Cates, Kimberly (38 page)

"Shall
I tell you, Norah? Shall I show you?" That noble head lowered, capturing
her mouth in a kiss.

"Philip!"
she gasped, a vision of maidenly protest— exactly the kind men could never
resist. Montgomery tangled his hands in her hair.

"You
cannot love that beast you call a husband!" he grated. "No one could
blame you for seeking comfort from a better man. Norah, let me love you."

The
words coiled whip cords of madness around Aidan's throat, blinding him with a
red haze of fury and betrayal.

"Philip,
I—I don't know what to say." Shaken, she sounded so shaken. Hadn't he
heard such tones a dozen times before? Women tempting their suitors to greater lengths,
more grandiose vows of adoration. "I am wed to Sir Aidan."

Aidan
strode into the pool of light, his voice steel sheathed in ice. "Oh,
please, don't let such minuscule concerns as wedding vows interfere in your
pleasure, madam."

Norah
gave a tiny cry as she wrenched out of Montgomery's embrace.

"Kane,
you sneaking bastard!" the nobleman snarled. "I should have known
you'd be skulking in the bushes, following us."

"On
the contrary, I was merely coming to claim my bride for a dance. I had not
fulfilled my husbandly duty to do so, as my daughter none too gently pointed
out. As for any attempt to...
skulk,
you are mistaken. I made a great
deal of noise when I approached, my lord, but I doubt either of you would have
heard the blast of a cannon if it were fired from this hedge. You were...
otherwise occupied."

Norah
pressed one hand to her chest, those delicate, gloved fingers silhouetted
against the breasts Aidan had lavished with kisses the night before. He was
fired with the need to drag her into his arms, force her down into the hidden
bower of the arbor, and take her again, hard and fast and furious, until Philip
Montgomery's kiss was nothing but a crumbling ash of memory in the wake of
Aidan's own onslaught of passion.

"Aidan,
please." Her voice trembled, so soft and musical, so uncertain. Aidan
clenched his jaw against its dangerous persuasion. "This is not what it
appears."

"You
forget I have had some experience in such matters. It has always been a Kane
family tradition to dismiss wedding vows as soon as they become inconvenient.
However, I must say, I cannot recall any bride doing so quite this soon—a mere
day after her wedding."

"You
are the one who said our vows were meaningless. I never—"

"Don't
bother scrambling to explain," he said, cutting her off with a wave of his
hand. "You were the picture of maidenly protestations, my sweet. I suppose
that you flung your arms about this man's neck because—what? He'd taken a
troublesome speck of dust out of your eye? I'm quite certain that would qualify
him as—how did you say it? The most wonderful man in the world."

Bitter,
biting, he echoed her words of moments before, amazed at the jagged hole they
tore in his chest. He expected her to wince, to flush, readily trapped in a
snare of her own words. But instead of growing teary eyed, or letting that
wounded-doe expression of hurt fill her eyes, the dark depths filled with
outrage.

"Why
don't you be honest for once, Aidan?" she said. "Say, Don't bother to
explain because I don't want to hear the truth. I'd much rather leap to
brainless conclusions about things I don't understand."

"A
man with his hands all over you, begging you to let him love you, doesn't need
much translation, in my experience."

"Why
should it bother you if she did let me love her?" Montgomery raged.
"Before a sennight, you'll be in some other woman's bed. Or will you have
a pair of them, Kane? A brace of pretty harlots playing bed games with you?
From what I hear, you have carnal appetites that could scarce be fulfilled by a
decent woman. Or do you plan to debase Norah by teaching her your lecherous
tricks?"

Aidan
felt the blood drain from his face, fury and pain and betrayal clawing inside
him. Scenes flashed before his eyes: the bed littered with playing cards, the
wildly sensual wagers that had fired his blood driving him to heights of desire
he'd never reached before. He could see Norah, her lips glossy, parted in a
breathy gasp, as he unfastened her nightgown one button at a time, daring to
touch her, taste her, tease her.

Lecherous
tricks...

There
were those who would claim it was so—the game he had played with her in their
bridal bed. But it had shifted into something so stunningly powerful, so
wrenchingly beautiful, it still awed him, terrified him.

The
idea that Norah might have confided such happenings to Montgomery poured acid
on nerve endings already sizzling with tension.

His
hard gaze flashed to Norah's face. "Did you follow through on your threat,
my lady?" he asked in silky menace. "Did you tell your hero what
transpired between us on our bridal night?"

"No!
Of course I—I did not!"

"You
didn't tell him about our diverting little game of wagers, then?"

"Aidan,
please—"

"Montgomery,
this I can tell you: You are wrong in your judgment of my bride. Norah may
appear the gentle virgin, the quintessential lady, but I assure you, last night
she was most—ahem—eager to place herself in my jaded hands."

"You
bastard!" Montgomery raged. "I will do everything I can to rescue her
from your clutches!"

"Philip,
stop! I—"

"Montgomery."
Aidan's voice was deadly steel. "If you ever come near my wife again, I
vow you will regret it."

"Brave
words, Kane. You didn't turn a hair the entire time your first wife was whoring
her way through half the king's regiments! You think it will be long before
Norah rejects you just as the Lady Delia did?"

Years
of rage, beaten down by force of will, suddenly burst their dam, roaring
through Aidan like wildfire. His lips curled in a feral snarl, Aidan drove his
fist into Philip Montgomery's patrician face. Fire shot through Aidan's right
hand at the impact, but he barely felt it, the sensation lost in the surging
satisfaction of Montgomery roaring in pain.

The
nobleman staggered backward with the force of the blow. One hand covered his
face as a crimson stain spread beneath his impeccable glove.

"Stop
this! Both of you!" Norah glared at them. The face Aidan had seen wreathed
in wonder was now sick with horror.

"Norah,
you see what he's capable of!" Montgomery warned. "Violence. Lechery!
Surely you cannot want to chain yourself to such an animal."

"She's
already chained, Montgomery."

"Chained?"
Norah blustered. "What do you plan to do? Keep me locked in a tower like
you have Cassandra?"

"You're
mine, Norah." He snarled an icy warning.

Norah
wheeled on him. "I'm not your property, you stubborn, brainless fool! Was
that what this madness was about? Jealousy?"

"The
bastard had his hands all over you!"

"And
you just assumed I was welcoming his advances."

His
fury stumbled in the wake of her outrage. "You were embracing him."

"I
embraced him because he'd agreed to petition his grandmother, the duchess of
Ware, to ease Cassandra's way into society."

"But
he wanted you to run away with him. I heard him!"

"But
you didn't wait to see if I would go, did you? No, you were so certain I'd
betray you. Why do you think I wed you?"

"You
had nowhere else to go."

"I
wouldn't sell myself so cheaply!"

"Norah!"
Montgomery cut in. "You don't owe this bastard any explanation."

She
paid no notice to the nobleman. "Aidan, there is a whole wide world out
there beyond the Irish coast! I'm certain I could find a corner of it for
myself if I desire to. I wed you for one reason." Her chin tipped upward.
"One reason only."

"What
the devil is that?" Aidan demanded, hands planted on lean hips, as if
daring her... daring her to what? Tell him things that could never be?

"I
married you because I—" She stopped as her eyes shimmered with unshed
tears, her whole body trembling. "No. Only a fool would cast out her heart
to be trampled over yet again!"

He
stood frozen as she spun away and ran down the path, away from Montgomery, away
from the arbor, away from the ballroom. But most certainly of all, away from
him.

"Norah..."
He breathed her name, his head reeling with memories of how she'd offered
herself to him last night, her eyes huge and wanting, her voice breathless with
little cries, shy and innocent, and yet eager, generous, opening herself to his
lovemaking with a tender ferocity that had astonished him.

What
could it possibly mean?

Only
a fool would cast her heart out to be trampled over again.
Her heart... her
heart...

Was
it possible that Norah had given him a treasure more precious than mere vows
within the old stone church?

That
she...

Aidan
couldn't even form the thought, couldn't fathom anything so astonishing, so
terrifyingly wonderful.

Too
stunned to follow as Norah melted into the darkness, Aidan stared after his
bride, wary and disbelieving, bewildered and more shaken than he'd ever been in
his life.

Mists
swirled around Norah as she stumbled blindly through the maze of hillocks and
gorse, guided by the intrepid rays of moonlight that managed to pierce the
haze.

She
wasn't certain where she was going, she only knew she had to escape the ballroom
filled with gawking gossip mongers, Philip Montgomery's pleas, and most of all
Sir Aidan Kane's fallen-angel eyes, eyes still haunted with anger and betrayal,
worlds away from love—the emotion Norah would have sold her soul to see
flickering in their emerald depths.

She
had almost told him she loved him.

The
knowledge lanced through her, making her cheeks burn, her eyes sting. She had
flung out words in fury and hurt and pain, and had all but bared her heart to
him, there in Rathcannon's garden, with Philip, bleeding from the blow from
Aidan's fist, and the harsh words of Aidan's jealous rage still reverberating
in her ears.

But
she had caught herself just in time, cut off the admission that would have made
her completely vulnerable to this man who had already won far too much of her
soul. He had stared at her as if she had run mad, her unfinished sentence
pulsing between them, her pain and frustration doubtless branded in her face.

Madness...
Hadn't she been possessed by it since she'd first set foot on Irish shores?
Since she'd nursed Aidan's fever, let him slip his wedding ring upon her
finger? Since she'd taken up playing cards upon her bridal bed, and let him
seduce her with a sensuality, a wild, pulsing passion that had branded the
magic of his lovemaking forever in her heart?

He
had taken not only her virginity in that tumbled, passion-hot bed. He had taken
her very soul. And then he had shown her exactly how little the night meant to
him by making a bitter jest of what had happened between them.

He
had warned her, the night she had arrived at his castle by the sea, that he had
no heart to give any woman. No love to give anyone save his daughter. And she
had seen the truth in his eyes. Yet, even knowing that, even knowing his trust
had been so shattered by the heartless Delia, Norah had not been able to keep
from making the most costly mistake of her life.

She'd
been a fool. A romantic, dreamy-eyed fool when it came to Sir Aidan Kane,
weaving fantasies, reaching for the most impossible hopes, believing—actually
believing— they were almost within her reach.

But
the truth was that only a fool would cast her heart into Aidan's reckless
hands. Only a woman fairly begging to be hurt and devastated would allow
herself to love him. Delia Kane had made certain no other woman would ever gain
entry into Sir Aidan's battered heart. She had forced him to build that wall of
recklessness and carelessness about the tender places inside him brick by
brick, shutting out light, shutting out hope, leaving only a hard, brittle
shell of cynicism.

Norah
stumbled, catching a glimpse of something pale against the night sky: the
mystery-shrouded ruins of Caislean Alainn. It seemed to be floating in the
mist—a castle of enchantment, wreathed in a pearly glow, a fairy bower more
mystically beautiful than anything Norah had seen before.

Awed,
hurting, she sought haven there, wading through moonlight and a hundred dreams
far too ephemeral to hold onto in the harsh light of day.

Her
hair had tumbled from its pins, the gardenias she had woven in with such care
still caught amongst her dark curls. The sea breeze chilled her arms, and the
wet tears coursed down her cheeks as she stepped through the fairy ring of
ancient stone, into the shadow of the castle ruins.

It
sheltered her, as if the souls of those who had lived here, loved here, had
reached out their hands to comfort her. But could there be any comfort in the
truth that Aidan Kane could never love her?