“The child that died,” he asked. “Did Jeremy know?” A change of tack that had her flailing for firmer ground. A way to bolster her crumbling resolve.
“He did.”
“And what did he do when he found out?”
“There was naught he could do. He had promised another. And his family saw to it he fulfilled that earlier oath. He left for England and his bride three months before his son was born. I never heard from him again.”
Fury flared briefly before the light within his eyes flickered and went out. “What was he called?”
Her heart fluttered as if trying to escape her chest. “Who?”
“Your son. Tell me. I want to know. Tell me everything.”
Warmth filled every part of her as if she’d suddenly come from darkness into brightest sunshine. The image of her son drew anew on a mind freed at last from the shame of remembering, and she smiled. “I called him after my father. William.”
The moon washed Cat’s skin in luminous silver. Her eyes black pools where thoughts lay hidden. Blankets and sheets had been kicked aside or entangled beneath them. He lay spooned beside her, their bodies cooling in the chilly room, their hearts pounding as they recovered.
The dam breeched, Cat’s past had spilled out of her in a torrent of festering memories. Aidan had allowed her to unburden herself. Listening in silence. At the end, holding her while she wept. The calm that had followed like the peace after a storm. Sweet. Untainted. Alive with potential.
Cat reached for a blanket, just that slight movement of skin on skin enough to stir him back to life. He pulled her close, his thumb rubbing the puckered nipple he encountered. A hiss of pleasure as she rolled to face him. Breasts flattened to his damp chest. A slender leg thrown across his hip. His now very alert cock nested in the junction created.
She skimmed his stubbled jaw. Kissed him with lips velvety warm, his tongue dipping deep to taste more of her. She sighed into his mouth, grinding against him, causing every inch of his body to stand at attention.
Her hand dropped to curve around him. Her fingers cool. Her touch exquisite. Groaning, he jumped at the caress. “You’re far too good at this, a chuisle,” he murmured, combing his fingers through her hair, gliding them along the curve of her jaw.
Her body stilled, and she lifted troubled eyes to his. Bottom lip caught between her teeth.
He quirked his mouth in a wry smile. “I’ve stepped in something somewhere. Though the gods only know what,” he said, half joking. Their bed remained littered with caltrops. A misstep could spell the end of repairing the damage he’d done with his thoughtless words. His unthinking actions.
She lay back against the pillows, the ebony ribbon of her hair fanned against the cream of her skin. His muscles went from jumping to rock hard. Gods, did she know what kind of a picture she created? As erotic as that bloody damned statue of Leda. He’d almost taken her there. That day. He’d been hard and half-crazed with lust. And she not knowing what the hell she’d sparked with one look from those bright jade green eyes. He’d not surrendered to it then. But now, here, no such scruples forestalled him.
“Cat?”
Her gaze flickered. Died. “Someone told me once men don’t want to know they come second to a woman’s bed.” She paused on a shuddery gulp of air. “That no man wants to think he’s being compared to another and found wanting.”
He let out the breath he’d been holding. That was it? That was the worry bringing bleak misery to a face so recently awash with ecstasy? He bit back his initial one-word response. Took better aim to diffuse her fears.
His hand stroked the line of her ribs. Traced the curve of her breasts. Drifted to skim the flat of her stomach, pleased with the shiver that met his agile fingers. “And what of the world’s widows? Are they doomed to never know another man’s touch without worry they’re thought of as soiled goods?”
“No, but it’s not the same and well you know it.” Her gasps came faster now. Threaded with a shaky excitement. His own body felt electrically charged. A touch from her all it would take to shoot him to the moon.
“No, it’s not. You’re right. You weren’t wed with love as you should have been. Nor left with a widow’s resources. But if I come second or thirty-second to your bed, Cat, I shall consider myself lucky. For were you any other than I found you, you’d have had the men buzzing like honey wasps and me with nary a chance.”
His lips found her neck, the swirl of her earlobe, her lips. His hands stroked her legs, her inner thighs. Brushed ever so enticingly at the folds of her mound, flicking out to barely caress the sensitive nub hidden within. She was wet for him. Heat rose from her body, and the tangy sweet scent of sex.
She whimpered, desire glazing her eyes. A smile tipping the beautiful corners of her very kissable mouth. “You’re mad.”
He felt the slick, moist fire of her center. His body aching to plunge himself to the hilt. Take her until she screamed his name.
He held back. Chained the brutish desire to possess. Stake his claim. Instead, he took his tortured time. Heightening the pleasure. A wild churn curling along his veins with almost as withering an inferno as the combustion that met his use of magic.
“Besides,” he growled, “I think my vanity can handle any amount of comparison.”
Pulling himself to his knees between her legs, he licked his slow and seductive way downward. Lapped at her with his best scoundrel’s moves. Resurrected the rake he’d been once upon a lifetime ago to pleasure her senseless. He’d drive that bloody bastard Jeremy right out of her dazed and satisfied brain. She’d forget the damned ass ever existed. It would be Aidan she’d see. Aidan she’d feel. Aidan she’d remember forever.
By now they both labored, whimpers and moans mingling in a bed suddenly far too small for the gyrations of two sweat slicked, writhing bodies in the throes of a passion that had moved beyond mere lovemaking. It had become a battle. A challenge they meant to win. A desperate struggle to exorcise a phantasm played out with pillows.
At one point he found himself on his back, eyes closed, a woman’s lips around his member, his body throbbing as spasms built. He wanted to explode. To shout her name. To hold her and never let her go.
His reaction was sharp. Decisive.
An expert twist. A flash of smile. And his shaft lay buried within her. Their eyes met as he rocked forward. As she rose to meet him, taking as much of him as she could, the slide of her muscles goading his body onward.
The rhythm increased. The tempo stretching to a breaking point. He felt her climax. Head thrown back, neck arched, the ripples of inner muscles as he drove into her again and again.
Her hips came off the bed, her body arced like a bow, the moon washing her skin to pearl. Spasms wracked him. He threw himself forward. Thrust. And thrust again. Pumping himself into her. His seed spilling sticky and hot. Giving himself to her. Praying it might hold her when all else he’d tried had failed. For she’d never given him an answer. Never spoken the words he sought to wring from her with his pleasuring: Yes, Aidan. I will stay.
She watched him as he slept. The broad shoulder sloping down into the long, clean line of his collarbone. The slant of ribs, starkly visible with every breath he took. The powerful, sinewy legs. There was a new boiled-down toughness to his body, as if the unessential bits of him had been burned off in the struggle for his soul. Fine lines lay at the edges of his eyes, deep creases carved into the corners of his mouth where none had been before. And one hand fell defensively across his chest, where the long ugly slash of a new scar marred the sleek musculature.
It had been a night of discovery. The two of them finding each other in the dark. Holding on as they stepped over a new threshold into unmarked territory. Thoughts revealed. Plans dreamt. Bodies explored until they lay spent and bedazzled, their skin damp with lovemaking, their breaths quick and shuddering. Holding all the potential for permanence.
But she wasn’t blind. Belfoyle bore the same signs of neglect as had Kilronan House. Yet he
re among the ancient family heirlooms and Douglas legends, thick as furze, the sense of patient waiting seemed almost tangible. An expectation of a turned corner. A new beginning that might bring the old house back to life.
Yet a new beginning meant new money. And even as the tolerated stepdaughter, she’d not held a dowry large enough to tempt a wealthy financier’s son, much less a peer of the realm. She hated to admit it, but Aidan needed Miss Osborne. Someone with the right family ties and a sterling reputation. A woman Aidan could be proud of and who in turn would be proud to reside upon the arm of the Earl of Kilronan.
She brushed a strand of auburn hair off his brow. Skimmed a cheek shadowed with stubble. Kissed the sensual line of his mouth.
Her actions carrying the grief of a parting.
She’d fantasized. Of course she had. And Aidan had nurtured the dream with his whispered promises tonight. But deep in her heart, she knew better. Only this time the naive child who’d shattered with Jeremy’s abandonment bore a strength she’d only achieved over the last hardscrabble years.
She bent but she did not break.
And her time with Aidan would carry her through a thousand empty days.
From a night of fantasy had sprung a gift beyond measure. A serenity she’d never expected to feel. And a head full of memories no longer bearing the stain of her sins. Her son had come back to her. Every breath he’d taken, every glance from slate blue newborn eyes, every feeble cry as he struggled against the inevitable.
Aidan had taken from her. But he’d also given back. And even if it had been unintentional, she’d give credit where credit was due.
She had her son again. And she knew now he would remain a part of her forever. She leaned over. Whispered in Aidan’s ear so that only he might hear: “Thank you.”
Aidan stood upon the thin strip of beach at the bottom of the cliff. Shaded his eyes as he estimated the climb. A good three hundred feet. Nothing like the sheer ascent of the cliffs to the south, but still a challenge.
He’d accomplished it twice. Once with his father on that long-ago birthday. The second time in the months following his parents’ deaths, when physical exhaustion had been the only way to dull the devastating grief and ease the frustrated desire for vengeance.
It was that same kind of need bringing him here this morning. He’d brought his gear. Leather harness. Ropes. A thin-bladed axe. Hammer. Steel anchors.
Scrambling up the initial part of the ascent, he hammered the first anchor into the rock face. Knotted his rope around it. Attached that rope to the harness at his waist. From here, the way steepened to almost vertical, though at one point, a buttress of rock created a solid handhold at the top. A perfect place to wedge the next anchor into position. Knot the second rope.
The next stretch grew more demanding. No outcroppings or spurs for easy positioning. He found and dug his fingers into a narrow crevice. Pulled himself up. Wind tugged at him. Slapped the cliffs in sea-salty gusts, whining through his ropes. Nesting seabirds squawked threats from their ledges and beat their wings to warn him off.
Aidan’s shoulders strained as he pulled himself up, sweat leaking into his eyes. The harness cut into his waist. His fingers grew slippery and cramped. Breathing harsh with fatigue.
Fumbling with the next anchor, he dropped it. The metallic plink as it bounced off the rock and the crash of sliding shale startled the birds to a fresh round of squawking.
Training took over.
Climb. Hammer. Release. Clip. Repeat.
Clouds moved in from the west. Flattened, bellies black and licked with lightning. The wind became a tempest, the rain arriving in icy sheets.
A voice slithered up out of the torrent. A vicious hissing drowning out the sounds of the storm, the squawk of birds, the rumble of a surging ocean.
A crushing squall tore him from the cliff. He dangled one handed over the precipice, his shoulder screaming as tendons stretched to the breaking point. Then, his hold collapsing, he plummeted earthward, the ground rushing to meet him. No time for panic. No time for regret.
And just as in the dream when he woke before he struck, the rope caught, strained against the anchor, his harness jerking him to a stop with a bone-rattling jolt.
Rain sluiced over his face. Soaked him to the skin. He squinted up into the downpour. Into the flickering clouds. And swore he saw the ghost of a shape upon the cliff’s edge. The gleam of a blade.
His scar burned as if someone had jammed his frozen axe head into it, and he gasped against the glacial agony, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes as he fought back a scream.
The wind laughed at his pain. “Skoa.”
Soon.
“There’s nothing here, Aidan. Not even a veiled reference.”
Cat pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, but the imprint of the words remained etched on the backs of her eyelids. Sharp as if they’d been penned in blood.
Arthur’s return figured more and more among the pages now, as if the unfocused ambitions of the group slowly coalesced to a single goal. And sprinkled throughout, references to the tapestry and the stone, both items inextricably linked to this resurrection. Yet nowhere was any mention of the whereabouts of either object. If old Kilronan had recorded it anywhere within the pages of his diary, he’d been too clever for her.
She closed the book, sickness dogging her, a malaise sucking at her like soggy ground. Making every thought, every breath as exhausting as if she’d fought a battle. Ended on the losing side. Pushing the book farther away as if distance might ease the worst of it, she made her decision. “I’m finished, Aidan. I can’t do this anymore.”
Aidan peeled himself from the shadows. He’d been skulking all day. A simmering anger to his words. A brewing violence to his actions. A new restless purpose, as if he knew Belfoyle’s sanctuary would buy them only so much time.
“Fair enough. Give it to me.” He held out a hand, a shuttered expression in his eyes.
She checked a quick breath, her hand instinctively curling around the book. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Lazarus is after the diary. Why? Because he’s been ordered to retrieve it for Máelodor. Why is Máelodor after it? Because he thinks—or knows—it contains the location of the tapestry and the stone. They’ll kill for it. And I’m tired of the two of us being their number one target. They can have the diary. I’m through with it. I’ve learned all I want to of my father’s crazed and ruthless ambitions.”
“Lazarus will never let you live. He’ll tear you apart, leaving less than enough to fill a canvas sack.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I have a few tricks that may surprise.”
“Aidan, you can’t think you’re a match for—or perhaps you do. After all, you did it once, didn’t you?”
He turned toward her with slow deliberation. Tracking her with a stare that had naught of the lover in it, but instead a savagery as relentless as the parasitic Unseelie. An image assailed her. The glimpse she’d caught long weeks ago upon her first reading of the diary of Kilronan as ironfisted conqueror. Sword upraised. Streaked with gore. A mythic, battle-maddened demon.
She forced herself to remain still beneath his fathomless gaze despite the panic assailing her. Had Aidan been forever altered by the sinister shadows? Was this what she’d been witnessing in the stretched and uneasy hours? Daz had referred to it as an addiction. A craving for the beast that would live within Aidan as a splinter of dark mage energy. Tempting him always. Luring him with clawed hands toward the chasm.
“I’ve grappled with every angle, Cat. If Máelodor wants the tapestry, who am I to stop him? Let him have it. Let him try his madness. What is it to me?”
“It’s everything. It makes him one step closer to succeeding. To resurrecting Arthur as a slave born Domnuathi. Using him to sway the world of Other to Máelodor’s side. Can you imagine the horrors a war between Duinedon and Other would bring to the world? It can’t be allowed to get that far.”
He fell into a chair. Clo
sed his eyes. When he opened them again, the creature had receded into the darkest corner of Aidan’s soul. This time his stare burned clear of shadows. Made his words all the more frightening.
“Did you ever think, Cat, that the war has already started?”
She cast a quick glance around the darkened room, the furniture no more than black shapes against the gloom. But this time she knew where she was going. There was no hesitation. And only one or two second thoughts. The ones that had escaped her earlier exorcism.
Aidan wouldn’t like what she planned. But Aidan wasn’t here to stop her. She’d left him sleeping. Finally.
It had taken hours of tortured pacing—his limp growing more pronounced with every pass, his brow growing heavier with unspoken troubles—before he finally fell into an exhausted doze.
Hours in which she’d hatched her plan. Worked up her courage. Hardened herself to her purpose.
Her talent for languages had begun her involvement. Her talent for thievery would end it.
Conjuring flame to candle, she set an unerring course. Left her coal bucket at the hearth. Crossed to a low chest opposite a high tester bed.
Sinking to her haunches, she worked the lock with the flat of a knife she’d cadged from dinner. One snick of a sprung catch, and she was in.
Within the chest, a bundle of letters tied with a frayed ribbon. A deteriorating set of bound Shakespeare. A fan with one broken stick. A folded length of watered silk. A second of muslin in a pale green. A bouquet of dried flowers.
She placed each item aside as she searched, trying not to think of the woman who once owned this chest. A woman whose life had been torn apart in the initial struggle to bring Arthur back. Now, six years later, Cat refused to let one more Douglas be sacrificed to the obsession. Not if she could prevent it.
A book lay at the bottom of the drawer. Cloth wrapped. Heavy with secrets.
Her heart galloped as she withdrew it, palms moist, fingers trembling. She drew in a steadying breath as the cloth fell away. Tracing the spread-winged bird perched atop its crooked sword, she mouthed the Douglas motto like a mantra—luck favors the strong.
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