Duchess of Sin (6 page)

Those eyes focused on her and a faint smile was on his perfectly shaped lips. It made her cheeks feel too warm in the cold
breeze, made her want to laugh and turn away. Looking at him was like looking at the sun—too fine and heady for every day.

A vision flashed through her mind, erasing for a split second the handsome man before her and the laughing crowd all around
them. She saw a dark man, a Hades rather than an Apollo, his moss-green eyes intense as he reached for her. She felt his warm
breath on her face, felt the slide of his hands on her bare skin and the spark of excitement deep inside of her.

Cailleach,
he called her. Witch. But he was the one with magical powers, drawing her out of her bright, hectic world into the darkness
of his. The terrible thing was, she liked it. Far too much. Something in him called out to her, and she wanted to run back
for more.

Anna shook her head hard. She could
not
go back to Adair, to his club and whatever turmoil he fermented there. She had enough of darkness two years ago, and enough
of other people’s ideals that proved to be ashes and death in the end. Enough of the violence that lay hidden down inside
of her. She wanted only sunlight now, frivolity and forgetfulness. At least that was what she told herself, over and over
until it was true.

She peeked at Grant Dunmore from under her veil. He was laughing with Jane and Gianni now, the merriment making the elegantly
drawn angles of his face seem lit from within. Maybe he
was
what she needed. She had to marry someone, and he was a good choice.

“And what of you, Lady Anna?” he said. Even his voice seemed full of light, like rich summer honey, smooth and sparkling.
Not rough, like Adair’s. Not touched with the wildness of Ireland. “Your friend says she is brave enough to dance with me.
Are you? Or did I trod on your feet last time?”

Anna laughed, remembering the way she glided down the dance floor with him at the Overtons’ ball. “Oh, Sir Grant, you are
one of the finest dancers in Dublin, and I am sure you know it. I was quite the envy of the ballroom.”

“Oh, no, Lady Anna,” he said softly, his gaze almost like a gentle caress as it moved over her face. “
I
was the envy of every man there. I know there were many who were aching to call me out for dancing with you twice and taking
you away from them.”

Anna laughed. “Well, I don’t want to be the cause of any violence, Sir Grant. We should only dance once at the Fitzwalters’
then.”

“I shall count the hours until then,” he said, and something in his charming smile made even the trite compliment blush-worthy.

Jane watched them with her own amused smile, twirling the ribbons of her bonnet in her hand. “Perhaps you can fill those hours
by telling us the news from Queen’s County, Sir Grant, since you have just returned from your estate there. I heard there
was some new unrest in the
area. Should we all flee for England again, as we did two years ago?”

Anna glanced sharply at Grant. New unrest? But things had seemed so quiet in the last year or so, aside from those silly brawls
between pro- and anti-Unionists. At Killinan Castle, the fields were tended again and the house full of parties. The wounds
left in the lush, green landscapes by battles and fires were healing. The past was hidden under laughter and pretty clothes.
And if there was a strange tension that never quite went away—a wary, shrill anxiety—that could be ignored. Sometimes.

But if true violence burst forth again, real warfare and bloodshed, that could not be ignored. And she feared it could not
be healed again.

Grant’s jaw tightened, but he just gave his usual charming smile. A smile could hide so much. “I doubt flight will be necessary,
Lady Cannondale. It’s true there were some small disturbances at my estate I had to look into, but it turned out to be just
the usual Irish nonsense. Boys dressed up as ghosts trying to set fire to barns and haystacks. Someone splashing the words
‘No Union’ across my portico in red paint. A nuisance, to be sure—that marble came all the way from Siena. But it won’t happen
again.”

“Damned Whiteboys,” one of the other men muttered. “You’d have thought the Irish would have learned their lesson two years
ago.”

“They’ll never learn,” another man said. “They’re like monkeys—just keep doing the same things over and over, battering against
the bars that are there for their own good.”

“Should’ve hanged the lot of them two years ago,” the
first man added. “Pitt was a fool, letting Robert Emmet and Colonel O’Callaghan escape to France to keep spreading their poison.
No wonder the peasants here keep acting up. I hope you put a stop to that, Dunmore, before it can grow.”

A muscle ticked along Grant’s jaw, and his smile turned frosty. “It won’t happen again, I can assure you.”

Jane suddenly snapped her fingers, cutting off their words. “How bloodthirsty you have all become! It’s quite ruining my fine
afternoon. I command you to speak of something else, something amusing.”

The men laughed ruefully, apologizing and shuffling around as the conversation turned to horse races. But Anna couldn’t get
rid of the sour, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The cruelty wasn’t over; it was never over. It was only hidden by
a thin layer of glitter and laughter. Violence was always on the edge of erupting, and she couldn’t bear to be caught in it
again. She had been both its victim and its perpetrator, and she wanted only to be done with it.

Perhaps she
should
go to see Eliza in Lausanne. She heard it was quiet and pretty there among the snowy mountains and meadows. But if United
Irish ideas were still spreading, Eliza was surely a part of it, and there could be no real peace there.

“I should find my mother,” Anna said softly.

“Will I see you at the Napiers’ card party tonight, Anna?” Jane said.

“Of course. If you all will excuse me…”

“Let me go with you to find her, Lady Anna,” Grant said. “You look very pale. Are you unwell?”

“I am quite well, thank you, Sir Grant,” she answered,
trying to smile at him through that cold feeling. “But I would be glad of the company.”

He turned his horse with hers, and they moved back to the wider lane, leaving Jane with Gianni and her other admirers. The
crowd had thinned a bit as the light grew pinker and the promenade hour drew to a close, but there were still several carriages
rolling slowly along. Anna did not immediately see her mother’s equipage among them.

“I am sorry if I upset you, Lady Anna,” Grant said. “I should not have spoken of what happened on my estate. It was nothing
at all, I assure you. Just a bit of mischief, easily dealt with.”

“A bit of mischief,” Anna murmured. “Yet is that not how the Uprising began? A bit of mischief that got out of hand?”

“Those were terrible days indeed,” he said gently. “And I am more sorry than I can say if you were affected by them, Lady
Anna. It can’t happen again, though. England has learned not to underestimate the Irish propensity for violence, and the military
force here is twice what it was. Control has been tightened, and soon we will be a true part of Great Britain.”

Anna smiled at him and nodded, but she had her doubts. Some people thought the Union would erase their troubles in one stroke.
Yet how could that be, when the troubles ran so deep? They were not the same nation, no matter how it was worded in the Act
of Union.

“I feel quite safe in Dublin, Sir Grant, I assure you,” she answered.

“And Dublin could not do without you, Lady Anna,” he said. “The ballrooms would be quite desolate if you were not there to
brighten them.”

Anna laughed. “Oh, Sir Grant, I am sure you say that to all the ladies.”

“No, I assure you I do not.” He leaned from his saddle to reach for her hand, gently unwinding her fingers from the reins.
He raised them to his lips for a lingering kiss. “I think there is no other lady in Dublin quite like you.”

She laughed again, but deep inside she felt an odd tinge of disquiet. Though flirtatious, there was nothing improper in his
words, nothing Anna had not heard a hundred times before. Men always made such compliments; they were empty little baubles.
Yet as Sir Grant gazed at her over their joined hands, she glimpsed a look in his golden brown eyes she could not quite define.
A sort of calculation, perhaps, a speculation. Something deeper than most men.

Then it was gone. It vanished in an instant to be replaced by that polite, charming smile.

Anna took her hand back and wrapped the leather reins over her palm. “I am sure my mother would say there is no other lady
in Dublin who causes as much trouble as me!”

Sir Grant sat up straight in his saddle. He gave her a rueful half-smile. “Ah, but what is life without trouble, Lady Anna?
Very dull.”

Anna glanced down one of the pathways in search of her mother’s carriage. She wanted nothing more than to go home, to be quiet
and alone and not have anyone look at her. Everyone was always watching, watching.

Yet her wish was not to be met just yet. Her gaze collided with that of another horseman halfway down the path—a dark green
stare that she remembered very well.

Adair.
Her heart thudded in her chest, and she couldn’t hold back a shocked gasp. What was he doing here, at
the promenade hour when all respectable society was at St. Stephen’s Green? She had never seen him here before, though his
name was bandied about often enough in political circles.

Was he—could he be here because of her? Had he truly seen through her disguise at the Olympian Club?

But even as that thought flashed through her mind, she knew it was foolish. If he wanted to confront her, blackmail her, he
would not choose to do so here. And why would a duke blackmail
her
? Why would he even care what a silly debutante did?

She took a deep, steadying breath, forcing her hands to relax on the reins as her horse shifted restlessly. The fact remained
that he
was
here, and he was the least foolish man she had ever met. If he did not yet know that she was the lady in red, which wasn’t
very likely, he soon would. Especially if he kept staring at her so intently.

She peeked at him again from beneath her veil and found that he
did
still watch her. His face was shadowed now by the brim of his hat, the play of dark and light making the rugged angles of
his high cheekbones and jaw even more chiseled. A trace of black beard shadowed his cheeks, and his hair was midnight black
along the nape of his neck. He even wore black, fine wool and leather, and Anna thought again of Hades, thundering up from
the Underworld to snatch poor, unsuspecting Persephone from the sunlight.

He raised his hat to her in a salute, giving her a little half-bow from his saddle. His lips parted in a grin, and she saw
that he did know. He knew, and it seemed he was laughing at her.

A burst of temper flared through her, hot and sharp.
She longed to spur her horse forward, to snatch that crop from his hand and bring it down over his dark Irish head! How dare
he laugh at her, after—after…

After that kiss in the conservatory. That wild, primitive kiss that left her so shaken. And, yes, left her longing for more.
She had never found such wondrous forgetfulness as she had in those moments in his arms. Maybe after she whipped him for laughing,
she would bury her fingers in his hair and drag him against her for another taste.

She touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips, just under the edge of her veil, and his smile faded. His expression darkened,
and his eyes narrowed on her mouth. Slowly, deliberately, she licked her lips again.

“Lady Anna,” Grant said, drawing in his horse next to hers. “Shall we…”

His words cut off abruptly as he glanced down the lane to where her attention was focused. She sensed him stiffening, his
hands tightening on the reins.

Adair, too, grew tense, the sensual, shimmering haze that seemed to linger between them dissipating in an instant. His stare
snapped to Grant, his fist opening and closing as if he clutched a dagger. She would not be surprised if he was quite proficient
in a knife fight—or a fight of any sort.

“Do you know my cousin, Lady Anna?” Grant said tightly.

“Your cousin?” Anna said, shocked. If ever there were two men less similar than Adair and Grant Dunmore—less likely to be
kinsmen—she had never met them. The sophisticated center of Ascendancy Society that was Sir Grant and the wild black Irishman
Adair?

Surely not. Grant had to be speaking of someone else along the pathway. Yet the lane was nearly deserted now.

“The Duke of Adair,” Grant said. Ice dripped from every syllable of the grand title. “He is watching you.”

Anna looked back to Adair. He seemed to watch not her but Grant, or rather he watched the two of them together. He had relaxed,
his black-gloved hands loose on the reins, a strange, humorless smile on his lips. Yet even across the distance, she could
feel the heat of those green eyes, glowing with fury.

It was obviously not a happy family connection.

“I have met him once or twice,” she said. She could certainly never tell the circumstances of those meetings, in a burned-out
stable amid the fury of the Uprising, and in a deserted conservatory at the scandalous Olympian Club. She did not even want
to think of them herself, her two darkest, truest moments. “But I would not say I know him. We have not been formally introduced.”

“Then we should correct that oversight, Lady Anna, for I believe his ducal estate is not far from Killinan Castle,” Grant
said, suddenly spurring his horse forward. He reached out to grasp Anna’s bridle, as if he would force her to follow.

Anna tugged hard at her reins. “What do you mean?”

He glanced back at her, those golden eyes burning. “I thought every lady longed to make the acquaintance of a duke.”

“Not
that
duke,” Anna muttered. “And I am not sure why you would want to speak to him, either, Sir Grant. It’s obvious you don’t care
for each other.”