Stealing Heaven by Kimberly Cates
He crossed to the washbowl and lifted the pitcher to pour water into the bowl. A spike of pain jolted from his collarbone through his ribs, and he winced. Norah snatched the china pitcher away and filled the bowl herself. Then she took him by the arm and settled him in a chair.
Aidan sank down into the cushions, exhaustion seeping through his body, pulling him down into emotions he couldn't conquer, couldn't hide. And as Norah's hands began gently swabbing his wound, Aidan let his head sag onto the chair back, his eyelids slipping closed.
God, it was so beautiful, feeling her fingertips glide across the wounded places on his body, tending him with such infinite tenderness. Love...
Belief in him, when he didn't deserve it. Love, when he had none to give her in return. Magic, where there had only been darkness and dread and self-loathing.
She was a treasure that should be cherished, framed in a backdrop of love worthy of her devotion. She should be forever safe, in the care of a far better man than he.
Aidan's heart tore with the pulsing terror that he would somehow fail her. His jaw knotted, his fingers clenching on the arms of the chair. He welcomed the pain of his hands throbbing, wishing it could drive away the deeper pain in his heart.
"Aidan, what—what are you thinking? Feeling?" Her breath wisped over him as she bandaged his wound. "Damn it, Norah."
"You say I don't know you. I want to. Need to. Tell me."
Aidan wanted to shake her, rage at her, tell her that the truth would destroy her. She should pull away from him, not try to peel back the layers of his soul, because what she'd find there... oh, God, what she'd find there...
And yet there was a pull in those remarkable dark eyes of hers he couldn't deny, a kind of dignity, courage, love that reached inside him, cupping about his pain, drawing it to the surface, until for the first time in his life Aidan felt words spilling free, memories rising inside him, things he'd never talked about coming out in the rasping voice of a man imprisoned for an eternity, speaking for the very first time.
"I feel like the first time I stepped onto a battlefield, being swept under by bloody currents, flailing in the darkness, my lungs screaming for air. My hands grappling for purchase on something, anything to drag myself out of the gore, to stop from hearing the shrieks of men dying. Knowing I was helpless to save them. Sweet Christ, what if I can't save you or Cassandra? What if—"
"You were knighted for bravery. You did save as many men as you could. Cassandra wrote—"
"Cassandra wrote a damned fairy story, rigged out in laurels I never earned. Yes, I saved my men. But I saved the accursed major as well—a pompous ass, hungry for his own glory, greedy for promotions. I was knighted for saving that bastard. I should have let him die. Hell, I should have put a bullet in him myself."
"I don't understand."
"While I was being knighted for bravery," Aidan all but spat, "the sonofabitch was sending my men in to be slaughtered as cannon fodder so that he could climb over their bloody backs and rise among the officers' ranks."
He'd fought so damned hard to dismiss his past, layer it in devil-may-care scorn. But he could hear the pain in his own voice, see its reflection in Norah's meltingly dark eyes.
"I'm sorry. So sorry. But Aidan, you couldn't have known."
"They labeled me a hero. Hero. For saving that bastard's life. But I wasn't any goddamn hero. I was a reckless fool who had plunged in without knowing or thinking. Just as I did in every other facet of my life."
A bitter smile twisted his lips. "War was a nightmare, but I thought I could escape it, cleanse myself of what I'd seen, done, as I had washed away the blood on my hands. When I got back to England, hell, my marriage made war seem like a cursed musicale by comparison. When Delia discovered she was pregnant... God, the joy I felt. For just a moment, I believed the fates had given me the chance to start over, to make things right with this new life we'd created."
"It was a new chance, Aidan. One you've taken advantage of. You have made something beautiful in Cassandra."
Her praise was an acid-soaked whiplash against the raw places in his soul. "You see Cass as she is now," he insisted. "Here. Safe. You wouldn't be handing me any hero crowns if you had known me during those first years of her life, Norah. You'd be as sickened, as disgusted as I am with myself, every time I remember."
Those soft lips firmed, her chin tipping up with a stubbornness that wrenched his heart. "I don't believe you were ever a bad father. Ever."
"I wasn't a father at all, damn it. I didn't even exist in Cass's world. Delia hated me for burdening her with a child, made me feel as if I'd raped her, forced my baby inside her. I all but begged her to let us make a new beginning, but it was too late. She said that after what I'd done to her, I owed it to her to leave her in peace. I could only destroy the baby, the way I'd destroyed Delia's life, the way I'd destroyed the troop of soldiers, the way I'd destroyed everything I ever touched."
Tears welled in Norah's eyes, and Aidan saw them fall free. She knelt down at his feet, so he had to look into that lovely angel's face. "You didn't destroy Cassandra, Aidan. You made her... magnificent."
"I didn't make Cassandra anything. She survived because of her own strength, her own courage, her own blasted stubborn will. I only saw her once in the first five years of her life. I'd stayed away, like Delia demanded. I didn't even know when she had the baby. God knows, no one at the March household thought it important to notify me that I was a father. I was cheating at a game of hazard when one of the Marches' acquaintances congratulated me on the birth of my daughter. Cass was three weeks old."
"It must have hurt so badly," Norah said, her hand stroking his. "To find out about your child that way."
Aidan bit back that remembered pain, too raw to be examined, and went on. "I rode all night to reach Delia's parents' estate. My wife had already gone off to Bath to take the waters, and, I don't doubt, to renew her acquaintance with her former admirers."
"She'd left the baby?" Disbelief echoed in the soft query.
"She cast Cassandra aside the instant she was up from childbed, with no more thought than if my baby had been a wilted posy from some forgotten beau." Aidan sucked in a steadying breath, his lungs burning at the memory.
"I went upstairs to the nursery and saw Cass cuddled in this elegant cradle that had been in the March family for a hundred years. She had this little lace bonnet on, and her knees tucked under her, her little rump in the air. She was... so damned beautiful, lost in rose-satin coverlets, so innocent, so helpless. I was afraid... afraid she'd break if I touched her. I was afraid I would hurt her."
"You loved her even then," Norah said gently. "How could you leave her?"
His voice roughened on the pain of the man he had been, so young himself, without the hard core of cynicism to protect him. "I left to save her from myself."
"Aidan..."
"Since the night I first waltzed with Delia, her mother had hated me, seen me as her daughter's despoiler. God, how could I blame her? Yet that day, when she came to me, the proud Lady March stooped to plead with me. She begged me to leave Cassandra in her care."
"But Cassandra was your daughter. You loved her and wanted her."
Aidan raised an unsteady hand to his eyes, rubbing away the burning sensation that had little to do with exhaustion. "Lady March promised me that if I gave my daughter into her care, Cassandra would have everything she ever wanted or needed. That she'd have love, security, a home. The kind of stable life I could never give her."
His lips twisted in mockery. "Hell, I could hardly have dragged a baby with me to my apartments over a tavern or gaming hell, could I? The blasted old dragon was right about that. With the kind of life Delia and I led..." He stopped, swallowed hard. "I thought about changing—casting aside my life, making a place for Cassandra and me. But even if I had, what did I have to give her? Nothing but a crumbling castle in Ireland. I remember standing there over Cassandra's cradle, staring down at her, memorizing... memorizing the way her l
Something hot and wet splashed his bruised hand. Norah's tears. Would God Aidan could shed some himself, for the confused, hurting youth he had been, standing over his daughter's cradle.
"I couldn't even touch Cassandra because I knew that if I did, I would never be able to leave her. And I had to. For her sake, I had to let her go. I'd been through a war, the destruction of my marriage, but I never understood the depths pain could reach until I rode away from my daughter."
Norah's hand slipped up to curl her fingers around his, the way this woman had somehow managed to curl herself deep in the battered reaches of his heart.
"Don't cry for me, angel. I don't deserve it," he said roughly. "I'm not proud of the life I lived after I left Cassandra in that cradle. I drowned myself in brandy, gambled like a lunatic. And there were women—I don't even know how many, Norah, can't even remember their faces. I was so damned broken inside, trying to prove to myself that I could make some woman... any woman... want me when my wife did not. I didn't care if I lived or died. Hell, I wanted to die. I believed Cass would be better off if I did.
"Five years I stayed away. Delia was playing harlot to half the men in London. I'd quit playing the jealous fool after I almost killed a raw lad in a duel over Delia. I suppose I'd finally realized she wasn't worth another death on my conscience. I turned everything into a game then, a game of wagers—bed sport, gambling, drink. The amazing thing was that suddenly I couldn't lose at the gaming tables. I knew that Rathcannon was Cassandra's legacy. I poured every shilling of my ill-gotten gains fashioning it into something she could be proud of. I even created the perfect room for her. It was the only way I could think of to let her know that I loved her, wanted her, that every day she was in my mind... in my heart. One day I was racing my curricle near the March estate when a wheel shattered."
He paused, blessing that broken wheel and the brainless wager that had ended in his getting his daughter back.
"I knew I should just go on to an inn, hire out another carriage, see to the fixing of my own. But instead, I went to Lord March's door. Suffice it to say they were not thrilled to see me. I demanded to see Cassandra... to just see her. I didn't want to upset her life, intrude. I just—just wanted to look at her and to make certain that she was all right."
Aidan smiled, an aching, brittle smile. "Mrs. Brindle was there. She had loathed me, like the rest of the Marches, for defiling Delia—but she led me into the garden, let me wander through it, searching....
"They say children are innocent. But they can also be incredibly cruel. I found Cassandra on a stone bench, crying her eyes out because the cousins she'd been playing with had taunted her about her mama and papa and the fact that we didn't want her. She didn't even know who I was, Norah, when I tried to comfort her."
His jaw set, hard. "I decided then and there that my child's life was going to change. I hauled Delia away from her lovers, cast my gaming aside, took every shilling I'd won, and went to Rathcannon with a bewildered little girl in tow. You know the rest. Delia's hatred, the poison, her death. I know you can't choose your parents, but whatever angel delivered Cassandra into the hands of Delia and me had made a terrible mistake. I'm still sick when I think of the years I lost.... The time she first walked, smiled, her first skinned knee. I wonder what scars those years left inside her, in places I will never see."
"You've done wonders with her, Aidan."
"Have I? Or have I just made things worse? Left her unprepared for the future? I've given her eight years of fairy tales when she has to face a reality that's harsh and ugly. She's so brave, so damned innocent, so open. But someday she's going to stumble into the truth—about Delia, about me. And when she does..."
"I think you underestimate your daughter's love for you and her faith in you. Yes, it will be a shock. And painful. But she knows you love her, Aidan, and even when she discovers things about the past, she'll still have fairy dust to hold."
"Fairy dust?"
"She told me about Caislean Alainn, and butterflies and gold flecks that clung to her little hand."
"One more of my accursed lies. God, I was so good at them."
"You made magic."
"No. I painted her illusions, while her real legacy waited outside these castle walls. Shame, because of what her parents were; revulsion when she hears the truth; and now, worst of all, some kind of animal who intends to use her against me, to hurt her so he can destroy me. Most terrifying of all, I don't know if I can protect her."
"You'll do what you have to do, Aidan. Cassandra believes in you." Her voice dropped low. "I believe in you. You have so much love inside you, I know you'll find the strength to get through this. You'll find a way."
It was a gift, the most precious one Aidan had ever received. "You almost make me believe in myself," he said in a ragged whisper. "I haven't for a very long time. Maybe... maybe I never have."
Norah reached out to him, and he felt her arms close about him, her cheek pressed soft against his bare chest.
He felt as though he had bared his soul, and the need to bury himself in her love became an obsession fiercer than he had ever known. Yet within that precious gift lay the possibility of his own damnation. For if he failed Norah, failed Cassandra this time, Aidan knew it would destroy him for all eternity.
"Aidan?" She breathed his name, then paused for a heartbeat. "I love you."
The words trembled between them, Aidan's throat parched with the need to whisper them back to her, tell her. But all he could do was lower his mouth to hers, trying with all that was in him to let his kiss reveal to her the words he could not say.
When he pulled away, she looked up into his face, so full of faith and hope and determination and quiet courage. "Aidan, we'll find a way. Tell me where to begin."
"Begin? Christ, if I only knew. There are dozens of possibilities, and somehow I'm going to have to look into every one. I'm going to try to track down any information about the bastard Gilpatrick told me of. He may be dead, but there might be some clue, some hint, some trail leading back to whoever told him about the wagers. Then I intend to rake through my memory, list the worst enemies I might have made. Men bested at the gaming table or on the dueling field. Maybe a few I knew back in the war. The problem is, it will take time. And time may be the one thing Cassandra doesn't have. There's no telling when this sadistic bastard might strike again. No telling how desperate he might be. It makes me insane, staring into every face, wondering... wondering if they might be the one stalking Cass, stalking you."
The sound of a knock at the bedchamber door made Aidan straighten and Norah pull away.
"Lady Kane and I are not to be disturbed," Aidan bit out roughly.
"Your pardon, sir, but the gentleman insists on seeing Lady Kane. He says he'll not leave until he does."
"Who the devil—"
"It's an English gentleman, sir. A fine one."
"Blast it, if Montgomery is sniffing about again, I'll bloody his chin this time."
"I can't imagine it's Philip. He left for his estate in Sligo when the rest of the guests departed last night." Norah rose, tidying her hair with distracted hands, smoothing her gown. "I'll just run down for a moment."
"Like hell." Aidan dragged on his shirt, then looped his arm protectively about his wife, his eyes simmering with distrust, his muscles tense and wary, and they both walked down the stairs toward the drawing room the servant had settled the guest in.
Norah opened the door, then stepped into the room. She stiffened and shrieked with joy. In a heartbeat, she tore away from Aidan's grasp and flung herself into the Englishman's arms.
"Richard!" she cried out. "Thank God you have come!"
CHAPTER 22
Aidan stiffened as the stranger let out a ragged laugh, the sound grating against already frayed nerves.
"I couldn't stay away another moment," the man said, swirling her around in his embrace. "I've been insane with worry, cursing myself a hundred times a day for a fool because I ever let you go. God, Norah—"
"Another heartbroken suitor?" Aidan bit out.
Norah turned a glowing face back to him, and he felt a crippling jab of jealousy.
"Aidan, this is the person I love and trust most in the whole wide world." She flushed. "After you and Cassandra, of course. My brother, Richard."
The instinctive dislike he'd felt the moment he'd laid eyes on the man intensified. Aidan's shoulders squared, his jaw hardening. "I see. So this is the man who sent you off to wed a complete stranger."
"Aidan!" Norah's soft protest was lost as color spilled up Farnsworth's neck onto his handsome cheeks.
Fires of shame and anger simmered in bright eyes. "No one is more ashamed of that day's work than I am. I've blamed myself a dozen times a day, wondered if she was safe... happy."
"I am!" Norah insisted. "Oh, Richard, I—"
But the man warmed to his diatribe, with all the passion of a parliamentarian pleading a cause destined to swell his bank account. "When I discovered your reputation, Kane— God, I all but went insane."
"It seems to me my... reputation... should have been easy enough to unearth. The mere mention of my name should have drowned you in tales of scandal and debauchery."
"Aidan, please! Richard did his best to help me. He only stumbled across tales of your bravery in the war, and—"
Aidan regarded the Englishman through narrowed lids, his voice soft. "I'm certain tales of my heroism would be the first thing off the lips of the society dragons. We all know how charitable the haute ton is, determined to show everyone in the most favorable light."
Hurt welled up in Norah's chocolate eyes, her sweet mouth curving in a silent plea. Aidan felt like a bastard. Exhaustion, frustration, and very real fear left him feeling edgy, goading him to lash out. And God knew, since Norah had been dumped on his doorstep, helpless and friendless, completely at his mercy, he'd thought more than once what he'd say the first time he met the brainless idiot who was responsible for thrusting her into such possible danger.