Lions and Lace (5 page)

Her defiance made him falter but only until her words registered. Then a wild glint appeared in his eyes, and he lowered his hand. He took in her rich, luxurious clothing and released a laugh. The sound chilled her to the bone. Before she could guess what he was thinking, he grabbed her hand and pulled her to the parlor doors. He shoved them aside and dragged her through the foyer to the front door.

"What are you doing?" she cried out, becoming hysterical.

"I'll tell you what to do, all right! One last time, you'll do as I bid, and I'll get even with you and that rag-picking
Irisher
!"

"What are thinking of?" she gasped, fighting to keep the front door closed.

Without warning, he stepped toward her and ripped the strands of creamy pink pearls from her chignon. She moaned from the pain, but he ignored her. The costly pearls went into his pockets, and he dragged her out the door into the rain, her flaxen hair swirling freely around her like a milkmaid's.

"You must be mad!" she cried, drowning in the cold pelting rain.

"You want to appeal to Sheridan's better nature?" Didier grunted, dragging her to the street. "Fine, then. Go ahead.
Now's the time.
He's ruined me, and I can't afford you anymore. So let him take care of you!"

"This is insanity!" She grasped at any straw. "You're the one who will be hurt by more scandal! If you continue with this behavior, my reputation will mean nothing! Your business dealings will die!"

Her uncle didn't react. As if he weren't listening, he pulled her down the brownstone's stairs and out to the curb to look for a hired
hack
.

He was beyond reasoning, so she again tried to free herself, believing if she could just get back to the house, perhaps Kevin would help her. But in her struggle to get free she slipped on the wet cobbles and fell
bruisingly
against him. She looked up. The rain was coming down in dark, blurring torrents, but his eyes still had the power to hold her.

"You and
Christabel
ruined everything for me," he hissed. "God, how I've wanted you both off my back these three years since your parents were killed. I've tried to be patient—tried to hold on.
No longer.
No longer!"
He shook her hard. "Without any more money, you're ruined, no matter what I do now. My last connection with the Knickerbockers is gone, so it's just that the final humiliation should be yours and Sheridan's!" He stared down at her, his gaze, brilliant in the refracting light of the rain-covered streetlamps, pinning her in place like a doe frightened by the sudden flare of a torch.

"Don't do this," she
said,
her face porcelain-pale. "Don't humiliate me like this. I'll never forgive you."

A lone hack turned the corner onto Washington Square. Didier glanced its way and rasped, "With that money gone, I haven't a hope in hell. You'll do as I say."

Panicked, she suddenly possessed the strength to pull away. She got free from his hands and ran halfway to the marble stairs of the brownstone before her wet satin train tripped her. Without pause, Didier lifted her and slammed her into the seat of the hack before she could catch her breath.

"I swear you will pay for this!" she ranted while Didier held her and knocked on the cab to get them going.

Eyeing her with that hellish stare, he swayed and said, "This is merely payment for all the sacrifices I've made on your behalf."

"Sacrifices?" she panted, furious and desperate. "It's I who've made the sacrifice! You've taken my money—you've lost it and spent it on whores! If not for
Christabel
, I should see you in prison for all your wrongdoings!"

At the mention of prison, Alana thought Didier might actually kill her. He looked as if he wanted to put both hands on her throat and press until she no longer breathed. But his joy seemed increased in proportion to her fear, so she quieted and stared him straight in the eye. He returned her stare, and her mouth filled with the metallic taste of terror.

"Alana, go ahead, drive me over the edge. I'm halfway there already," Didier
said,
his voice reed thin.

"Burn in hell!" she rasped in a ragged breath.

He laughed, and it was a horrible sound, but she was never to know what he might have done because right at that moment the cabbie stopped the hack and called out, "Thirty-third and Fifth!"

They could hear the muffled thumps of the driver scrambling off his seat in the pouring rain to open the door. Her uncle threw some coins on the ground and dragged her away before she could plead with the driver to help her. Amidst the rain-muffled curses of the hired driver, Didier forced her to the
porte
cochere
of a huge mansion that took up the entire city block. It was too dark to see whose house it was, but from its chateau-like proportions, Alana knew it didn't belong to a Knickerbocker. Knickerbockers never displayed their wealth like this—it was much too ostentatious.

"Be nice to Sheridan, Alana." Didier laughed. "Why, he might even think of an arrangement where he'll pay for that sister of yours." He slicked the rain off his face with his hand, and with a sheet of water beating down on both of them, he dragged her up marble stairs to an enormous pair of brass doors that looked as if they'd be more appropriate for a Roman coliseum.

She turned to him and made her last plea. "By all that you hold sacred, Uncle, stop this! If you cease now—"

"Give me your hands." Didier took them before she could pull back. He removed his cravat and began winding it around her wrists. She tried to claw at him—anything to escape this mad, irrational act he was determined to do— but it was no use. She could barely see him in the dim, rain-shadowed lamplight from Fifth Avenue. When she struck out at him, her thinly
slippered
feet slid on the slick marble stairs, and she nearly lost her balance. With tears of rage and frustration mixing with the rain on her cheeks, she struggled as he lashed her hands to the railing. A low, pitiful moan escaped her lips when he stepped to the huge bronze doors and pounded on them.

She cried out to stop him, but to no avail. He pounded again and shouted his message. "Sheridan! Sheridan!" he screamed in a blind, drunken rage. "Come out, Sheridan! See what you've bought for all your troubles!"

"Stop this! I beg—" she cried as the bronze doors slowly opened. In the driving rain it was hard to make out the figure, but the man appeared to be elderly and dressed in butler's attire.

He gave her
drunk
uncle a glance that should have sent him scurrying back to the
rathole
from which he came. "Yes,
sir?"
the butler seemed to say, though Alana found it difficult to hear him with the rain pounding the pavement all around her.

"Sheridan! Sheridan! You tell him I want my money back! I want it all back!" her uncle screamed.

"And the young lady?" the butler asked.

Didier faced her, and Alana gave him such a look of loathing, she knew she would never hate anyone as she hated Didier at that moment.

"The girl is Sheridan's problem! He's left me no money to take care of her now!" Didier grasped the aged man by the lapels. "By God, you tell Sheridan he's going to pay for all the misery he's caused me! I'll go to my grave before I'll let him off the hook!"

"Remove your hands at once," the butler appeared to say.

Alana let out a muffled sob, and Didier shot her a vengeful glance. But with no other course left to him, he released the butler and stumbled back, skidding on the slick wet marble.

As much as Alana resisted, she couldn't stop herself from pleading, "Please don't leave me like this!" But the words were as useless as she had feared. Didier staggered through the
porte
cochere
and disappeared into a hack he hailed from the avenue.

In desperation, she hung her head and gave vent to her tears, bitterly noting that the rain washed them from her cheeks as fast as they spilled from her burning eyes.

"Miss?"

She looked up and found the elderly butler out in the rain futilely holding a large black umbrella over her soaked figure while he tried one-handed to untie her. It was then she had the misfortune to look toward the open bronze doors.

In the years to come she would always remember her first sight of Trevor Byrne Sheridan. He stood in silhouette. She was not privy to the details of his face, but he left a deep and lasting impression on her. He held a walking stick, an unusual accouterment for such a tall, muscular form. His straight, formal figure was pleasing, yet his stance left her feeling as if a frigid wind had just passed through her heart. He crossed his arms and tipped his head back to look down at her as she almost knelt on the wet marble stairway, and in the shadows he looked every bit as cold, dark, and forbidding as the night that mercilessly pelted her with rain. And she knew then, with a truth that pierced her very soul, that the devil before her now was sure to be worse than the one who had just left her behind.

Alana repressed a shiver by sheer will. She was freezing, but she did her best to hide it by crossing her arms over her chest and taking long controlled breaths. Her gown was dripping wet, and the blackguard who sat silently behind his huge overly carved library desk didn't even offer her a wrap.

She stared at Sheridan, anger, humiliation, and determination burning within her. Her uncle's actions had cut her to the quick. What was worse, the Irishman knew it. Shuddering, she remembered how he'd looked at her when his butler had led her into an awe-inspiring marble foyer. The expression on his face was unforgettable, an odd marriage of pity and satisfaction. It was obvious that he saw her as a hated Knickerbocker and found great amusement in her downfall. But the pity was far harder to take. When his gaze had lowered to her wrists, red and scraped from the bindings, she wanted to run from him in shame.

Yet now, sitting in the Irishman's library, she swore to endure. Though she held herself together with the thinnest shred of dignity, she kept
Christabel
in the forefront of her thoughts to strengthen her. She had to save her sister— with as great a need as his when he had sought revenge for Mara. That above all else, she reminded herself, was important.

But the Irishman was a more than worthy opponent. With his piercing dark stare and cold manner, he inspired a fear in her that her uncle never had. She believed she knew how far Didier would go to achieve what he wanted, yet of this ominous man sitting in front of her she knew nothing. She was at his
mercy,
and her future and her sister's rested upon his whim, doom or salvation awaiting them as Trevor Sheridan chose.

Alana watched him shuffle papers on his desk, her shame enormous. Ever since Sheridan had led her to his library, she'd forced herself to put up her Knickerbocker facade, if only to retrieve some of her pride. Now she sat mutely across from his desk, thinking with shattering clarity about what her uncle had done to her. If she'd come to the conclusion that her uncle was a devil, then the dark, emotionless man in front of her was Satan incarnate. Her uncle had proven himself to be so lacking in character that he was unworthy of cleaning the Van
Alen
chamberpots
. But in truth, the Irishman Trevor Sheridan was the real source of all her trouble. Her uncle had thrown in his share of the kindling. She would never forgive him. But she couldn't escape the fact that it was the Irishman who had sparked the fire in the first place.

While she churned with these thoughts, she leveled a cool green stare at Sheridan. She knew she must appear an ice princess on the outside, yet on the inside, when she thought about being tied to this man's banister like a runaway slave before the war, she burned with humiliation.

She looked across the desk
The
man's attitude toward her bedraggled presence seemed as cold and professional as if he were dealing with one of his bankers. She watched him, and her anger produced another silent thorn. She wondered how the man could be so emotionless and calculating. He'd taken all her money and now didn't even possess the grace to offer her a shawl.

She studied him more closely. Her host, if that was what this devil could be called, was finely attired in black trousers and a burgundy silk paisley waistcoat. Her unexpected appearance had caught him unawares because his shirt was missing its starched collar, and the stud was gone at the throat, revealing a mass of dark chest hair. His head was bent as he perused a document on his desk, and the flames from the gas lamp lit the planes of his profile. He was a handsome man. His hair was cropped, and she thought the color was black, yet it was difficult to tell in the dim gaslight. He wasn't looking at her now, but from the first time their gazes had met, she had known that particular dark-hazel color of his eyes could only be from his native Erin.

An uncontrollable shiver caught her, and she wrapped her palms around her upper arms in a futile attempt to warm herself. This seemed finally to gain his attention. He looked up from the paper he was reading, and his gaze ran down her soaked Worth gown, taking particular note of the way the sodden peach flowers wilted at her décolletage and the defeated way she grasped her limp
ciel
-blue satin train. All at once the silence became deafening.

"Miss Van
Alen
?" he asked rhetorically, shattering the library's tomb-like quiet.

She didn't answer, giving him a frosty leaf-green glance that belied the blush of shame
pinkening
her cheeks.

As if expecting her to be difficult, he checked the paper before him and began to recite from it, his pronunciation almost artificial in its exactness. "You are Miss Alice Diana Van
Alen
, of Thirty-eight Washington Square. You are considered to be one of the foremost treasures of the city of New York. Your family has had a box at the Academy of Music from the beginning of time, even before the illustrious Caroline
Schermerhorn
got her clutches on old Backhouse. Your ancestors were shareholders in the Dutch West India Company, and you can trace your family all the way to the
Schuylers
, the
Philipses
, the Van
Rensselaers
—even Peter Stuyvesant." He looked up. "Have I the right woman, then? Am I correct?"

Alana felt the sudden heat of anger. Instead of shivering, she boiled. The man looked at her as if she were some kind of dead poet whose meaningless life could be summed up in a paragraph.

"No, you are not correct, Mr. Sheridan," she said in a tone that could cause frostbite. "He signed his name
Petrus
.
I am related to
Petrus
Stuyvesant."

"Of course.
My mistake."
Their eyes met for a moment, and as if to taunt her, he took the paper from which he'd read her biography and made a display out of changing
Peter
to
Petrus
.

She stood and leaned over the great rosewood desk separating them. With a boldness she could hardly eke from her chilled, trembling body, she reached out and crumpled the paper. When she straightened, she dared him to complain.

He looked almost surprised. One eyebrow lifted, and the first glimmer of interest sparked in those dark hazel eyes.

"Mr. Sheridan, we obviously have no need for an introduction," she said now that she had his full attention.

"That's true," he agreed with a dark little smile. "I've known who you are for some time. And now I expect you know who I am."

She didn't know why his words threatened her, but they did. She groped for the words that would extricate her from this mess. "In any case, I must tell you you've done a terrible thing here—"

"I
'
ve
done a terrible thing?" he interrupted, incredulous. He chuckled, and if she hadn't been so desperate, she would have picked up her train and left in a huff. "Let me tell you, Miss Knickerbocker, I've never hitched a woman to the front of a townhouse like she was a Broadway horse-car.

Too embarrassed to begin to address her uncle's
hel-lacious
behavior, she blurted out, "You've taken away the Van
Alen
money unjustly, Mr. Sheridan. And I wish to make you understand that. I must have my money returned."

A grim smile lifted the corner of his mouth. "Your uncle has controlled your money for several years now. You dare beg for that . . .
man?"
he said as if he were having a difficult time characterizing Didier as a man.

"How do you know so much about me?" she asked in a small voice.

"Shouldn't I know you? You're society, after all. And isn't that the point of that little clique—to be exalted by the masses?" He almost laughed, "Well, madam, you should consider yourself honored. You've personally felt the fervor of my exaltation."

"I meant you no harm," she said passionately. "And in truth, I did you no harm, so I would like the money you took from me. I must have it."

"What do you mean you did me no harm?" He sat back as coolly as if he were discussing the day's trading.

She put both hands on his desk and leaned forward. "I mean that I would have attended your sister's debut but was restrained from doing so. Therefore, you must return my money. You've made a tragic error."

He
laughed,
a shockingly joyless sound. "Do you know how many times in the past weeks I've heard that, Miss Van
Alen
? My God, I'd need an accountant to keep track of all the excuses."

"But in my case it's the truth," she said, sure she could make him believe her.

He only laughed harder. "There must be a mockingbird in this room. Doesn't the Manhattan aristocracy have any originality at all?"

"But I truly meant to attend," she answered, panic rising in her breast because he didn't believe her. "I
wanted
to attend."

A sardonic smile played on his lips.
"Ah, finally something new.
Congratulations, Miss Van
Alen
, you're the first one who's said
that."

She shook her head, desperate that he
believe
her. "I met your sister Mara in the park several months ago. She'll tell you I wanted to attend. I believe she liked me every bit as much as I did her."

He lifted another paper from his desk, a long list of names, and he paused. "These are all the people my sister thought liked her. Do you know how many of them attended her debut?"

Sickened by what the answer might be
,
Alana said nothing.

Without a word, he rose and walked stiffly to the fireplace. He tossed the list into the fire, and as it burned, she saw his knuckles whiten over the gold top of his walking stick that he never seemed to relinquish.

Their eyes met, and she could hardly look at him for the fury in his gaze. "I know none of them came," she whispered, her heart aching for some inexplicable reason. Suddenly she was as desperate to soothe Mara's ills as her own. "But perhaps those people on that list are not worth all this trouble, Mr. Sheridan. Have you thought of that? And does Mara want you to do all of this? Cause all this trouble? I think not. So I wonder whether you're doing this for Mara . . . or for yourself."

"I don't give a damn about people like you, Miss Van
Alen
. I never have." He eyed her coldly. The walking stick tapped a muffled staccato on the thick carpeting as he left the fire. "But you cannot convince a sixteen-year-old girl that people like you are meaningless. You and your cronies are gods to my little sister, who's too young and naive to know better. So for now, if she wants you, I'll truss up the lot of you and serve you upon a platter if I have to
to
make her happy."

She sank to the chair, pulling aside her damp bustle.
A tiredness
seeped into her limbs, and for a moment she wearily lowered her head.

He watched her, a gleam of triumph lighting his eyes. "Are we through? May I send my carriage around to take you to your home, Miss Van
Alen
?"

His voice had a finality about it that sparked one last flame within her. She raised her head, and anger gave her the strength to continue. "No, we're not through." She got to her feet and faced him, this time without the safety of the desk between them. "I must make you understand, Mr. Sheridan, how important it is that you make reparation in my case. You've wrongly taken my money, money that I need quite desperately." She hoped she was being strong enough. To make her point, she tipped her head back to look him in the eye, now realizing how short she was compared to his great height. She was shocked at how he intimidated her.

"You're not the only Knickerbocker in straitened circumstances," he answered easily. "Why should I help you?"

She opened her mouth to say "Because of my sister" but stopped herself. Instead she stared imploringly into his eyes. "I have to have it. Others depend on that money. Others not
so
fortunate as you, or even I."

"Mr. Baldwin Didier?" He stepped to his desk and picked up another paper. "Ah yes, that's the name of that gentleman who was so kind as to leave you on my stoop. Is he not
so
fortunate as we? I must tell you, I wouldn't have guessed that, especially when he left you in the rain tied to my banister."

His words appalled her. She began shaking
again,
and something terrible inside her burned when she thought how Didier had humiliated her. But her uncle wasn't the only one responsible for her downfall.