He crossed to the bed and reached out his fingertips to feel her cheek, so warm and alive. The trust he placed in her—this woman of gentle dignity, sweet, quiet courage terrified him, and yet…
“Norah.” He breathed her name, watched her come awake with a start. Her eyes flashed open, disoriented, tear-reddened, and he knew in that instant what she had suffered for him. With a cry, she flung herself against him. White-hot pain radiated out from his ribs and the wound in his shoulder, but he didn’t care. He pulled her tight against him, drinking in the warmth, the vibrancy, the sweet, sweet honesty of his new bride.
She was touching him everywhere, his hair, his face, as if she didn’t believe her eyes. “Aidan! You’re alive!”
Emotion crushed his throat. “Hush, ladylight,” he whispered, stroking her dusky curls with his bruised hand. “I’m fine.”
“Did you find the—the men who tried to hurt Cassandra? You were gone so long, I was certain you must have found the rebels.”
“I found Gilpatrick. He isn’t responsible for the attack. He is the one who tried to warn us.”
Norah looked up at Aidan, still holding on, tight. “But I thought you were enemies.”
“We were bred to be. And yet… he’s a good man, Norah. One I would want at my side if I were charging into battle. One I would trust with my life. He already did his best to save my daughter’s.”
“Oh, Aidan.” Her palm curved along his jaw.
He felt so unsettled, off balance. “It isn’t over. I have to find whoever plotted against Cass. Gilpatrick gave me some information to begin with, and he promised to send me word if he learned anything more. Whoever is stalking me is a cunning bastard, one making a game of my destruction. There are wagers involved. One regarding Cassandra. And… another about you.”
“Wagers? What kind of wagers?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I’m certain of is this: He wants to toy with me before he closes in for the kill.”
“Is there an enemy you can think of? Someone so villainous—”
“I’ve spent my life neck-deep in villains, Norah. Libertine blackguards who would joyfully slit a throat over the turn of a card. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, more than I can even remember.”
“Aidan, I don’t believe—”
“That I’m every bit the bastard I told you I was the night you arrived here? Believe it, Norah. When I inherited Rathcannon, it was in ruins. I found that situation vaguely amusing at first. I was a bold rakehell with London at my feet. I didn’t give a damn about the estate, my inheritance, anything. I was a soldier, but I’d had a belly full of killing. The only other skill I possessed was at the gaming table. I used it. Ruthlessly. To survive. I don’t know how many of my opponents I ruined. We Kanes have always had an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation, the devil take the price to anyone else.”
“I don’t care about that Kane legacy. I know you.”
Her belief in him should have offered him comfort. Instead, it opened scars long buried.
“You don’t know me at all,” he said. “I pray you never do.” And yet there was a part of him that wanted to take that final risk. Hoping that, by some miracle, she could love him in spite of what he had been, the past from which he could never be free.
But the possibility of seeing her love for him change to revulsion, feeling her shrink away from him… He wasn’t sure he had the courage to hazard such a risk…
He drew away from her, so that he could drag the tattered remains of his guard about him. He raised his fingers to rake his hair back from his eyes, and he heard her breath catch in her throat. “Aidan, you’re hurt!” she gasped, staring at the blood-soaked tear in his shirt.
“It’s nothing. The tiniest scratch.” He attempted to brush her concern away, but Norah scrambled out of the bed, her brows crashing together in such a stormy expression he almost smiled.
“I barely get you healthy after your bout with the gypsy love potion, and you charge out and get yourself injured again!” She attacked his buttons, stripping the ruined garment from him. The cloth clung to the wound, and he saw her catch her lip between her teeth as she tried to gently pull it free. She flinched as she saw the eight-inch gash.
“It looks far worse than it is, Norah,” he said gently. “Trust me. It’s not as if I’ve never been wounded before.”
Her mouth trembled, as her gaze skated from the cut to a chest covered with darkening bruises.
“The fête at the standing stones was a private party. Some of Gilpatrick’s men took exception to my arriving without an invitation,” he attempted to jest. “I just need to wash the cut, and then bind a tight cloth about my ribs.”
“Aidan, they hurt you. I thought you said Gilpatrick had tried to help.”
“His men didn’t have their leader’s philanthropic impulses. And as for the fight with Gilpatrick, I goaded him into it. I wanted to gain control of something again, anything. To fight some foe besides this—this phantom that melted out of the night to try to steal Cassandra and then disappeared again.”
He crossed to the washbowl and lifted the pitcher to pour water into the bowl. Pain jolted from his collarbone through his ribs, and he winced. Norah snatched the china pitcher away and filled the bowl herself. Then she took him by the arm and settled him in a chair.
Aidan sank down into the cushions, exhaustion pulling him down into emotions he couldn’t conquer, couldn’t hide. And as Norah’s hands began gently swabbing his wound, Aidan let his head sag onto the chair back, his eyelids slipping closed.
It was so beautiful, feeling her fingertips glide across the wounded places on his body, tending him with such infinite tenderness. Love…
Belief in him, when he didn’t deserve it. Love, when he had none to give her in return. Magic, where there had only been darkness and dread and self-loathing.
She should be given love worthy of her devotion. She should be forever safe, in the care of a far better man than he.
Aidan feared that he would somehow fail her. His jaw knotted, his fingers clenching on the arms of the chair. He welcomed the pain of his hands throbbing.
“Aidan, what—what are you thinking? Feeling?” Her breath warmed him as she bandaged his wound.
“Damn it, Norah.”
“You say I don’t know you. I want to. Tell me.”
Aidan wanted to tell her that she should pull away from him, not try to peel back the layers. And yet there was a pull in those remarkable dark eyes he couldn’t resist. For the first time in his life Aidan’s words spilled free, memories rising inside him.
“I feel like the first time I stepped onto a battlefield, being swept under. Grappling for some way to drag myself out of the gore, hearing the shrieks of men dying. Knowing I was helpless to save them. What if I can’t save you or Cassandra?”
“You were knighted for bravery. You did save as many men as you could. Cassandra wrote—”
“Cassandra wrote a damned fairy story, rigged out in laurels I never earned. Yes, I saved my men. But I saved the accursed major as well—a pompous ass, hungry for his own glory, greedy for promotions. I was knighted for saving that bastard. I should have let him die. Hell, I should have put a bullet in him myself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“While I was being knighted for bravery,” Aidan all but spat, “the bastard was sending my men in to be slaughtered as cannon fodder so that he could climb over their bloody backs and rise among the officers’ ranks.”
He’d fought so hard to layer his pasts in devil-may-care scorn. But he could hear the pain in his own voice, see its reflection in Norah’s eyes.
“I’m sorry. So sorry. But Aidan, you couldn’t have known.”
“They labeled me a hero. Hero. For saving that bastard’s life. But I wasn’t any hero. I was a reckless fool who had plunged in without knowing or thinking. Just as I did in every other facet of my life.”
A bitter smile twisted his lips. “War was a nightmare, but I though
t I could wash myself clean of what I’d seen and done, the way I scrubbed the blood off my hands. When I got back to England, hell, my marriage made war seem like a cursed musicale by comparison. When Delia discovered she was pregnant… the joy I felt. For just a moment, I believed the fates had given me the chance to start over, to make things right with this new life Delia and I had created.”
“It was a new chance, Aidan. One you’ve taken advantage of. You have made Cassandra’s life beautiful.”
Her praise lashed him. “You see Cass as she is now,” he insisted. “Here. Safe. You wouldn’t be praising me if you had known me during those first years of her life, Norah. You’d be as sickened and as disgusted I am with myself, every time I remember.”
Those soft lips firmed, her chin tipping up with a stubbornness that wrenched his heart. “I don’t believe you were ever a bad father. Ever.”
“I wasn’t a father at all, damn it. I didn’t even exist in Cass’s world. Delia hated me for burdening her with a child, made me feel as if I’d raped her, forced my baby inside her. I all but begged her to let us make a new beginning, but it was too late. She said that after what I’d done to her, I owed it to her to leave her in peace. I could only destroy the baby, the way I’d destroyed Delia’s life, the way I’d destroyed the troop of soldiers, the way I’d destroyed everything I ever touched.”
Tears welled in Norah’s eyes. She knelt down at his feet, so he had to look into her face. “You didn’t destroy Cassandra, Aidan. You made her… magnificent.”
“I didn’t make Cassandra anything. She survived because of her own strength, her own courage, her own stubborn will. I only saw her once in the first five years of her life. I’d stayed away, like Delia demanded. I didn’t even know when she had the baby. No one at the March household thought it important to notify me that I was a father. I was cheating at a game of hazard when one of the Marches’ acquaintances congratulated me on the birth of my daughter. Cass was three weeks old.”
“It must have hurt so badly,” Norah said, her hand stroking his. “To find out about your child that way.”
Aidan fought pain too raw to be examined, and went on. “I rode all night to reach Delia’s parents’ estate. My wife had already gone off to Bath to take the waters, and, I don’t doubt, to renew her acquaintance with her former admirers.”
“She’d left the baby?” Disbelief echoed in the soft query.
“She cast Cassandra aside the instant she was up from childbed, with no more thought than if my baby had been a torn glove.” Aidan sucked in a steadying breath, his throat raw.
“I went upstairs to the nursery and saw Cass cuddled in this elegant cradle that had been in the March family for a hundred years. She had this little lace bonnet on, and her knees tucked under her, her little rump in the air. She was… so damned beautiful, lost in rose-satin coverlets, so innocent, so helpless. I was afraid… afraid she’d break if I touched her. I was afraid I would hurt her.”
“You loved her even then,” Norah said gently. “Why did you leave her?”
His voice roughened on the pain of the man he had been, so young himself, without the hard core of cynicism to protect him. “I left to save her from myself.”
“Aidan…”
“Since the night I first waltzed with Delia, her mother had seen me as her daughter’s despoiler. How could I blame her? Yet that day, when she came to me, the proud Lady March stooped to plead with me. She begged me to leave Cassandra in her care.”
“But Cassandra was your daughter. You loved her and wanted her.”
Aidan raised an unsteady hand to his eyes, rubbing away the burning sensation that had little to do with exhaustion. “Lady March promised me that if I gave my daughter into her care, Cassandra would have everything she ever wanted or needed. That she’d have love, security, a home. The kind of life I could never give her.”
His lips twisted in mockery. “Hell, I could hardly have dragged a baby with me to my apartments over a tavern or gaming hell, could I? The blasted old dragon was right about that. With the kind of life Delia and I led…” He stopped, swallowed hard. “I thought about changing—making a place for Cassandra and me. But even if I had, what did I have to give her? Nothing but a crumbling castle in Ireland. I remember standing there over Cassandra’s cradle, staring down at her, memorizing… memorizing the way her lashes curled on those plump little cheeks, the way she crinkled up her nose. I stored up images of the little shuddering sigh of contentment she gave when she got her tiny fingers in her mouth and sucked on them.”
Something hot and wet splashed his bruised hand. Norah’s tears. Would God Aidan could shed some himself, for the confused, hurting youth he had been, standing over his daughter’s cradle.
“I couldn’t even touch Cassandra because I knew that if I did, I would never be able to leave her. And I had to. For her sake, I had to let her go. I’d been through a war, the destruction of my marriage, but I never understood how deep pain could reach until I rode away from my daughter.”
Norah curled her fingers around his, the way this woman had somehow managed to curl herself into his heart.
“Don’t cry for me, angel. I don’t deserve it,” he said roughly. “I’m not proud of the life I lived after I left Cassandra in that cradle. I drowned myself in brandy, gambled like a lunatic. And there were women—I can’t even remember their faces. I was so damned broken inside, trying to prove to myself that I could make some woman… any woman… want me when my wife did not. I didn’t care if I lived or died. Hell, I wanted to die. I believed Cass would be better off if I did.
“Five years I stayed away. Delia was playing harlot to half the men in London. I’d quit playing the jealous fool after I almost killed a raw lad in a duel over Delia. I suppose I’d finally realized she wasn’t worth another death on my conscience. I turned everything into a game then, a game of wagers—bed sport, gambling, drink. The amazing thing was that suddenly I couldn’t lose at the gaming tables. I knew that Rathcannon was Cassandra’s legacy. I poured every shilling of my ill-gotten gains fashioning it into something she could be proud of. I even created the perfect room for her. It was the only way I could think of to let her know that I loved her, wanted her, that every day she was in my mind… in my heart. One day I was racing my curricle near the March estate when a wheel shattered.”
He paused, blessing that broken wheel and the brainless wager that had ended in his getting his daughter back.
“I knew I should just go on to an inn, hire out another carriage, see to the fixing of my own. But instead, I went to Lord March’s door. Suffice it to say they were not thrilled to see me. I demanded to see Cassandra… to just see her. I didn’t want to upset her life, intrude. I just—just wanted to look at her and to make certain that she was all right.”
Aidan smiled, an aching, brittle smile. “Mrs. Brindle was there. She had loathed me, like the rest of the Marches, for defiling Delia—but she led me into the garden, let me wander through it, searching….
“They say children are innocent. But they can also be incredibly cruel. I found Cassandra on a stone bench, crying her eyes out because the cousins she’d been playing with had taunted her about her mama and papa and the fact that we didn’t want her. She didn’t even know who I was when I tried to comfort her.”
His jaw set, hard. “I decided then and there that my child’s life was going to change. I hauled Delia away from her lovers, cast my gaming aside, took every shilling I’d won, and went to Rathcannon with a bewildered little girl in tow. You know the rest. Delia’s hatred, the poison, her death. I know you can’t choose your parents, but whatever angel delivered Cassandra into the hands of Delia and me had made a terrible mistake. I’m still sick when I think of the years I lost…. The time she first walked, smiled, her first skinned knee. I wonder what scars those years left inside her, in places I will never see.”
“You’ve done wonders with her, Aidan.”
“Have I? Or have I just made things worse? Left h
er unprepared for the future? I’ve given her eight years of fairy tales when she has to face a reality that’s harsh and ugly. She’s so brave, so damned innocent, so open. But someday she’s going to stumble into the truth—about Delia, about me. And when she does…”
“I think you underestimate your daughter’s love for you and her faith in you. Yes, it will be a shock. And painful. But she knows you love her, Aidan, and even when she discovers things about the past, she’ll still have fairy dust to hold.”
“Fairy dust?”
“She told me about Caislean Alainn, and butterflies and gold flecks that clung to her little hand.”
“One more of my lies. I was so good at them.”
“You made magic.”
“No. I gave her illusions, while her real legacy waited outside these castle walls. Shame, because of what her parents were; revulsion when she hears the truth; and now, worst of all, some kind of animal who intends to hurt her so he can destroy me. Most terrifying of all, I don’t know if I can protect her.”
“You’ll do what you have to do, Aidan. Cassandra believes in you.” Her voice dropped low. “I believe in you. You have so much love inside you, I know you’ll find the strength to get through this. You’ll find a way.”
“You almost make me believe in myself,” he said in a ragged whisper. “I haven’t for a very long time. Maybe… maybe I never have.”
Norah’s arms closed about him, her cheek pressed against his bare chest.
The need to bury himself in her love became an obsession fiercer than he had ever known. Yet if he failed Norah, failed Cassandra this time, Aidan knew it would destroy him.
“Aidan?” She paused for a heartbeat. “I love you.”
The words trembled between them, Aidan’s throat parched with the need to whisper them back to her, tell her. But all he could do was lower his mouth to hers, trying with all that was in him to let his kiss reveal to her the words he could not say.
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