Lady of Seduction (13 page)

He just looked back at her, his jaw set in that hard line she had come to dislike so much, and she sighed. Trust surely had
to go both ways, and it seemed he could not yet trust her. But they had to rely on each other now, even if it must be blindly.

“I actually have nothing to change into for dinner,” she said.

“Perhaps I can find something,” he answered. “Wait here for a moment, and for God’s sake don’t…”

“I know.” Caroline laughed. “Don’t go wandering around alone. I have learned my lesson this time.”

His lips twitched. “Somehow, Caroline, I doubt that.”

Grant shut the library door with a firm click and turned the lock. Caroline should be safely alone in her room now. It was
time to finish this business.

“Let’s make this meeting short,” he said tersely as he crossed the room to sit behind his desk. If he had to look at LaPlace
very long, he would surely beat the man to a bloody pulp for what he had done to Caroline.

And then the whole painstaking plan would fall apart.

LaPlace sat back in his chair with a lazy smile. “
Quelle dommage
, where is the famous Irish hospitality?”

“You are not my guest. You are merely here for one purpose. So let’s get on with it, shall we?”

LaPlace’s smile faded, and his eyes took on the cold cast of winter ice. “Quite right. Time does grow very short. These documents
must be delivered in Dublin by the end of the month, if our little alliance is to hold. And we all want that,
n’est’ce pas
?”

He drew out a sealed packet of papers from the case at his feet and leaned forward to place them on Grant’s desk.

Grant examined them carefully. This was it then—the culmination of all the careful planning, the lies and plots; his salvation
and his atonement were at hand. He watched LaPlace closely over the edge of the papers. It felt as if time stood still for
one tense moment. It could all fall either way.

“If anyone asks here on this godforsaken island,” LaPlace said, “I was merely the vicomte’s escort, a man
who appreciates fine literature. Just as you are, monsieur. No one will know of these papers.”

“Of course not.”

“Not even the oh-so-pretty mademoiselle.”

Grant threw down the papers with a growl. “She has nothing to do with any of this. I have my own reasons for taking part in
your scheme.”

“Just be sure those reasons don’t cause you to double-cross us.” LaPlace gave a deceptively affable smile. “I fear you would
certainly regret it, as would so many of your countrymen.”

He took out another paper, folded very small and sealed, and tossed it across the desk. “This is the address in Dublin where
the documents must be delivered. If they don’t reach our contact by the agreed-on day, we will assume the alliance is broken,
and we will be forced to take our own measures. They may not be very pleasant.”

Grant said nothing, merely watched LaPlace with a hard, stony stare. He had known that the double scheme would be tricky and
perilous. He had nothing to lose by taking on this role—that was before Caroline arrived. Now he had to protect her.

“I have chosen my path,” Grant said. “I will do as I said I would, you and your cohorts can be assured of that.”

LaPlace smiled again. “We cherish our bond with our Irish allies and hope we can be of much use to each other in the future.
If we find we cannot…”

“All will be well, LaPlace. If we keep this strictly business. No more harassing my guests.” Or Grant would kill him.

“Certainly not! A Frenchman never poaches on another man’s preserve. If I had known she was your plaything…”
LaPlace shrugged. “I have copies of all the documents, of course, and I always carry them. Just to be certain.”

Grant watched as LaPlace rose to his feet, as lazy as a jungle cat. “Yes,” Grant said brusquely.

“Then we are agreed,” LaPlace said. “I shall see you at dinner, yes? Perhaps then some of that hospitality will be evident.”

After he left, closing the door behind him, Grant finished examining the papers. It was as he expected—treasonous agreements,
a prelude to revolution, to be delivered to traitors in Dublin. And he had to play the traitor right along with them.

As he reached for the wax to reseal the packet, he heard a sudden noise in the corridor outside. A clatter and the patter
of footsteps. He quickly locked the papers in a drawer and ran out of the library.

It all looked deserted and silent, but then he heard steps running up the staircase. And he smelled a trace of sweet perfume
in the air.

He dashed up the stairs two at a time and along the corridor to the bedchambers. Caroline’s door was closed. Was he imagining
things? Perhaps all the plotting had driven him mad. He saw spies around every corner.

But then there was the sound of a lock turning. She hadn’t been in there long if she was just now locking the door.

Grant braced his palm on the wall beside her door and listened closely. He could almost imagine that he heard her breathing
in there, quick and panicked after a run.

The little eavesdropper. He should lock her in her chamber and not let her out until this was all over.

He pounded on the door. It was a long moment before she called out softly, “Who—who is it?”

“It’s Grant,” he answered. “I’ve come to take you down to dinner, if you’re ready.”

After another moment, the door slowly swung open, and Caroline stood there. Her cheeks were pink, but she met his eyes steadily.
If she
had
been listening, surely she could not have heard much. She didn’t know what he was doing. But if she suspected, if she tried
to find out, he would have to stop her. For her own safety.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Then let’s go. Everyone is waiting.”

G
rant watched Caroline closely as she sat with the vicomte d’Allay at the other end of the table. They spoke to each other
quietly, their heads bent together over the soup as they talked and laughed with every sign of easy enjoyment. They seemed
to have much in common, and Caroline gave no sign of suspicion or disquiet, no sign of what she might have overheard earlier.

But every once in a while, Grant caught her glancing at him from the corner of her eye, and her fingers clutched at the stem
of her glass. She was trying to play it cool and calm, yet Grant was sure she would demand answers later. He would have to
see that she did not find the answers.

Mademoiselle Muret laid her hand lightly on his arm to draw his attention to her. When he looked, she gave him a flirtatious
smile and leaned closer so that he could smell the spice of her expensive French perfume. She was exactly the sort of woman
he was accustomed to in his life before Muirin Inish—beautiful, sophisticated, elegant, adept at the games of flirtation and
fully cognizant of their rules.

With her, Grant could feel himself slipping back into
his old ways. He forgot his sins and all the hard-won lessons of the years since then—almost. He could never entirely forget
with Caroline Blacknall’s voice in his ears.

“Sir Grant, your home is so very charming,” Mademoiselle Muret said. “Like something in a romantic novel!”

“And you are a most charming liar, mademoiselle,” Grant answered with a laugh. He gestured to the footman to refill their
glasses.

“Non!”
she said. Her own laughter trilled like crystal bells, her eyes sparkling with mirth, yet Grant saw the hardness beneath,
the glint of careful calculation behind her charm. He remembered something else about the women of his past, something beyond
their beauty and grace. He remembered that they were as dishonest and artificial as he was himself. Every word and smile was
part of a careful plot. Only the object had changed since his days in Dublin.

Grant could handle women like Victorine Muret. He had played their game for a long time, and he understood them. But Caroline
Blacknall he didn’t understand at all. She played no games, at least none he understood. She didn’t hide behind sophisticated
artifice. She was an intelligent woman who felt no need to conceal who she was.

An intelligent woman with a streak of wild curiosity that was proving to be dangerous to both of them.

Grant took a long drink of his wine and turned away from Caroline’s study. She baffled him, turning his careful world upside
down. He wanted her body with a burning lust he had never felt for his elegant mistresses, and that was bad enough. But he
also wanted to know her mind, her thoughts and opinions, her feelings. He wanted to lose himself in that calm brightness of
hers and be clean again.

And he hated that feeling; he resisted it with all his
strength. Grant Dunmore was not accustomed to needing another person. He had vowed when he and his mother were turned away
from Adair Court that he would care only for himself, look out for his own interests, and be utterly ruthless in fulfilling
them. He would never be vulnerable again.

He lived his life in that way, cold and selfish, for years—until it all ended in that fiery warehouse. Now he had a different
goal, and once again Caroline Blacknall was in his way.

She was the most damnable, confounding woman he had ever met.

“Monsieur, I fear you are not paying attention to me,” Victorine said, breaking into his brooding thoughts.

Grant turned back to find her pouting prettily up at him. She tapped his wrist with one manicured finger. It was soft and
white, not stained with ink as Caroline’s was. He smiled at her in return with his old, practiced smile of seduction. It had
always worked on the females of Dublin, actresses and duchesses alike, and it seemed to work on Victorine Muret. A pretty
pink blush stained her cheeks, and Monsieur Michel glowered at them.

“Do forgive me, mademoiselle,” he said in a low, intimate voice. “I could not possibly neglect you for even a moment. It is
so rare to have such lovely company on Muirin Inish.”

Her pout deepened. “And yet you seem so distracted, monsieur. Does the tall mademoiselle so occupy your thoughts?”

Grant glanced at Caroline, but she was lost in conversation with the vicomte again. She
was
tall, and slender, her long neck like a graceful swan’s above the low bodice
of her pale yellow muslin gown. She had her very own sort of elegance.

“It is better than being alone here, I suppose,” he said.

“Ah,
pauvre
Sir Grant!” Victorine murmured. She laid her hand on his arm again, light but inviting. “How very lonely you must be, even
here in your charming castle. You should come to Paris and really live your life again. There is no place more exciting in
all the world, I am sure.”

Grant laughed. “I doubt an Englishman would be welcome in Paris right now, mademoiselle.”

“You are Irish, are you not? There are many Irishmen in Paris now. The charming Monsieur Emmet and his friends, for instance.
I meet with them everywhere, at the theater, riding in the parks, even at the Tuilleries. We are united in one cause now,
non
? To defeat the stuffy, ridiculous English.”

“And that is why you and your friends are here, is it not, mademoiselle?”

For the first time, Grant saw a hint of doubt in her eyes. She glanced at LaPlace, who had joined in the conversation with
Caroline and the vicomte and paid Victorine no heed, and at Monsieur Michel, who stared at her in stony silence at the end
of the table.

“I am not sure about Captain LaPlace and Monsieur Michel,” she said. “They do not talk to a silly girl like me. But you know
my father and I are here on our own errand. One I hope will conclude to my father’s satisfaction.”

“I hope that as well, mademoiselle.”

Her hand softly caressed his arm, and her smile brightened. “It would mean so very much to him, Sir Grant, to see his dream
fulfilled at long last. His health has been so frail, and I am sure this will make him feel stronger.”

Grant shifted in his chair. “We will have to see what the terms are, Mademoiselle Muret.”

“Will you not call me Victorine?” She leaned closer, revealing even more of her lovely bosom in her ribbon-trimmed bodice.
“If
I
can add to the offer in any way…”