"I didn't. You did. I said everything I knew you would say if you dared let your true feelings out."
The notion of a fifteen-year-old girl whose head was stuffed with romantic nonsense penning a letter in Aidan's name made his head spin. He hadn't blushed since he was sixteen and his father had taken him 'round to his current light o' love to rid his son of the troublesome burden of virginity. But as Aidan looked from his daughter to Norah Linton, hot blood surged into his cheeks.
"My true feelings?" he said through gritted teeth. "Let me make this very clear, Cassandra: I do not want a wife."
Cassandra cast Norah Linton a pleading glance. "He rode all night," she attempted to explain. "He doesn't have the slightest idea what he's saying. If you would pardon us for a moment."
"Devil burn it!" Aidan protested. "I know exactly what I'm—"
Cass grasped Aidan's hand, dragging him off behind the carved griffin bearing the Gilpatricks' heraldic device.
"You may not want a wife," Cassandra raged at him in scathing undertones, "but I do want a mother!"
Aidan reeled at her impassioned words. "Cass..." He tried to gentle his voice, but it was roughened by her pain. A secret pain he had never suspected. An empty place he thought she'd long since forgotten.
"Don't you see, Papa? When I go to London, I want to be like everyone else." Her words sliced deep into Aidan's soul, exposing stark impossibilities. You're not like everyone else. You never can be.
He winced, remembering that adolescent desperation to fit in with the hordes of young people who would descend upon London with their dreams in their hands, ready to discover their futures.
But she was continuing, so earnestly it broke his heart. "Papa, I want a mother who will help me pick out gowns and explain so many things I don't understand."
Aidan felt as if she'd ripped away something indescribably precious. Something he hadn't even noticed was slipping through his fingers. "You've always said you can tell me anything."
She caught his hands, squeezed them, hard. "Papa, I love you more than anyone in the whole world. But you're a man! You can't tell me about things like—like when to let a beau kiss my hand, or how to be certain that I'm in love."
"I can tell you that I'll thrash the daylights out of any whelp who dares come near you." Aidan closed his eyes against the image of his proud little Cass suffering through her first heartache. Because even with her beauty, her wit, her courage, Aidan knew the odds were high that she'd suffer more than one disappointment. Romantic youths were quick to abandon their infatuations with "ineligibles" when they were confronted with the harsh reality of the haute ton's disapproval. And there was no doubt that those interfering snobs who had nothing better with which to occupy their minds than gossip and ridicule would have a veritable feast of scandal to feed on when it came to Cass.
He sucked in a steadying breath, groping for the right words, as he had so many times in the past. "Cass, we'll figure out how to deal with all that when the time comes, just the way we always have before," he said, stroking back one tangled silver-blond tress. "I understand that you feel the loss of your mother." Aidan looked down at the ringlet that clung to his finger, knowing that the one thing he had learned in his marriage to Delia was that it was possible to grieve for something you never really had. "The one thing I'm certain of is that dragging Miss Linton into our lives isn't going to change the ache you feel."
"Why not?" Cassandra's lashes were wet with tears, her eyes shining with belligerence. Belligerence, all the more heart-wrenching because Aidan could see beneath it her absolute faith that he wouldn't fail her, that he would deny her nothing.
"Papa, I want a mother more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. And soon it will be too late. I'll be grown up. From the time I first came to Rathcannon, I've watched the Cadagons with their babies and Mrs. O'Day with her little ones. And I would have traded all my pretty things if just once I could run to my own mother when I was sad, or sorry, or hurt."
Aidan winced at the memory of how many scraped knees and bumped elbows he'd soothed. But there had been far more bumps and bruises that he hadn't been at Rathcannon to heal. He'd done his best to make certain Cassandra was surrounded with people who adored her: Mrs. Brindle, the Cadagons, the O'Days, everyone from the head butler to the lowliest stableboy.
He'd told himself it didn't matter that no one carried the official title of Mother. In fact, if he was brutally honest, he'd thought Cassandra well rid of Delia, since the woman had possessed about as much maternal instinct as the stone griffin. But the lack of a mother had obviously mattered to Cassandra. Just one more bruised place in her spirit she'd kept hidden from him.
He looked from his daughter, now holding that ridiculous doll, to the woman who still stood silhouetted against the side of the coach, ash-pale, agonizingly quiet.
Was it possible that this stranger could give Cassandra something he could not? A confidante to initiate Cass into the rites of becoming a woman? A protector if her father should fail her?
"No, damn it," Aidan muttered more to himself than the hopeful girl standing beside him. "Hellfire and damnation, I would be mad to even consider... Cassandra, for the love of God, girl! Think!"
"I have been thinking! Thinking and thinking until my head ached!"
"That's enough! God's teeth, Cass! You're acting like a spoiled child!" Aidan snapped. If only she had been. Instead, she was facing him with the aura of a most determined young woman.
"If you don't marry her, I'll never forgive you for taking this chance away from me!" Cassandra said, her eyes shimmering with tears she was fighting not to shed. Never." She wheeled as the first tear fell and ran up the stairs.
Aidan swore. When had his daughter—his willful, strong, adorable little Cass—become prey to those wild, hysterical vapors the fair sex seemed given to? When he'd left her last, she'd seemed so blasted rational, reasonable... asking him such sweet questions: Are you happy, Papa? Do you ever get lonely, Papa? This visit, were she to query him, the question would be Do you mind if I ruin your life, Papa?
He would be willing to promise her the moon if it would make her dry her eyes. But marriage? Bind himself until death to a woman?
He shifted his gaze to where the woman stood—what the blazes was her name? Lyndon? Mitton? Something as unremarkable as her face. The name Linton finally came to his mind.
Still, he could hardly leave her standing out here. He walked toward her, his arms folded across his chest. Why did she suddenly look fragile? Forlorn?
"Well, I suppose there's nothing to do but take you inside," he allowed grudgingly. "I can hardly leave you standing in the carriage circle until I figure out what to do with you."
"I am not your responsibility, sir," she said in that frosty way Englishwomen had that had always tempted Aidan to try to melt them. "I'm certain there must be an inn nearby."
"There is. Fifteen miles away. But the only way you are going to get there, madam, is to walk, and it's a damn sight too far for you to try it."
There was just enough fire under that icy voice of hers to taunt him. "Sir Aidan, you have made it absolutely clear what you think of me. If you think I would consider inconveniencing you any further after you've bellowed at me, humiliated me, and maligned everything from my intelligence to my appearance, you are much mistaken."
She was making him feel like a bastard. It infuriated him. Mainly because she was right.
Aidan set his teeth. "Madam," he said very carefully, aware of a bevy of servants who had heard the ruckus and gathered to peep out the door. "I think we've both made fools of ourselves long enough for one morning, don't you? If you don't march yourself up to that castle right now, I am going to throw you over my shoulder like a common tavern wench and haul you inside myself."
Her eyes widened, and she took a step backward. "You wouldn't dare!"
"Wouldn't I? I rode all night half drunk in an effort to get here from Dublin. I've got a daughter who has some demented notion that she w
ants you for her mother. And whether I want to deal with you or not, the truth is that my daughter's mischief is what brought you here in the first place, so I am responsible for you. At least as responsible as a man can be for a scatter-brained..." He bit down on the words, cutting them off, battling for control of his badly frayed temper. "In other words, Miss Linton," he said carefully, "it's not even nine o'clock in the morning, and already it's been one of the worst goddamn days of my life. To top the whole thing off, it's supposed to be my birthday." It sounded ridiculous, even to Aidan's own ears.
"I'll offer you my felicitations when I leave this disaster behind." Nothing she could have said would have made him feel more the fool.
"Don't worry, madam," Aidan said. "No one is in a greater hurry to hasten your departure than I am. But until then, we'll just have to limp along as best we can." He signaled the footman. "Put the lady's trunk in the Blue Room."
He saw the footman's jaw drop open.
"Is there some problem, Sipes?" Aidan shot the youth such a glare the boy flushed scarlet.
"Of course not, sir. It's just that no one has stayed there since—since, well... I'm certain it's not prepared for occupancy."
"Then prepare it."
"Aye, sir. I'll make certain Rose does so right away, sir." The footman heaved up the trunk.
"Is there something amiss about the room?" Norah asked, unease flickering in her dark eyes. "I'd not want to inconvenience anyone."
"You're a damn sight too late to be worrying about that," Aidan grumbled. "As for the chamber assigned to you, it's perfect." Aidan flashed her a diabolical smile, possessed by an unholy need to unnerve her. "It belonged to the last Lady Kane—a fitting place for you, since you were so eager to take her place. If I should change my mind, and become tempted to matrimony, I figure it would be best if I were within easy reach of you so I can sample what you've offered so prettily."
It was a damnable thing to say, but Aidan believed he would have said far worse to assure that he dashed the last of any romantic notions this woman had woven about her mysterious bridegroom.
The woman's face went scarlet. "I cannot imagine anything that would induce me to marry you now. And unless you want your other eye blackened, you had better not attempt to sample anything."
Aidan reached up his fingers to touch the bruise he'd all but forgotten and fought not to heave an audible sigh of relief. "Perhaps my birthday can be salvaged after all. Sipes will show you to your room." He watched Norah disappear through the door through which a tearful Cassandra had fled, and it seemed as if an eternity had passed in that brief time since he'd charged out into the sunlight, laughing with his daughter.
Barely a heartbeat later, here he was, with Cassandra crying her eyes out and a woman he'd never seen before taking up residence in the Blue Room.
Perhaps he had acted like a bastard, thrusting the Linton woman into the chamber adjoining his own. And yet, it seemed the perfect location for this "bride" Cassandra had dredged up for him.
Every time he looked at the Englishwoman he would remember the nights Delia had hurled out her contempt of Rathcannon—the servants, the castle, and everything Irish. Most especially Aidan himself.
Surely, if he ensconced the woman in the middle of such relentless reminders of his disastrous first marriage, even Cassandra couldn't tempt him to slip his neck into the matrimonial noose again.
Could she?
His gaze flicked to the door where the Englishwoman had disappeared, and Aidan battled a sudden urge to race after her and haul her back outside. To stuff the woman back into the coach and send her careening off to God knew where— anywhere, away from him.
The man who hadn't quailed from charging hordes of Napoleon Bonaparte's Frenchmen swallowed hard, reaching up a hand to wipe away the beads of sweat suddenly dampening his brow.
There was only one thing to do, Aidan resolved: He would have to get that woman away from Rathcannon as soon as possible.
* * * * *
Norah trudged in the wake of the footman, her stomach churning with hopelessness, the sick, wrenching futility of it all. She had failed, miserably. Completely. She'd made a total fool of herself before this hard-eyed Irishman she'd dared to weave dreams about for such a brief and precious time.
She winced at the image of herself, straining for a glimpse of Ireland's shore from the ship's rail, and shuddered at the memory of the fluttering of her heart as she'd seen the turrets of Rathcannon.
But most of all, she was sickened by the soaring sense of hope that she had felt from the moment she'd first taken up the letter from Sir Aidan Kane. She hadn't paused to question the oddly rounded, elegant penmanship, so unlike a grown man's. Instead, she'd drowned in the poignant beauty of the words, words that had convinced her—just this once—to take a chance. To dare dream of happily ever afters, and of a man who needed someone to love him.
A mate who hungered as desperately as she had for a family.
How many years had she bottled up the love inside her, kept it hidden away, knowing it would be unwelcome in the house of her cold stepfather? How many years had she pretended it didn't matter that she was isolated, so very much alone?
But the soul-deep need to love and be loved had surged up inside her, battering her like a raging river against an ancient dam, until a fistful of letters had shattered all her defenses, and she had taken her heart in her hand to offer it up to a man. A man who didn't want her any more than her stepfather had, any more than any of the high-brow beaux in London society had.
Crippling disillusionment tightened its grasp about her throat, making it burn with tears she would not shed.
She tipped her chin up high, her face aching with the effort it took not to betray the turmoil inside her as she made her way up the exquisite staircase, then passed through the curious throng of servants that seemed to peep at her from every doorway.
It should have been simple enough to barricade herself behind the wall of icy dignity that had been her retreat since she was a wary child, wandering into her stepfather's domain for the first time.
Never once in the years that followed had she allowed Winston Farnsworth to see past her pride into her pain. And yet, the feelings roiling through her now were far more daunting than anything she had endured before—a churning mixture of self-loathing, despair, exhaustion, and hopelessness.
Dear God, what had she done? Charging off to Ireland like a dream-struck fool to marry a man she'd invented in her imagination. Emerging from the coach—not with the sense of calm acceptance that would have been sensible, considering the circumstances—but, rather, with a thousand fragile dreams clutched, like that ridiculous doll, in her hands. A doll that had been intended as a gift for a gap-toothed little cherub with skinned knees and plump baby hands.
Dreams of a man, a lover, a husband, Norah hadn't dared to admit she'd had, even to herself, until Sir Aidan Kane had stormed out of the castle's massive doorway and dashed those secret fantasies to bits on Rathcannon's stone stairs.
Sir Aidan Kane—no solemn hero scarred by battle, no lonely father, wanting to share his life with a woman.
Rather, Norah's worst nightmare. A raging, arrogant beast with the hard glitter of dissipation etched in a handsome face and a mocking edge of cruelty in a voice roughened with a sensuous burr no woman could help but understand. Exactly the kind of male who had been casting dismissive sneers at Norah Linton since she'd been in short skirts.
Most humiliating of all, Aidan Kane hadn't made the slightest effort to hide his reaction toward her.
Horror.
Disbelief.
Utter contempt.
Kane had looked as if the mere word wife were anathema to him, and she had set out singlehandedly to ensnare him in the jaws of marriage. No, not singlehandedly, Norah thought, exhausted. There had been two other parties involved.
Her stepbrother, Richard, so earnest, so hopeful as he pressed the mysterious Irishman's letters into her hands, wanting to save her from the
hideous marriage his father had arranged for her. Richard, showering her with a trousseau so lovely it stole her breath away, with no notion that his attempt to help her had merely plunged her into an even more calamitous disaster than the one she was leaving behind.
And second, Cassandra Kane, penning letters in her father's name, plotting to give him the "gift" of a bride, never suspecting that her father would be horrified by the mere suggestion.
A tight ache knotted in Norah's chest, a sense of loss spawned by a child who had never existed. Cassandra. Not the winsome little waif Norah had been led to anticipate, a bright-eyed angel rushing over to cradle the doll her new mama had brought her. A child she could lavish with all the affection Norah herself had never experienced.
Rather, Cassandra Kane was a headstrong girl on the verge of womanhood, who had recklessly plunged both Aidan Kane and Norah herself into this maelstrom of disaster.
A budding beauty Norah could never have hoped to be an adequate mother to.
Norah raised her fingertips to the dusty curve of her cheekbone, wincing inwardly. No, even if Aidan Kane had welcomed her with open arms, she would not have been a proper mother to his daughter. She wouldn't have known how to begin to deal with a lovely, bright, confident little beauty who would never spend her adolescence as Norah had—staring at her reflection in a mirror, trying not to regret the ivory pallor to her cheeks, the plain shape of her nose, the solemn mouth that was far from ripe and kissable.
Not even the swan's down pelisse Richard had given her could fire color into Norah's cheeks. Not even the glorious bonnet he'd tucked over her brown curls could spill beauty into features that were ordinary as any chambermaid's in Farnsworth House.
Farnsworth House.
The name alone was enough to make bile rise in Norah's throat, her fingers tremble.
I can hardly leave you standing in the carriage circle until I can send you back to wherever you came from, Aidan Kane had snarled.
Yet the very idea of dragging herself back to her stepfather's household, rejected, humiliated, was more than Norah could bear. She could imagine Winston Farnsworth gloating over her blunder, certain he would rejoice in his proud stepdaughter crawling back to his doorstep, placing herself under his control once more. Likely, the man wouldn't even allow her in the door.
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