Meeting his future father-in-law’s stare, Aidan did nothing.
Camille rose from her chair and raised her glass. “I’d like to be the first member of our family to offer a toast to Miss Gawain, for her intrepid heroism, and above all, for returning our Aidan home to us, alive and well.”
Aidan raised his glass, noticing the rise of color in Olwyn’s cheeks, and the rapid throbbing of her pulse in her neck.
She was a vision, unequivocally, uncommonly lovely, he thought, and his gaze swept once more over her long, slim figure. He had known the shape and texture and feel of her body against his, the smell of her hair, the taste of her skin and mouth.
He would never know any of it again, and the bitter truth of that became a nasty taste on his tongue.
Olwyn offered a nervous smile as everyone called out “here, here,” and she blushed deeper still as the glasses clinked in musical tribute to her.
“Thank you,” she said, as they all drank to her. She met Aidan’s eyes across the room, and his pulse picked up its pace. She spoke as if to him alone. “It was well worth the risk.”
A servant appeared in the doorway and announced dinner, and the group moved toward the dining room. Aidan had Mira’s fingers on his arm, and he watched as Roman escorted Olwyn. His cousin had the lean good looks of his father, narrow and tall, sensual and rakish. Certainly Olwyn was not immune to his charms, Aidan thought.
He recalled how he’d planned on finding Olwyn a man who would appreciate her enough to take her to wife, and the idea now seemed absurd. No man seemed good enough, not Roman who was a romancing knave, nor his brother, Padraig, who had sworn off marriage and seemed content to woo women and race horses when he was not absorbed with business.
In truth, he could not think of any man worthy of her. No matter who came to mind, no matter how likeable or upstanding they might be, their faults became too apparent when he considered pairing them with Olwyn.
As everyone took their seats around the large table, Olwyn sat between Padraig and Roman, and as they dined the two men kept her laughing and chatting.
By the time they retired to the ballroom, Aidan felt as though he’d been tortured on the rack for hours, stretched beyond his limits, his tolerance worn thin.
He noticed Olwyn’s face as they entered the ballroom, and was touched by her look of wonder, saw the grandeur through her eyes: crimson velvet furniture and draperies, the towering ceiling painted with murals, shining parquet floors, and mammoth chandeliers lit with candles and dripping with crystal.
The musicians struck up as they entered, a trio that played the harp, guitar, and tin whistle. The moody, ancient music was of the Celts who’d once roamed the land, evocative of misty moors, standing stones, and star-crossed loves that could never be.
Roman immediately asked Olwyn to dance, and Aidan heard her politely demur. “I do not know how to dance.”
“I will teach you,” Roman promised her with a rakish grin. “You are already very graceful in your movements. One dance with me, and you will be sweeping across the floor like a swan.”
“I doubt that,” Olwyn said, but she put her slim white hand in Roman’s and let him pull her into his embrace.
Aidan watched them glide across the floor, and yes, she was graceful. In his arms she looked nubile and ethereal, a slender, shimmering dream of a woman.
Rogan asked Portia to dance, and Patrick invited Kieran to join him, and so Aidan, feeling like a knave, swept Mira into a dance with him.
Her gown brushed his legs and her waist felt pleasingly narrow against his hand. He looked down into her face and tried to see the sweetness that had once attracted him, but all he saw was the petty, insulting remarks she’d lain against Olwyn in an effort to diminish her.
How had he once felt passion for Mira, a consuming wanting to possess her that he’d never felt before, and hadn’t felt since that one night? It didn’t make sense, for he didn’t even want to kiss Mira, let alone take her to bed.
“You must stop staring at that woman. ’Tis most untoward,” Mira scolded.
Aidan knew Mira had every right to be upset, and did not offer a defense. “Aye, you’re right, and I’m sorry. I will strive to comport myself better.”
“Is she so attractive to you?” Mira cast a glance Olwyn’s way. “I find her appearance odd to the point of being disturbing.”
“She is different,” Aidan said neutrally, and finished the statement in his mind—from any other woman.
“Well, I don’t care for her, and I most especially didn’t care for the way she practically threatened me with violence.” Mira pursed her lips in a pout. “You should have defended me.”
Aidan resisted the urge to thrust her away from him, for she had the look of a simpering, spoilt child. He spoke distinctly, lest she misunderstand a word. “Make no mistake, I do not condone your behavior this night, and I will never rise to defend it.”
“You’ll allow her to speak to me in such a way?”
“When you’ve invited it? Aye. I will.”
“A husband is supposed to honor his wife, and hold her dear above all others.”
Aidan blew out his breath and without thinking first, blurted, “We shouldn’t get married, and we both know it. I don’t love you, you don’t love me, and that one night should not consign us both to wedded misery.”
Mira’s mouth dropped open, becoming a rictus, really, gaping open as if she lacked the sense to shut it. And then she drew in a deep gasp, her eyes wide. Recovering somewhat, she said in a hissing whisper, “You are a cad, a rogue, a scoundrel. How dare you? You drunkenly forced yourself on me, and now, mere weeks from our wedding, you try to jilt me? I will not stand for it.”
Aidan remembered the night well, and it had not been force. However, it seemed clear that that was how Mira chose to remember it. He tried to reason with her. “Is this what you want? A loveless marriage full of sniping at each other because we made one mistake? Wouldn’t it be better to go our separate ways and see if we can each still find happiness?”
“I will not have this discussion here,” Mira bit out, “with all of your family and my father watching on, as you insult me and try to worm out of your manly obligation.”
“I’m asking a simple question: is a lifetime together worth one night’s mistake?”
“Well, when you’re pleasant, I quite like you,” she answered, as if their attraction were something he could control. “That alone is more than many marriages can boast. And, as we are on the subject, do not forget that I accepted your offer of marriage and did not tell my father you got drunk and practically raped me. I should hate to have to do so now, but as I was divested of my virtue, I hardly have any choice. For that matter, a lawsuit would be in order as well. Breach of promise is the least of the charges I could lay against you.”
He looked down on her and wondered what he’d ever seen as pretty, for she had a spitefully superior expression on her face, and her mouth was twisted in a smug smile.
Aidan bit his tongue and abandoned the subject. She was correct about one thing—it was neither the time nor place to have such a discussion.
But Mira had to add one more dig. “You’d better ask yourself, my lord, if you want a wife of good breeding or a woman scorned. Because frankly, I have the capacity for being both.”
Aidan gripped her harder than necessary, and she gasped, her eyes reflecting anger and fear at the same time.
“Don’t threaten me, my lady. You’ll get more than you’ve bargained for.”
“Making threats is far beneath me,” she said haughtily. “I am, however, not above reminding you that you have not yet paid for what you’ve taken. If you think I will let you walk away unscathed, you sorely mistake how greatly I value myself.”
Before Aidan could reply, Padraig approached them, bowed, and extended his hand to Mira. “May I cut in?”
“You can, brother.” Aidan handed over Mira to him, and walked away without looking back.
He’d mo
ved to the edge of the floor, and saw his mother looking at him. Aidan smiled for her benefit, but Emeline wasn’t taken in by it. She rose from her chair and came toward him, looking divine in her creamy, velvet gown. Her gold hair was coiled and sleek, and her face was timelessly beautiful. She took up her place beside him.
“I have not interfered with you overmuch, Aidan. You are a man, and as such, you do not need the meddling of your mother in your affairs,” Emeline said without preamble.
“However?”
Emeline’s expression changed, and as her sapphire eyes narrowed a bit, Aidan realized she was quite angry.
“However, indeed. Tonight I have watched you disgrace your betrothed and yourself, and completely overstep the boundaries of propriety where Miss Gawain is concerned. I did not raise you to behave so indecently to any woman, let alone the one you will take to wife. So I ask plainly, my son, as ’tis so obvious that you do not love Mira Kimball enough to esteem her, why do you marry her?”
Aidan felt anger bubbling in his chest, a stew of frustration, weary self-possession, and age-old resentments. “I am not going to explain myself. You hold your secrets dear enough, so forgive me if I don’t feel obliged to bare my soul in return.”
Emeline pulled back as if he’d struck her. “How dare you liken the two? Your birth order affects you not at all, and will not until the unhappy day that your father dies. You have been denied nothing but a tiny scrap of information, withheld to protect you and Padraig from being treated in any way differently as you grew, and now from young women questing prestige over true love. You may not agree with our method, Aidan, but do not ever doubt our motive.”
“Has it ever occurred to either of you that you might be going about it wrong? Have you ever thought of how it feels for Padraig and me, to look to the future and not know our place in it?”
“Of course,” Emeline answered simply. “Parenting is fraught with doubt and worry, and I was always afraid of making mistakes with you and your brother. But your father was certain this was best, and I agreed with him. He’d been raised without the foolishness and decadence of court life, without the nonsensical labels by which people seek to define themselves and others. Such things are meaningless, and though we raised you for the most part in England, we wanted to spare you the characterization that certain titles would bring. We wanted you to be able to be just yourself, Aidan Mullen, and let that be enough.”
Aidan turned away from his mother’s angry eyes, hating himself for being unpleasant when the evening had been intended to welcome him home. “I’m sorry, Mum. I should not have spoiled the night,” he said, and he meant it. It seemed all he did of late was apologize to women. “’Tis a discussion for another time and place, one we should have with Padraig and Da as well.”
Emeline laid her hand on Aidan’s arm. “Let me speak to your father. Perhaps you’ve the right of it. You’re both nearly thirty years old, and it could be that your father and I have clung too long to our ideals.”
Aidan didn’t respond, for his eyes were drawn to Olwyn in Roman’s arms. She giggled as he twirled her and pulled her close again. Aidan feasted on the sight of her, an earthy girl in a heavenly gown. He couldn’t control himself—he gazed on her with all the love and lust he felt, an open, unguarded, seething expression of pure passion.
“You watch her with far too much ardor,” Emeline observed quietly.
“I know,” he said softly.
The last strains of the song faded, and the musicians struck up a new song, this one a slow, aching melody.
Roman walked Olwyn toward Aidan, and with a guileless expression in his dark eyes he presented Olwyn to him. “Cousin, the lady saved your life. Will you not even offer her a single dance?”
Padraig had whirled Mira across the floor, and she and he were engaged in a discussion as they glided around the floor. Aidan glanced once to his mother, saw her look of disapproval, and then met Olwyn’s crystal gray eyes.
And in that moment, nothing else mattered. Not Mira, or his parents, or even his own honor. He wanted Olwyn Gawain any way he could have her, no matter how briefly, and so he bowed before her, took her hand in his, and pulled her into his arms.
Before Camille had invited Olwyn to join the Mullen family for dinner, Olwyn’s experience with opulent ballrooms and dancing had been limited to fairy tales and her imagination.
Yet here she was, beautifully gowned and in Aidan’s strong arms, feeling the heat of his body and the current of his desire as he swept her across the floor.
She tilted her head back so she could watch his every nuanced expression. She remembered how she’d once thought him a prince, his handsomeness both intimidating and fascinating.
But now she knew the taste of his mouth and his skin, the secret thoughts of his mind, and the warm shelter of his body over hers. And she wanted more, wanted all of him, and scarcely noticed how handsome he was any more, for it was not his appearance that drew her. What she felt for him was blind, the other senses in full command, obsessed with touch and taste and smell and sound.
He looked deeply into her eyes, and did not hide his yearning for her. It was there, burning, for anyone to see.
“My lord,” she whispered. “Your family watches.”
“You know me by another name.”
“Lóchrann.” The word on her tongue made her crave smoky darkness, the hard throbbing of his body against hers, and the complete surrender to her desire for him. “They watch.”
“Tell me the truth, Olwyn,” he urged her, his deep voice thick with feeling.
“I have only ever been honest with you.”
“I know ’tis true. A lie would burn in your mouth.” His eyes traced her lips so intently she could nearly feel the touch of his regard. “Tell me how you feel about me.”
“You consume me.”
He lowered his eyes and swallowed heavily, looked away and then brought his gaze back to meet hers. In his sapphire depths she saw a war being waged. “You do not hesitate.”
Olwyn smiled up at him. The strains of the music were haunting, a melody that suited her yearning. “My lord, I have spent a great deal of time alone. It allows for plenty of introspection.”
“I, too, have been doing a great deal of thinking.”
“Have you found any answers?”
“I’ve had a few revelations, aye.”
He looked troubled, his lips flat, eyes haunted, and a tiny jumping muscle flexed just below the hollow of his cheek.
And Olwyn wanted to comfort him, to have him tell her his troubles, to press her lips against all his tetchy nerves. Oh, yes, she wanted his worries and his concerns, and she wanted them whispered to her in the dark.
But she’d have to let the space of one dance suffice. “What’s wrong, Lóchrann?”
“’Tis not curiosity.”
His words brought a bittersweet smile to her lips, for she knew he spoke of the wanting between them. The sort that kills cats, he’d called it.
No, it was far more dangerous than that, she reflected, more the variety that ruined lives. “I never thought it was.”
“Staying away didn’t make it easier,” he said.
“We didn’t give it long enough.”
“I think it would take a lifetime.”
Olwyn’s eyes traveled across the planes of his face, his neck, his wide shoulders. She envisioned the skin beneath his formal black jacket and crisp white shirt. That skin was soft and golden and taut, stretched over hard muscle and bone. Her gaze dipped lower, to the place on his chest where her father’s scalpel had nearly taken his life.
She remembered holding Aidan’s hand when she thought him dead, how easily she’d fallen in love with him even then, a headlong dip into danger, the love of a man denied his life and the lust for the man reborn, all combined into a muddled mix of emotions that Olwyn didn’t dare try to deny.
“Come to me tonight, in the cottage,” she invited him in a hushed whisper. “No one need ever know.”
&
nbsp; Surprise lit his eyes first, and then heat, as the idea took root. He smoldered with her invitation, and his refusal was half-hearted. “You deserve better than that.”
“Maybe I want whatever part of you I can get,” she breathed. Her eyes were on his mouth and then his hair, and she remembered the feel of it, the silky soft warmth. “It isn’t uncommon for men to keep mistresses.”
“If I allowed you to settle for that, I’d hate myself for the rest of my life.”
“I admit it isn’t the fairy tale I dreamed of when I was a little girl, but I am a woman now, and I am practical. If stolen moments are all we can have, perhaps we should seize them.”
He pulled her closer and leaned down to press his cheek against hers. It was a scandalous dance, too close, too intimate.
Olwyn reveled in it.
“You deserve the fairy tale,” he said softly.
She could feel the heat of him, pumping as if from a furnace, the faintly gritty roughness of his shaven jaw pressed to hers, and the slight tremble that shook them both.
The music was slowing further, nearing the end.
“Once upon a time,” he whispered against her ear, the heat of his breath sending more shivering trembles through her body. “There was a beautiful maiden imprisoned in a crumbling old keep. Some called her a witch, and others thought her an ancient Druid.
“A man was brought to her, so close to death that no signs of life could be felt. The maiden, though, believed in his life, so much so that she risked her own to save his.”
He pulled back and looked deep into her eyes, and his were limpid, dark blue pools in which she was willingly drowning.
“She woke him,” he breathed. “He returned to life, reborn, awakened in a way he’d never been before. And he saw in her the truth: that she was neither witch nor Druid, but a woman unlike any other. She saw in him deep truths that no one else had ever even thought to look for, and he loved her for it.
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