Lady of Seduction (32 page)

At last, as morning slid into afternoon and the sun grew warmer, Grant broke their silence. “There’s a stream up ahead where
we can stop and drink if you’re thirsty.”

“Yes, I am,” Caroline said, surprised to realize she
was
quite thirsty, and her backside was getting sore again. She had been distracted by her thoughts and worries.

But they never reached the stream. As they turned off the main road to a narrower path lined with hedgerows, they found their
way blocked by another man on horseback. He wore a caped greatcoat and a brimmed hat tugged low on his brow, but those angelic
blue eyes were much too familiar.

It was LaPlace, alive after all. She
had
actually seen him on the street in Kilmallock. And he held a pistol leveled at them as if he had been expecting them.

Caroline’s mouth went dry, and her heart leaped with sudden panic. She tugged her horse around hard, but another man stepped
out from the hedges with a gun in his hand. To her shock she saw it was Mick O’Shea, poor dead Bessie’s suitor. His face was
pale, his eyes wild as if with a panic even greater than hers, but still he held on to his gun.

“Ah, Sir Grant,
mon ami
! And the lovely mademoiselle,” LaPlace said affably. “I knew if I just waited in the right place you would come to me. It
is meant to be.”

Caroline slid her hand toward her waist where a dagger was strapped just beneath her coat. She tried to move carefully, but
LaPlace tsked and shook his head at her, as if she was a schoolgirl sneaking a cake.

“I would not do that, mademoiselle,” he said. “Not with my friend’s gun aimed right at your pretty breast. Nor you, Sir Grant.
I’m sure you want nothing to happen to the fair lady.”

“What is your game, LaPlace?” Grant said tightly.

“
My
game? Oh, no, monsieur. I did not begin this little play of ours. I merely came here to do Bonaparte’s bidding. He doesn’t
want to entrust his troops and arms to helping your country if such assistance is not desired—and if your countrymen aren’t
prepared to act on their own behalf. Your messengers indicated your little island could be of benefit to us, so I was sent
to discover the level of dedication to a rebellion.”

LaPlace’s cold blue eyes swept over Caroline, and his smile faded. “It seems my master was quite right to have doubts. You
double-crossed me, monsieur, you and your little whore. And that means you have double-crossed my master.”

Caroline glanced between LaPlace and Mick O’Shea. Mick certainly didn’t seem to share LaPlace’s chilly confidence. The hand
holding the gun trembled, which made the firearm wobble about in a terrifying way. What if it went off?

“And you, Mr. O’Shea?” she said as calmly as she could. “What is your part in this? Do you serve First Consul Napoleon as
well?”

“Of course he does,” LaPlace said. “He has for many months, sending us messages of much interest. How else
could we have known so much about Sir Grant and his Dublin friends? And in return, Monsieur O’Shea was handsomely rewarded.”

“You were a spy?” Grant said in that low, soft, tight voice Caroline had learned to fear. It was worse than any shouting.
Grant twisted around in his saddle to look steadily at O’Shea. “On your own island, against your own people?”

The gun shook even harder. “I needed the money! Bessie and I couldn’t marry without it. I only passed on what I overheard,
what Bessie told me she found. I never meant harm by it. I never meant…”

“And then she died,” Caroline said. She thought of Maeve’s tale of poor Bessie the housemaid, falling from the walkway of
the old tower. Her ghost wandering the halls, moaning for someone to avenge her death. Yet it seemed “poor Bessie” was not
so very helpless after all. She and her lover were spies, all for a few French coins.

O’Shea’s face went even whiter, and his brow shone with sweat. Caroline had a sudden terrible suspicion.

Moving very slowly, her hands extended in a nonthreatening way, she slid off her saddle and moved carefully toward Mick. She
tried to ignore his gun and look only in his eyes.

“Caroline!” Grant shouted.

“It’s all right, Grant,” she answered. “I only want to ask Mr. O’Shea a question.”

“I don’t want to talk to you!” Mick cried.

“I am bored with all this,” LaPlace said. “Give us the papers you stole, Sir Grant; that is all we want.”

Caroline ignored him. “What really happened the night Bessie died, Mick?”

He licked his cracked lips. “I wasn’t there! How should I know? I heard that
he
killed her.”

She gazed steadily into Mick’s wild eyes. All her reading did have one advantage now—she had learned a great deal about the
unpredictability of people. They had motives and desires no one else could understand, and they were often driven by them
to do awful things. But unless a person was unnaturally cold like LaPlace, the guilt of it haunted them.

She had seldom seen anyone quite so wretchedly guilty as Mick O’Shea.

“And you let them think that, didn’t you?” she said. “But I think you know what really happened.”

“It were an accident,” he cried. “I wanted to stop sending them any information, but Bessie said we needed the money. She
said the French couldn’t be no worse than the English, but I knew she was wrong. We met in the tower to talk about it, where
no one else could hear. But we argued, and then she…” He broke off with a sob.

“And she fell?” Caroline said softly.

“I told you, it were an accident!” The gun suddenly swung up and pointed at Caroline’s face. “I only wanted it to stop!”

“Caroline!” she heard Grant shout. He leaped down from his horse and strode over to grab her arm. “Get away from him now.”

He dragged her down just as an explosion went off, deafeningly loud. The birds scattered from the hedges in a wild flurry,
and Grant threw her to the ground, his own body over hers. The clear country air smelled of metallic gunpowder and new blood.

“
Diolain,
Grant, are you shot?” She ran her hands desperately over his back and shoulders, searching for any
wounds. He still breathed and seemed blessedly whole and unhurt—this time.

He raised himself as his gaze scanned over her, searching for wounds in turn. “It’s not me. For fuck’s sake, woman, what were
you thinking, going to him like that?”

Caroline peered over his shoulder to find that it was Mick O’Shea who had been shot. A puddle of bright red blood spread over
his chest, and he tilted precariously to one side but didn’t fall down. His eyes were wide with disbelief—just before they
went glassy and empty. The gun in his hand, still unfired, fell to the ground, and he toppled after it.

LaPlace still sat on his horse, the smoking pistol leveled in his grip. He shook his head and said, “So regretful. He was
useful for a time, but he had obviously lost his nerve. That botched shooting in the woods, where he missed you by mere inches,
Sir Grant, showed his use was quite at an end. The Irish fool.”

Grant leaped to his feet and pulled Caroline up with him. He gave her a hard shove and told her, “Run now!”

LaPlace tossed away his emptied pistol and drew a long dagger from his belt. He climbed down from his horse and stepped toward
Grant. “This has all become quite dull, monsieur. Let’s be at an end now.”

Caroline drew her own dagger and tossed it to Grant before she did as he suggested—she ran. But she didn’t go far. She couldn’t
leave Grant, not now. She caught up Mick’s gun and dashed to the end of the lane. She took what shelter she could behind the
hedge and tried to get a clear shot at LaPlace.

He and Grant circled each other warily, never taking their eyes off each other. The sunlight glinted off the
daggers they held in their hands. They were like two primitive warriors, each poised to make the killing strike. Only one
of them could prevail, and both had the fury of revenge behind them.

Caroline couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, LaPlace lunged forward with his knife raised to strike. He let out a shout, but Grant
just slid to the side, lithe as a dancer. Grant parried with his own blade and drove LaPlace back.

Grant kept driving him back with a furious series of thrusts and defensive strikes, until he landed a hard blow on LaPlace’s
arm. A line of blood appeared on LaPlace’s sleeve, and finally his cold mask cracked in anger. He lashed out with his foot
to kick Grant hard on the leg and tripped him, sending him falling hard to the ground.

But Grant seized LaPlace’s wounded arm as he went down and dragged him along. They fell heavily to the dirt and grappled.
The dust flew in a blinding cloud, but Caroline saw Grant go down, LaPlace’s arm raised to land a killing blow. Seeing the
knife only an inch from Grant’s face, she screamed—only to have the sound strangle in her throat as Grant twisted the Frenchman’s
arm sharply and pushed him off in one great heave. Blood and sweat flew with the dust in a nightmare whirlwind. Every time
Grant shouted, she wanted to cry.

Caroline watched them in terror as first one then the other seemed to get the upper hand. It was a horribly confusing scene,
a tangle of limbs and blows and shouted curses. She couldn’t see who was where, and her arm ached with holding the heavy gun.
She knelt on the ground with a frustrated sob.

Suddenly, Grant’s dagger thrust upward and landed deep in LaPlace’s chest. The Frenchman fell face-first
and lay in the dirt, very, very still as blood slowly pooled beneath him.

Grant lurched to his feet to stare down at his fallen foe. He carefully turned LaPlace over with his boot, and Caroline could
see LaPlace was truly dead this time. There would be no more miraculous risings for him. His eyes stared sightlessly up at
the sky, and a thin line of blood trickled from his mouth.

Grant’s face was completely blank, his eyes very dark. Caroline dropped the gun and ran to him, throwing her arms around his
neck. She buried her face in his shoulder and held him as hard as she could. He was alive!
They
were alive. It hardly seemed possible after this terror.

But then she saw that the shirt over his shoulder was stained with fresh blood.

“Grant,” she sobbed. “You’re hurt.”

She felt him kiss the top of her head. “It’s just the old wound. I think it reopened in the fight, nothing to worry about.”
His voice was cold and calm.

“Nothing to worry about?”

“Come, we have to get out of here.” Grant lifted Caroline back up into her saddle, his face still blank.

As she gathered up the reins, all the fear of the last few minutes faded into numbness. She watched as Grant quickly and efficiently
dragged the two bodies into the hedges and searched LaPlace’s saddlebags. After he retrieved a packet of papers, he sent the
horses galloping off alone down the lane. Then he swung up into his own saddle and led Caroline in the opposite direction—toward
Dublin.

T
he walls of Dublin looked as if they were preparing for a siege.

Caroline and Grant were halted just beyond the gates, held up at the end of a long line of people waiting to enter the city.
Carts filled with vegetables, eggs, milk, and squealing pigs destined for tomorrow morning’s markets jostled with fine carriages
and sedan chairs. No one was getting inside any faster than anyone else, and nerves and tempers were fraying. It didn’t help
that the evening sun beat down on them and the air was still, with no cooling breeze.

Caroline shifted the reins to one hand and patted her tired horse’s neck. The animal was nervous with the press of the crowds
and the tangle of loud voices, and so was she. She had forgotten what it felt like to be among so many people, bombarded with
the sounds and smells of the city, after Muirin Inish and the quiet country roads and towns.

And Dublin hadn’t been quite like this when she left. Things had been tense but quiet, the social season still
going but winding to a close. Usually by this time, most people had returned to their estates, and the city was silent.

Now it was busier than ever. Caroline shaded her eyes from the sun’s hard glare and studied the dark gray stone walls. More
cannons lined the parapets than usual, their ominous black mouths pointed on the throngs below, and more soldiers patrolled
those heights and guarded the gates. They were checking papers and examining the carts before they let anyone pass, which
slowed the lines down. Other soldiers worked on repairing the weak spots in the old walls, which had been crumbling since
long before the last rebellion. Now the men slapped on mortar and shoved new stones haphazardly into place.

Caroline felt sure if there was an invasion, the walls wouldn’t hold back the forces for even a minute.

She shifted in her saddle and adjusted her skirt over her knees. She had changed into her washed and mended dress and wore
her boy’s coat over it, not exactly a proper riding habit. But hopefully it would shock anyone they met less than her breeches
would have.

Her companion—well, Grant was sure to shock everyone immensely as soon as they saw that he was back in Dublin.