Cates, Kimberly (11 page)

Kane
winced, a sweep of crimson appearing on his high cheekbones. "By 'ripe and
rosy,' I only meant that you are a different sort of woman than—than my first
wife. In truth, that's the highest compliment I could give you," he
explained hastily. "God's teeth, it got so I thought I could walk through
Delia's bedchamber and see her with a dozen men between the coverlets, and
merely caution them not to let the cat slip out the door when they took their
leave. You, on the other hand, are obviously a lady of quality...." He
stammered to a halt, his jaded face twisted in evident dismay at the words that
had tumbled from his mouth.

"Don't
distress yourself," Norah said, holding up one hand. "I know exactly
what you meant by your comment, Sir Aidan. I became resigned to the fact I'm
not a beauty long ago." Then why was it that here, now, with this man
staring down at her, she suddenly felt the fierce pangs of regret she'd thought
packed away with the slippers and fan from her first disastrous ball? "As
you said, even if we—we enter into this arrangement, it would be purely a
practical one. Not an affair of the heart."

"No.
It would not be an affair of the heart. But I would do my best not to cause you
pain. I would... But then, there will be time to hash the rest of this out
later, if there is, indeed, a wedding. In any case, you are welcome here for as
long as you need safe haven."

"Kindness?
From you, sir?" She looked up at him, and for a heartbeat she thought she
saw a flicker of shame, almost self-loathing in his eyes.

"Don't
deceive yourself. I only indulge in the most selfish pursuits, madam. If they
benefit someone else, it is purely accidental, I assure you. As for my motive
in allowing you to remain at the castle, well, it's possible I only want to
give Cassandra time to grow tired of this notion she has of making you her
mother. Perhaps I simply don't give enough of a damn about your presence to
trouble myself to get rid of you at the moment. Rathcannon is a huge castle,
the grounds extensive. I could house a dozen runaway Englishwomen and not even
know they were here."

He
hesitated for a moment, and a shiver skated beneath Norah's skin as that
emerald gaze locked with hers. "It's also possible that I'm such a
bastard, I have already figured out a way to use you to my advantage, Miss
Linton. I shall see about procuring a special license at once, so that if we do
choose to marry no time will be lost scrambling around crying banns and other
such nonsense."

"But...
but I thought we—that marriage... I still cannot believe you would want to
wed—"

Shadows
melted across Kane's face, deepening the hollows, darkening his compelling
eyes. "Miss Linton, do you know why I have such luck at the gaming
tables?"

"I've
not had much experience with games of chance," she answered warily.

"I
excel because I play fast and dangerous. Once I choose a course, I never look
back. If I choose to marry you, the wedding will take place the same way."

He
turned and crossed to the door, then paused one lean hand on the brass latch,
the emerald ring glittering wickedly on his finger. "There is one other
thing I do that you should be made aware of."

"What
is that?" Norah asked faintly.

"I
shift the rules to suit me, Miss Linton. I cheat. It's a family legacy. Bred in
the bone."

Norah's
throat felt parched, her lips suddenly tingling, as Aidan Kane's sensual gaze
flicked across them. She expected him to leave, to close the door behind him.
But instead, he turned and paced toward her, his eyes suddenly narrowed, his
lips parted.

Norah
took a step backward. "What is the matter?"

"The
most damnable thing. It just occurred to me that I've never been betrothed
before. Delia and I raced off in a fit of impulsive passion. It seems as if a
man should kiss the woman he is bound to."

"But
we're not bound! I mean, we probably won't be..." Her voice vanished,
stolen away by the overwhelming aura of Aidan Kane. He was a whisper away from
her, his eyes smoky, a sulky cast to his lips, as if her protest had robbed him
of something sweet.

"I
suppose we are not bound—yet," he allowed, his breath warming the curves
of Norah's lips, heating places far deeper. "However, a betrothal kiss is
something to contemplate."

With
that he slipped through the door. Norah pressed a hand to her racing heart,
taken aback by the knowledge that there was a part of her that had wanted Sir
Aidan to close the space between them, to fit that beguilingly sensual mouth to
hers.

Her
experience in kissing had been limited at best. There had been the snipe-nosed
Mr. Lambeth to whom she had allowed the liberty in a fit of simple curiosity,
and there had been the sickening, overly enthusiastic groping of the lustful
youth her stepfather had chosen to be her husband.

Never
had she suspected that a man like Aidan Kane would kiss her. Never had she
imagined tasting the power, the passion that would be in the Irish knight's
mouth, in hands so skilled that a dancer hungered for them.

Never
had she imagined such an experience, except in her dreams.

She
pressed her fingertips to her lips, trembling. No. Aidan Kane was no dream-spun
hero, no lover born of mist and magic and fantasies ages old. He had made it
glaringly clear that he was no man for a woman to build dream castles about.

He
was selfish. Ruthless. Dangerous. He was a man at one with vice and greed and
dark pleasures.

When
I leave my daughter, I am a wholly different man.

Norah
paced toward the tumbled bed Aidan Kane's first wife had slept in and wondered
if he had always been a man lost in the darkness, or if Delia Kane had driven
him to wander the path he embraced.

She
crossed to the dressing table onto which he had slammed the candlestick he'd
forgotten in his haste to quit her chamber.

The
mahogany surface was still littered with woman's things: a cut-glass scent
bottle, a half-open fan depicting the seduction of Venus, a silver jewel case
with the initials D.K. etched in elegant letters. And a... note?

The
folded square of paper was propped against the looking glass, a gobbet of
sealing wax glistening red, as if defending the missive from prying eyes.

Norah
stared at it long moments, her gaze taking in the freshly inked inscription:

Lady...

She
caught her lips between her teeth, confusion and curiosity warring inside her.
The servants had made it clear this chamber had rarely if ever been used since
the demise of the first Lady Kane. Was it possible that this note was yet
another relic of the dead woman, like the jewel box and the fan? Could this be
some impassioned letter from one of Delia Kane's lovers? A missive left behind
by the woman who had once possessed the dark-haired man, the fairy child, and
this lovely, haunting room?

No.
Sir Aidan said Delia Kane had died when Cassandra was five. The ink would be
faded, the paper yellowed with age if it had belonged to that time so long ago.

Then
who could this missive possibly be intended for? One of the servants? Or...
most unlikely of all... could it be for Norah herself?

Norah
took it up, a sense of foreboding, a whispering of unease prickling at her
nape.

An
unease that multiplied tenfold as she broke the wafer of sealing wax and read
the verse inscribed on the bit of paper:

Three tragedies
has Rathcannon,

cursed from a
rebel's grave—

A princess,
imprisoned in a tower,

A mistress,
murdered by her husband's hand,

A woman,
straying near hell's flame.

Flee, before it
consumes you.

Norah's
heart fluttered, a thick knot of fear lodging in her throat, and she glanced
about the room, half expecting to discover some phantom there, ink stains on
transparent fingers, a cryptic warning on death-cold lips.

Hatred.
Bitterness. Norah had heard those emotions, raw in Sir Aidan Kane's voice.
Cassandra's
mother was a coldhearted bitch.... Believe anything reprehensible you hear
about me.... It's probably true....

But
this?

Norah
shivered. If she didn't know better, Norah might believe that this note was
warning her... of what?

That
Aidan Kane had murdered his wife?

Nights
at Rathcannon had always been miserable—silent eternities chafing Aidan. During
the hours when Cassandra was filling the castle with laughter and temper
tantrums, mischief and magic, he was able to forget at least a little, subdue
the constant litany of regrets that warred inside his head.

But
after his daughter had trailed up to her tower chamber to lose herself in
sleep, Aidan had always ranged about the castle with the restless tension of a
condemned prisoner listening to the carpenter's hammer strokes on the gallows
that would be his destruction. A man tormented with the knowledge that the
trapdoor would be sprung beneath him eventually, though unsure exactly when the
fates would hurtle him to his doom.

He
retaliated against that sense of powerlessness the only way he knew how: by
riding the night until he could return to Rathcannon too tired to think, too
numb to dream, too exhausted to peer into a future that only looked bleaker and
more dismal with each passing year.

But
as he plunged his stallion over countless Irish hills this night, he knew that
his future had been altered forever.

Altered
by a dark-eyed woman with sorrow, softness in her ivory face, and quiet courage
drifting in a veil about her, as subtle as the gossamer nightgown that had
hidden her most intimate secrets.

Redemption.

She
had offered it to Aidan with one slender hand, as certainly as any angel come
to give him pardon from heaven. Her name.

Linton.

It
was the key that could unlock the most noble doors in London, gain entry there,
even for the daughter of an infamous scoundrel like Aidan Kane. It was a
passage through darkness into the light.

The
salvation of Cassandra's future. Yet this miraculous pardon could only be
bought by the ultimate act of selfishness, villainy. The price? What little
decency remained in Aidan's own soul. That, and the future of the innocent
woman who had strayed too close to the beast's den.

He
reined his stallion up the rise to where the ocean crashed against the cliffs.
As dastardly as he might have been—dissolute, decadent, jaded—he'd never yet
stooped to taking advantage of a woman like Norah, using her for his own
purposes.

The
prospect of doing so now twisted something deep in his chest, sickened him to
the point that he was nearly tempted to thrust her into the coach and drive her
away from Rathcannon as quickly as possible—not to save his own neck this time,
but, rather, to save hers.

And
yet he hadn't sought her out, hadn't intentionally drawn her to him. She had
come to Rathcannon wanting a husband. He was merely going to grant her wish. At
Rathcannon she would be out of reach of her bastard of a stepfather. She would
have a home.

Cassandra
would have someone to chatter with about dresses and hair ribbons, someone to
go to during dozens of balls and soirees, in search of a pin to catch up a
drooping flounce. In search of consolation when the young gentleman who had
caught her eye failed to sign her dance card. And Aidan—Aidan would never have
to suffer the hell he had been dreading for so many years—seeing his daughter
rejected because of his own sins.

He
drew rein, barely halting Hazard at the edge of the cliff, sending a spray of
pebbles and turf cascading down into the water. He stared down at the moonlight
melting over the waves, heard the violent music of the sea, felt the rush of
certainty in his heart.

He
would take what Norah Linton had so innocently offered. He would bind her to
him forever, not out of love, or even affection, not to build some sort of
future. But to use her for this small space in time. For Cassandra.

Self-loathing
pulsed through him, mingled with fierce resignation, as he remembered the great
dark pools of Norah Linton's eyes, that determined lift of her chin that had
been intended to assure him that she had entered into this adventure with only
the most practical of intentions. That she had not spun girlish dreams of fairy
tales and love about this marriage she had sought.

But
it had been a lie, a lie exposed in the lines of the letters she had written
him, words that whispered through his memory like the haunting strains of a
ballad, revealing secret, tender places inside her soul that a man like him
could never touch, never heal.

Beneath
Norah Linton's quiet strength and stiff-necked English pride, he recognized the
remnants of the emotions he had seen so often of late in his daughter's eyes. A
kind of breathless anticipation, a waiting, a hoping that Norah had not yet
fully extinguished from her soul.