Lady of Seduction Read Online Free PDF

eyes, Caroline caught up the brush and tried to sweep the spilled ashes into a pile. She only
     seemed to scrub them deeper into the threadbare old hearth rug.
    “Obviously I am hopeless at this,” Caroline said. She pushed her tangled brown hair back from her eyes and stared down ruefully
     at the mess. “I certainly don’t want to be the cause of trouble for you.”
    The maid laughed and took the brush away to start sweeping herself. Caroline saw that she was quite young, surely no more
     than fifteen, with a very freckled nose, blue eyes, and dark red curls escaping from under her crooked cap. A dark smudge
     marred her cheek, and her apron was dusty.
    The efficient housekeeper at Caroline’s girlhood home at Killinan Castle would never let a maid like that out of the kitchens,
     but she had a nice smile and seemed so
normal.
After the shipwreck and meeting Grant again, Caroline craved a bit of normal.
    The girl shook her head. “There’s not many who’ll come work here at the castle, miss. They’re all scared of the master, of
     the ghosts. Mrs. McCann has to take what she can get, even if it’s only me.”
    “Have you seen any ghosts here, Miss…?”
    “I’m Maeve, miss, Maeve Kinley, and I haven’t seen any such thing.” Maeve seemed rather disappointed about that. “I’ve heard
     things, though, especially since poor Bessie died.”
    “Bessie?”
    Maeve frowned, and for the first time, a shadow flickered over her open expression. “I shouldn’t have said anything about
     that.”
    Caroline was most intrigued. This place seemed so full of mysteries and tales, even more than one of the romantic books Anna
     loved, which boasted dark foreign villains, ruthless smugglers, virtuous heroines, and crumbling ruins by the dozens.
    “You can tell me,” Caroline whispered. “I won’t tell a soul. Surely if I’m to be trapped here until the storm clears, I should
     know of any ghosts to beware?”
    Maeve glanced at her uncertainly. “I don’t think it’s ghosts you need to beware—not
just
ghosts, anyway. And if Bessie’s spirit is here, I’m sure she wouldn’t hurt anyone. She’d just be sad, miss.”
    “Who is, or was, Bessie then?”
    “She was housemaid here before me. She was the daughter of a farmer from the mainland, and she was lonely when she came here
     to work. She would come into my mum’s tavern in the village on the other side of the island, and we got to talking. She was
     nice, but quiet-like. Sad, like I said. And then…”
    It
was
like one of Anna’s novels. Sad heroines in black castles. Somehow Caroline was sure that she wouldn’t like the end to this
     tale, but she felt compelled to hear it nonetheless. “And then?”
    “She died, miss,” Maeve whispered. “During a storm just like this one. She fell from the tower down onto the cliffs. Or at
     least they say she fell.”
    Caroline shivered in a sudden rush of trepidation. “You mean she was—pushed?”
    “Mick, who was a footman here and Bessie’s beau, he got to drinking at my mum’s one night, and he said she wouldn’t have jumped
     like that. Not being a good, religious girl like she was. He said…” Maeve glanced over her shoulder, as if to be sure no one
     listened, and then hurriedly whispered, “He said Bessie was afraid of something.”
    “Like what?” Caroline whispered back.
    “He didn’t know. But he thought it had to be the master. There have been such wild tales, miss, ever since he came here all
     those years ago, all scarred like that. And he prowls the beaches in the middle of the night like he’s watching for something.”
    Caroline closed her eyes, and a sudden vision flashed in her mind. Grant stalking along the ramparts of a tower, lightning
     sizzling in the sky above him, a dark cloud whipping around him as he came near a girl who shrank back against the stones.
     He reached for her, and she cried out…
    Just as Caroline had when the warehouse caught fire.
    She opened her eyes