There was all the gruff disgust of a boy in those masculine features, a boy who had long since given up believing in Father Christmas but who very much wished that he still did.
Norah was stunned to feel her lips tugging into a wary smile. “Surely there must be one or two with a happy ending.”
“Not a one that comes to my mind.” His face stilled, his eyes intent beneath thick lashes. “I wonder how our tale will end, Norah Linton.”
Norah turned away from that probing gaze and went to a window that let in a keyhole-shaped block of light. “Sensibly, I would hope,” she said with forced lightness. “There is something to be said for avoiding jealous passions, illfated love potions, and such like. The one certainty in the matter is that it will end. And considering the circumstances, the sooner it does the better.”
She heard the soft crunch of Aidan’s boots on the rubble that littered the castle floor, the sound of Aidan coming near her. She stiffened, aware of him—every line and sinew, every dark angle and coiled muscle—even before his shadow covered her.
“You are ready to be quit of us already, then?” His voice was like aged whiskey, warm and intoxicating. “I wonder if I could change your mind.”
She started as those sinewy hands closed on her shoulders, turning her gently to face him. His touch sent awareness racing through her veins, whispering of the danger in him, the perilous allure. His eyes burned her with a glittering intensity.
“Norah, do you believe in fate?”
“Fate?” The echo came out in a breathless whisper.
“That some things are preordained, no matter how we carry on about having free will.”
“Of course not. I…” She gave a sad laugh. “No, that’s wrong. I must believe in fate. I’m sure I do. Look at my mad actions when I got the letter advertising for a woman to be your bride.”
“How did you come to receive Cassandra’s letters?” he prodded gently.
“My stepbrother has a friend with connections at the London Times. When the letter came, his friend was making a jest of it, showing it around his club.”
“Perfect.” Aidan winced, and Norah could guess just how uncomfortable that notion made him. “Bloody perfect.”
“Richard saw the note, and he was certain the position was ideal for me,” Norah hurried on. “He knew how desperately unhappy I was. He gave it to me, and I—I thought…” She stopped, her cheeks burning, her gaze dropping to where the crisp white of Aidan’s shirt was edged by his dark green waistcoat. But he forced her to meet his gaze, curving one palm against her cheek, tipping her face up toward his with warm, callused hands, suddenly almost tender.
“What did you think, Norah Linton?” he encouraged, more gently than she would have imagined possible.
“I thought you were my destiny. Isn’t that absurd?”
“If you had asked me that question yesterday, I would have agreed. But I’m not so certain anymore.”
Norah’s heart fluttered in her breast, her fingers trembled. He was confusing her—utterly, completely, disarming her.
“Did you ever stop to think that we need each other?” he asked. “Badly?”
Need—hadn’t that been what Norah had wanted when she’d set out for Ireland? Some purpose in her life, some direction? Somewhere to belong? Someone who needed her? Loved her?
She hadn’t admitted it even to herself, how much she wanted someone to cherish her, just a little. The admission alone made her draw back, wary.
“I need a home, Sir Aidan. And from what you said yesterday, what you need is to be left in peace. Your life is arranged just as you like it.”
“What would you say if I told you I was drowning, and that you—you may be the one person in the world who could reach out a hand, pull me back to shore?”
Norah winced inwardly at the echoing of her most dangerous fantasies. “Now I know where Cassandra inherited her flair for the dramatic, Sir Aidan. I cannot imagine what I could possibly do to… how did you say it? Pull you back to shore? Especially since it’s so evident you are swimming with all your power in the opposite direction.”
Aidan’s eyes darkened, earnest, almost… supplicant. “You could open the doors to society for Cassandra. Your name could restore to her everything I threw away.”
Her heart tripped. It was as he’d said: The honor of the Linton name had been the one legacy her father had managed to leave her.
“With Cassandra’s beauty, my wealth, and the name Linton to lend her respectability, I know Cass could weather whatever snubs are directed at her. You know how winning the girl is. Within weeks, she would have the old dragons at Almack’s eating out of her hand.”
“You think a triumph at Almack’s will guarantee her happiness? Did your time among the haute ton bring you such joy?”
Tempests swirled in the green mist of Sir Aidan’s eyes, a muscle in his jaw working. “Cassandra is different. Special. If you would only marry me, she could rise above Delia and me—be what we never could be. Something wholesome and good, strong and happy… She deserves to be happy.”
There was such passion in his words, a catch of desperation in the husky tones. Norah couldn’t help but feel a tug in her heart.
He raked one hand through the tumbled ebony of his hair. “Norah, I’m asking you—no, begging you—to help us.”
For all his attempts to paint himself a villain, there was a fierce pride in the chiseled handsomeness of his features that allowed Norah to see exactly how much that plea cost him.
For a heartbeat, she felt a mad urge to reach up and lay her hand against that stubborn jut of jaw, smooth back the lock of dark hair that fell across his brow. But she reined herself in harshly. It would be all too easy to succumb to Sir Aidan Kane’s entreaty. The man was as compelling as a siren’s song.
She didn’t dare forget the perilous bargain he wanted her to make. How could she enter into such a cold and loveless marriage? Agree to the terms Sir Aidan Kane had flung out at her like a duelist’s glove the night before?
A marriage that was no marriage. A husband who would slip his ring upon her finger, then do his best to forget she even existed.
A business arrangement, he had called it; and yet what would it be like to watch her husband with his lights o’ love? Knowing that those were the women whose company he would delight in, who would see him laugh and feel the power of his kiss?
The instant Cassandra was launched into her own life, Norah would once again be a stranger in a house that did not belong to her. A useless appendage that her “husband” would cast away with no more thought than a waistcoat whose color he had wearied of.
Why did that stark reality make her suddenly feel so desolate?
She sucked in a steadying breath. “Sir Aidan, I know you are fearful for Cassandra’s future, but to enter into marriage—to take holy vows—knowing before we even begin that the promises have no meaning…”
“You lied to me then when you said you wanted a comfortable home? You hunger after the grand passion instead? As one who barely escaped its fires with my life, I can assure you, the experience is highly overrated.”
Norah looked away from him, troubled by his careless words, and the ease with which she could picture this man—so gloriously sensual, so wild and reckless, indulging in earthy pleasures and passions Norah couldn’t even begin to understand or hope to possess for herself.
The pain in surrendering hopes she’d cherished surged inside her, and she raised her chin a notch, clinging to the legendary Linton pride. “You want me to marry you to ease your daughter’s way. To shield her from the humiliation a scandal tied to your past might cause her, do you not?”
“Exactly so.”
“And yet, if I were mad enough to wed you, wouldn’t my fate be exactly that which you are battling so hard to spare your daughter?”
Dark brows lowered over a patrician nose. “What do you mean?”
“You fear that your daughter will become the target for cruel jests and mockery be
cause of your actions.”
His face whitened. “You need me to say it? Yes. That is exactly what I fear. Damn it, there is no justice on earth if that girl has to suffer for my sins.”
“On that we both agree. But if I do decide to aid you—” Her voice trembled just a whisper. “If I were to become your bride, what will happen when Cassandra is safe? What possible use will you have for me?”
“Your task will be done. I would grant you any wish within my power, to the last drop of my blood.”
“Anything,” Norah said softly, “except honor.”
Aidan stared at her, his voice low, roughened with earnestness. “If you spare my daughter pain, you will be honored by me above all other women.”
“I suppose I should be flattered. After all, from our previous conversations, I gather that the annals of your regard is quite overflowing with those of the gentler sex.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just that I saw enough of my stepbrother’s friends to know the way of men like you. They lavish gifts and entertainments on mistresses who are bright and beautiful, bold and dashing. When they are forced to think of their wives at all, they make sly mockeries of them, often within the wife’s hearing, as though a wedding ring upon a woman’s hand deadens her to all feeling.”
Aidan’s features darkened, his mouth tightened. “You think that is how I would repay you for sparing my daughter pain?”
“You wouldn’t have to make jest of me. Others would be happy to do so for you.”
“Norah—”
She raised one hand in protest. “Can’t you imagine what they would say? How they would speculate about our marriage?”
“Why the devil should they?” he demanded, stalking away a few paces.
“Because—look at you,” Norah exclaimed helplessly. “At everything you are. Then look at me.”
He turned, his arms crossed over the hard plane of his chest, the Kane belligerence she had seen in Cassandra carved much more formidably in her father’s aristocratic features. “I see nothing but a man and a woman who both need what the other can provide.”
“Society will see a desperate spinster and a man who could not possibly love her. They’ll see you with women battling for your favors, and believe that you are trying to wash away the sour taste of a night in my bed.” Norah’s cheeks flamed, her voice faltered, but she plunged onward with brutal honesty. “That is, if they believe you ever seek my bed at all.”
Green eyes clashed with hers, and she felt as if the mere weight of his pulsing intensity were crushing her, making it impossible to breathe. “Do you want me in your bed?”
Norah gave a pained laugh. “And if I did? Are you saying you would accommodate me in exchange for my services to Cassandra?”
“Norah, I’ve attempted to be honest with you. As honest as I know how to be. You be honest with me. If you want me as your lover, I’m certain we could do well enough.”
The words poured hot acid into the most vulnerable place in Norah’s battered heart. “What? Would we make consummation part of the bride price? Perhaps we could get it written up in the marriage contract: ‘Herewith, Sir Aidan Kane does solemnly swear to perform his husbandly duty every month on the last Tuesday—’”
“Blast it, what do you want me to say?” Aidan roared with a helpless gesture. “That I’m madly in love with you? We’d both know that was a lie. Truth to tell, after what happened with Delia, I’m not capable of loving any woman, ever.”
“You made that quite clear already.”
“Do you want me to promise that I’ll never look at another woman?” he demanded. “Or that I’ll duel every ton bastard who dares make mockery of our marriage? Why should they stand in judgment? When it comes to marriage, society has always set far more store by practical considerations than anything so fleeting and ephemeral as love. And as for your fear of being scorned because of my infidelities, you needn’t worry. Taking lovers is as common a practice among the ton as sipping ratafia at a rout party. You might even find a man who strikes your fancy one day—and you can be sure I would wish you both a most pleasurable dalliance.”
The words bit into Norah like a lash, rippling fire through the tattered remnants of her pride. She groped for something to say—something with which to wound him back. But she feared she would disgrace herself by bursting into tears of exhaustion and disappointment.
Sunlight and shadow pooled on that harshly masculine face alive with restlessness and impatience, his gaze clashing with hers. “Blast it, don’t look at me that way—as if I were some blackhearted villain who dragged you here by your hair! When you left England it was with every intention of—” He cut off the words, pressing his fingertips against the hollows of his eyes.
“Of what?” Norah demanded with icy dignity.
“Of marrying a man blindly.” His hand fell away to reveal eyes glittering with a recklessness already too familiar. His anger fired hotter still with a darker intent that stirred panic inside her—panic and something more.
“Perhaps that is where I have erred in my wooing of you, Miss Linton. Perhaps I should give you a taste of that which you seem to crave.”
Norah took a step backward and collided with solid stone. “No!” she said, fighting to hide her alarm. “You’re mistaken if you think—”
“If I think what?” Aidan purred, flattening his palms on either side of her. “If I think you came here to taste of a man’s passion before it was too late?”
Norah swallowed hard, her pulses racing. “Whatever I came here seeking, I’m certain I haven’t found it.”
“You should fall down on your knees and thank God for that. Love is poison when compared to simple passion. Love blinds you, seeps into your marrow like the most insidious venom, weakening you until it strips away everything—your strength, your honor, your pride.”
She was shaking under the force of those bitter words, words that made her question his callous dismissal of the woman who had once been his wife. Words that made her wonder just how deeply Delia Kane had wounded him—this man who despised himself, everything he was, everything he stood for, except when his life brushed that of his cherished daughter.
“Let me show you, Norah,” he breathed. “Let me show you how much sweeter passion tastes than the poisonous bond you think you desire.”
Norah stared into that starkly handsome face, her lips parting to protest. But at that instant, Aidan Kane lowered his mouth to hers.
His breath heated her tingling lips for just a whisper, those thickly curled lashes dipping lazily to half mast, until all she could see was a mesmerizing glimpse of emerald green. Then that hard, reckless mouth mated its sensual contours to her own, hot and moist and insistent. Fire sizzled through Norah’s veins—wild, terrifying, as Sir Aidan Kane’s mouth seduced hers with a mastery that left her knees weak and her spirit shaken.
Rocked to her very core, she grasped for something, anything, to anchor her in the maelstrom his kiss released in her. Her fingers clutched at his coat, the scent of him musky and dangerous, touched with the tang of salt waves and wind-battered moors.
As if her touch signaled acquiescence, Aidan moaned low in his throat. His tongue, hot and skilled and sweet, traced the crease between her own lips, starting a shuddering pleasure blossoming in that secret forbidden place between her thighs.
A tiny sound of pleasure and despair rose in Norah’s throat, and her lips parted to allow it to escape. Aidan caught it in his own mouth and answered the longing plea Norah didn’t even understand by entering her mouth with his tongue.
Once the lecherous youth her stepfather had bade her marry had attempted such liberties, and she had been so sickened she had all but retched after breaking away from him. But the wet, stroking roughness of Sir Aidan’s intimate kiss unleashed in Norah something wild and frightening in its power. He shifted, the stiffened joints of his elbows softening, buckling, so that the length of his forearms met the stone, bringing the virile plane of his body
tight against hers. The masculine ridges and hollows imprinted themselves on her until the folds of her gown and petticoats seemed no more shielding between his flesh and hers than the last veil of mist, burned away by a too hot sun.
Her nipples were afire, abraded by the buttons on his coat. Her thighs were melting where his long, sinewy legs molded against hers, her senses spinning, wheeling dizzily into madness.
She whimpered in quiet anguish when Aidan broke the kiss, trailing his questing mouth down her cheek to the vulnerable curve of her throat. Those straight, impossibly white teeth nipped at her with an exquisite artistry that made a sob shudder through her. A sob of need, of despair, and longings that could never be fulfilled. Never, by any man. Especially this bitter, anguished, reckless Irish knight.
“See, ladylight?” Aidan murmured against her heated flesh. “I can give you what you crave, though I can’t give you love. I can give you this.” His hand swept up to capture the fluid weight of her breast, his thumb circling the pearled bud of her nipple. “And more… there’s so much more, Norah. I can show you. The moment my ring is on your finger.”
The words were icy water, drowning the flames he had ignited inside her with his consummate skill as a lover, a skill Norah knew he had learned in the beds of countless other women. Women who had offered him only the lush bounty of their bodies, the sating of mutual desires, not the striking of some cold bargain that had brought him to their bed.
She flattened her palms against him, shoving with all her might. “No! I can’t—you can’t make me—”
Aidan staggered back a step, the unfathomable green of his eyes clouded with a strange light, his mouth reddened from taking hers with such fervor. “I can’t make you what?” His breath rasped, a raw uncertainty about his mouth. “Can’t make you want me?” he demanded, low. “By God, Norah, I already have.”
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