Lady of Seduction (37 page)

“Stay behind me,” the guard said.

Caroline crept with him through the ground floor, which was littered with crates and heaps of rough-chopped firewood. At the
back was a rickety staircase, and faint lamplight spilled from the door at the top. She could hear the rise and fall of voices.

She tiptoed up the steps and listened carefully for an accent that sounded like Grant’s. The guard drew his pistol, and she
did the same.

“Who’s there?” a man’s frantic voice shouted. A silhouette appeared in the doorway, blunderbuss aimed at them.

“I came from Conlan McTeer,” her guard answered. “I’m looking for Grant Dunmore.”

“How do we know that’s true?” the man with the gun demanded.

Caroline stepped out into a beam of light. “I’m also looking for him. Tell him Caroline is here.”

The door was suddenly shoved back, and Grant appeared
there. “Caro!
Mac an donais,
woman, what are you doing here?”

“I came to find you, of course,” she said, echoing the words she used on Muirin Inish. She rushed up the stairs to catch him
in her arms. He seemed unhurt, with no bleeding wounds. He was not dead in some filthy gutter. If only he would stay that
way. “And to deliver a message from Conlan. He said he needed someone trustworthy to deliver it.”

She held out the note, and he hugged her so fiercely he lifted her off her feet. “My cousin must be insane to let you go wandering
the streets,” he growled.

“I had Conlan’s guard to show me the way,” she said. She pulled back to study his face. His hair was hastily tied back, and
his cheek was smudged with gunpowder. His eyes were dark rimmed, but he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. “And
Conlan and Anna couldn’t stop me. I had to find you.”

“It seems the battle has moved northward.” Caroline glanced around the room. Gun boxes were broken open and empty, with only
the sawdust they were packed in left to spill onto the floor. The men who had been standing around the walls disappeared out
the door.

“As you can see, I think our work here is done,” Grant said. “There’s nothing left here for the soldiers to find.”

“What were you doing exactly?”

“Handing out the guns and pikes that were stored here to anyone that would take them. We had to clear out the stash quickly.
What else did Conlan say?”

“That Lord Kilwarden was dragged from his carriage and piked earlier tonight. And that reinforcements are being sent from
the outlying barracks.”

“Damn it all.” Grant rubbed his hand over his face. “Troops will be pouring through these streets and alleys at any minute.”

“What can we do? Can we spread the warning?”

Grant grimly shook his head. “As I’m sure you saw, it’s utter chaos out there. Any modicum of control Emmet and his officers
had is long gone. They’d all do well to take shelter in The Liberties. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to your sister’s house—where you never should have left, Caroline.”

She grasped his hand tightly in hers. “After all we’ve been through, it would feel far worse to sit and wait, not knowing.”

He lifted her hand to his lips for a quick kiss. “Then together we’ll stay.”

He led her out onto the stairs, where a few of the men still waited. “Reinforcements are coming from outside the city,” Grant
said quietly. “If there are any other arms stores, they need to be cleaned out right away.”

“I’ll go to McMaster’s and let them know there,” Caroline’s guard said.

The others all hurried out into the night, and Grant led Caroline after them. They turned back the way she had just traversed,
away from the fires and explosions along the river.

Grant held on to her arm as they hurried down narrow back lanes, taking a circuitous route that changed in an instant whenever
they glimpsed trouble. Troops marched by, their boots ringing on the cobblestones, just behind bands of rebels fleeing for
their lives from the barricades. Ragged bands of beggars slipped by loaded with looted
goods, and once Caroline saw a most horrible sight—a cart filled with bloodied bodies.

Grant pulled her even closer to his side. “We’ll be home soon,” he said.

She nodded, but in a very strange way she felt as if she
was
home. She would never choose to be in such a frightening, nightmarish place, seeing the worst of what humans could do, but
she was with Grant. When they were together, they were stronger.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang, much too close, and something swift and sizzling flew over Caroline’s head. Grant dragged
her to the ground at the base of a brick wall and threw himself on top of her. There was another crack, and a stone pediment
high above them broke apart.

“What is it?” she whispered. She felt frozen with alarm, every sense vibrating as she waited for another explosion.

“Bloody sunman,” Grant said tightly. He wrapped his arms hard around her and held her close in the shelter of his body.

“Army or Irish?”

“Could be either. They’re surely all over the place tonight and not asking questions before they shoot. Lie very still.”

Caroline carefully turned her head just a bit to peer past Grant’s arm at the building across the lane. She thought she glimpsed
a moving shadow in one of the upper windows, a glint of metal in the moonlight, but she wasn’t sure.

“That top window on the right, I think,” she murmured.

Grant’s hand slid very, very slowly toward the gun at his waist. But he didn’t have to try to get off a shot. A large wagon
careened around the corner and came clattering noisily down the street toward them. It was loaded with
enormous barrels that made a tall barrier, and Grant and Caroline jumped to their feet as it passed. They ran alongside it,
keeping it between them and the figure in the window, until they spilled out onto a much wider street.

The lamps here were not broken out, and as they collapsed onto a doorstep to catch their breath, Caroline had a glimpse of
Grant’s face. He looked utterly furious.

He caught her by her arms and roughly dragged her close. “You crazy woman!” he growled. “What if you had been killed?”

“What if
you
had been killed?” she cried. Her own anger bubbled up in her, all the fear and danger of the night boiling together with
her fierce love for Grant.

“I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you,” he said, and gave her a little shake. “I could never live with myself if
you were hurt, if I lost you.”

As Caroline stared up into his burning eyes, she couldn’t breathe. “Because you would feel guilty again? Because I would weigh
on your conscience?”

“No, you fool woman. Because I love you, and I can’t ever lose you again.”

“Oh, Grant,” she sobbed. “I love you, too. I know I shouldn’t, I know
we
shouldn’t, but I can’t escape it.”

“I save you, you save me,” he said. “I think it’s our fate, even if we fight it.”

“Then don’t fight it anymore.”

Grant kissed her fiercely, his mouth hard on hers and full of the desperate, wonderful, all-consuming passion they had found
against all the odds, in the most terrible of circumstances.

Even with the chaos of explosions in the distance, panic and pandemonium all around them, she had to laugh.
“Oh, Grant,” she whispered. “I feel so ridiculously happy at this moment, despite where we are. Does that make me entirely
mad?”

“We’re both entirely mad. I’m completely convinced of that.” He kissed her once more, quickly, and tugged her to her feet.
“Come on, Caro. We’re almost home.”

C
aroline propped her elbow on the piles of pillows on the bed and watched Grant as he slept. The daylight was bright yellow-white
as it streamed through the window and over his face. His brow was deeply furrowed, and his fists curled atop the sheets as
if he went on fighting even in slumber.

It had taken many hours for her to persuade him to rest, even after their mad flight across the city to land back at Henrietta
Street. Grant and Conlan insisted on staying up as the news of the night came to them in frustrating spurts, messages that
contradicted and canceled previous news. Finally with the light of day, it became clear the rising had been decisively put
down, just as Conlan had feared.

Despite the way it had felt to Caroline while in the very midst of it, the way it seemed the whole city was a battle zone,
the fighting had been rather localized. Some districts had seen no violence at all, though where there had been skirmishes
it was fierce and deadly. The dead were still being gathered up and piled in the courtyard of the
Castle. Soldiers explored every street and alley, and the rebels who had not fled were soon found and thrown into Kilmainham
Gaol. Bridge crossings and roads out of the city were guarded, and houses were searched.

But not the houses of Henrietta Street. Not the houses of dukes, even Irish ones. All those houses rested uneasily in the
bright day, waiting for the next chapter to begin.

Caroline gently took Grant’s hand in hers and studied his long, elegant fingers. The palm was scraped, and there were still
gunpowder smudges beneath the nails, a reminder of last night’s turmoil. She had the feeling that life with Grant would mean
there was always a “next chapter,” always excitement and trouble. Yet she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She pressed a soft kiss to his fingertips, and his eyes opened. He started to sit up, but she gently pressed him back down
on the bed.

“What time is it?” he said.

“Oh, terribly late, I should think,” she answered. “But you need to rest.”

“So do you.” Grant kissed her fingers, one by one, slowly, as if to savor her. He held her palm against his chest, and she
could feel the steady, reassuring beat of his heart.

He was alive. They were both alive, and together. Caroline wanted only that, forever and ever. She slid down beside him on
the bed and rested her head on his shoulder.

“I’m not tired,” she said. “I know I should be, but when I close my eyes I keep seeing everything that happened last night.
It seems like a nightmare now, so hazy and unreal. After ’ninety-eight, I thought I would never see such a thing again.”

The corners of his mouth turned down, and his hand
tightened over hers. “You must try and forget it now, Caro. It is done.”

“Is it? I think it will never be
done
, not here. Not until Ireland is its own country. Conlan won’t give up the cause, will he? And neither will you. I can’t hide
in my books forever. I have to fight, too.”

“Gaolach,”
Grant said. “There are many ways to fight and to help those who need us. You
have
to hide in your books—that is your work.”

Caroline laughed. “When you put it that way, how can I say no? I suppose we all must use the talents we are given.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You fought fiercely on our journey and last night. I doubt I would be here without you, my Badb. But
I would much prefer that you were safe in the library.”

“I think we’ve learned libraries can sometimes be the most dangerous places of all. What will
you
do now?”

“I think it would be best if I left the city for a time and stayed quiet until things have settled down. Conlan and Anna say
they will go to Adair as soon as the roads are open. I may go back to Muirin Inish.”

“Muirin Inish?” Caroline said in surprise. “I thought you said the people there probably wouldn’t welcome you back.”

Grant laughed wryly. “I’m sure they won’t be overjoyed to see me. But it’s my home now. If I work hard enough, I’m sure they’ll
learn to accept me. In a decade or two.”

“It is a beautiful place, despite everything.” Caroline thought of the rocky, wave-tossed shore, of the old monastery and
all the sites yet to be discovered, the rolling
gray-green fields. “But can you bear to live in the castle again?”

Grant shrugged. “The castle does seem cursed, I’m afraid, or at least the islanders will always say that. Perhaps I’ll knock
it down and build something else. Something entirely new with no ghosts.”

“A fine Palladian villa?”

“If that’s what
you
would want, Caroline.”

“Me?” She sat up and stared down at him in surprise.

He looked up at her. His face was set in that cool, wary expression that he so often wore, but his eyes held a bright gleam
in their dark depths. “I have no right to say this, I know. I’ve led you into danger time and again ever since we met, and
if you had any sense at all, you would run as far from me as you can.”

“I think we have quite established that I do not possess any sense,” Caroline said. Her stomach fluttered with tiny, nervous
butterflies. Was he going to ask her what she thought—hoped—he was? She had the feeling that in the next moment the course
of her life would truly change, and she would have to decide once and for all—safety or passion?

“I must have none, either, for I know I can’t be without you, Caroline,” Grant said. “I’ve lived my whole life alone, serving
only my own selfish ends, until I looked into your eyes and saw the goodness of your soul. You showed me a better way to be,
and I never want to go back to the way my life was before. So I must do one more selfish thing.”