Duchess of Sin (34 page)

She managed to push herself up, her head spinning, just in time to see Grant punch Conlan in the face.

For an instant, Anna could only stare, stunned. It was so entirely unreal that she was sure it must be a hallucination brought
on by her fall. But it was all too real.

All Grant’s calm inscrutability in the chamber had vanished in a raw, primitive fury. As Anna scrambled to her feet, Grant
and Conlan went tumbling down the steps locked in combat.

“Stop this right now!” Anna shouted, struggling to be heard over Caroline’s screams and the shouts of the crowd gathering
around them. Dublin was always a rowdy city, but a duke, a baronet, and an earl’s daughter in a brawl was not seen every day.
The tale would be known everywhere by sunset, but Anna couldn’t worry about that now.

She had to keep the two stupid men from killing each other.

“
Diolain!
” Conlan shouted. He had the upper hand, holding Grant’s arm pinned behind his back. But a livid bruise bloomed on his jaw
where Grant had punched him, and Grant seemed to be possessed by some demon of fury. He drove his elbow back into Conlan’s
ribs and called out hoarse, incoherent words that no lady should hear.

The onlookers were no help. They only kept shouting encouragement of more violence. A few fights even broke out amongst
them.

Anna snatched the book from under Caroline’s arm and cried, “Help me, Caro!”

Caroline nodded numbly and followed Anna into the fray.

Dodging flying fists, Anna cracked Grant over the head with the book. She rained down blows on him until he fell back. Caroline
seized him by the arm and dragged him down the steps with a burst of strength as Anna fell to her knees by Conlan.

His eyes were nearly black with fury, and he lunged after his retreating cousin as if to finish Grant off, once and for all.
Anna threw her arms around his shoulders, using all her strength to hold him back.

“No more, Conlan!” she cried. On the steps below them, Caroline had twisted her fist hard into Grant’s cravat and seemed to
be lecturing him. He, like Conlan, looked mutinously angry, but he stayed where he was. The crowd, sensing the drama was over,
slowly dispersed in search of other diversions.

Anna felt out of breath and exhausted. The fight had lasted only minutes, a sudden firestorm of murderous temper, but she
felt as if she had been battling for hours.

“Please, Conlan, no more,” she begged. “No more.”

He tore out of her grasp and spun around, as if he would shout at her, too. But something in her appearance—her hat lost,
hair pulled from its pins, and face dirty from rolling around on the steps—made him freeze.

“You’re hurt,” he said hoarsely. He reached out and gently touched her lip. His finger came away smeared with blood.

She swiped her hand over the spot and found a cut. She hadn’t even felt it in the furor of the fight. “Blast,” she whispered.
Then she caught sight of her blue velvet sleeve, smeared with cabbage. “Double blast! This was my favorite jacket.”

“
Diolain!
” Conlan shouted as he spun back toward Grant. He stood up straight, his arms spread wide. “You’ve been scheming to get me
for years, Dunmore. Well, here I am. Face me like a man. Don’t involve innocent women in your villainy.”

“You stole everything from me,” Grant called back. He shook away Caroline’s grasp to face Conlan squarely. His handsome face
was twisted with rage. “Everything that should have been mine. But you had best beware, cousin. Your day of reckoning is coming
fast. Your time is ending.”

“And you’re lurking in the wings, waiting to swoop in and claim what is
yours
?” Conlan said with a sneer. “The estate you couldn’t get by treachery? My fortune? Maybe even my woman.”

Grant’s stare raked over Anna with palpable contempt. “After your dirty Irish hands have touched her? I don’t think so.”

With a roar, Conlan lunged toward Grant. Anna seized his coat and yanked him back just in time, almost sending them both toppling
to the ground.

“Heed my words,
cousin,
” Grant said. “Your time is over. This time I will win.” He stalked off down the street, disappearing into the rushing crowds
as Caroline stared after him angrily.

Anna suddenly felt every bump and bruise, every touch of the cold wind. The sudden violence made her think too much of ’98,
the nearness of rape and death. She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling.

“Anna, don’t cry, colleen,” Conlan said. He gently touched her arm, but she shook him away. “It is over.”

“Of course it’s not over,” she whispered. “You heard him.”

“Grant? He’s nothing. I fought him before. I’ll win again.”

Anna shook her head. “It isn’t just him, though, is it?”

“Your Grace?” someone called. “What happened here? They said in the gallery there was a fight.”

Anna turned to see Monsieur Courtois, Caroline’s drawing teacher, hurrying down the steps toward them. Jane was right behind
him, her usual expression of fashionably cynical amusement replaced by tense concern.

“Grant Dunmore thought he would start something with me here,” Conlan answered. “But he’s gone now.”

“Monsieur Courtois,” Anna said. She was amazed that her voice sounded steady at all. “I didn’t know you were interested in
politics.” She did remember that the Frenchman knew Conlan, though. They had met the night that Conlan was attacked next to
the river.

Had Grant sent those men, too? Her head was spinning, and she swayed dizzily. She didn’t fall, though, because Caroline rushed
to catch her arm.

“Lady Caroline,” Monsieur Courtois said in surprise. “I didn’t know you and Lady Anna planned to attend Parliament today.
Is your mother here?”

“She’s not interested in politics, monsieur,” said Caroline. “Now I see she was quite wise. Politics are perilous to one’s
health.”

Jane took a handkerchief from her reticule and pressed it gently to Anna’s lip. “Politics are a necessary evil, Lady Caroline,”
she said. “It is
politicians
one must be wary of. Did Grant do this?”

“I was merely a bystander who got in the way,” Anna said. “He ran into me on his way to Conlan. He wanted to kill Conlan.
I could see it in his eyes.”

“Let me take you home,” said Jane. “My carriage is right here.”

Anna glanced at Conlan. She had so many questions. It seemed wrong to let him out of her sight. But he gave her a decisive
nod. “Go with Lady Cannondale, colleen. You and your sister should be at home.”

“And stay there with the doors locked and pistols at the ready?” Caroline said wryly.

“If you are so inclined,” Conlan answered. “I have a feeling you would be a formidable shot, Lady Caroline.”

“But what of you?” Anna protested. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

“Monsieur Courtois will walk with me,” said Conlan.

Anna uncertainly examined the elegant drawing teacher. “Monsieur Courtois?”

“I assure you, Lady Anna, I am armed with more than a paintbrush,” he said.

“Come with me now, Anna,” Jane said, tugging at Anna’s sleeve. “We should be out of the cold. Plus, you rather reek of old
cabbage.”

Anna lifted her sleeve to her nose for a careful sniff. She did indeed stink, one more indignity to add to the day. She nodded
and let Jane lead her and Caroline down the street to her carriage. Conlan and Monsieur Courtois set off in the opposite direction,
talking together intently.

Anna wanted so much to know what they said, to know all of what was going on here. But she was also suddenly very weary. She
slumped back onto the fine silk cushions as Jane’s carriage jolted into motion.

“I’m sorry I’m getting your pretty carriage dirty,” Anna murmured.

Jane waved her apology away. “I’m just glad you are not hurt. Whatever happened out there?”

Caroline answered. “Grant Dunmore attacked the duke and knocked him down on the steps. Then Anna hit him, Dunmore that is,
over the head with my book and drove him away like a rabid dog. By the way, I seem to have lost that book. And my spectacles.
But it was worth it. It was actually rather exciting.”

Jane laughed as Anna protested, “It wasn’t quite as simple as that. I was shocked by Sir Grant’s sudden rage.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Jane said. “He is a man full of hidden darkness. I just fear we have only glimpsed the beginning
of it all. You should be on your guard, Anna.”

“Should I take to carrying a pistol?”

“It couldn’t hurt.” Jane opened her reticule to display a tiny, pearl-handled firearm. “You never know what can happen in
these dangerous days.”

“Is that real?” Caroline asked in avid curiosity.

“Of course,” Jane said. She took out the gun and pressed it into Anna’s hand. “You should keep it. I have others at home.”

Anna tested its dainty weight on her palm. It was almost as light as a fan, yet was somehow reassuring. As Jane said—these
were dangerous days.

“That was quite a scene, Sir Grant.”

Grant, stalking past an open carriage door on Fishamble Street, was brought up short by the slurred words. The anger that
overcame him when he saw Adair put his arm around Anna Blacknall had died down to simmering
embers, but they still sizzled with the old, old injustices. He couldn’t even think straight anymore, and it made him foolishly
lose his temper and show his hand too soon. Now word of his breach would spread over the whole city.

Scowling, he peered into the dark depths of the carriage. George Hayes sat there, a silver flask in his hand as usual. The
ridiculous sot was so lost in debt that he would do any dirty deed for money, yet he laughed at Grant.

“It was an unfortunate lapse,” Grant said coldly. “It won’t happen again.”

“I should say not,” said George. He took another swig from his flask. “Here, get in. I’ll drive you home.”

“I would rather walk.”

George’s bloated face turned from tipsily genial to furious in a flash. “After what you just did, Sir Grant, brawling like
a common prizefighter in the street, you have no cause to look down on
me
! Now get in. We have to talk about what action to take now.”

“Did Lord Ross send you?”

“Just get in.”

Grant glanced down the street. Everyone seemed to be scurrying on their own errands, paying him no attention even with his
bruised face and dirty coat. But a carriage turned the corner, one with the Cannondale crest on the shiny black door. Jane—his
former lover, and, as he had just discovered from one of his spies in Parliament—a traitorous bitch. He climbed into George’s
carriage before she could see him and slammed the door behind him.

George offered him the flask, and Grant shook his head in disgust. George shrugged and gulped down the last of it. The interior
of the carriage reeked of old upholstery, brandy, and rotten cabbage.

“It doesn’t matter who sent me. We have to act now,” George said. “The final vote on Union is very soon. We have the numbers
on our side now, but that could change too easily. Adair has been a thorn in our side too long.”

All my life,
Grant thought. Adair had been his nemesis all his life. But that would end soon. Even if he had to ally with scoundrels like
George Hayes to achieve it. “What are you saying?”

“Adair seems to know everything we’re doing before we do. He frightens men off so even bribes don’t work on them. And every
time someone is sent to finish him off, he walks away unscathed. It has to stop. Too bad you didn’t finish that fight by bashing
his ugly Fenian head on the marble steps.”

Grant flexed his bruised hand. He had wanted to do that with a ferocity that shocked him. “He doesn’t have to be dead for
me to get what I want.”

“A man like that? Of course he has to be dead. Come, Dunmore. You want Adair Court; I want Killinan Castle. My lovely cousin
has been unlucky in her children. Eliza and her damned United Irishman, and now Anna wasting her considerable charms on the
likes of Adair. Caroline is just a useless bluestocking. But poor Katherine seems to love them. Emotions can be useful. They
can be used against people when it’s most needed.”

Grant stared down at his bloody knuckles and thought of Caroline Blacknall. She was small, slender, so young, but she had
been so fierce as she dragged him out of the fight. Like Athena, riding into war.

Yet her brown eyes were so soft as she looked at the
Chronicle of Kildare;
as if she understood its significance.

“I won’t involve ladies in this,” Grant muttered.

“Even a lady like Anna Blacknall, who threw you over for an Irishman?” George said with a drunken laugh. “She’s already involved
up to her beautiful neck. Now, do you want to defeat Adair or not?”

Grant slammed his fist down on the seat, blotting out the image of Caroline Blacknall’s dark eyes and pretty smile. “I want
to take him down.”