Cates, Kimberly

by Stealing Heaven

  Bruises, from fresh purple to wild discolorations days old, darkened that ivory skin, finger marks Aidan knew had been imprinted into Norah's hands by his own. What the devil had he done to her during those hours he couldn't remember? Why the hell had she let him?... Let him hurt her?

  The notion that he had caused her this kind of pain made Aidan cringe, so stricken that when she tugged again, he let her hand slip away. She buried it in her skirts.

  "It's nothing," she claimed. "I have always bruised easily."

  As Aidan stared into her face, he could see it was the truth. Not only her delicate skin, but deeper; there were countless bruises far deeper in Norah Linton's spirit, where the careless and the cruel had hurt her.

  "Please, Sir Aidan, it's already forgotten."

  "I won't forget." Aidan's gaze swept up to hers. "What you did for me. What you did for Cassandra." He shifted against the mound of pillows. "Norah, why did you stay?"

  "You were so terribly sick."

  "Why should you have cared? I've been nothing short of a bastard since the first moment you arrived at Rathcannon. What if it hadn't been the gypsy potions? What if I'd been stricken with some kind of sickness, something contagious?"

  "I couldn't just leave you."

  Why did these simple words stun Aidan to his core? Even early on in his marriage to Delia, his wife wouldn't have so much as handed him the basin if he were ill. No, it would've been too vulgar, too distasteful. And as for the idea of Delia letting him clutch at her hands, claw at her until her skin was marred—she wouldn't have caught his hand to keep him from falling into an abyss if she were in danger of chipping one of her nails.

  Loyalty. Steadfastness. Unselfishness. Courage. Aidan knew enough of the world—and enough of women—to realize how rare these treasures of the spirit were. If Norah hadn't left him when he'd needed her, he was certain she would never abandon his daughter.

  Even so, would he be able to bear looking into those eyes, knowing all they had seen? She had glimpsed the darkest corners of Aidan's own soul and seen his vulnerability—a vulnerability he'd sworn no woman would ever see after Delia had left him scarred.

  He raised his gaze from the coverlet to Norah's features, features not dazzling the way that Delia's had been, but rather soft, kind, caring. She possessed a quiet loveliness that made him want to reach out and curve his hand over her cheek, with the same tenderness that he would cup a mountain flower nestled in a storm-swept hollow. And he would shelter her, keep her safe from storms forever, if she would let him.

  "Norah." His pulse beat erratically in his throat. "Don't."

  "Don't what?"

  "Don't go."

  "I suppose I can postpone my departure for however long you need me here. I'm certain it won't be long before—"

  "I don't want you to postpone leaving Rathcannon. I want you to stay here. Permanently."

  "Permanently? But I thought we'd agreed—"

  "I want you to be my wife. I need you. Cassandra needs you. And I think that you need us."

  The bonnet slipped from her hands, and in her haste to pick it up she stepped on part of the brim. "This is... I mean, I'm astonished you..." She made a wounded little sound.

  "Astonished I what? That I've finally had the wit to realize what a gem has been dumped on my doorstep? Norah, I still can't promise you hearts and flowers. Love. But I can take care of you, shield you so you'll never be at your stepfather's mercy again. I can give you the home you long for, and... a family of your own. A husband. A daughter."

  "But you said..."

  "I said a damned sight too much." He grimaced. "Truth is, I was doing my damnedest to get you to run screaming from Rathcannon of your own free will. I'm not proud to say that I would've just as soon avoided one of Cass's temper tantrums. Then, in the castle ruins, I was determined to use you for Cass's sake."

  "And now? You're going to tell me things have miraculously changed?"

  Aidan raked one hand through his hair. "Do you know, in all the years I've had Cass to myself, I've never been able to name a guardian for her? Oh, financially, she's well taken care of. There is enough money in trust that she can live like a princess for the rest of her life. Her affairs are in the hands of the most honorable solicitors in Christendom. The staff here at Rathcannon would walk through fire for her."

  "You've taken wonderful care of her."

  "The only thing I could never quite bring myself to do is to name someone to take care of her if I died. Her guardian.... No matter who I considered, I could find some flaw in them, something that held me back."

  "It would be hard to imagine entrusting such a treasure to anyone else. She is... magnificent."

  "Even though she hates you at the moment?"

  Norah smiled a little. "Yes. Even so."

  "Norah, if I could choose anyone to trust Cassandra to, anyone who would care for her, love her, understand her, it would be you."

  She looked taken aback, and one hand fluttered to her throat. "You barely know me."

  "I know enough. When a man spends as many hours over a gaming table as I have, he develops a sixth sense, an ability to peel back the facades people create and see what lurks beneath. I can pick out a liar and a cheater from across a room. I can guess which patrons of an establishment will be willing to cast their whole fortunes onto a dicing table. And I can tell when a person is honest. Honorable. Even though I am not."

  "Sir Aidan, I—"

  "I want you to be mother to my daughter, Norah Linton. Believe me, it is a relationship that would require far more of my esteem, my trust, than merely making you my wife."

  She stared at him for long seconds. "But Cassandra..."

  "The girl can take her damn moodiness and cast it to the devil. You'll be the best thing that ever happened to her. I know it."

  "But she—"

  "Norah, this is my decision, not Cassandra's. And I'm damned certain that if I spent a dozen years scouring all of Europe for a woman to fill this position, you would still be the one I would choose."

  Was there a kind of fragile joy in those eyes? A shimmering of hope? He saw the instant a cloud of unease swept over them.

  "If I married you," she said, stumbling over the words, "there would have to be... honesty between us. I would have to know—" She stopped, swallowed hard, then her eyes met his. "While you were delirious, you... you said things—about Cassandra and Delia."

  Aidan's hand knotted in the coverlet. "What exactly did I say?"

  "You were... chasing Cassandra, trying to find her. Someone had stolen her away. You kept saying something about poison, and that you—you would kill whoever had taken Cassandra away from you. From your cries I'm certain that person was Delia. Aidan, did—did you..."

  "Murder my wife?"

  He saw Norah flinch at the cold words, saw the truth in those guileless brown eyes, that somehow she had heard the rumors that had circled around him like vultures the past eight years.

  "I wondered how long it would be before you overheard the whispers." No denial, no anger; he felt as if his voice were dead. "You can't imagine how many times in my nightmares I've crushed Delia's lying throat with my hands, killed her for what she did, what she tried to do to Cass. But by the time I found them..." Fighting back waves of dizziness, he grabbed the dressing gown the footman had left him and drew it across his broad shoulders. The restlessness seething inside him stronger than the weakness left in the poison's wake, he rose and paced to the window.

  "Delia, Cassandra, and I had been at Rathcannon almost two years. Delia hated it. Almost as much as she hated me. I knew it, but in my damned arrogance I didn't care. Cass was safe, sheltered from scandal here. Nothing could hurt her. No one could."

  Norah listened as she saw a brooding light drift over Aidan's emerald eyes.

  "From what I could piece together from Cassandra and the servants, I underestimated Delia's determination and how far she would go to destroy me. The night Delia died, it had been storming. One of those he
llish storms that sweep in from the sea. She came into the study for a little while under some crazed pretense that one of the serving maids had stolen a ribbon from her room. I was drinking brandy. Heavily, I'm afraid. It was the panacea that got me through the night once Cass was asleep. Delia took my snifter and refilled it while we argued." He gave a bitter laugh. "I must admit, I was stunned by such wifely attention, but I'm afraid my suspicions as to Delia's motives didn't stretch quite so far as to imagining she'd slip poison into the draught."

  Poison... The word echoed in Norah's mind, raking back memories of Aidan's agonized cries, that dark cloud of fear that had swept over him when she'd said that word. "She wanted to murder you?"

  "I would assume that was her ultimate goal, wouldn't you? I mean, as someone who just finished going through the singularly unpleasant experience of being half poisoned, I would imagine any such bumbling would tend to make an already estranged husband decidedly unamused."

  He was making a scathing mockery of the fact his wife had attempted to kill him, Norah thought, her heart breaking. That sensual mouth was curled in self-derision, as if his life meant nothing, except where it touched his daughter.

  "What... happened?"

  "When we'd first arrived at Rathcannon, Cadagon gave me a wolfhound pup with a taste for spirits. As Delia slipped from the room, Finn came bounding in and knocked the glass out of my hand. It was the damnedest habit—the dog could lick up the spilled wine without ever so much as nicking his tongue on the glass shards." Aidan leaned an arm against the window and rested his head on his clenched fist. Regret. There was far more regret in the man's voice over his dog than himself.

  "Did the dog..."

  "About forty-five minutes later he went into convulsions. He died just as the poison took hold of me."

  "Oh my God."

  "The instant I knew what was happening, I stumbled up to Cass's room."

  "You couldn't have thought that Delia would murder her own child."

  "Delia had always known that if she wanted to hurt me, the child was the place to strike. She used to say all kinds of wild things—that Cassandra wasn't my daughter, that she was the bastard of one of a dozen lovers. As if I would've given a damn. She was my child, Norah, in my heart. That was all that mattered. Delia had once threatened to tell Cass she was a bastard, an unwanted child that she had tried to get a witch woman to rip from her womb. Half of Rathcannon heard me vow that if she ever breathed a word to the girl, I would kill her."

  Norah's gaze skated over Aidan's features, pale and yet so dazzlingly handsome, his eyes dark and intense. And she was certain he would have done anything to protect his daughter from this woman who had threatened to hurt her.

  "I told her to leave, to get the hell out, but she said she'd never leave Cass. The girl was hers. Hers. Property. As if Cass were a goddamn dog Delia could drag around on a string. Delia didn't want Cassandra, didn't love her. She only wanted to make my life hell. In the end, she made the one threat that I couldn't fight. She vowed that if I banished her from Rathcannon, she'd find Cass when she was grown up and tell her I was the one who had so cruelly separated them."

  "Cassandra adores you." Norah jumped to his defense, aching for him. "She would never have believed such a lie."

  "I believed Delia, didn't I? All those years ago when I went to the altar like a blasted beast to the slaughter. The woman was a consummate actress. One who took the hearts of half the men in London and twisted them to her will. Made them believe she was an angel, all the while she laughingly led them to hell. Tell me, Norah: What chance would an innocent like Cassandra have against that kind of evil?"

  Norah shivered; the scene Aidan had painted in her imagination was all too vivid, the consequences of such a revelation to the proud sheltered girl in the tower room all too easy to imagine.

  "When I reached Cass's room, her bed was empty. Mrs. Brindle had been Delia's nurse when she was small. I thought—thought she might have been in league with Delia, but the old woman was as shocked and scared as I was. That was when I knew that Delia had taken Cass and run. Cass was so damned brave, but the one thing that frightened her was storms. And she was lost in one far more dangerous than anything she could imagine. To make matters worse, I didn't know how much time I had before the poison... finished me. I didn't know which way they'd gone. I dragged myself up on a horse and rode. Thank God I passed a man who had seen a coach, hellbent for leather, heading toward the coast. The coast, and, I was certain, a ship that would take Cassandra away from me forever, hide her where I could never find her."

  Norah closed her eyes against the image: Aidan, lashed by the storm, death snapping at his vitals, his daughter just beyond his grasp. If there was indeed a devil, he could not have fashioned a more hideous hell for this man.

  "The whole sky was shattered with lightning, and torrents of rain were lashing down. It was the worst storm I'd ever seen, like something alive, malevolent. Delia must have seen me, or her lover did. All I know is that they veered up onto the road that snaked along the edge of the cliff. Sweet Jesus, I couldn't believe it. They were insane. On a clear day, a lone rider traveling at that speed would have been in peril. They were in a coach, and that night I doubt the angels themselves could have traversed that road without plunging to the rocks below."

  His gait still unsteady, he made his way to the hearth and stared into the writhing flames, his face shadowed with that decade-old horror. "I could hear Cassandra screaming for me. Screaming." Norah saw his throat constrict in a paroxysm of remembered anguish. "If I had had Delia in my grasp at that moment, I could have killed her. Of that I'm certain. I was only a horse's length from the back of the coach when one of its wheels disintegrated in front of my eyes. The coach rolled, teetering on the brink of that cliff."

  "Cassandra... she was—"

  "Cass was inside the coach, the whole thing threatening to fall. I reached in to grab her. I remember... remember Delia clawing at my arms, trying to shove Cass aside so she could escape. I remember Cass screaming and screaming, her face... her face covered with blood. I don't know how I got the two of us onto my horse. Whatever poison Delia had used was working its way through me with a vengeance. The last thing I remember was riding like a madman, Cass in my arms, trying to get her to the doctor's house. They say I collapsed outside the man's door."

  "How in God's name did you survive?"

  "Cassandra kept calling for me. I had to hold her hand."

  A simple admission of fact. Norah wondered if she fell in love with Aidan Kane in that instant.

  "Thank God you're both safe. I can't believe you escaped unscathed."

  "Not completely. Cass has a scar still on her forehead, and I'm terrified there are others as well, buried where I can never see them. And as for me..." He grimaced. "Delia's legacy will haunt me forever. The moment I regained consciousness, I sent a search party out to find her and the bastard who was driving the coach, but by the time they reached the accident site Delia was dead. The only thing they found of her lover was a gold-handled walking stick, with a head in the shape of a hawk."

  "Had he run away?"

  "After an accident like that? It would've taken a miracle. No. The cliffs claimed him, and the sea pulled him under before the search party could find the body."

  "But if that's so, then why would anyone think that you murdered Delia? Everyone involved must have known the truth. The staff at Rathcannon, the people who searched. And the doctor whose aid you sought must have known as well. You must have been half dead when you arrived at his house."

  "When they found Delia, her throat was crushed. They believed she had been strangled."

  "She could have been injured any one of a hundred ways when the carriage overturned," Norah said firmly. "Or it could have been the man who—"

  "There were plenty who claimed her 'lover' was a figment of my imagination. Someone I'd invented to cover up my heinous deed."

  "You didn't kill her."

  Those incredible green
eyes widened in astonishment and bemusement. "Are you so certain, Norah?" he queried softly. "Sometimes I still wonder if I did it, maddened by the poison and my own rage. God knows, there were a dozen times when I thought if she made one more threat against Cassandra, if she..." His voice snagged. "Isn't it possible I crushed her throat in my hands and I just don't remember?"

  Norah crossed to him, and her fingertips cupped his beard-stubbled cheeks, forcing him to face her, her eyes capturing his troubled gaze. "If Cassandra was in danger, you would never have wasted precious time attacking Delia. Never. No matter how much you hated her. No matter how much agony you were in. Aidan, I know you. Nothing would matter to you except getting help for your daughter."

  Was it possible for those eyes that had been filled with such mockery, such self-loathing, to suddenly seem defenseless, stripped of everything save a dawning wonder? It was an astonished wonder that made Norah think she would sell her soul to have seen that green gaze in the years before Delia Kane had poisoned not only Aidan Kane's body but his soul.

  He smiled, just a little, and Norah's heart wrenched for him. "I had never thought of it that way before. Christ, Norah, I... maybe I didn't." He raked one trembling hand through his dark hair, then gave a brittle laugh. "Not that it would matter a damn to most people whether I'd been pardoned by a band of holy angels. In the end, what I did or didn't do mattered a helluva lot less to the folks hereabouts than who I was. A Kane of Rathcannon. Most of them relished the idea that I'd murdered my own wife. One more diabolical legacy to add to the castle's illustrious history. Wife murder is a creative mode of villainy which none of my ancestors had thought to indulge in before."

  Norah shivered, unsettled by the notion of so many people clinging delightedly to such tales of supposed wickedness, embroidering them with lies as great ladies would embellish their fancy work. Saints only knew how twisted the stories had become. And, Norah thought with chilling clarity, what would happen if such stories ever reached the wrong ears?

  "Has Cassandra ever heard these lies?"