“I told you to go to bed,” he said, meeting her gaze with hard green eyes.
“I tried. I was just starting to get undressed when I…” She cast a glance at Gibbon, her cheeks heating. “Aidan, I need to speak with you. Alone.”
“I’m damned busy right now tracking down whoever meant to hurt Cass. I don’t have time—”
“This is about Cassandra. It’s important. Please.”
Aidan cursed, low, then motioned the others from the room. When the door had shut behind them, he turned, hands on hips. “Make it quick. What is this about?”
“These.” Norah extended the notes. Aidan took them, his brow furrowing. “I found the first one the night I arrived here. The second one was buried beneath some flowers on the dressing table in my bedchamber. I just found it now, but I think I was meant to discover it earlier, before the ball.”
Aidan stalked to where a branch of candles spilled over the papers littering his desk. He shoved the first note toward the flame, his gaze scanning the script. The planes of his face hardened, stilled. Murder… Even though he knew he was innocent, what must it be like to see that epitaph scrawled above your name? He gave a bitter laugh. “So someone designated themselves as your guardian angel. I wondered from the first how long it would be before you heard the rumors. I never suspected it would be the first night. No wonder you looked so damned scared of me.”
“Aidan, the other one is far more frightening.”
He cast the first note onto the desk, then unfolded the other. She caught the slightest tremor in the hands that clutched the bit of paper. “My God. Who the devil—”
“I don’t know. I just found them propped on the table. I saw no one, heard nothing.”
“Someone was in your bedchamber,” he grated, “someone who knew what those bastards were going to try to do to Cassandra. To you.” His eyes glinted, like a wolf hungering to tear out an adversary’s throat. “There must be someone in the house, someone at Rathcannon who knows where these came from. I vow, I’ll drag the truth from them if I have to.”
“It could have happened a hundred ways. The castle is so large. Someone could have stolen in from outside, they could have entered the window, or—heaven only knows what. But I don’t think they’re evil. Whoever wrote the notes was trying to warn me.”
“That you were about to marry a murderer? That my daughter was about to be kidnapped? Excuse me if I don’t see them as some blasted benevolent spirit! If they knew this much, they must know more.”
At that moment Rose entered, the maid carrying a hod with peat for the fire. She hesitated, her gaze flicking to the notes. Norah saw the girl pale. “Your pardon, sir, my lady. In all the fuss, I forgot to stir up the fires, but I’ll nip back later to tend to—”
“Stand where you are, Rose,” Aidan commanded.
The girl swallowed hard, her white cap quivering. “Aye, sir.”
“You tend the fires in the bedchambers as well, don’t you, girl?”
“Aye, sir.”
“I suppose you’ve never seen these bits of paper Lady Kane has just brought me?” He extended them toward her, catching a dart of fear in the girl’s eyes.
“N—Nay, sir,” she stammered. “What would I be doin’ with such things? I can’t even read.”
“But if that is so, why do you look so pale?” Aidan demanded with silky menace. “Why are your hands shaking?”
The girl set down the hod, clasping work-roughened hands in her apron as if to hide them. “Sir, I—”
“You have a mam and five brothers and sisters to care for, don’t you, Rose? They’re tucked away in the cottage near the Hill of Night Voices.”
“Aye, sir.”
He was aware of Norah’s eyes on him, watching him. “If you were not employed at Rathcannon, there would be most unpleasant consequences for your family, would there not?”
“Please, sir! I—I know nothing—”
“I’ve made a fortune reading peoples’ faces over a deck of cards, Rose. I know when someone is lying. Tell me the truth, now, or I vow you’ll be cast out of here without a shilling.”
The girl’s mouth trembled as tears crested in her eyes. “Oh, sir, nay! I didn’t mean no harm! It was just… he’d done such kindnesses for me mam and the young ones, and it seemed such a simple thing he was askin’.”
“Who was asking? Damn it, who?”
“I cannot tell you, or he’ll… they’ll… Horrible things happen to those that betray him. None in the valley would dare.”
“Gilpatrick!” Aidan rasped, his voice hoarse with disbelief.
The girl let out a piercing wail. “I didn’t tell ye! I never would!”
Stunned by the truth evident in the girl’s eyes, Aidan fought for balance. The nemesis he’d thought he’d understood seemed to shape-change, like some Druid priest of old, shedding the honor that had been a part of Gilpatrick despite his ragged clothes and starveling body, the princely arrogance that a hundred years of subjugation by Aidan’s ancestors hadn’t managed to beat from his features.
And yet, difficult as it was for Aidan to believe the girl’s words were true, he could see it in her face: genuine terror of Gilpatrick’s retribution, dismay that she had betrayed this champion of her people, and anguish that she had not been a better liar to shield the Irish rebel.
Something snapped in Aidan, and he grabbed Rose by her plump arms, shaking her. “It was Gilpatrick, wasn’t it? He sent the notes, and you smuggled them into Lady Kane’s chamber!”
“Aidan!” Norah cried, rushing over. “You’re frightening her.”
“If she doesn’t tell me the whole truth—all of it, damn you—she’ll be worlds more than frightened!” He was savage with fear for his daughter and with a strange, crippling sense of betrayal—betrayal by a man he’d known as an enemy so long. They were absurd, ridiculous, these twisted emotions that drove the breath from his lungs. And yet the memory assailed him of the night he had encountered the English troop, the night he led them away from Gilpatrick and the rebel’s wounded comrade. Had he, by his rash interference in English “justice,” allowed the man responsible for Cassandra’s terror to go free? The soldiers had claimed Gilpatrick was planning some sort of skulduggery, some dark mission. Was it possible that that mission could have been kidnapping Aidan’s daughter? Yet the notes had held warning, not a threat.
“Why?” he blazed. “Why would Gilpatrick write these notes? It makes no damn sense.”
“Donal feared for the lady,” Rose cried. “He only wanted to warn her.”
“That I was a murderer? That she should refuse to wed me?”
“Aye! It was that.”
“But the note was in the chamber the night she arrived,” Aidan raged, trying to piece together the madness that was this crazed tangle. “How did Gilpatrick know she was coming here? And to be my bride, no less? Even I had no idea.”
“I don’t know, sir! I don’t know!”
“And tonight—the bastard knew what was afoot. What was this damned note supposed to be about? A sinister game, to pleasure himself before he stole my daughter?”
“Donal wouldn’t hurt a child!”
There had been a time Aidan would have believed that, deep in his gut, despite the enmity he and the heir of the Gilpatricks had borne each other for so long. And yet how could he doubt it now, with the evidence staring him in the face? The attempted abduction must be related to Gilpatrick somehow.
“If Gilpatrick wouldn’t hurt a child, then who came into the garden tonight? Who terrified Cassandra? Who put that pistol ball in Calvy’s leg?” Aidan was shaking the girl, his fingers bruising her arms, primitive fury rending him with images of what might have happened—stark tragedy he couldn’t even comprehend.
The maid was crying, great, hiccoughing sobs. “Please, sir—I don’t know… I only put the notes in the chamber.”
“Aidan, you’re hurting her!”
He felt Norah’s hand on the rigid muscles of his arm, her voice urgen
t, rippling through him like cool water over a blazing fire.
“Look at her face, Aidan. She knows nothing!”
“Then I’ll find out the truth from Gilpatrick himself,” Aidan snarled. “Rose, you tell me where to find him.”
The maid’s eyes rounded with horror. “Nay. If I betray him—”
“Tell me where to find him, or your services at Rathcannon are no longer required.” He watched his threat wash over the girl’s features, and what he saw sickened him, but he was too desperate to let her see his flicker of weakness.
“But me earnings are the only money we have, the lot of us. Without it, the wee ones would starve.”
Aidan’s face felt cast in stone. “Someone put a pistol in my daughter’s face tonight. I’m not over-full of mercy. Tell me.”
A war waged in the girl’s face, but in the end, she sobbed out, “There’s to be a gatherin’ at the standing stones on the Hill of Night Voices.”
The standing stones. It was strangely fitting that Donal Gilpatrick would choose that site for his rebel meetings, a location filled with dark powers and mystic secrets. A place most crofters would shun in superstitious fear once night fell.
“When is this meeting to take place?” Aidan saw the slightest flicker in the maid’s eyes, as if she were torn with indecision, plotting to find some lie to save not only her employment at Rathcannon but the rebel Gilpatrick’s skin.
“Lie to me, and it will be the last lie you tell at Castle Rathcannon.”
The girl stared at him, with the fascinated horror of a mouse caught in the gaze of a hunting peregrine. In the end, her fear of Aidan overawed her loyalty to Gilpatrick.
“When?” Aidan demanded.
“Tonight. At the rising of the moon.”
The moon.
Aidan gritted his teeth, thoughts of his blood enemy fading in the memory of the silvery beauty of its rays melting down upon Caislean Alainn, Norah making love to him in a world of such magic he had forgotten all else—dark legacies of hatred, his vulnerable daughter, the lies that tripped so easily from a woman’s tongue. Norah had never told him about the note, the warning, never told him that someone had come into her chamber, whispering of murder.
If he had known that, wouldn’t he have been more wary, more watchful? Wouldn’t he have guarded his daughter with more care?
He shook himself as betrayal and anger surged in to fill spaces where helplessness and guilt had been. He glared down into Rose’s round, frightened face.
“If you’re lying to me, I will make certain every person in your family, down to the tiniest babe, will suffer for it.”
Keeping hold of the girl, he hauled her into the corridor, where two alert footmen stood guard before the door. The menacing gleam of pistols shone at their waists. “Rose will be spending the rest of the day and all night in her chambers,” he said. “Lock her in, and God help the man who lets her escape.”
One of the footmen looked as if he were about to argue, but he obviously thought better of it once he glimpsed the fire in his master’s eyes.
“I’ll see to it myself, sir.”
He watched the two lead the crying girl away. His jaw clenched. The rising of the moon was hours away, but the restless blaze that was in his blood, the hunger for vengeance, for answers, was already driving him mad. The knowledge that Norah had not been honest with him ate like poison inside him.
“Aidan.” He heard Norah say his name, felt her touch him, tentative, so tentative. “Aidan, what are you going to do?”
He jerked away from her and stalked to the fireplace, staring into the flames as if they were the gateway to hell.
“I’m going to hunt down Gilpatrick. Make him tell me who is behind this madness.”
“You can’t ride into the midst of a band of rebels all alone.”
“So what would you have me do? Make an appointment to meet him at White’s? Or wait until the rebel bastard writes another cryptic message to my wife? Not that she’d bother to show it to me until it’s too late.”
Norah paled. “I didn’t find the note until after the ball.”
“You found the first one a helluva lot earlier than that, but you didn’t feel compelled to show it to me!”
“What was I supposed to do? Pound on your bedchamber door and say Excuse me, but did you murder your wife? You were already furious, intending to pack me off to Dublin at first light. There seemed no reason—”
“No reason to mention it to me? Why? Because you were afraid it was true?”
The expression on her face was answer enough. It hurt Aidan, more than he dared admit.
“I did ask you about Delia. When you awoke from your sickness. I asked you and you told me what had happened. I believed you. Why would I present the note to you, knowing that it would only cause you pain?”
“Because if you had, I would have known something was afoot. I would never have consented to this infernal ball.” He swore, slamming his fist into the mantel.
“I see,” Norah said, so quietly it stunned him. “This is my fault, then.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You might as well have. Of course, I understand it must be so. That way you don’t have to face the truth.”
“And what truth is that?” he demanded, stung by her words.
“That you can’t protect Cassandra from the world, no matter how much you want to. That there are things you cannot control. That someday, she’s going to be hurt, just like the rest of us—by cruel words or cruel deeds—and you are going to be helpless to stop her pain.”
“If I hadn’t been chasing over the countryside searching for you, I would have been here when she needed me.”
He was wounding her. He could feel her pain, reminding him with excruciating clarity how damn good it had felt not to care. About Delia. About any woman. Especially this woman, with her soft eyes and her healing hands.
He swore. “Go back to your room, Norah. I have more important things to do than argue with a woman.”
He expected her to run, flee in a bout of tears. Any other woman he’d ever encountered would have. Instead, she asked in a tight voice, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to confront the rebel lord of Rathcannon,” he said. “To see if the blackguard has the courage to face a man instead of terrorizing a child.”
“Aidan, he hates you.”
“Then perhaps the bastard will have the courage to put a pistol ball through my heart. God knows, he’s been hungering to do so for the last twenty years.”
With that, he spun on his heels and stalked from the chamber, racked with his own hunger—for the coming of the night.
Chapter Nineteen
The circle at the Hill of Night Voices had kept secrets long before the first bard touched fingers to a harp made of bog oak. Gray stone thrust up from the clearing in mystic contortions, like arms reaching for the heavens—or, Aidan thought grimly, like the forever damned clawing the sky in a wild attempt to escape from hell.
It’s mystic power, rooted deep in the Irish hills, had intrigued the curious, including Aidan himself when he’d been a boy. He’d not been able to resist the tales of human sacrifice and pagan rituals that had been practiced within the cryptic monument. He’d followed with interest scholars’ efforts to unlock the riddle of the stones. And he’d understood the fascination of those who tried to release the dark magic centered there, seeking the entryway to other worlds they believed existed beneath the hillocks on which the stones held their vigil.
It seemed somehow fitting that Donal Gilpatrick should choose the mystic circle as his meeting place this night.
Gilpatrick.
Aidan had never been able to hear that name without a memory stirring, one that still had the power to make his jaw clench with shame and frustration decades old. They had been born to hate each other, schooled in it as boys by a master of such emotions. And they both still carried the scars from that encounter: Gilpatrick’s on his face, Aidan’s hidden
from any eyes but his own.
Yes, Gilpatrick was his old adversary, dangerous, and yet one he thought he’d understood—until now.
Aidan held his stallion to a walk along the narrow path that carved its way up the stone-scarred hill, aware of the hot press of eyes boring into his back. The hair on his nape prickled, as if he could feel the cold nudge of pistol barrels against his skin.
Gilpatrick was no fool. The Irish renegade was cunning and careful, or he’d have dangled from a gallows years before. Aidan was certain that the tangle of gorse and blackthorn concealed any number of Gilpatrick’s sentries—men bred from the cradle to hate Aidan like Donal Gilpatrick himself, served up the thirst to shed Kane blood with his first taste of mother’s milk.
It was madness to range the night, searching for those who would rejoice at his death. Of that much Aidan was certain. He was courting a rebel pistol ball through his heart with the same dark fervor he had lavished on Norah at Caislean Alainn.
But he couldn’t stop himself now, any more than he’d been able to keep himself from laying Norah down upon his cloak and making love to her.
For hadn’t he always belonged to the darkness? Condemned even before his mother had brought him into a world that despised him because of his Kane blood?
He was a villain who had been entrusted with a child of light in a cruel twist of fate. He had tried so hard to keep her safe from the evil swirling all around, even the dark places in his own soul.
Yet last night had shown him how futile his quest had been.
Someone had tried to harm his daughter.
Why? There could be only one reason. To use Cassandra as a weapon against him—the only weapon that could give his enemies the power to destroy him completely.
No, a voice inside Aidan whispered, mocking him with a vision of soft brown eyes in the shadow of Caislean Alainn. Cassandra was not the only weapon an enemy could wield against Aidan Kane’s heart. Not anymore.
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