Lady of Seduction Read Free Page A

most handsome man in Dublin. He was a wild, long-haired, tattooed islander now, his gorgeous face scarred
     by that fire, his eyes hard. Whatever she had once glimpsed in them, whatever connection she once imagined, was gone.
    And she had no way off Muirin Inish.
    Caroline eased back the bedclothes and carefully slid her legs off the edge of the mattress. She felt battered and weak after
     fighting with the sea, her muscles sore, but shemade herself climb down from the high bedstead to the floor. She wore a strange nightgown that was much too large for her,
     a voluminous tent of white flannel that flapped over her hands and pooled around her feet. Those feet were bare, the scarred
     wooden floor cold under her soles.
    Her head spun with dizziness as she stood upright, and she clung to the carved bedpost until it passed. Her chamber was large
     and dim, lit only by the fire in the stone grate, and it was full of old, heavy, dark wood furniture. It smelled slightly
     dusty and stale, as if it was not much used.
    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 sensibleas she thought. But she didn’t feel sensible right now, when he was so close to her.
    “You put your life at risk, Caroline.”