Last Updated:

March 2012

The Daughters of Erin

Three tales of the extraordinary Blacknall sisters, as they find love, danger, and adventure amid the splendors of Georgian Ireland!  Coming in 2010 and 2011 from Grand Central Publishing…

Book Three, Lady of Seduction

Caroline Blacknall’s story

(June 2011)

Lady Caroline Blacknall is shipwrecked off the coast of a barren Irish island--only to find herself rescued by the last man she ever thought to see again...

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 howling wind, she heard a 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 fallen 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 and gently rolled 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 an 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 seawater 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 run 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 knot work on 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 the Celtic cross with her fingertip.  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.