Lions and Lace (4 page)

"Good God, have you heard the news?" Eagan shut the doors behind him.

"You didn't even allow Whittaker to take your hat." Sheridan commented over his newspaper.

Eagan pulled the black top hat from his head and let the snow on its brim melt on the hearth. "I just came from the Commodore Club. You wouldn't believe the frenzy down there. The markets have gone mad. Every hansom cab from as far as
Forty-second
Street is lined up taking chaps to the telegraph office. They're wiring to Chicago—and you won't believe what they're trying to corner."

"Commodities.
Potatoes and cabbage, to be exact."

Eagan stopped. "How did you know that?"

Sheridan lifted one brow,
then
leisurely returned to his paper. "Rumor has it blight may come early to Ireland this year."

"Blight—already? I don't see—" Eagan stopped. He looked at Sheridan,
then
nearly choked on his own laughter. It was several minutes before he could collect himself to utter a simple sentence. When he finally could, all he said was
"Potatoes?
Cabbages?
Goddammit
, Trevor, I'd have never believed it, but you
do
have a sense of humor."

Trevor ignored his brother's roundabout praise and asked, "Would you hand me that list on my desk?"

Eagan took the sheet of paper off the heavy ornate desk. "What's this?"

"Check off the names De
Harinck
,
der
Burch, and
Wynkoop
." Sheridan watched while Eagan did it. "Now," he said, "are there any more names left?"

"Just the name Van
Alen
."

Sheridan eased back in his chair and resumed reading. Quite off-handedly, he murmured, "Oh yes, I forgot. Check that name off the list too."

Alana hardly noticed the covert glances of the servants as she was helped from the Van
Alen
brown coupé. If it hadn't been raining so hard, she might have felt a tingle of foreboding at their wary gazes, but as she was escorted by umbrella to the front door of her residence, her thoughts were elsewhere, preoccupied with another impending disaster.

Tonight had been another tedious Monday soiree at Mrs. Astor's. For an evening that should have been made for pleasure, "pleasurable" was hardly how Alana would have described it. Mrs. Astor spoke incessantly of "that wretched Irishman" and "his vile
manueverings
," while the men holed up in the library right after dinner, uttering oaths, she imagined, that could have put Mrs. Astor's groom to the blush.

The Knickerbockers had been hit hard by Sheridan, the man they too now called the Predator. But their financial ruin didn't compare to their outrage at being humiliated. Some Knickerbockers, Alana had heard, were even being chased by debt collectors after losing enormous sums in speculation. That was unheard of in her circle, and it would have amused her—the picture of all that old money being chased down by such a common vulture, the bill collector—if she weren't another ready victim for the Predator.

She was a Knickerbocker too. She'd meant to attend Mara's debut, but Sheridan didn't know that, and though he'd left some of them alone—the
Astors
because it was said he admired Willy B. and because he wanted to ensure there was some society left for Mara to be accepted into—Alana wondered if the Van
Alen
money wasn't just a matter of time.

In her heart she truly understood the reasons for Trevor Sheridan's wrath. The cruelty of Mara Sheridan's failed debut still stabbed at her too. But as much as she empathized, Trevor Sheridan's vengeance had been too strong and too sweeping to condone. She had a sister and loved her as well, but only a madman would go to such lengths to destroy the people he blamed for hurting his sibling's feelings. So she'd reached the conclusion that either Trevor Sheridan was a madman or there was something about Mara Sheridan's debut that cut into him more than just its lack of attendance.

Now, disembarking from the carriage in the pouring rain, Alana felt weighted down with worry. The evening had been torture, and while she dreaded feeling Sheridan's wrath upon her shoulders, it had been all she could do not to say something inflammatory at Mrs. Astor's—to blame those licking their wounds in Willy
B.'s
library for their own misery. She hadn't because she knew she couldn't. Didier made it all too clear to her that, for her sister's sake, she must keep her standing in society. Yet she longed to lash out, and tonight, seeing all those hateful people who had so callously crushed the hopes of a sixteen-year-old girl, she'd found it difficult to restrain herself.

Tiredly she allowed the butler to take her cape and shake off the raindrops. Pulling on the fingers of her skintight kid gloves, she began on the fifteen buttons at her wrist and slowly strode through the carpeted foyer. She walked unmindful of the glittering blue eyes that watched her from the double parlor, unaware how the gaze ripped down her figure, taking in every detail of her costly appearance, from the pale-peach satin of her gown to the strands of pearls that were woven into her chignon at the back of her neck.
The sight of all these expensive trappings so enraged the onlooker that he rose, knocking his cognac from its perch on the arm of his chair.
"Alana."

Hearing her uncle's angry rasp, Alana turned sharply to find him at the entrance to the double parlor. Didier's menacing figure stood in the shadows cast by the gasolier. He had frightened her before, but now his very quietness terrified her. Without guessing, she knew he'd come all the way from his hotel on Fifth Avenue to talk about Sheridan. He'd come to tell her she was ruined. And though her first reaction was unadulterated panic, her next was a strange relief. At least now the ax had fallen, and she could begin picking up the pieces.

"Uncle Baldwin—what are you doing here at so late an hour?" she asked, though she hardly needed to. From the corner of her eye she glanced at the servants who had helped her from the carriage. Margaret's husband, the footman, Kevin, quickly averted his eyes, and even
Pumphrey
, a master of butler's detachment, looked anxious to be excused. They'd known something was up. They'd also known it was bad.

"Come in here," Didier instructed, ingeniously hiding his drunkenness with precise speech and impeccable attire. Even his dark-blue cravat was as straight as a pin.

Alana braced herself for the worst. Her uncle was furious. Sheridan might be the cause of their troubles, but somehow she knew she would pay. She knew from the glitter in those magnificent ice-blue eyes.

She handed her gloves to Kevin, and to the man's credit he looked as if he just might step forward and block her way, disproving Mrs. Astor's theories that there was no chivalry in the working class. Yet just when he was about to move, Alana covertly shook her head and brushed past him. "I must handle this," she whispered in passing. The next time she glanced back,
Pumphrey
was nodding Kevin in the direction of the basement kitchen.

Alana stepped into the parlor and watched her uncle pull together the enormous pocket doors that shut them off from the foyer. With any other person this wouldn't have frightened her, yet she knew from their last encounter that Baldwin Didier was unlike any other person. Her stomach lurched, and her palms began to perspire, but she faced him with cool green eyes. "What is so pressing at this hour that you've come all the way down from your rooms to speak to me?" She wanted to get through this as quickly as possible. The bruise he'd left on her cheek still smarted when she touched it, and it was still a trick to hide it with powder. Her insides coiled with anger every time she thought of it.

"Sit down." Didier's glance went to the old Belter settee her parents had bought during better
times,
times that now seemed bitterly distant.

"What must we discuss at this late hour?"
She
reluc-tantly
sat on the edge of the settee, still ready to stand and fight.

"You may dispense with those nice manners, Alana. You can't afford them anymore."

Her uncle stood over her; she could smell the spirits reeking on him and on the carpet behind him where his cognac had spilled. He had many vile faults, but she had to admit she had never seen him drunk. Not in the three years he'd held her trust fund.

"I'm ruined, then?" she asked, a wild surge of panic rushing through her.

"That's right. You're poor. I bought into the Hudson Bank. They went under today—" he brutally took her chin in hand and spoke very well for one so drunk—"my money with it. They went bust when Sheridan demanded their note. I've lost everything. And now even the almighty Van
Alens
have lost their last gold dollar."

She tried to pull out of his grasp, but it was impossible. Momentarily overwhelmed, she released a small moan and inwardly cursed the Sheridan name. The Irishman had been thorough in his rampage. Now she too was a casualty, and the thought made her swing between outrage and helplessness. She had wanted to go to that ball! And because of that, she had almost believed Trevor Sheridan would leave her alone. But he hadn't. In his strange obsession to avenge his sister he had raked her fortune clean just like the others. Yet in her case she hadn't a soul to help her recover. No relatives
except
the charlatan standing before her.

Shattered, she had barely recovered from that knowledge when another terrible thought overcame her. "Oh God, how shall we take care of
Christabel
?" she whispered.

Didier's grasp tightened. "Forget about
Christabel
. She can go to the state. I want to know what
you
are going to do. You owe me, Alana."

She looked up at him, knowing she had never seen him so enraged. "What are you talking about?" she gasped.

"Your expensive upkeep!
Those clothes! This house! Who do you think has seen to these things all these
years!
"

"That was your job. I had a trust fund for these things," she answered, a wary expression on her face.

He grew purple with anger. "I had control of that fund, and if it had been my choice, I would have taken the entire thing and left you and that loon of a sister of yours by the wayside!"

She couldn't hide her shock. "How can you say such a thing? You had a duty—"

"Duty
be
damned!" He let go of her chin. With the force of his release, she fell backward. He leaned close, and his voice was ominous. "It was to my advantage to keep you in society. So I paid for the pretty things you wear and see around you now. But now I've nothing. Do you understand me? Nothing! You owe me for being so charitable!"

She stared up at him, truly believing he'd gone mad. His words made no sense. While it was true she had never liked her uncle, until the night of the ball, she had done her best to think well of him, mostly because of
Christabel
. After the fire it was her uncle who had held things together. He had been the one to find the "country estate" for her sister. He'd even talked to the police. But the man who towered over her now had no redeeming characteristics at all. Whatever goodness there had ever been in him was truly gone.

"I owe you nothing, Uncle," she said numbly. "Our parents provided for my sister and me, and provided well." She stood. "We've had a tragedy here tonight. But this isn't solving it. I must ask you to return to your hotel."

He swung his arm around her torso, and she felt every rib being squeezed to cracking. "You speak so well and so haughtily, but tell me how you're going to rise above this, Alana. Tell me how this fine little Knickerbocker is going to like sweeping streets to keep food in her mouth."

She wanted to beat him. With clenched teeth, she said, "Let go."

"You are the cause of all this!" He shook her.

"Not I! I wanted to go to that ball!"

"I did the right thing! How did I know Sheridan would do this?"

"Well, he has done it, and perhaps there's some good to come of this." She shot him a look of contempt. "I see you now, Uncle, for the vile creature I've always suspected you were. So leave me alone and never come here again."

He laughed. "And how will you get along?"

"Tomorrow I shall speak to Mr. Sheridan and make him see reason. He cannot mean me harm when I've meant him no harm. I met his sister, Mara. I didn't want to see her hurt."

Didier stared at her for a moment. "You think that potato picker's going to have mercy?
And why on you, Alana?
Don't you think to get back their millions, they'd all claim they were going to attend Sheridan's ball?" His eyes inventoried her finery: the Worth gown, the matching beaded slippers, the Dutch West India Company pearls. Disgust plain on his face, he pulled her to her feet. "How are you going to convince him? Shall you go in the expensive attire I've bought you and prostitute yourself?"

His words, his very being, disgusted her. Unwilling to address such a loathsome question, she pried his fingers from her bare arms.

"How will you convince him?"

"I shall appeal to his better nature."

"Sheridan has none."

"He must if he cares so deeply for his sister," she said, her voice cracking.

"But not for you, Alana. He'll have no mercy on you." With that, he pushed her back onto the settee. His hand pulled agitatedly on his Van Dyke beard, and he began cursing. "I've spent a fortune keeping you up. Is this why I did it?
To be a pauper?"
He looked at her gown again, and it only inflamed him further. "All my plans are ruined by this! What good are you when all the people I've tried to impress are ruined too? What's left for me? You and your goddamned costumes have cost me my last gold ten
piece
, and now I haven't anything to show for my investment!"

"I am not an investment!" she retorted angrily. "These gowns were bought with my money.
My
money, do you hear?"

He grabbed her. A guttural cry escaped her lips before he shook her violently. "But you haven't any money now, Alana! Shall you try a week on the streets at Gotham Court and see how you like that?"

She pulled away. If he could, he would have hurt her, but this time she vowed to do anything she could to stop him. Prying his fingers from her, she couldn't stop herself from saying, "If I haven't any money, then I'll no longer need you telling me what I must do. Leave, then. I demand that you leave!"

Furious, Didier raised his hand to strike her, but she refused to flinch, even blink. She couldn't struggle from his strong hold, but even though he could hurt her physically, her spirit, astonishingly, remained unbroken.