“No!” She glanced at the window as if expecting the king himself to come racketing up to the door. “You should carry yourself off to make yourself quite handsome.”
“I should, eh? Since when did you become so particular about my appearance?” Aidan peered into the gilt-framed mirror on the wall. His mouth tipped up in a rueful grin. Cassandra was right: He was looking even more disreputable than usual. Stubble shadowed his square jaw, his hair wind-tossed and wild about sun-bronzed cheeks. His eyes were reddened from a shortage of sleep and an overabundance of liquor. A spectacular bruise stained his left cheekbone where he’d been struck by a vase his mistress had flung at him when he’d not tarried in her bedchamber. His cravat had been mangled by impatient fingers, while his breeches and boots were dulled by a fine layer of travel dust.
“Your coat is deplorable,” Cassandra insisted with a toss of her head. “And your whiskers nearly burned my cheek raw when you kissed me!”
He rubbed at the offending stubble with one long-fingered hand. “I should hope these will be a minor irritation, since I doubt I’ll be tempted to kiss my present!”
Cassandra choked, sputtering. “You could make yourself presentable for me. A gentleman… Well, I—Papa!” Her garbled scoldings vanished in a vexed cry. “What on earth have you done now!” Accusation was edged with worry.
Aidan frowned, confused. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”
“Your eye! Don’t even attempt to tell me you ran into a stable door again, for I shan’t believe it! Tell me you haven’t been indulging in fisticuffs at that awful boxing salon again!”
“I haven’t even been to London!” He raised his fingers sheepishly to the place Stasia had bruised him and groped for a plausible lie. “When I was riding out of the city, I was set upon by… by a pair of brigands who tried to relieve me of my purse.”
“Brigands? Oh, Papa!”
“Yes, there must have been four big, burly fellows.” Aidan paced to the window overlooking the castle drive, warming to his story.
“I thought you said ‘a pair.’”
“Well, I was much confused. It was dark, and after all, I’d taken the devil of a blow to my head.” Aidan paused, nearly sighing in relief as a reprieve came in an unexpected form, that of a coach rumbling toward the castle.
“It seems as if I will have to regale you of my adventure some other time,” he said, tugging at Cassandra’s curls. “My gift seems to be coming up the drive.”
“What?”
“The coach!” Aidan said with diabolical glee. “I’ll beat you to the door!”
With a squawk, Cass started to dart out ahead of him. Aidan caught a handful of her dressing gown, reeling her in. “Cassandra Victorine Kane, you are still in your nightgown. A young lady shouldn’t parade in front of the servants en dishabille.”
“I won’t if you’ll wait for me! Papa! Papa, no!”
Aidan had never been able to resist teasing her. He raced down the stairs, making a deafening racket, while he heard Cassandra scrambling to get dressed. He had no intention of spoiling her surprise, of course, fully planning to wait for her in the grand entry to Rathcannon. But at that instant the door flew open, revealing the face of Rathcannon’s coachman, Sean O’Day, the burly Irishman looking as distraught as if he had just set fire to the stables. Ashen faced, he railed at the footman, Calvy Sipes.
“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, you won’t believe what Miss Cass has done. The master is going to flay the hide off every one of us, and I vow I’ll hand him the knife to do it with!”
Aidan stepped into the coachman’s line of vision, and Sean looked as if he was about to be judged at the seat of Lucifer himself. “Come now, man, don’t be so hard on the girl!” Aidan soothed. “I promise not to resort to violence unless I’m severely provoked.”
O’Day’s eyes grew wild as he looked at Aidan, his big hands clutching at the front of his travel-dusty livery. “Sir. Oh, sir,” he mourned, “I was hopin’ you weren’t here yet. That there’d be time to fix things somehow. But we wouldn’t be able to right this in a hundred years! You have to believe me, sir, I had no idea what Miss Cass was about or she couldn’t ’a dragged me off to Dublin bound with chains! But if I hadn’t gone, what would have become of her? Didn’t know what the divil to do once I had her. Didn’t dare to tell her…”
“Tell who what?”
O’Day blinked, looking even more dazed. “Why, the lady, sir! There she was, standin’ at the dock plain as the wart on Cadagon’s nose, with a letter in her hand and her thinking you wrote it. But I knew the truth the minute I saw it.”
O’Day’s rattling was stirring up the dregs of gin in Aidan’s head, starting a painful throb in the base of his skull. “You’re blathering like a half-wit!” Aidan bit out. “Just tell me what mischief the girl has kicked up, and we’ll sort it out somehow. You’re acting as if she committed murder, for heaven’s sake!”
“It’s you who might be tempted to murder, Sir Aidan, when you see what lurks out there!” O’Day waved toward the open door, as if some horrendous monster was beyond it, waiting to devour them.
Fists on hips, Aidan stalked to the threshold, glaring out at the scene before him. Slivers of light drove beneath his burning eyelids, and he swore, rubbing his fingers impatiently across his suddenly blurry gaze.
He didn’t have the slightest idea what he expected to see as the mist cleared from his vision—the hounds of hell tied to the coach wheels, a tribe of gypsies setting up camp on the front lawn, or the horsemen of the Apocalypse kicking up their hooves in an effort to separate old Cadagon’s few remaining teeth from his gums.
However, one thing Aidan didn’t expect to see was a footman unloading a spanking new trunk, while a lone woman stood beside the coach, looking on.
Aidan took in wide brown eyes, dusky curls peeking out about a heart-shaped face that looked rather pale under the shelter of a bonnet brim. A rich blue pelisse that should have seemed the height of fashion and elegance flowed about her slender figure, but instead of setting her charms off to advantage, the garment made the woman look, for all the world, like a girl caught dressing up in her mother’s finery.
Even the object in her arms seemed designed to accentuate that impression, for she was holding onto a child’s doll with white-knuckled fingers.
Yet when she looked up at him, there was something about her—that stiff-necked English propriety, that sense of control—that had always set his teeth on edge. His face twisted into a scowl as he stalked down the stairs.
“What the blazes is going on here! The coachman’s raving like a Bedlamite!”
The woman raised her dark eyes to his, and Aidan was surprised as they were transformed into a rare loveliness by her nervous smile. “He’s been acting quite strange since the moment I met him. As if there is some sort of—of confusion. If you could just take me to your master, I’m certain it can all be untangled.”
“My master?” Aidan echoed.
“Yes. I’m looking for Sir Aidan Kane, of Rathcannon Castle. If you could find him for me?”
He eyed her warily. “What the devil do you want him for?”
Color flooded her cheeks. “It’s a personal matter, rather difficult to explain. But I can assure you, he’s expecting me.”
“The devil he is! I mean, the devil I am. I’m Kane.”
She seemed dismayed, and Aidan was aware that he looked like absolute hell.
“Who the blazes are you?” He cursed himself, unable to keep his hand from creeping up in an instinctive effort to straighten his tousled hair.
“I’m Norah Linton.” She looked at him as if the name should explain everything. But Aidan just watched her, tension coiling at the back of his neck.
“I answered your letter of advertisement,” she stammered out. “The one you intended to place in the London Times.”
Aidan folded his arms over his chest in challenge. “I never entered any advertisement.”
Disbelief streaked across f
eatures that were far too waif-like for beauty. “But of course you did. I have your letter right here in my reticule, and you arranged my passage from England.”
“I didn’t arrange a damn thing!”
At that moment, a whirlwind of tumbled curls and sweet muslin frock bolted out the door, Cassandra still fastening the buttons at her throat.
“Miss Linton!” Cassandra cried, rushing up to the woman, beaming. “I’m Cassandra. It’s so wonderful to meet you at last!”
The Englishwoman looked astonished.
“Cassandra? But I thought…” A flush stained her cheeks. She looked down at the plaything in her hand.
“You thought I was younger, didn’t you?” Cassandra smiled as she looked down at the miniature lady rigged out in primrose-hued satin. “Did you bring this for me?”
Aidan gaped as his daughter—of late so determined to guard her dignity—reached out to accept the toy then stroked the doll’s tiny feathered bonnet. “It’s adorable! I shall save it for when I have a little sis… ahem!” She dissolved into a fit of theatrical coughing.
“You know this woman?” Aidan interrupted, pinning his daughter with a glare. What he saw made his stomach knot. “Cassandra, what is this? Some sort of joke?”
“Joke?” What little color had stained the woman’s cheeks drained away. “You can’t mean you had no idea….”
“It’s not a joke, Papa,” Cassandra said, linking her arm through that of the stunned Englishwoman. “Miss Linton is the present I told you about.”
“My present?” Aidan choked out, casting a wild glance from his daughter to the woman standing in his carriage circle. “What the devil is she supposed to be? A maid servant? A governess?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Papa.” Cassandra laughed. “You don’t need a governess.”
“You drag some strange woman from who knows where, and tell me she’s my present, and then say I’m being ridiculous?” He sucked in a deep breath, battling for inner balance. He knew damn well he shouldn’t ask the question Cassandra was so obviously anticipating, but he couldn’t help himself.
“If I don’t need a governess, what in the blazes do I need?”
The girl who was the mirror image of Delia raised her chin with a pure Kane recklessness that always presaged disaster.
“What you need is a wife.”
Chapter Two
“A wife?” Aidan bellowed. Anger flooded through him. He couldn’t move. Didn’t dare. Because if he did, he’d be tempted to thrash his daughter for the first time in his life.
Aidan let fly a string of oaths. The coachman dove for cover. The sturdy footman who had unloaded the trunk tried to hide behind the lead horse in the coach’s traces.
The Englishwoman looked as if Aidan had snatched O’Day’s whip from the coach seat and lashed it about her head and shoulders.
Only Cassandra stood her ground, her face twisting in a formidable scowl. “Papa, if you’ll just stop and think for a moment, you’ll see that it’s the most perfect gift in the world.”
“Why not snap a fox trap to my leg and call that my present? Better still, shove my boot through the stirrup and have Hazard drag me a dozen miles! A wife?”
“Stop it right now!” Cassandra hissed between clenched teeth. “You’re going to ruin everything!”
“There’s nothing to ruin!” he snapped. “I need a wife like I need a cup of hemlock, Cassandra! There is no way in hell that I’m marrying anyone. Especially some brainless female so desperate she’d marry a man she’d never set eyes on before! She must be mad!”
“You’re right, of course.” The woman’s voice startled Aidan, and he wheeled to glare at her. Something about her reminded him of a wildflower crushed beneath a careless heel. Her dark eyes were bleak, and in them he could see just how much hopefulness she had packed up along with her polished trunk and her flower-decked bonnet. But it was the set of her shoulders that made Aidan even more tense. For they were squared beneath the blue pelisse with the air of someone who had withstood withering blows before.
Why did that make Aidan feel like the most vile tyrant who’d ever breathed? He was just an innocent bystander. Cassandra was nothing but a reckless girl. But Norah Linton was a grown woman who should have some notion that this whole scheme was insane!
“It was rash of me to come here,” she admitted, sounding so reasonable that Aidan wanted to wring her neck. “And it was wrong of your daughter to concoct such a drastic scheme without telling you. But there’s no need to rage at the child. She made a simple mistake.”
“There’s nothing simple about this disaster! There never is when Cass is involved! I’ll have to find some way to get you back to wherever you came from.”
“It’s not a disaster unless you make it one!” Tears quivered just beneath the stubborn tones of Cassandra’s voice. “Papa, you should read her letters, they’re so kind. She’s lonely just as you are and wants someone to love. She didn’t say it in exactly those words, but I know it’s true.”
“Please,” the woman interrupted, a little desperately. “I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm, but it’s obvious this has been a mistake. There’s no need to—to make it worse by repeating what was in those letters.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you set up a correspondence with Miss Linton?” Aidan roared.
“I didn’t. You did. I said everything I knew you would say if you dared let your true feelings out.”
The notion of a fifteen-year-old girl whose head was stuffed with romantic nonsense penning a letter in Aidan’s name made his head spin. He hadn’t blushed since he was sixteen and his father had taken him ’round to his current light o’ love to rid his son of the troublesome burden of virginity. But as Aidan looked from his daughter to Norah Linton, hot blood surged into his cheeks.
“My true feelings?” he said through gritted teeth. “Let me make this very clear, Cassandra: I do not want a wife.”
Cassandra cast Norah Linton a pleading glance. “He rode all night,” she attempted to explain. “He doesn’t have the slightest idea what he’s saying. If you would pardon us for a moment.”
“Devil burn it!” Aidan protested. “I know exactly what I’m saying!”
Cass grasped Aidan’s hand, dragging him off behind the carved griffin bearing the Gilpatricks’ heraldic device.
“You may not want a wife,” Cassandra raged at him in scathing undertones, “but I do want a mother!”
Aidan reeled at her impassioned words. “Cass…” He tried to gentle his voice, but it was roughened by her pain. A secret pain he had never suspected. An empty place he thought she’d long since forgotten.
“Don’t you see, Papa? When I go to London, I want to be like everyone else.” Her words sliced deep, exposing stark impossibilities. You’re not like everyone else. You never can be.
He winced, remembering that adolescent desperation to fit in with the hordes of young people who would descend upon London with their dreams in their hands, ready to discover their futures.
But she was continuing, so earnestly it broke his heart. “Papa, I want a mother who will help me pick out gowns and explain so many things I don’t understand.”
Aidan felt as if she’d taken away something indescribably precious. Something he hadn’t even noticed was slipping through his fingers. “You’ve always said you can tell me anything.”
She caught his hands, squeezed them, hard. “Papa, I love you more than anyone in the whole world. But you’re a man! You can’t tell me about things like when to let a beau kiss my hand, or how to be certain that I’m in love.”
“I can tell you that I’ll thrash the daylights out of any whelp who dares come near you.” Aidan closed his eyes against the image of his proud little Cass suffering through her first heartache. Because even with her beauty, her wit, her courage, Aidan knew the odds were high that she’d suffer more than one disappointment. Romantic youths were quick to abandon their infatuations with “ineligibles” when they were confronted
with the harsh reality of the haute ton’s disapproval. And there was no doubt that those interfering snobs who had nothing better with which to occupy their minds than gossip and ridicule would have a veritable feast of scandal to feed on when it came to Cass.
He sucked in a steadying breath, groping for the right words, as he had so many times in the past. “Cass, we’ll figure out how to deal with all that when the time comes, just the way we always have before,” he said, stroking back one tangled silver-blond tress. “I understand that you feel the loss of your mother.” Aidan looked down at the ringlet that clung to his finger, knowing that the one thing he had learned in his marriage to Delia was that it was possible to grieve for something you never really had. “The one thing I’m certain of is that dragging Miss Linton into our lives isn’t going to change the ache you feel.”
“Why not?” Cassandra’s lashes were wet with tears, her eyes shining with belligerence. Belligerence, all the more heart-wrenching because Aidan could see beneath it. She had absolute faith that he wouldn’t fail her, that he would deny her nothing.
“Papa, I want a mother more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. And soon it will be too late. I’ll be grown up. From the time I first came to Rathcannon, I’ve watched the Cadagons with their babies and Mrs. O’Day with her little ones. And I would have traded all my pretty things if just once I could run to my own mother when I was sad, or sorry, or hurt.”
Aidan winced at the memory of how many scraped knees and bumped elbows he’d soothed. But there had been far more bumps and bruises that he hadn’t been at Rathcannon to heal. He’d done his best to make certain Cassandra was surrounded with people who adored her, Mrs. Brindle, the Cadagons, the O’Days, everyone from the head butler to the lowliest stableboy.
He’d told himself it didn’t matter that no one carried the official title of Mother. In fact, if he was brutally honest, he’d thought Cassandra well rid of Delia, since the woman had possessed about as much maternal instinct as the stone griffin. But the lack of a mother had obviously mattered to Cassandra. Just one more bruised place in her spirit she’d kept hidden from him.
Lords of Ireland II Page 75