Duchess of Sin

by Laurel McKee

  “Lady Anna Blacknall, will you marry me and be my duchess?”

  Anna closed her eyes and held those words close to her heart. Their Graces the Duke and Duchess of Adair, the most loving couple in all of Ireland. “Yes. I most certainly will.”

  Epilogue

  Adair Court, August 1800

  Where is he? He should be home by now!” Anna stood on the front steps of Adair Court, peering along the sweep of the drive as if she could will her husband’s carriage to appear there. But there was nothing at all, just the hot summer sun beating down on the lush green fields.

  The child in her womb kicked hard, as if it could sense her worries. She pressed her hand to the swell of her belly and felt the imprint of a tiny foot on her palm. She wasn’t the only one anxious for Conlan to come home.

  “Soon, little one,” she whispered. “Your father will be home very soon.”

  Conlan had been in Dublin for weeks now, ever since word came of the Act of Parliament in London last month. That meant a vote for the Union in the Dublin Parliament was imminent, and Conlan had gone to Dublin to join his anti-Union allies in a final push to stop it. Anna couldn’t go, as she had grown so slow and ungainly with the baby, so tired in the summer’s heat, and so she was forced to stay home and do what she most hated—wait.

  Aside from hasty messages saying he was safe, she had heard nothing more for weeks. Until yesterday, when word came that the vote for Union had passed amid protests and violent riots. There were deaths and arrests, and news was maddeningly slow to reach Adair Court.

  “You should come in the house, Your Grace,” she heard Mrs. McEgan say behind her. “It’s much too hot for you to be standing about outside.”

  Anna glanced over her shoulder to smile at the woman who stood in the doorway. Mary McEgan had been very kind to come and sit with Anna every afternoon, to talk to her and distract her, even though she worried for her own husband. Mr. McEgan had gone to Dublin with Conlan, along with several other men of the Adair estate. Anna and Mary worked on plans for the new girls’ school at Adair Court, sewed baby clothes, played card games—and sat and waited.

  “I’m not tired, Mary,” Anna said.

  “Maybe not, but I would wager the wee one is, Your Grace! Come sit down and have some lemonade. They probably won’t be home today, and if they are, we’ll hear their arrival just as well from the sitting room.”

  Anna glanced once more down the empty drive and nodded. She didn’t have just herself to think about now; there was the baby. The future of Adair Court, and all of Ireland, no matter what happened in Dublin.

  She went back into the house and shut the door against the bright day. “If they were hurt or locked up in Kilmainham Gaol, we would have heard by now,” she said.

  Mary nodded. “Of course we would have. I’m sure they’re on their way home now.”

  They went back upstairs to Anna’s own little sitting room, a cool, pretty chamber decorated in shades of rose and cream, that looked out over the drive and the fields and road beyond. When Conlan arrived she would be able to see it from her window.

  Little Molly McEgan played with her dolls on the carpet under the gaze of Anna’s sisters from their portraits on the wall. Listening to Molly’s sweet, girlish murmurs and being surrounded by her familiar piles of books, estate ledgers, and pictures helped Anna feel a bit calmer. But she still kept a close watch out the window.

  “Perhaps you could read the letter again, Your Grace,” Mary suggested as she poured out glasses of lemonade from the refreshment tray. “That always makes you smile.”

  Anna laughed as she took the well-worn letter from her sewing basket. She kept them all in there where she could bring them out whenever she needed a bit of comfort. “I have memorized it entirely! I don’t really need to read it any longer.”

  She balanced the precious missive carefully in her hands. The thick packet was worn soft from reading, but she kept it close. It was three letters in one, from her mother and both her sisters in Lausanne. The pages were filled with wonderful accounts of their life in the pretty, lakeside town, news of Eliza’s new son and Caroline’s studies and her future wedding plans with Lord Hartley.

  After the two weddings at Killinan last winter—Anna’s grand affair filled with tiaras, lace, and roses, and Katherine’s small family-only ceremony—there had been weeks of celebrations and family parties. Then Katherine, now Madame Courtois, and her new husband departed to join Eliza and Will in Switzerland for a long honeymoon, taking Caroline with them to give her time to consider carefully the match with Hartley. Killinan was left in Anna’s care.

  They would probably still be there for months to come, and Anna missed them terribly. But the letters brought them close to her, and they were always in her heart.

  “I want to hear about Switzerland again!” Molly said eagerly. “About the ice skating. It sounds like so much fun.”

  Anna laughed. “I am sure they can’t be ice skating in August, even in Switzerland!” She pulled out an older letter from the winter and re-read it for Molly and Rose, distracting them all with tales of snow and ice, sledding and skating, until the sun began to set outside.

  “I should probably be getting home to see about Mother’s dinner,” Mary said. “And you need to eat, too, Your Grace. You need to keep your strength up for the baby. I’m sure the men will return tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I know you’re right, Rose. I fear we’re going to need all our strength very soon,” Anna said, thinking of the impending Union and all it would mean for their country. “Won’t you and Molly come back…”

  Suddenly, she heard a clamor from outside. She pushed herself from the chair and hurried to the window, with Molly and Mary close behind her. From along the drive came a sight she had been praying to see for days—Conlan coming home.

  And he was not alone. It looked as if the entire estate accompanied him in a triumphal parade. Tenants walked alongside the carriage bearing torches, while some of them had even unhitched the horses from their traces and drew the vehicle themselves.

  Anna pushed the window open to hear the crowd singing the old Irish song The Cliffs of Doneen. She felt the sting of tears in her eyes, and her heart pounded with pride for her husband and her country. Even now, with the last illusion of Irish freedom gone, they were all united. They would not give up.

  As the carriage drew to a halt at the front steps of the castle, Anna turned and hurried from the room and down the stairs. As she pulled open the door, the baby stirred again as if to join in the excitement.

  Amid the singing and cheers, Conlan climbed down from the carriage. He looked tired, his eyes circled in purple shadows, but he was unbowed. He looked up at her, smiling but somber. He would go on fighting, and so would she. They were truly as one now, dedicated to each other, their family, and their people.

  Anna ran down the steps and into his welcoming arms. He held her very close. “You’re home at last,” she cried.

  “Home at last,” he answered. He kissed her forehead, her lips. They were together again at last. “But I come in defeat. The final vote for the Union has passed.”

  Anna shook her head and gestured toward the crowd behind them, still singing and cheering, welcoming their chieftain home. “They do not see it as defeat, Conlan! They see that you fought for them, that you will always fight for them. We will fight for them.”

  Conlan laughed and kissed her again. “My fierce cailleach.”

  “I am fierce, because you have shown me how to be,” she answered. “Together, here, we can do anything.”

  “Anna,” he said. “Is tu mo ghra.” I love you.

  “Is tu mo ghra,” she whispered. “Always.”

  Don’t miss the final book in

  Laurel McKee’s

  Daughters of Erin trilogy!

  Please turn this page

  for a preview of

  Lady of Seduction

  Available in June 2011.

  Chapter One

  Off the C
oast of Ireland, 1804

  This was not how Caroline Blacknall expected to die.

  Not that she had ever thought about it very much. Living took up too much time and energy to think about dying. But she would have thought it would be quietly, in her bed, after a long life of scholarship and travel and family. Not drowning at the age of twenty-one on a crazy, ill-advised pursuit.

  Caroline clung to the slippery mast as a cold wave washed over her and lightning pierced the black sky over her head. The little fishing boat rocked and twisted under the force of the howling wind. Waves crashed over its hull, higher and stronger every time, nearly swamping them completely.

  She couldn’t hear the shouts of the crew any longer, or even her own screams. All she could hear was deafening thunder and the crash of those encroaching waves.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and held even tighter to the mast. She dug her ragged, broken nails into the sodden wood. A splinter pierced her skin, but she didn’t mind the pain, or the bitter cold wind that tore through her wet cloak. It told her she was still alive, although probably not for much longer.

  Behind her closed eyes, she saw the faces of her sisters, Eliza and Anna, saw her mother’s gentle smile. She felt the tiny hands of her nieces and nephews wrapped around her shoulders, heard her stepdaughter Mary’s laughter. Were they all lost to her forever?

  No! She had just begun to live again after her husband’s death a year ago. She had just begun to find her own purpose in the world. That was what this voyage was about, putting the past to rest and moving into the future. She couldn’t give up now. Blacknalls did not surrender!

  She opened her eyes and twisted her head around to see the crew of the little boat scurrying and sliding over the deck as they desperately tried to save the vessel and themselves. They hadn’t wanted to take on a passenger, especially a woman, but she had begged and bribed until they gave in. No one but fishermen ever went to the distant, forbidding Muirin Inish.

  She wagered they would never take a “cursed” woman aboard again, if they all made it through this.

  Caroline tilted her head back to stare up into the boiling sky. It couldn’t be much past noon, but that sky was black as pitch, black as midnight. Only jagged flashes of lightning broke through the gloom, lighting up the thick clouds and the turbulent sea.

  When they set out from the coast of Donegal that morning, it was gray and misty. One of the sailors muttered about the absence of seabirds, the silence of the water, but despite these supposed ill omens they set sail. Birds couldn’t stand in the way of commerce, and Caroline refused to be left behind. She had traveled too far to turn away now, when her destination was at last within her grasp.

  She had even glimpsed the famous pink granite cliffs of Muirin Inish, so close yet still so far, when those black clouds closed in. It was all much too fast.

  Was he there somewhere? she wondered. Did he watch the storm from those very cliffs?

  A crack sounded above her, loud as a whiplash, and she looked up to find that the mast, her one lifeline, cracked. Horrified, she watched it slowly, oh so slowly, topple toward the deck.

  Caroline felt paralyzed, captured, and she couldn’t move. But somehow she managed to throw herself backward, unpeeling her numb hands from the wood.

  She moved just in time. The broken mast drove down into the beleaguered deck, cutting a wound in the boat that swiftly bled more salt water. It twisted onto its side, and Caroline was thrown into the waiting sea.

  She had thought it was cold before, but it was not. This was cold, a freezing knife thrust into her very heart that stole her breath away. The waves closed over her head, dragging her down.

  Somehow she ripped away the ties of her cloak and kicked free of its suffocating folds. She had learned to swim as a child, lovely summer days with her sisters at the lake near their home at Killinan Castle. She blessed those days now as she summoned all her strength, pushed away the numb cold, and swam hard for the surface.

  Her head broke through the water and she sucked in a deep breath of air. The hulk of the floundering boat was far away, a pale slash in the inky sea. The rocky cliffs of shore beckoned through the darkness, seemingly very far away.

  Caroline kicked toward it, anyway, moving painfully slowly through the waves. Her arms were sore and terribly weak; it took every ounce of her will to keep lifting them, to not give in to the restful allure of the deep. She knew if she couldn’t keep moving she would be lost, and she couldn’t give up.

  A piece of wood drifted past her, a section of the broken mast. She grabbed onto it and hauled herself up onto its support. It floated toward shore, taking her with it, and all she could do was hang on tightly.

  Once it had been fire that separated her from him. Burning, scarring fire and the acrid sear of smoke. Now it was water, cold and just as burning. It felt like the primal wrath of the ancient Irish gods she loved studying so much.

  Caroline pressed her cheek to the wood of her little raft and closed her eyes. “This shouldn’t be happening to me,” she whispered. It was utterly absurd. She was a respectable widow, a bluestocking who preferred quiet hours in the library to anything else. She was not adventurous and bold like her sisters. How did she find herself caught in a perilous adventure straight out of one of Anna’s beloved romantic novels?

  But she knew how it was she came here. Because of him, Grant Dunmore. A man she should have been happy to never see again. They seemed fated to brave the elements together through their own folly.

  Caroline felt something brush against her legs, something surprisingly solid. She opened her eyes to find she was not far from the rocky shore of Muirin Inish. She tried to kick toward it, but her legs had become totally numb and refused to work.

  She sobbed in terrible frustration. The tide was catching at her, trying to drag her back out to sea, even as land was so tantalizingly near!

  Above the wind, she heard a humanlike shout. Now she was surely hallucinating. But it came again, a rough call. “Hold on, miss! I’ve got you.”

  Someone grabbed her aching arm and dragged her up and off the mast. She cried out at the loss of her one solid reality and tried to cling to it, yet her rescuer was relentless. He wrapped a hard, muscled arm around her waist and pulled her with him as he swam for the shore.

  Caroline’s chest ached, as if a great weight pressed down on her, and dark spots danced before her eyes. She couldn’t lose consciousness, not now so close to redemption! She struggled to stay awake, to hold on.

  Her rescuer carried them to shore at last. He held her in his arms, tight against his chest, as he ran over the rough, stony beach. Caroline was vaguely aware that she was pressed to naked skin, warm on her cold cheek, like hot satin over iron strength. His heartbeat pounded in her ear, quick and powerful, alive. It made her feel alive, too, her heart stirring back into being.

  He laid her down on a patch of wet sand, gently rolling her onto her side. “Diolain, don’t be dead,” he shouted. “Don’t you dare be dead!”

  His voice was hoarse from the salt water, but she could hear the aristocratic English accent under that roughness. What was an Englishman doing on an isolated rock like Muirin Inish? What was she doing there? She couldn’t even remember, not now.

  He yanked at the tangled drawstring of her plain muslin gown, ripping it free to ease the ruined fabric from her shoulders. Through her chemise he pounded his fist between her shoulder blades, and she choked out the sea-water that clogged her lungs. The pain in her chest eased and she dragged in a deep breath.

  “Thank God,” her rescuer muttered.

  Caroline turned slowly onto her back as she reached up to rub the water from her aching eyes. The man knelt beside her, and the first things she noticed were the stark blue-black tattoos etched on his sun-browned skin. A circle of twisted Celtic knotwork around his upper arm, a small Irish cross on his chest. Dark, wet hair lay heavy on his lean shoulders.

  Dazed and fascinated, she reached up to trace that Celtic cross with her f
ingertip. The elaborate design blurred before her eyes.

  He suddenly caught her hand tightly in his. “Caroline?” he said. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  She slowly raised her gaze to his face, focusing on those extraordinary golden-brown eyes. She had seen those eyes in her dreams for four long years.

  And now she remembered exactly why she had come to Muirin Inish.

  “I’m here to see you, of course, Grant,” she said. Then the world turned black.

  THE DISH

  Where authors give you the inside scoop!

  From the desk of Kate Perry

  Dear Reader,

  In going through my desk, I found personal case notes from Rick Ramirez, the hero of TEMPTED BY FATE, Book Three in the Guardians of Destiny series…

  From the files of Rick Ramirez,

  Homicide Inspector,

  San Francisco Police Department

  There’s something in the air, and it’s not good.

  In fact, its been stinking up the city for over a year—just about the time I first met Gabrielle Sansouci Chin, in fact. Although I was investigating a homicide at the time, so maybe I was inclined to be suspicious.

  Gabrielle struck me odd, and it didn’t help my image of her when she took up with Rhys Llewellyn. He may be an internationally respected businessman, but I can tell he has secrets—dark ones. So does Gabrielle, although as hard as I try I can’t seem to uncover them.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, my close friend Carrie Woods got in over her head with the wrong people several months ago. Fortunately, she had her muscle-bound boyfriend Max Prescott to watch over her. That didn’t stop her from getting mixed up in one of the strangest deaths I’d ever seen in my career as a homicide inspector for the SFPD.