Lady of Seduction (14 page)

He laughed and drew away from her. Her pout returned. “We cannot discuss business at the dinner table, mademoiselle. I am
utterly unable to think of such things in your charming company.”

“You are quite right, Sir Grant,” Captain LaPlace said. “We can’t bore these lovely ladies with such dull talk. Perhaps we
may retire to your library shortly and leave the English lady and Mademoiselle Muret to chat about bonnets and such.”

Caroline’s lips tightened, but Grant sensed that it was not entirely out of anger. She seemed to be trying not to laugh.

“How kind of you, Captain LaPlace,” Caroline finally said. “It is true I am sorely ill-informed on Paris fashions this season.”

“Poor mademoiselle!” cried Victorine. “I see that so clearly. But I am most happy to give you any advice I can.”

Caroline’s eyes narrowed, and she gave a tiny little smile. Grant suddenly felt rather sorry for Mademoiselle Muret.

S
he does not understand why we are here, I’m afraid,” the vicomte said.

Caroline looked at him in surprise. She had been lost in her own thoughts, half-listening as Mademoiselle Muret played on
the rusty old harpsichord someone had unearthed for her and set in the corner of the drawing room. Her thoughts kept turning
on the snatches of talk she had heard earlier between Grant and LaPlace, the hints of treason.

The question now was what was
she
going to do about it?

“I beg your pardon, monsieur?” she said.

He nodded toward his daughter. Mademoiselle Muret’s pretty auburn head was bent over the keyboard, a discontented pout on
her lips. No doubt because no one of the male persuasion was there to admire her performance.

“She doesn’t understand why we’re here, not really,” the vicomte repeated. “On a bleak, cold island in the middle of the Paris
social season.”

“Hmm.” Caroline took a slow sip of her tea. The music, the crackle of the fire in the grate, and the patter of the
rain on the windows combined to make a cozy scene. It could almost appear normal.

“Why
are
we here again, monsieur?” she said. As the days passed, the daily world of her Dublin life receded farther and farther away,
and the strangeness of Muirin Inish became the reality. She had to be very careful not to lose herself completely. “I seem
to need reminding sometimes.”

“Oh, I think you and I are here for a very similar reason, Mademoiselle Black,” he answered. “For love—in our own ways.”

That
caught her attention. She turned to him, and he gave her a little smile. “Love?”

“Come now,
ma chere mademoiselle.
Why else would an intelligent, pretty young woman such as yourself bury herself on such a bleak island? Why would I come
so far at my age, when my wanderings should be long over? It would have to be something very powerful indeed.”

“I am not in love,” Caroline protested strongly. She had loved Hartley, in her own way—which was not the overwhelming, soul-bound
way her sisters loved their husbands, the way her mother loved her stepfather. It was quiet and calm and safe, but it was
love nonetheless.
That
was surely how she loved.

What she felt for Grant was nothing like that.

“
Non?
” said the vicomte. “Well, desire can be very strong as well. I remember that from my own youth. Victorine’s mother was an
extraordinary beauty.”

“But what sort of love has brought you here?”

“Why, the love of learning, of course. That you understand, I think?”

“Yes, I do understand the love of learning.” Caroline sat back in her chair, deeply disquieted. “I am writing a
volume of Irish history and mythology, though I fear it’s far from finished.”

“Then we are kindred spirits, mademoiselle. I enjoy studies of many kinds. Greece and Rome,
naturellement,
the Renaissance, art and mythology. My father owned one of the most renowned libraries in all of France, and I was allowed
to read anything I liked from it when I was young.” He gave her a wink. “Even the more risqué items he kept hidden from my
maman.”

Caroline laughed. She rather liked the vicomte. He didn’t seem to fit with LaPlace and Michel, though surely he, too, had
some hidden errand here on Muirin Inish.

“It sounds marvelous,” she said.

“So it was. But alas my father perished in the Terror, along with so many others, and his chateau was sacked. So much was
lost. I have recovered some, but many of his treasures have eluded me—or been sadly destroyed.”

Caroline felt terrible for the vicomte and for the loss of any library. The loss of so much learning and beauty was surely
a tragedy. “I am very sorry for your losses, monsieur. And for mine—I would have loved to see such a treasure.”

“Once the sad conflicts between our countries are ended, you must come to Paris, mademoiselle. I will be proud to show you
what I have recovered. My own daughter is terribly bored by it all.” He glanced at LaPlace and Michel. “She cares only for
romance. And who knows? Perhaps our nations will be on amiable terms once more. The Peace of Amiens is a hopeful sign. You
will visit Paris one day.”

Did he know something about the political situation then? Caroline studied him carefully, wondering what information she could
get from him, but he just gave her one of his placid smiles and held out his glass to be refilled.

“Tell me more about this book you are writing, Mademoiselle,” he said. “It sounds most intriguing.”

Caroline outlined her work for him, and what she hoped to accomplish with it in the future. She wanted it to be a comprehensive
source for Ireland’s dramatic and important history and old tales, a source of dignity and pride for Irish families. She seldom
spoke of it, except to her scholarly friends in the Hibernian Society, but the vicomte seemed very interested and had many
questions.

Caroline was able to lose herself in talking about the project, until the drawing room door opened and Grant reappeared with
LaPlace and Michel behind him.

She searched his face for any hint of what might have transpired in the library, but he looked as cold and expressionless
as ever. Truly he could have been a famous actor at the Crow Street Theater. She could never decipher him.

“Ah, Sir Grant, there you are at last!” Victorine cried. “How you neglect your guests. It is most shocking.”

With one last glance at Caroline, Grant turned toward the harpsichord. “Forgive me,
chere mademoiselle,
” he said. “You must know I thought of only one guest in particular at every moment.”

“Only one guest in particular at every moment?” Caroline cried the instant Grant closed the bedroom door behind them and they
were alone. She let out the burst of laughter she was holding inside. “Did you learn that in a Minerva Press novel?”

Grant leaned back against the door, his arms crossed over his chest. He laughed ruefully, and she saw the first
hint of a real expression on his face for the only time that evening.

“She seemed to like it,” he said.

“Of course she did. You were obviously most admiring of her large—eyes as you said it.”

He grinned at her, and it was as if the sun suddenly broke from behind the dour clouds. “Are you jealous, Caro?”

Caroline let out her breath in a huff. “Of such patently false compliments? Certainly not!”

“I think you are. Most astonishing.” He reached out and caught her around the waist to draw her closer to him. “You shouldn’t
be, you know. You have very pretty—eyes of your own.”

Caroline beat her fists against his chest, trying not to laugh. She tried to remember her terrible suspicions, her fears—tried
to remember that he was a possible traitor to Ireland, consorting with French spies. But when he looked at her like that,
the deep rumble of his laughter warm against her, it was hard to remember anything at all.

“Very pretty indeed,” he whispered as he nuzzled his lips against her neck. “You taste so sweet. Like sugared roses.”

Caroline tried to laugh, but her breath caught on a gasp as his mouth opened on her skin. His kiss was hot and wet and eager,
and it made her tremble. “S—sugared roses?”

“I always did have a terrible craving for sweets.”

Her head fell back against the door as he traced a line of kisses along her collarbone to the curve of her shoulder. He pulled
her gown away from her body as he went, baring her skin inch by inch. He caressed her naked breasts gently, tracing his long,
rough fingers over their curves, closer and closer to her aching nipples, teasing
and retreating. Caroline couldn’t breathe with the force of her need for him to touch her,
really
touch her.

“Oh,” she sighed as he finally caught one of the pink, erect crests between his thumb and forefinger, lightly pinching and
rolling, sending waves of pleasure through her. She strained up on her toes, her whole body arching toward him. “Oh!”

“These,” he said hoarsely, “are the most beautiful breasts in all the world.”

Caroline laughed weakly. She knew they were no such thing, but when he said it, and when he looked at her with those intense
dark eyes, she could almost believe it. “More beautiful than Mademoiselle Muret?”

He kissed the soft upper slope of her breast, and she felt his smile on her skin. “You
are
jealous. How gratifying.”

She seized handfuls of his hair and pulled him up to face her. She stopped his laughter with a fierce, hard kiss. Her tongue
pressed into his mouth to twine with his, to taste the wine and darkness of him. He made her feel drunk, dizzy, giddy with
this terrible, primal need she had never imagined before.

And he seemed to feel the same. He lifted her up and pulled her tight against him. His hands were hard on the curve of her
backside, tilting her toward him so she could feel the iron length of his erection through their clothing. She wrapped her
legs around his waist and held him close to her.

When they kissed like this, when they fell headfirst into this roiling maelstrom of lust, she felt closer to him than she
ever had to anyone in her life. Her body and soul were open to his, connected to his, in ways she thought only existed in
myths. It was all an illusion, of course. In
the cold light of day, those fiery bonds snapped, and there was only old suspicion and chilly distance.

But now, when he kissed her with such hunger—they were like one.

Suddenly desperate to hold on to that strange, almost mystical connection, Caroline deepened the kiss even more. She tilted
her hips against his and rubbed along the length of his penis, making him groan.

Grant swung around toward the bed, and they fell onto its softness in a tangle of limbs and cloth. He kissed the soft curve
of her shoulder, the tip of his tongue tasting the hollow of her throat. Caroline closed her eyes tightly to absorb every
lightning-hot sensation.

He slowly drew her gown and chemise away, down the length of her body, dragging the soft fabric over her sensitive skin. As
the muslin slid away, his mouth followed its path. He kissed the soft, white skin between her breasts, the curve of her waist,
the flare of her hip. He lightly bit at the top of her thigh as he drew off her stocking, making her gasp, before he kissed
the underside of her knee.

“These,” he said, “are the most beautiful legs in the world.”

According to his vast experience? Caroline knew that was not true, any more than the beauty of her bosom. But she bent her
leg around his hip and cradled him against her. When he looked at her like that she felt beautiful—and powerful, in ways she
never had.

He reached for her other leg and slowly stripped away its stocking, kissing every newly bare inch as he went. He cast the
flimsy silk away and kissed the arch of her foot, her ankle, her toe. He gently nipped at its tip, and she laughed at the
shivery, tickling sensation.

“And the most beautiful foot, too,” he muttered. To her shock, he drew her toe between his lips. The pleasure of it was too
much. She pulled away from him and sat up against the pillows.

“You, Sir Grant Dunmore, are entirely overdressed for this occasion,” she said. She had wanted the words to sound alluring,
tempting, but they came out all breathless and eager. Her head felt light and whirling, and her skin flushed hot.