Lady of Seduction (2 page)

And now she remembered exactly why she had come to Muirin Inish.

“I’m here to see you, of course, Grant,” she said. Then the world turned black.

S
ir Grant Dunmore carried Caroline gently in his arms as he climbed the steep, ancient stairs cut into the granite cliffs.
The cold rain still pounded down from the dark sky, and thunder echoed off the stone. He had wrapped her in his discarded
shirt, but that was quickly soaked through, and she trembled against him.

The sea might claim her yet, if he didn’t get her warm and dry as quick as could be.

Her head lay heavy on his shoulder, her heart-shaped face pale as snow. Her dark hair clung to her skin like seaweed, and
purple circles were like bruises under her eyes. She had always been slender, like an elegant willow, but now she seemed even
smaller, a featherweight in his arms.

Caroline Blacknall.
What was she doing here, at the ends of the earth, after so long? After the terrible things he did to her, to so many people,
he could not imagine why she would ever want to see him again. When he had glimpsed the hulk of the damned ship from his tower
and ran down to try to save who he could, he had never dreamed he would find Caroline in those waters.

She let out a deep sigh and twisted restlessly in his arms. He held on to her tighter, the soles of his sodden boots slipping
on the wet steps. “Not much farther,” he muttered against her ear, and she went still.

He had heard that she married a few years ago, and she wore a slim gold band on her finger. What sort of husband was he, to
send his wife out into the middle of the sea on some wild, unknown errand? He obviously wasn’t taking care of her as she deserved.
The bastard.

Grant laughed ruefully at himself. He had no room to criticize anyone at all. He wasn’t even able to take care of himself,
let alone a bluestocking Blacknall woman.

At last, he reached the top of the cliffs and turned along the twisting, narrow path that led to his home. Muirin Castle was
cold and forbidding, no place to nurse a woman back to health, but the small village was too far away. A freezing gray mist
had wrapped around the whole island, closing them off from the world.

That was why he came here four years ago, wounded, scarred, trying to atone for his sins. If he hid here, he couldn’t hurt
anyone again. He should have known the past would catch up with him.

She said she came here to find him—and he had led her into danger once more.

Her fingers suddenly tightened on his shoulder, and her eyes fluttered open. Those eyes were the same as before, deep coffee-brown
and fringed with long inky lashes. And they still seemed to look deep inside him, seeing every cursed shadow of his soul.

“We’re almost there, Caroline,” he said. “You’ll be warm by the fire in no time.”

She said nothing, just stared up at him. She slowly
raised her hand to his cheek and brushed her cold fingers over the scarred left side of his face.

He recoiled, as if the fire that left those marks touched him again. Her hand fell away.

“It’s been so long since I saw you, Grant,” she whispered. Her hand dropped to his shoulder. “Yet it feels like it was only
yesterday. How is that possible?”

Grant knew why that was for
him—
he thought of her every day of his lonely life here. But he said nothing, just held her tighter as he carried her through
the gates of Muirin Castle.

His home was built of dark gray stone, nearly covered by thick skeins of overgrown vines. It blended into the mist, like an
enchanted, cursed castle in some fairy tale. The tall, crenellated towers were shrouded in fog, and no light glowed in the
narrow, old arrow-slit windows.

Grant pushed open the stout, iron-bound door with his shoulder and stumbled into the dim foyer. It was just as cold there
as it was outside, with the cracked flagstone floor and stone walls. But his housekeeper, old Mrs. McCann from the village,
stood at the top of the twisting stairs, staring down at him and his “guest” in open-mouthed astonishment.

“Light a fire in one of the bedchambers, Mrs. McCann, quickly,” Grant shouted. He ran up the steps two at a time; Caroline
had gone limp and silent in his arms again. “And send someone to the village for the doctor.”

“He’s gone to the mainland yesterday,” she said. She scurried after him into the one upstairs chamber that was habitable besides
his own.

“Then we’ll have to nurse her as best we can,” he muttered. He laid Caroline down carefully in the middle of the
cavernous old bed and pulled off her wet clothes before wrapping her in the heavy velvet counterpane. She sighed and slid
deep under the haven of the covers.

“But—who is she?” Mrs. McCann said. She stood in the doorway, twisting her hands fretfully in her apron.

“A mermaid,” Grant said. “We need a fire, hot water, and some soup. And clean clothes for her. Now!”

Mrs. McCann dashed away, and Caroline murmured in her sleep.

Grant leaned over the bed to tuck the blankets closer, not even noticing the cold on his own damp skin, the rivulets of rainwater
that dripped from his long hair down his bare back. He only saw Caroline, so pale in the huge old bed. Caroline, flown suddenly
back into his life.

He gently smoothed the tangled, seaweed-like hair back from her brow. Her skin felt slightly warmer under his touch, a faint
trace of pink beneath the white marble of her cheeks.
Don’t let her catch fever!
Her soft, pale lips parted on a breath, and he remembered how once, so long ago, he had tasted that mouth with his own. The
merest, lightest brush of a kiss, and yet he remembered it so much more vividly than any night of lust with any other woman.

“Caroline,” he whispered. “Why were you out in that storm? Why does your husband not take better care of you?”

“Because he is dead,” she whispered. Her eyes opened, and she stared up at him with an unfocused intensity. “I take care of
myself.”

He smiled at her. “Not doing a very good job of it, are you?”

“I was doing all right, until today. It doesn’t seem
you
can take care of yourself, Grant. You’ll surely catch a cold standing there with no clothes on.”

He gave a startled laugh. Caroline Blacknall had
not
changed—she was still bossy, tart-tongued, and practical. But there was something new in her eyes as well, a flash of womanly
awareness as her gaze swept over his bare chest.

Before he could answer, two of the footmen hurried in with buckets of coal for the fire. The maids followed with towels and
hot water, and Mrs. McCann shooed him out of the room as they all set to work. He had never seen such efficiency in his quiet
home before.

At the doorway, he glanced back to see that Caroline’s eyes were closed again. She seemed to sink back into exhausted sleep
even as the maids swathed her in towels and a clean nightdress.

“I’m so sorry, Caroline,” he whispered as he closed the door behind him. How he wished she had not come back to him again,
reminding him of all he could never have. All that his sins had cost him.

T
he flames scorched Caroline’s skin, the thick smoke was acrid and bitter in her throat even from a distance. She watched helplessly
as the old warehouse collapsed in on itself—with Grant inside.

It was a dream, Caroline knew that very well. She had this dream so many times over the past few years, a vision of a frozen
winter river embankment in Dublin and watching the fires of hell consume the night. But while it was happening, she could
never rouse herself to reality. She was trapped, reliving that fire over and over.

And it felt so very real, that heat on her face, the ashes that stung her eyes. The tears for a man who was lost, in so many
ways.

“I haven’t even started learning who I might be,”
he had told her as they sat together in that freezing warehouse, kidnapper and captive bound together in the moments before
the inferno. Bound together by an understanding that was strange and deep.
“Except for my evils, of course.”

Caroline couldn’t argue with the
evils
part. Grant had wanted to marry her beautiful sister Anna, to make Anna
part of his social and political ambitions, his perfect wife for his high place in society. When Anna preferred his cousin
and enemy, the wild Irish Duke of Adair, Grant kidnapped Anna—and accidentally caught Caroline in that snare, too.

Yet in that moment, as Caroline stared up into his inhumanly beautiful face and saw the deep sadness of his eyes, she couldn’t
help but reach out to him. To try to touch the heart that he claimed he no longer had. She traced her fingertips over his
cheek, and the feel of his skin, the harsh angles of his face, were more real to her than anything.

“I think there is more to you than evils,” she had whispered.

Those beautiful golden-brown eyes had narrowed as he watched her. Very slowly, as if he fought hard against something inside
himself, he leaned toward her and his lips touched hers, lightly, tenderly. This was not how she imagined her first kiss would
be, with a too-handsome, kidnapping villain in a freezing old warehouse. Yet a sudden feeling of
rightness
shivered through her, as if this was what she had been waiting for her whole life. All her studies, all the tales of the
fiery, forbidden passions of ancient Irish gods, could never have prepared her for the feelings of that kiss.

She reached out for him, desperately—and then the world exploded…

Caroline sat straight up in bed, gasping for breath. For an instant, she thought the smoke choked her again. She had no idea
where she was, and a cold panic washed over her. What was happening to her? Was she going mad?

Then she felt the softness of old velvet under her hands and the gentle heat of the fire on her face. It was the
comforting crackle of flames in the grate, not the consuming inferno of four years ago. It
was
just a dream. That was all over and done with. But she was still in trouble, for she was sleeping in Grant Dunmore’s house.

Caroline slid back down against the pillows and stared up at the embroidered underside of the faded canopy. Everything came
flooding back to her then—the storm that gathered so suddenly, overwhelming the little fishing boat. Being swallowed by the
sea, and plucked out again by Grant.

He had carried her here, to this strange castle that looked like the dwelling of some magical ogre in an old myth. She was
at his mercy again, miles and miles away from civilization.

She groaned and closed her eyes, listening to the crackle of the fire and the lash of freezing rain against the narrow, old
windows. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Not the near-drowning, of course, but to find Grant, to ask for his help. It
seemed so easy, in her snug house back in Dublin. After all, that terrible drama was years ago, and she was a sensible widow.

Not so sensible now. Grant was not the sophisticated, aristocratic gentleman that he had once been, the man all the ladies
swooned over. The most handsome man in Dublin. He was a wild, long-haired, tattooed islander now, his gorgeous face scarred
by that fire, his eyes hard. Whatever she had once glimpsed in them, whatever connection she once imagined, was gone.

And she had no way off Muirin Inish.

Caroline eased back the bedclothes and carefully slid her legs off the edge of the mattress. She felt battered and weak after
fighting with the sea, her muscles sore, but she
made herself climb down from the high bedstead to the floor. She wore a strange nightgown that was much too large for her,
a voluminous tent of white flannel that flapped over her hands and pooled around her feet. Those feet were bare, the scarred
wooden floor cold under her soles.

Her head spun with dizziness as she stood upright, and she clung to the carved bedpost until it passed. Her chamber was large
and dim, lit only by the fire in the stone grate, and it was full of old, heavy, dark wood furniture. It smelled slightly
dusty and stale, as if it was not much used.