"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 19
The circle at the Hill of Night Voices had imprisoned 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 some treasure lost in the heavens—or, Aidan thought grimly, like the forever damned clawing at night in a wild attempt to escape from hell.
It was a place of mystic power, rooted deep in the Irish hills. One that had intrigued countless throngs of the curious, including Aidan himself when he'd been a boy. He'd not been able to resist the tales of human sacrifice and strange 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 hungered 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.
Never had Aidan been able to hear that name without the stirring of a memory that still had the power to make his jaw clench in a wash of 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 bore 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 the back of his neck prickling, as if it could feel the nudge of cold invisible pistol barrels against his skin.
Gilpatrick was no fool. The Irish renegade was cunning and careful, or he'd have dangled from a traitor's 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 in the moonlight and making love to her until he was raw inside, and aching and unsure.
For he was one with the darkness. One with the sin-blackened souls who were the lords of night. Hadn't he always been? Condemned even before his mother had brought him into a world that despised him because of the Kane blood that flowed through his veins?
He was a villain whom the angels had chosen, in a cruel twist of fate, to entrust with a child of light. He had tried so damned hard to guard her, protect her, keep her safe from the evil swirling all around, even the dark places in his own soul.
Yet last night, those jeering angels had shown him how futile his quest had been, how helpless he was to shield her.
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 ultimate power over his soul and destroy him completely.
No, a voice inside Aidan whispered, mocking him with a vision of soft brown eyes, so earnest, so filled with wonder in the shadow of Caislean Alainn. Cassandra was not the only weapon an enemy could wield against Aidan Kane's heart. Not anymore.
The stark vulnerability slayed Aidan. His fingers gripped the reins of his stallion as if they were the slenderest of threads keeping him from falling through the entrance to Hades.
Norah. How had she breached his defenses? She had managed to slip past his guard with the same subtle warmth as a ray of sunlight through a crack in a thick stone wall. She had wanned him in places he didn't want warmed, had touched him in ways his raw and weary heart had never expected. She had made him hunger for her hands on his body, her mouth under his, so he could catch her breathy whispers, hold onto the words she had spoken time and time again at his command: I love you.
Love. From the instant the words had first fallen, so shy, so reluctantly from her lips, he'd been starving for the sound of them.
Even when he had stridden into Rathcannon's stable at dusk and found her waiting outside his stallion's stall, he had wanted to draw her into his arms and kiss her. Promise her that everything would be all right. He had expected anger, pleading, raging.
But she had merely stood there, in the first light of the lantern suspended from an iron hook in the stable rafter. She had been quiet, so quiet, while Sean O'Day and Gibbon Cadagon had demanded to be allowed to follow their master into this den of rebels. Two guns to watch his back, Cadagon had claimed.
Two men—innocent, good men with families dependent on them—volunteering to take a bullet for Aidan Kane. The notion had raked mercilessly across his nerves, unsettling him in ways he couldn't begin to understand.
He'd been surly as hell with the two, telling them he'd be in more danger that they'd shoot him by accident than that Gilpatrick's men would manage to gun him down. But at the hurt in those puckish Irish faces, he had softened, clasping first Cadagon's hand, then Sean O'Day's. He had gazed into the eyes of these two men he trusted and told them that he needed to know Cassandra was guarded, safe; and with the two of them at Rathcannon, Aidan said he doubted the devil himself could steal Cassandra away.
At that rough confession, he'd seen the determination melt out of the Irishmen's eyes and sorrowful acceptance take its place. Cassandra, the treasure that must be guarded, kept safe at all costs. Cassandra, the child that these two loved nearly as much as Aidan himself did.
But it had been Norah who had lanced his soul with her huge, fear-filled eyes, far more eloquent in their aching silence than the Irishmen's pleas. She had crossed to him, laying her fingertips against his lips, soft, so soft. "Revenge can't hold your daughter while she cries, or rejoice when she laughs. Cassandra needs a father far more than she needs to be avenged." The words had twisted deeply into his heart and lodged there.
He'd been furious at the sensation that she was able to reach him, cripple him in a way no woman had for eight long years. He had wanted to shake her, to kiss her, to beg her to understand. But he had clenched his jaw and turned away from her. He hadn't spoken. He couldn't trust himself to.
Instead, he had stripped down to shirtsleeves, then swung astride his stallion and rode into the night.
He'd welcomed the chill night air, biting through the thin fabric, cooling the fires of confusion and rage inside him. And he had hoped that his unorthodox plan would serve as some kind of shield against Gilpatrick's hatred, and that somewhere, in the rebel's heart, there remained a scrap of the oak-tough code of honor Aidan had once believed to be unbreakable, the one quality in the one man he had come close to envying.
The white of Aidan's shirt would stand out starkly against the backdrop of night, announcing his presence to Gilpatrick's watch. He wanted the bastards to see him. He wanted them to know he didn't give a damn if the whole county knew he was coming to confront the bastards who had dared terrorize his daughter.
If there was anything Gilpatrick could understand, and grudgingly respect, it would be bold-faced courage, a foe who dared face him down, outnumbered a score to one. Besides which, Aidan was
certain it was the only way he could get close enough to the rebel to demand the answers he needed.
The stallion tossed its magnificent head, whickering nervously, and Aidan tightened his knees around the animal as it sidestepped, dancing away from a clump of underbrush. Survival instinct raged inside him, demanding he turn toward the brush, tear back the veil of darkness with his eyes. But he rode on, his features impassive, his mount under iron control.
His heart thundered in his chest, as if realizing that each beat could well be its last.
In the moonlight, he could see the first glimpse of the Stone of Truth, which legend said had sent Eremon O'Caighan to hell for his crimes against his chieftain's wife. Orange-gold tongues of flame from a torch or lantern licked hellish reflections onto the towering slab.
Every muscle in Aidan's body was coiled, as if expecting the fiery lash of a whip, every nerve ending sparked and tingled.
Soon. It would happen soon now, whatever greeting Gilpatrick's men intended to give to him.
The thought had barely formed in his head when a blur of shadow catapulted down on Aidan from the overhanging branch of a tree, a blood-chilling Gaelic war cry cleaving the silence of night like a broadsword of old.
Something hard slammed into him, driving him from his stallion's back as the horse reared and plunged in terror.
Pain radiated through Aidan's shoulder as he crashed to the turf, his attacker landing atop him. The rebel, his face masked, drove his fist into Aidan's jaw, snapping his head back until stars exploded before his eyes.
He shook himself, trying to regain his bearings through the swirling darkness of night and the sick, dizzy circlings inside his head. With an oath he rolled the guard over, wrestling the bastard with all the pent-up fury that had been boiling inside him since he'd first learned his daughter was in danger.
But before he could land his first punch, another hand grabbed his hair from behind, yanking his head back so savagely his neck seemed likely to snap, and the blade of a knife snaked around until that silvery kiss of death was pressed against his throat.
"I wouldn't be rearrangin' anybody's face, lest you want us to carve up yours, ye Kane bastard," a muffled voice warned from behind a crude mask of sacking. "Though nothin' would give me greater pleasure, I vow."
"I have no quarrel with you. My business is with Gilpatrick."
The brigand chuckled, low. "The master is real particular about who he conducts business with. And from past experience, I doubt he'd be fool enough to do so with a thievin' traitor who bears the name Kane. Last time a Kane entertained a Gilpatrick, Rathcannon fell into your bastard hands, and Donal's great-grandda and uncles decorated an English gallows."
Aidan's jaw knotted as the knife bit deeper. "Can't you recall the rest of the tale? His brothers, his father—their fates?" Despite his peril, Aidan's stomach turned at the memory of his own father regaling him with pride about his grandsire's quest to complete the destruction of the once-noble Catholic lords, the Gilpatricks. How Crevan Kane had made it his personal quest to obliterate the family that had held prior claim to Rathcannon, sparing no one—even cutting the tiniest Gilpatrick heir from his mother's womb.
Aidan gritted his teeth, wondering if he was baiting this rebel into slitting his throat, daring him to.
"You bastard." The man's voice was silky with hate. The other rogue climbed to his feet, while Aidan was still on his knees, helpless. The Irishman kicked him full in the ribs.
Agony seared him, his chest seeming to cave in, his lungs screaming for air. But it was a miracle the other assailant had kept the knife from gouging deep. Aidan fought to stay conscious, to squeeze the words from his strangled throat.
"You want me dead—all of you. I full intend to give your leader a chance to show how courageous he is when pitted against a Kane."
"What the devil?"
"I come to issue a challenge to Donal Gilpatrick."
"He's run mad," the other man said. "We should just kill him and serve him up before Donal like a slaughtered sheep."
"What?" Aidan jeered in a desperate gambit for his life. "You fear your leader hasn't the mettle to meet me man to man? It's no wonder. The world over knows that any man with a drop of English blood in his veins can crush a lowly Irishman. I suppose your fear is understandable."
"Lord Donal could carve the meat from your bones an inch at a time, if he'd a mind to," the man welding the knife declared.
"I dare him to try. No, I'll do better than that. I'll wager him a thousand pounds I can best him. Of course, if Gilpatrick is a coward..." He let the word hang between them, goading, chafing, knowing his very survival dangled in the balance. An eternity seemed to pass in the seconds before the man who held the knife cursed.
"We'll take ye up to Gilpatrick, Kane, and cheer when he spills your life blood into the dirt. Tully, bind the bastard's hands."
The man who had kicked him in the gut jerked Aidan's arms behind his back, nearly wrenching them from the sockets as he tied them with a strip of leather. Aidan bit back a groan at the pressure against his throbbing shoulder as the two men half dragged, half shoved him the rest of the way up the hill.
He heard the rise and fall of voices, then silence as his two captors shoved him from the shadows into the ring of torchlight. Aidan stumbled, going down on one knee. He gritted his teeth against the pain and levered himself upright. Steel poured into his spine as his gaze searched the circle of faces until he found that of his enemy. Gilpatrick's scar gleamed in a twisted rope down the side of his face, his eyelid pulled down at a gruesome angle beneath the clear blue of his left eye.
Aidan remembered how smooth that same face had been the first time he'd seen it: grinning at him in pure devilment as he stole an apple from Squire Donbea's orchard, despite the fact that the squire kept a fractious bull fenced therein. Aidan remembered the boy running, barely reaching the fence. He was certain Gilpatrick would have been skewered by one of the bull's horns if Aidan hadn't reached over the fence and yanked the Irish lad away from those tossing points.
A dozen wild adventures had followed, the two boys never knowing each other by any name other than Donal and Aidan, never knowing they were sworn enemies, until the day Aidan's father had discovered them together.
"What the hell?" Gilpatrick demanded, his overly thin body fairly radiating fury and surprise.
"He was ridin' up, bold as ye please," the knife wielder said. "Said he'd come searchin' to offer you a challenge."
Gilpatrick's eyes shimmered in the torchlight. "A challenge, Kane?"
"Man to man, Gilpatrick. You and me. With your guard dogs here under orders not to interfere."
The Irishman stared at him with the air of a king. "To what would I owe this unexpected pleasure? There must be a reason you've decided to confront me after all this time."
"You must have hungered to repay me for that little decoration carved on your cheek. I come to grant you your heart's desire. To strike a wager with you."
"You think I would make a wager with a cur like you? To do that, I'd have to trust a Kane to keep his word. We Gilpatricks have far too long a memory to make such a mistake again. The last time we believed in what your kinsmen told us, they barred nearly our whole family within a castle hall and slaughtered them down to the last babe."
Aidan's mouth tightened. "My ancestors were hell-spawned bastards, is that it? Making war on women and children? But what of you, Gilpatrick? That false honor you wear like a mantle over your rags?"
"What the divil are you implying, Kane?"
"I'm not implying anything. I'm accusing you, straight out, of being a coward, the worst kind of villain. And when we duel, if I get my blade against your throat, your forfeit will be to answer whatever questions I choose to put to you."
"Questions about what?"
"About the happenings at Rathcannon last night. About animals who put pistols into the faces of innocent girls. But then, you know all about that, Gilpatrick, don't you?"
Gil
patrick paled, a flicker of emotion tightening his mouth. "About terrorized children? Murderers with pistols stalking the innocent? I'm acquainted well enough with those." Gilpatrick's fist knotted. "Am I to assume that whoever put the pistol into your daughter's face did not pull the trigger?" The words were cool, so cool Aidan might have been deceived, had it not been for the flame eating inside his adversary's eyes.
"Cassandra is safe. But the mystery of her attackers has yet to be solved. They left no trace except a pistol ball in one of my footmen's legs. That, and two letters, secretly tucked in my wife's bedchamber."
Gilpatrick regarded him with steely, cold eyes. "Are you quite certain they were not from the previous Lady Kane's former lovers? I would imagine she had to keep up the devil of a lot of correspondence."
Aidan jerked against his captors' arms, a savage twist to his mouth. "You know damn well they were sent to Norah. You had them smuggled in to terrify her."
"That was never my intent. I merely wanted to warn the lady that she was straying into the dragon's den."
"Then you admit that you're responsible?"
"For the notes? I admit that most readily, though how you discovered that truth is most puzzling."
"It doesn't matter how I discovered it. Let's just say that when my daughter is threatened, I can be as ruthless as any man whose veins are filled with Kane blood. Imagine my surprise when I discovered you were involved in the plot to kidnap my daughter."
"And that is what your... informant told you? That I had plotted this kidnapping?"
"Who else could it be? The hatred between our families is as old as these stones. The note that said Cassandra was in danger was penned in your hand. You knew the attack was going to happen before the men fell upon Cassandra. How could you be privy to such an attack if you weren't neck deep in it?"
"How, indeed? Surely, I couldn't be giving you a warning to keep your daughter safe. Only the worst kind of fool would do that for his darkest enemy."
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