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Inches, then feet, passed beneath him as he picked his way up the cliffs. Time sliding away as the sun passed overhead. As the tide turned and rose again.
He’d delayed decision making as long as he dared. Bankers summoned him. Estate managers from his properties in Cambridgshire, Wicklow, and Donegal sent increasingly frantic letters. Fellow investors scolded. Relatives fawned or chastised depending upon their income. But he’d put them all aside as he worked to understand his father’s life. His death. His guilt. To knit whole a man woven from so many disparate and contrasting threads.
How would his life have been different if the fourth Earl of Kilronan had been truly the man of Aidan’s memories? Would Aidan have remained forever a sauntering, pleasure-seeking rake hopping from scrape to scrape and bed to bed? Gliding through life on a nobleman’s entrée and his own good looks until marriage settled him to a more sober existence?
Would he have ever known Cat?
Would he have ever allowed himself to dream of a life with her? To love her?
These thoughts squeezed a heart beating frantically in his chest. Cat had stayed as she’d promised. And yet there was distance between them. A fear within them both that didn’t allow hope to blossom.
He understood her reluctance.
He despised his own.
The wind kicked up. Whistled through the ropes. Raised gooseflesh on his overheated back.
He made his next creeping move upward. Gritted his teeth against the pain.
Ten yards—and no more—lay between him and the cliff edge.
Almost there.
His father had been guilty of crimes uncounted. Death unmeasured. An ambition that drove others to share in his bloody and terrifying new world vision. The name Kilronan had become synonymous with ruthless power. Arrogant brutality. Unmatched tragedy.
Against such sins, how did simply loving someone compare?
He scrambled the final yards toward the edge, pebbles cascading below. Scree broken and sliding to shatter against the rocks below.
And that’s when it happened.
The rope pulled free of its last anchor, the weighted spike dropping to swing uselessly against the cliffs. Jerking him free of his handhold. He scrambled against the outcropping, his feet slipping, his arms burning with stress as he fumbled to keep himself from falling.
“Hold on.” A shadow blotted out the sun. A hand clutched his wrist. “I’ll not let you fall.”
Seconds stretched forever as he clambered to regain his footing. Drag himself the last feet over the lip of the cliff to lie gasping upon the turf. Above him, the shadow dissolved into a woman, staring down at him from a pair of spring green brilliant eyes, her mouth turned up in a hesitant smile, her curves barely concealed beneath a light summer gown of dotted muslin.
She knelt silently beside him as if she’d not spoken those heartrending words only a second before. Words carrying the punch of a sword thrust. Scalding him with a clarity of purpose he’d last felt upon the threshold of death. He knew what he wanted. Cared not the consequences. They would weather whatever the future held together.
Now if only she’d agree.
He rolled himself up onto his knees in front of her. Cupped her face. Brushed his lips against hers. Cool. Soft. Restrained. Like kissing a statue.
“Marry me,” he said.
That did it. She blinked her shock, eyes shining, mouth rounded in surprise. “But I can’t. I wouldn’t . . . Miss Osborne—”
“Can’t? Wouldn’t? You’ve battled a soldier of Domnu, fought back against an Unseelie possession, saved my sorry ass. Four times if you count just now. After all that, what’s a few narrow-minded, top-lofty cranks to contend with?” His heart lifted at the amusement in her eyes. The smile playing at the edges of her lips. “Damn it, Catriona O’Connell. I love you. I need you. Marry me. Be my wife. And to hell with Miss Osborne. To hell with them all.”
Beneath him, her breathing quickened. A shiver ran through her. He once again traced the fine line of her scar, almost invisible against the ghostly pallor of her skin.
“Say you will, Cat.”
Still she didn’t answer.
Desire quickened. The chill of her body against the heat of his skin, the nerve-searing rush of the cliff ascent, the explosion of his certainty all aroused him so that his touch grew bolder, his kisses longer.
He pushed her back onto the grass to lie spooned in the crook of his arm. “Marry me, a chuisle. Say ‘yes.’ I beg you.”
