Lady of Seduction

  LAUREL MCKEE

  NEW YORK BOSTON

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  Table of Contents

  A Preview of Countess of Scandal

  A Preview of Duchess of Sin

  Copyright Page

  To Linda McCabe, the best mother in the world, and my first fan! I couldn’t have done any of this without you.

  Chapter One

  Off the coast of Ireland, late spring 1803

  This was not how Caroline Blacknall expected to die.

  Not that she had ever thought about it very much. Living took up too much time and energy to think about dying. But she would have thought it would be quietly, in her bed, after a long life of scholarship and travel and family. Not drowning at the age of twenty on a crazy, ill-advised pursuit.

  Caroline clung to the slippery mast as a cold wave washed over her and lightning pierced the black sky over her head. The little fishing boat rocked and twisted under the force of the howling wind. Waves crashed over its hull, higher and stronger each time, nearly swamping them completely.

  She couldn’t hear the shouts of the crew any longer, or even her own screams. All she could hear was deafening thunder and the crash of those encroaching waves.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and held even tighter to the mast. She dug her ragged, broken nails into the sodden wood. A splinter pierced her skin, but she didn’t mind the pain, or the bitter cold wind that tore through her wet cloak. It told her she was still alive, though probably not for much longer.

  Behind her closed eyes, she saw the faces of her sisters, Eliza and Anna, saw her mother’s gentle smile. She felt the tiny hands of her niece and nephew wrapped around her shoulders, heard her stepdaughter Mary’s laughter. Were they all lost to her forever?

  No! She had just begun to live again after her husband’s death a year ago. She had just begun to find her own purpose in the world. That was what this voyage was about, putting the past to rest and moving into the future. She couldn’t give up now. Blacknalls did not surrender!

  She opened her eyes and twisted her head around to see the crew of the little boat scurrying and sliding over the deck as they desperately tried to save the vessel and themselves. They hadn’t wanted to take on a passenger, especially a woman, but she had begged and bribed until they gave in. No one but fishermen ever went to the distant, forbidding Muirin Inish.

  She wagered that they would never take a “cursed” woman aboard again, if they all made it through this.

  Caroline tilted her head back to stare up into the boiling sky. It couldn’t be much past noon, but that sky was black as pitch, dark as midnight. Only jagged flashes of lightning broke through the gloom, lighting up the thick clouds and the turbulent sea.

  When they set out from the mainland that morning, it was gray and misty. One of the sailors muttered about the absence of sea birds, the silence of the water, but despite these supposed ill omens they set sail. Birds couldn’t stand in the way of commerce, and Caroline refused to be left behind. She had traveled too far to turn away now, when her destination was at last within her grasp.

  She had even glimpsed the famous pink granite cliffs of Muirin Inish, so close yet still so far, before those black clouds closed in. It was all much too fast.

  Was he there somewhere, she wondered? Did he watch the storm from those very cliffs?

  A crack sounded above her, loud as a whiplash, and she looked up to find that the mast, her one lifeline, had cracked. Horrified, she watched it slowly, oh so slowly, topple toward the deck.

  Caroline felt paralyzed, captured, and she couldn’t move. But somehow she managed to throw herself backward, tearing her numb hands from the wood.

  She moved just in time. The broken mast drove down into the beleaguered deck and cut a wound in the boat that swiftly bled more salt water. The boat twisted onto its side, and Caroline was thrown into the waiting sea.

  She had thought it was cold before, but it was not. This was cold, a freezing knife-thrust into her very heart that stole her breath away. The waves closed over her head and dragged her down.

  Somehow she ripped away the ties of her cloak and kicked free of its suffocating folds. She had learned to swim as a child, lovely summer days with her sisters at the lake at their home Killinan Castle. She blessed those days now as she summoned all her strength, pushed away the numb cold, and swam hard for the surface.

  Her head broke through the water, and she sucked in a deep breath of air. The hulk of the floundering boat was far away, a pale slash in the inky sea. The rocky cliffs of the shore beckoned through the darkness, seemingly very far away.

  Caroline kicked toward it anyway, moving painfully slow through the waves. Her arms were sore and terribly weak; it took every ounce of her will to keep lifting them, to not give in to the restful allure of the deep. She knew that if she couldn’t keep moving, she would be lost, and she couldn’t give up.

  A piece of wood drifted past her, a section of the broken mast. She grabbed on to it and hauled herself up onto its support. It floated toward shore, taking her with it, and all she could do was hang on tightly.

  Once it had been fire that separated her from him—burning, scarring fire and the acrid sear of smoke. Now it was water, cold and just as burning. It felt like the primal wrath of the ancient Irish gods that she loved studying so much.

  Caroline pressed her cheek to the wood of her little raft and closed her eyes. “This shouldn’t be happening to me,” she whispered. It was utterly absurd. She was a respectable widow, a bluestocking who preferred quiet hours in the library to anything else. She was not adventurous and bold like her sisters. How did she find herself caught in a perilous adventure straight out of one of Anna’s beloved romantic novels?

  But she knew why it was that she came here. Because of him, Grant Dunmore. A man she should have been happy to never see again. They seemed fated to brave the elements together through their own folly.

  Caroline felt something brush against her legs, something surprisingly solid. She opened her eyes to find she was not far from the rocky shore of Muirin Inish. She tried to kick toward it, but her legs had become totally numb and refused to work.

  She sobbed in terrible frustration. The tide was catching at her, trying to drag her back out to sea, even as land was so tantalizingly near!

  Above the wind, she heard a shout. Now she was surely hallucinating. But it came again, a rough call. “Hold on, miss! I’ve got you.”

  Someone grabbed her aching arm and dragged her up and off the mast. She cried out at the loss of her one solid reality and tried to cling to it, yet her rescuer was relentless. He wrapped a hard, muscled arm around her waist and pulled her with him as he swam for the shore.

  Caroline’s chest ached, as if a great weight pressed down on her, and dark spots danced before her eyes. She couldn’t lose consciousness, not now so close to redemption! She struggled to stay awake, to hold on.

  Her rescuer carried them to shore at last. He held her in his arms, tight against his chest, as he ran over the rough, stony beach. Caroline was vaguely aware that she was pressed to naked skin, warm on her cold cheek, like hot satin over iron strength. His heartbeat pounded in her ear, quick and powerful, alive. It made her feel alive, too, her heart stirring back into being.

  He laid her down on a patch of wet sand and gently rolled her onto her side. “Diolain, don’t be dead,” he shouted. “Don’t you dare be dead!”

  His voice was hoarse from the salt water, but she could hear the aristocratic English accent under that roughness. What was an Englishman doing on an isolated rock like Muirin Inish? What was she doing there? She couldn’t even remember, not now.

  He yanked at the tangled drawstring of her plain muslin gown, ripping it free to ease the ruined fabric from her shoulders. Through her chemise he pounded his fist between her shoulder blades, and she choked out the seawater that clogged her lungs. The pain in her chest eased, and she dragged in a deep breath.

  “Thank God,” her rescuer muttered.

  Caroline turned slowly onto her back as she reached up to rub the salt water from her aching eyes. The man knelt beside her, and the first things she noticed were the stark blue-black tattoos etched on his sun-browned skin. A circle of twisted Celtic knot work around his upper arm, a small Irish cross on his chest. Dark, wet hair lay heavy on his lean shoulders.

  Dazed and fascinated, she reached up to trace the Celtic cross with her fingertip. The elaborate design blurred before her eyes.

  He suddenly caught her hand tightly in his. “Caroline?” he said. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  She slowly raised her gaze to his face, focusing on those extraordinary golden-brown eyes. She had seen those eyes in her dreams for four long years.

  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.

  Chapter Two

  Sir 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.

  Chapter Three

  The 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.