Cates, Kimberly (55 page)

They
were the words of a pompous popinjay, weren't they? A harmless if irritating
fool. One who had bumbled, sending Norah to Rathcannon... and then turned ap
fortuitously with a stricken conscience after Cassandra had nearly been
abducted.

Why?
Aidan was damned certain Farnsworth hadn't come out of any devotion to his
stepsister. Then why blaze his way into the wilds of Ireland? Ensconce himself
in Aidan's castle? Endear himself to Aidan's daughter?

Why?

The
thunder cracked, lightning shattering the sky into fragments of night.

Before
half-blinded eyes, an image danced; Farnsworth rising to his feet amid dinner,
stretching his stiff leg. His eyes had been hooded, something simmering beneath
the lids.

How
did you injure your leg?
Cassandra's innocent question jolted through Aidan,
followed by Farnsworth's reply.

I
was racing about on a slick road with a green-broke team of horses and an
ill-sprung curricle when it overturned. Lay on a cliffside for three full days.

No,
this was madness, Aidan thought, leaning over his horse's neck, urging the
animal to greater speed. Surely he couldn't believe... what? That Richard
Farnsworth had more menacing reasons for coming to Rathcannon? Insinuating
himself into Aidan's life? That Richard Farnsworth had had more nefarious motives
for flinging his stepsister into Aidan's bed?

Aidan's
mind filled with huge, dark eyes in a pale oval face, an uncertain smile
tugging at lips that had never known a man's loving until he had kissed her,
deeply, thoroughly, and lost his own soul. From the beginning, there had been
something incongruous about Norah and the lovely bonnet that had perched on her
dusky locks. What was it Aidan had thought in those frozen moments when he had
seen her in the carriage circle? That she looked like a child got up in her
mother's finery?

What
had Norah said when she'd been attempting to smooth over Farnsworth's arrival
at Rathcannon? That he had given her the gift of a trousseau. A nightgown
fashioned of wispy lace and mist to tantalize a man's desires. Delicate gowns
to set off Norah's quiet beauty, make a man want her.

Gowns
Norah never would have chosen herself.

But
Farnsworth had chosen them for her, bundled them into a trunk and sent her off
to meet the husband he'd miraculously found to rescue her from the fate her
stepfather had planned.

Coincidence.
Aidan's fingers clenched the reins until the leather gouged into his gloved
hands. This whole morass with Farnsworth was just coincidence. Just as it had
been coincidence the night Aidan had sat by Cassandra's bed and told Norah the
tale of Cassandra's necklace.

The
necklace.

It's
lovely,
Norah
had said, a tender wistfulness clinging in a web to her voice.
It reminds me
of one my mother once had, with miniatures of her and my father inside.

The
necklace was a gift from one of Delia's lovers.... One of Delia's lovers...

A
sudden shaft pierced Aidan's heart, crippling him with memories of a rain-slick
road, screams—Delia's screams, Cassandra's screams...

What
happened to the man driving the coach?

We
never found him.

A
carriage accident...I lay waiting for help for three days....

Jesus,
God, it had been years since that storm-tossed nightmare. Eight years. If
Farnsworth was indeed the man who had taken Delia on that wild midnight ride,
he must have been planning his vengeance all that time. Honing it to hellish
perfection. Seeking out Aidan's jugular, to tear with fangs of agony.

Cassandra.

He
closed his eyes for a heartbeat, seeing Norah flinging herself into the arms of
her beloved brother. Introducing him to a bedazzled Cassandra. Farnsworth
bending over Cassandra's golden curls with an attentiveness that would have
bewitched any girl straight out of the schoolroom. Most painful of all was the
memory of Cassandra staring up at the polished Englishman with an adoring light
in her eyes.

A
hideous premonition jolted through Aidan, freezing his blood, twisting his
nerves into a raw knot of terror deeper than he'd ever known.

Aidan
drew rein on his mount, wheeling his massive stallion around. The rest of his
men struggled to halt their horses, shouts of confusion echoing through the
night as they battled not to crash into the riders nearest them.

"What
be amiss?" Sean O'Day bellowed, all but toppling from a gray gelding.

"I
have to go back to Rathcannon."

"But—have
ye gone daft, sir? The villain you seek is at the inn."

Aidan
hesitated, his gut clenched. What if he was wrong? What if the man he sought
was at the Thorned Paw, and this crazed goose chase would only mean that his
enemy had slipped farther beyond Aidan's reach?

"You
go on. I'll ride back alone."

"Sir,
I—"

"Just
do as I command!" Aidan bellowed. Then he slammed his heels into his
stallion's sides, the powerful beast surging down the shadowed ribbon of road
as if the dark demons loosed the night Delia had died had returned.

It
seemed an eternity before he reined his mount to a halt outside the castle
doors. An eternity of agony, of sensing disaster pressing the air from his
lungs, uncertainty sizzling black poison through his veins.

Yet
the first glimpse of the haven he had made for his daughter by the sea
shattered him, impaling him with a soul-crushing certainty.

Tear-streaked,
desperate, the chambermaid Rose was attempting to help Calvy Sipes onto a
horse, the footman in obvious agony and barely clinging to the animal's mane.
When the girls' eyes locked on Aidan, a shriek of relief tore from her throat
and she abandoned the footman, running toward Aidan's stallion, her skirt
flying, her hand rummaging in her apron pocket.

"Sir
Aidan! Thank God you've come back!"

The
stallion danced on its massive hooves, but the girl flung herself against
Aidan's stirrup.

"Where's
Norah? Cassandra?"

"You
have to help her! Th—They're gone! Merciful Mary, he took... took the young
miss!"

"Who?"
Aidan snapped. "Who took Cassandra?" But he already knew.

"Mr.
Farnsworth. My lady rode out after them. She left you this. Told you to
hurry."

The
little maid thrust something toward him with one hand.

Aidan
cursed at the writing, blurred in the darkness. Guiding his mount until it
danced beneath the ring of light from a lantern, he wrenched open the book to
the page marked by a note, his eyes raking down the paper.

His
breath stopped. His heart slammed to his toes. Bile rose in his throat as
Richard Farnsworth's hideous words spilled their venom into Aidan's veins. A
devil's bargain, a pact with hell.

Three
wagers...

Sir
Aidan Kane will take a wife.... That wife shall take another man to her bed....
Kane's daughter will be abducted by a fortune hunter....

They
were diabolical, fiendish in their perfection—the cleaving away of Aidan's soul
a knife stroke at a time.

His
memory flooded with images: Norah, his miracle, his bride, Philip Montgomery in
the garden, his hands all over her, pleading with her to let him become her
lover, the danger that had lurked in that same garden, a predator waiting,
trying to steal Cassandra away.... And Farnsworth, forever smiling that sly
smile, taunting Aidan with his double entendres, his mocking quips, knowing...
knowing what he had in store for the enemy he'd come to Ireland to destroy.

God,
was it possible that Norah—his Norah—had any idea what she was a party to? That
she had come here, knowing—

No.
The denial was swift, sharp, relentless. The mere thought that he might suffer
betrayal at her hand was too hideous to contemplate. Impossible to fathom. He
dashed it away.

He
grabbed up the note, the book tumbling from his hands. What he read was even
more hideous than the wagers themselves. The bastard was mocking him with the
fiendish glee of Satan himself.

"Where?"
Aidan rasped. "Where did that bastard Farnsworth go?"

"I
don't know. Maybe to Noonan's abandoned cottage."

Noonan's
cottage—one more legacy of Kane treachery. The tenants had been flung out in
his father's time while the wife was in an agony of labor, the young husband
shot when, in his desperation, he had dared attack his lord and master. The
knowledge that Cassandra's screams might even now be battering those same
unfeeling walls was an irony that sickened Aidan. The knowledge that
Norah—gentle, sweet Norah—had gone after his daughter wrenched his heart from
his chest.

Oh,
God, what chance could his ladylight have against a monster like Farnsworth if
she could even manage to find him in the storm-darkened wilds that rippled out
from Rathcannon?

It
was as if he'd been hurled back, to the moment he realized Delia had taken
Cassandra. His daughter was lost somewhere in the vast abyss of night.

Aidan
cursed himself. Why hadn't he dragged Sean and the others back with him? Why?
Injured, Calvy could barely cling to the horse's back, let alone wrest
Cassandra from Farnsworth if he could find them. Any man who might be of use
was riding hell for leather in the opposite direction.

"Rose,
you have to go after Sean and the others. Bring them back to help me, damn it."

The
girl trembled, her fingers knotting against her breast as she eyed Calvy's
horse with fright. "I don't—don't know. About riding... horses..."

"You
can do it, girl. I know you can," Aidan said. "Cass could be anywhere
by now. I need Sean and the others to help me search every road and path."

With
an oath, he turned and spurred his mount into the night-shrouded hills, his
mind filled with agonizing images of Norah, so brave, so broken by her
stepbrother's betrayal; Cassandra, frightened, helpless. Again. Just as she had
been the night Richard Farnsworth had imprisoned her in a runaway carriage,
hurtling toward the cliffs.

Aidan
knew, with each beat of Hazard's hooves on the turf, each searing breath he
dragged into his lungs, that Farnsworth's prediction at the dinner table that
night would prove right. Tonight he would dice with the devil. But the wager
was far greater than anything Aidan had ever risked. It was the soul of his
daughter and, Aidan knew with blinding certainty, that of the woman he loved.

* * * * *

Lightning
lashed the sky in delicate whip cords of light, yet that subtle torture was
nothing in comparison to the savage raking of guilt that battered Norah with
each beat of her horse's hooves. Each precious minute that slipped through her
fingers was a separate agony—a minute in which her imagination tortured her
with images of what Cassandra might be suffering at Richard's hands.

Every
pulse of her heart shuddered through her in exquisite terror that Richard and
the helpless girl she so loved might even now be racing in some other
direction, to vanish until it was too late. Too late to spare Cassandra
unspeakable horrors, too late to save Aidan from the diabolical destruction
Richard had woven about him.

Cassandra...
Dear God, the mere thought of the girl lost in this nightmare was agonizing
beyond belief. The thought of what might be happening to that bright beautiful
girl right now didn't bear thinking about, lest she go insane.

And
it was Norah's fault—Norah who had stripped away Aidan's layer of protection,
Norah who had brought Richard into Rathcannon, leaving Cassandra vulnerable.

Guilt
battered her as she groped for the butt of Aidan's pistol, the smooth feel of
the weapon reassuring her at least a little.

She
reined in her horse, searching for the road Rose had spoken of, the darkness an
enemy that writhed and coiled about Norah's very soul, jeering at her
helplessness. She was just about to spur her mount on when a bolt of lightning
picked out a narrow trace that might be a path, all but obscured by the
underbrush struggling to reclaim it.

Norah
hesitated for a moment, then reined her mount down the pathway, praying with
every fiber of her soul that she wasn't making yet another costly mistake.

The
path writhed, twisted, her horse stumbling over tangled roots that wound across
the abandoned road. Panic coiled deeper into Norah's chest with the certainty
that if she had taken the wrong turn, she might not be able to find her way
back until daylight. Too late to aid Cassandra.

She
all but sobbed with relief the instant she caught the first glimmer of light
from deep in a hidden valley, the white hulk of a tumble-down cottage crouching
in the crook of a hillside like a wounded beast.

Rotted,
wood-framed windows peered out like empty sockets, eyes blinded to human
suffering, pulsing terror, the horror that might even now be taking place in
the room beyond.