Lady of Seduction (3 page)

She carefully moved across the floor, holding on to chairs and chests when she became dizzy again, until she came to the window.
She pushed back the green velvet draperies and unlatched the old-fashioned mullioned glass casement to throw it open. A blast
of cold, salty air washed over her face and blew away the last clinging vestige of her dream.

She found herself looking down over a cliff face into the lashing, roiling sea far below. It crashed against the rocks as
if it would carry the castle away, but the old stones stood firm.

She shivered as she remembered the cold waves closing over her head. Where was the poor crew of the boat? Had they been rescued,
too? Or was she alone?

The chamber door flew open behind her, and she spun around to find Grant standing there. He held a lamp in one hand, and its
flickering golden light cast shadows over his lean, ruined face and the tangled waves of his brown hair. He was more fully
dressed now than he had been before, in a loose white shirt and doeskin breeches, but that wildness still clung to him. It
was a part of him now; it
was
him.

He had changed. He was a stranger to her. A frightening, primitively attractive stranger.

“
Diolain,
Caroline,” he growled. “Are you trying to kill yourself with the ague?”

He plunked the lamp down on a table and crossed the room in four long strides to catch her up in his arms. He swept her high
against his chest and carried her back to her abandoned bed.

“I wanted to see if the storm had passed,” she murmured as he tugged the blankets up around her again.

“It hasn’t,” he said. “And it won’t, not for a few days anyway. It’s a very foolish time of year to try and cross from the
mainland.”

Caroline noticed that he carefully kept the scarred left side of his face turned from her. From the right, he was as beautiful
as ever, his profile all sharp, clean, elegant angles, high cheekbone and arched brow. Yet she wanted to see
all
of him, the real him, as he was now. Not as he had lived in her dreams all those years.

“The captain of the boat said the weather would stay clear long enough to reach Muirin,” she said.

“Then he was a fool,” Grant said harshly. “Both because of the weather and because of the French. Haven’t you heard they patrol
these waters?”

“I thought that was just hysterical gossip. There’s been so much of that since the Uprising. And since the Peace of Amiens,
we have a truce with the French, do we not?”

The corner of his sensual lips quirked, almost but not quite, as if he would smile. “You never did heed gossip, did you?”

“No. I have better things to do with my time.”

“You would have done well to listen this time—and stayed away from Muirin Inish.”

“Would I?” Probably she would, if she was as sensible
as she thought. But she didn’t feel sensible right now, when he was so close to her.

“You put your life at risk, Caroline.” Grant dropped a necklace onto her blanket-covered lap. It was the locket she always
wore, a gold oval etched with a shamrock and set with tiny emeralds and seed pearls. Inside was a portrait of her namesake,
Anna’s new baby Caroline, called Lina.

“Your child would have missed you,” Grant said quietly.

Caroline opened the locket to stare down at Lina’s painted blue eyes and soft golden curls. The tight gold lid had protected
the image. “I only have stepchildren, who are all grown and married now. Lina is my niece, Anna and Conlan’s baby.”

Grant’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of their names. Anna, whom he had once hoped to marry.

“Did you not know about their children?” Caroline asked him gently. “They have two now, Daniel and Lina.”

“We are very isolated here. I know nothing of anyone now, and that is the way I prefer it.”

His tone was cold, abrupt, yet some imp living deep inside Caroline made her argue. That imp always did get her into trouble.
“But don’t you even want to know…”

Suddenly his hands were hard on her shoulders, pressing her back down onto the bed. He
was
strong now, his body all lean muscle and heated power. His face was hidden in deepest shadow, but his eyes burned into her.

“I want to know nothing,” he said fiercely. “I came here so I could be alone and forget. Why have you come here, Caroline?
Why do you torment me?”

She couldn’t breathe. Her heart pounded, louder than the stormy thunder outside. His nearness sizzled through
her, and all she knew was
him.
The hard heat of him, the clean, smoky-brandy smell of him. It felt more intimate than any of those hurried encounters with
her husband in the darkness of their marriage bed.

He seemed to feel something of that heat, too. His hands turned gentle on her shoulders, sliding down her arms to take her
hands. His fingers, rough and callused now but still long and elegant, twisted with hers. He held her against the bed as he
slowly lowered his forehead to rest against her shoulder.

His hair was soft on her throat, his breath cool against her bare skin. She kissed his temple and felt the vital pounding
of his life’s blood against her lips.

“Why, Caroline?” he whispered, his voice filled with rough torment. “Why are you here?”

“Because I had to see you again,” she said simply. “I just had to. That’s all.”

G
rant stared down at her in silence for a long, tense moment. Caroline suddenly felt nervous. What had she really gotten herself
into, coming here to Muirin Inish? She was so far from everyone she knew, anyone who could help her, and any number of dangers
could lurk here.

She had to remember why it was so necessary to come here. Why she couldn’t stay away.

“I think you should get some sleep now,” he said. His voice was gentle, which only made her feel more nervous.

His hands slid away from her, and he started to turn away, but Caroline reached out and grabbed his hand. She didn’t know
why she kept him there. She had so much to think about, plans to make now that she was trapped here on the island. And she
definitely couldn’t think with him standing so close, clouding her senses, making everything so topsy-turvy.

“Grant, wait,” Caroline said. “I didn’t mean to trespass on your hospitality. I was only going to come here, ask you what
I needed to ask, and leave on the next tide. I never meant…”

A crooked smile touched his sensual lips, and for an instant, he seemed like the old Grant Dunmore. Handsome, charming—careless.
But then it vanished, and he was that hard, wild stranger again.

“You didn’t mean to use your Blacknall witch-woman powers to summon the storm?” he said. “I’m surprised to hear that.”

He glanced down at her hand on his, and she suddenly realized that she still held it tightly. Flustered, she let go, and he
stepped back from the bed. He crossed his arms over his chest, still watching her warily, as if he didn’t know what she might
do next.

Caroline wasn’t sure what she would do, either. Ever since she had decided to come to Muirin Inish, she hadn’t been quite
herself.

“I do study ancient tales of magic,” she said. “But I haven’t yet mastered the spells for myself.”

“Only a matter of time, I’m sure.”

Caroline pleated the edge of the sheet between her fingers. “That’s why I came here.”

“I don’t know any magic to teach you.”

She laughed. She feared that he had far too much he could teach her—about sex, need, the rawness of life. All the things she
had always tried to keep at bay by living in her mind, in a historical world that had vanished except for the stories. It
was safer that way. But to get what she needed from her work now, she had to face Grant.

“I want to see
The Chronicle of Kildare,
” she said.

Grant gave a surprised bark of laughter. “And you had to brave the stormy seas for that? A letter would have sufficed.”

“Would you have answered a letter I sent? Would you
even have read it? Our last meeting was not a very congenial one.”

“I suppose it was not, considering I had just kidnapped you and locked you up in a cold warehouse.”

“So you
do
remember.”

A muscle tightened along his square jaw, the only sign of any emotion. “Every day. And you are right—I probably would not
have answered a letter. I don’t exactly maintain a correspondence here.”

“Then perhaps you remember another time? That dinner party at your house in Dublin, when you showed me
The Chronicle
in your library.”

“You are surely the only lady in Dublin who could have appreciated it. You seemed awestruck, as if someone had handed you
a jeweled crown.”

Caroline closed her eyes and pictured that night, felt again the soft leather of the book’s cover as Grant placed it in her
hands.
The Chronicle of Kildare,
a history of the land written and illuminated by Brother Michael of the St. Ceolach monastery right here on Muirin Inish
in the 900s, carefully protected over the centuries from Vikings, Cromwell’s soldiers, and enemies of all sorts who would
use its beautiful words for ill. She had half-thought its existence must be a legend, for few scholars had ever seen it and
even fewer had read it.

There were only three copies in existence. One had belonged to a French nobleman who died in the Revolution, and his book
disappeared. The other was only a partial copy and was locked up and jealously guarded at Trinity College, with only a privileged
few allowed to see it. They had constantly refused Caroline’s many requests,
despite her husband’s reputation as a scholar and position as a graduate of the college.

The third copy was Grant’s, which she had glimpsed all too briefly that night in Dublin. She desperately needed to study
The Chronicle
to complete her own work. He was her only hope.

She opened her eyes to look at him. He still stood there in the shadows, his cool expression unchanged.

“It was more beautiful than any jewel could be,” she said. And she had been foolish enough to think that any man who owned
and loved such a book could not be bad. He could not be the cold, ambitious man that rumor claimed. A man who cared only for
wealth and position, who used and discarded dozens of women—or so they said.

She thought she glimpsed a tenderness in him that night, a yearning for beauty and truth that matched hers. But she had been
proven horribly wrong. She knew better than to trust him again.

Yet she needed
The Chronicle,
and he was the only way to get it. If she could only banish the weak spot she still had for him.

“I need to study it closer,” she said. “I have been working on writing a history of Ireland through the old legends for many
months now.
The Chronicle
is such a vital source that my work can’t be complete without it.”

“It must be for you to come so far. To face
me
again.”

“Yes. I also have research to do in the islands, old sites to visit and study. But I would not have come here if the book
wasn’t so important.”

“I’m very sorry to disappoint you then.”

Caroline’s heart sank. She was so close! Could he possibly turn her away now? “Disappoint?”

“
The Chronicle of Kildare
can’t be seen by anyone now.”

“What?” she cried. “Has it been destroyed?”

“It can’t be seen,” he said again, and she could see by the hard look in his eyes that was all he would say. And he would
not be moved. “You can study the other books in my library; there are a great many of them there. There’s little else to do
until the weather clears and you can leave Muirin Inish.”

Caroline sank back against the pillows. Her head pounded, and the room whirled around her. Everything suddenly seemed far
too much.

“Will the weather clear soon?” she whispered.

“I hope so. I’m expecting visitors any day now.”

“Visitors?” Caroline said in sharp surprise. What sort of visitors could such a recluse have, besides unwelcome ones like
her?

“And you don’t want to be here when they arrive.” Grant abruptly turned away from her and strode to the door. “You need to
sleep now. You’re still ill. Tomorrow Mrs. McCann can show you the library.”

“Grant,” she called as he opened the door. “I haven’t come this far just to give up now. We will speak of this again, and
again and again, until you see things my way.”

The old smile appeared again, fleeting and heart pounding. It made her shiver. How could he still affect her that way, after
all that happened and all the time that lay between them?

“I would expect nothing less from a famously stubborn Blacknall woman,” he said. “But surely you have learned by now, Caroline,
that I am just as tenacious when I want something. Believe me—not seeing
The Chronicle
and
being gone from here as quickly as possible is for your own good.”

Caroline slammed her fist down on the mattress in sudden fury. She had been told all her life things were “for her own good,”
by her parents, her sisters, her husband. It was always things that she did not want, things that went against her own will,
her own nature. She was sick of it, and she wouldn’t take it from Grant Dunmore.