Cates, Kimberly Read Online Free Page A

the air of someone who had withstood withering
blows before.
    Why
the devil did that make Aidan feel like the most vile tyrant who'd ever
breathed? He was just an innocent bystander. Cassandra was nothing but a
reckless girl. But Norah Linton was a grown woman who should have some notion
that this whole scheme was insane!
    "It
was rash of me to come here," she admitted, sounding so reasonable that
Aidan wanted to wring her neck. "And it was wrong of your daughter to—to
concoct such a drastic scheme without telling you. But there's no need to rage
at the child. She made a simple mistake."
    "There's
nothing simple about this disaster! There never is when Cass is involved! I'll
have to find some way to get you back to wherever you came from."
    "It's
not a disaster unless you make it one!" Tears quivered just beneath the
stubborn tones of Cassandra's voice. "Papa, you should read her letters,
they're so kind. She's lonely just as you are and wants someone to love. She
didn't say it in exactly those words, but I know—"
    "Please,"
the woman interrupted, a little desperately. "I know you didn't mean any
harm, but it's obvious this has been a mistake. There's no need to—to make it
worse by repeating what was in those letters."
    "Do
you mean to tell me that you set up a correspondence with Miss Linton?"
Aidan roared.
    "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