AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The avenue wound past long stone walls covered in ivy, heavy stands of ash and oak, a park dotted with grazing cows. In the distance she caught the blue and silver flash of a river.
“Give me your hands,” he said.
She held out her wrists, the flesh red and bruised beneath the cords. A few sharp tugs, a slip of the knots, and she was free.
She forced herself not to rub them, though they hurt like
the devil. “And if the first thing I do is scream bloody murder? Tell everyone I’m your prisoner?”
“They’ll think the same thing the coachman thought when you tried that with him—that you suffer from a nervous condition. A pity, I’ll say, but we’re doing all we can to keep you comfortable while you recover.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “This is my demesne, Cat. Here, I’m master, and they do what I tell them to do. Believe what I tell them to believe.”
“I don’t doubt your father thought the same thing,” she sneered.
The thrust hit home. He paled and looked away.
The coach slowed as they climbed a hill. And she caught her first glimpse of the house, though house hardly seemed a fitting description for Belfoyle.
Castle. Keep. Stronghold.
Terms more suitable to the monstrosity confronting her.
Beyond the arch, huge towers of gray stone rose straight up into the sky, topped by steeply pitched roofs and crenellated battlements. Upon cresting the hill, they drove beneath the gateway into a courtyard where additions and wings moved in every available direction. Tudor warred with Jacobean led into Baroque until the whole place was a hodgepodge of styles and periods.
Cat steeled herself for the few moments of freedom she’d get as the doors were opened. She didn’t care what Aidan said. She had to try to escape. She didn’t belong here. Not with him. Not now. If she could get even one person to doubt his story, she could work her way to freedom. She knew she could.
The coach crunched to a halt upon the gravel.
Stiffening in anticipation, she slid her hand out to grasp the door handle.
Distracted by voices raised in excitement and welcome, Aidan’s attention was elsewhere. This was the moment. She’d not get another such.
Holding her breath, she threw open the door. Scrambled from the coach with a cry of distress, awaiting the clamp of a restraining hand upon her shoulder. Catching her back.
But no hand stopped her. No alarm was raised. And panic flooding her, she flung herself straight into the shocked arms of Jack O’Gara.
“I’ve heard Miss O’Connell’s explanation,” Jack said. “Now I’m interested in hearing yours.”
Aidan looked up from the sideboard. The brandy he’d already drunk had done little to warm the cold, gnawing cramp in his bowels. Instead, nausea squirreled his insides, his balance was off-kilter, and darkness crouched at the corners of his vision. “I can guess what villainy she recounted into your waiting ears.” He poured himself another.
Jack flopped into a chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. Offered a wry smile. “No, coz. I don’t think you can.” He shook his head. “It was quite a tale. A few cogent details conspicuously missing, but my own prurient imagination filled them in. So much for keeping your hands off the help.”
Aidan’s fist came down with a crash that rattled the decanters. Shook a tray of glasses. “If you value our friendship, Jack, shut your mouth. Cat’s a guest. A valued and very precious guest.”
Jack remained unfazed. “That’s not how she tells it. ‘Prisoner’ is how she termed her stay here. Begged me to help her escape. What the hell happened between Dublin and here? Did you actually try summoning one of them?” Gravity hardened the playboy perfection of his face.
“I did,” he answered. “And bear the scars to prove it.”
He turned from the sideboard to stiffly pace the length of the salon, raking the room with a possessive eye. Breathing deeply, he inhaled Belfoyle’s freedom like a drug. Surprised at how just being within his own house upon his own land cleansed the lingering feverish tension from a brain scraped thin from sickness.
“Why don’t we skip the account of how I’ve managed to bungle, fail, and otherwise make a mess of this entire debacle, and focus on you?” He tossed back the brandy. Waited. Nothing. Not even a glimmer of heat to tease him back to life. “What are you doing here, Jack? Dublin get too hot for even your Fey-given luck?”
His cousin straightened in his chair. “Funny you should use that particular term. Hot was just what it was.” He cleared his throat. Shifted uneasily before rising and pouring his own restorative brandy. Tossing it back. “Aidan? How . . . uh . . . how attached were you to Kilronan House?”
Now there was a loaded question if he’d ever heard one. “Why?”
Jack shifted again. Ran a hand over his face. Huffed an uneasy breath. “Well . . . because it’s not there anymore.”
Aidan didn’t explode. Didn’t collapse. Barely inhaled on a quick, shocked gasp. Placing the glass on the mantel with exquisite care, he adjusted it until it caught and refracted light from an arched window nearby. Any action, no matter how small, while his mind wrapped itself around Jack’s outrageous statement.
