Lions and Lace (32 page)

Alana didn't close her eyes that night. She kept picturing herself as she left Trevor's room—shocked, crying, involved. She thought she'd gone there only to help him. But when he'd asked her why she had come, she hadn't known the answer. It took all night for her to know why.

In her deepest heart, she had wanted to succumb to him. She had wanted to make theirs a complete marriage, not just a play between two people trapped by a piece of paper. There was no hiding from it any longer. She had gone to his room with the unconscious desire to consummate their relationship. Before, it had seemed wrong to make lies out of her vows, but now, when her mind and heart and soul seemed obsessed with that dark, brooding Irishman, it was a crime worthy of a grand punishment.

Lying in the dark, staring at the dim gilded ceiling, Alana forced herself to accept the truth. She desired to make their marriage whole. Even though Trevor Sheridan was not the man she believed she wanted, though his riches sometimes repulsed her, though everything about him did not seem to fit her, there was no denying it. She wanted to be his wife, in every sense of the word.

The consequences of her thoughts oppressed her, the possibilities heavy and grim. If she and Trevor were to consummate their marriage, an annulment was out of the question. A divorce would be their only option if Trevor should still desire to abide by their agreement and end the marriage. But even the social stigma of divorce would be far less painful than a rejection after she'd given him everything a wife could.

No, if she dared lie with him, she could do it only with the hope that it would bind them together as man and wife and make their marriage a lasting one.

But would he think as she did? Could she seduce him into believing in this marriage? She sighed and clutched her satin pillow, thinking of white clapboard houses and children's laughter. None of those things might be hers with Trevor. They would never live a simple life unencumbered by possessions. And children—perhaps he didn't want any. She thought back to his comment at
Fenian
Court when Mara had mentioned the possibility of a niece or nephew. He'd told her she could have a child whenever she desired, but he'd said that only for Mara's sake. He hadn't meant it. His attention was focused on the exchange and his holdings. He wouldn't want to be bothered with the inconvenience of a family.

That last thought especially depressed her, but if she had to surrender a dream to get what she truly wanted, she would do it and never look back. For what she wanted more than anything was a husband, in every sense of the word.

Dawn broke just as she found sleep. It was late when Margaret finally woke her, bustling in with her breakfast. Alana rose and quickly dressed. She didn't bother with her coffee because she wanted to speak to Trevor, somehow to make amends for her strange behavior the night before. She wanted to apologize and perhaps show him that while she'd been confused and reluctant, she was now neither.

Tying a purple velvet bow to the back of her chignon, she looked in the mirror and was pleased with her attire. She wore a demure gown of leaf-colored silk that turned her eyes a rich grass green. She pinched her cheeks, giving them a rosy glow, and suddenly the ice princess was gone. Before her was a girlish lady anxious to speak to her husband.

She excused Margaret and turned to stare at the doors that separated her chamber from Trevor's. Unlike those in Newport, these doors weren't gilded but carved with medieval motifs such as Byzantine capitals, trefoils, and shields. These doors could have been the entrance to a dark, forbidding castle.

Ignoring the tingle that ran down her spine, she knocked and waited for
Trevor
's gruff
voice. None
came. She knocked again and then again, but still he didn't answer. She was about to turn away when it occurred to her that he might be in his dressing room, unable to hear her. Slowly she turned the heavy knob and peeked inside. His chambermaid had yet to make his bed. It was probable he was still dressing. She stepped into the room, unable to quash the surge of apprehension and exhilaration that shot through her veins. She was being very bold, but she wanted to speak with him in private, not in the public domain of the morning room. And she didn't want to send a note. She'd been doing that a lot lately, to
cover
her wounded feelings. But now was the time for words.

"Trevor!" she called in the direction of his dressing room, her voice suddenly turning shy. When she heard no answer, she repeated herself, this time more loudly. The chamber fairly echoed with the hollowness
of
his name, unanswered. She paused by the desk, not brave enough to peek into his dressing room. He was clearly up and gone. Now she'd have to find him in this maze of a house and hope that she could persuade him to speak with her alone.

Frustrated, she turned to go, but a letter on his desk caught her eye. It wasn't really the letter, actually, that got her attention, but the signature, written in scrolled blue ink that flowed across the bottom of the note. The name was Daisy.

All her schooling, her morals, and her self-preservation screamed at her not to read this note tossed so casually on his desk. Her logic told her to back away, retreat to her bedroom,
hide
her head in the sand.
But her heart, desperate to know if there was hope for her newfound emotions, reached for it.

My Darling Trevor,

You lied! What a vile inconvenience your marriage is already proving to be and how put-upon I
am having
to tolerate it. If you care for me at all, you'll come by today. I am lonely,
mon
cher
.

Your angel,

Daisy

Postscript—I know your honeymoon is over. The papers said so.

Alana
straightened,
her face pale, her heart heavy. If she hadn't been so utterly shattered, she might have laughed at the woman's flamboyance. She could almost picture the actress—her hand swept over her brow, her figure draped over a couch, penning this note to her paramour. But this woman's paramour was her husband, and suddenly nothing seemed remotely amusing about Daisy Dumont.

Alana jumped when she heard approaching footsteps. She disappeared into her room just as the chambermaids came to straighten the master's suite. Alone in her room, she was desperate to talk to someone, anyone who wasn't related to Trevor Sheridan. As she had so many times in the past three years, she surrendered to her instinctive need to be with her sister. Without another wasted moment, she summoned a carriage to take her to Brooklyn.

"She's taking the carriage, sir. Shall I have someone look after her?" Whittaker stood like a statue at Trevor's side while the master glanced at the morning
Chronicle
at his desk in the library.

Trevor looked up, a frustrated glint in his eye. He appeared as if he wanted to stop her himself, but thinking of past promises, he glared down at his newspaper and bit out, "No."

Whittaker bowed, obviously not understanding his master's restraint but accepting it. He held out a silver salver that overflowed with calling cards. "These were left this morning. Shall you look at them, sir, or shall I give them to the mistress?"

Trevor appeared as if he were about to dismiss them but then thought better of it. He waved them over and didn't even have to shuffle through them. The card was right on top, the name Mr. Anson Vanbrugh-Stevens handsomely engraved across it, its top right-hand corner turned down, conveying a silent message that everyone knew:
I
must speak with you.

"You may go." Trevor picked up the card and crushed it vengefully in his hand.

Whittaker hastily departed. Alone, Trevor stood and went to the window. Below, Alana was just starting out in the carriage and Trevor again watched his wife depart for places unknown. When she was gone, he turned and looked at the crushed calling card in his fist, his expression rock-hard.

If Wall
Streeters
were betting he wouldn't tolerate another trip to Brooklyn for his wife, it'd be a very bull market.

A
Mhúirn
í
n
dilis
geal
mo
chro
í
.

For, still imagination warm,

Presents thee at the
moontide
beam,

And sleep gives back thy angel form,

To clasp thee in the midnight dream.

—Old Irish Verse

Alana arrived back from Brooklyn with barely enough time to change for Delmonico's. Mrs. Astor had made the request that she attend because the Duke of Granville had finally arrived in New York and was to make his first appearance that night. Alana was less than enthusiastic. She would have preferred to have tea and toast in her room and go to bed early, but that was out of the question. Everyone would be there at Delmonico's tonight. This was too grand an opportunity for Mara to miss.

Strengthened by her visit with
Christabel
, Alana dressed quickly and waited in the drawing room for the others. She steeled herself for her first meeting with Trevor, but she didn't expect the painful tug of longing in her heart when he entered the room. Cautiously they nodded to each other, and if Alana hadn't had a clear head, she might have blushed, remembering what had happened the last time they were together. But she didn't blush. The ice princess was back, frost covering her vulnerable, terrified heart.

"Mara will be right down." He stepped toward the fire, the flames glinting off his gold-headed cane. Without changing his tone, he said, "Enjoy your trip?"

Unsettled by his question and his insidious knowledge of her comings and goings, she tore her gaze away and stared at the fire. "Yes" was all she offered.

"When are you going again?"

Her eyes snapped with annoyance. "You know my whereabouts better than I. Why don't you tell me?"

The only answer was ominous smoldering silence.

Taking a breath, she said, "Are the servants spying for you? Is that how you know I went today? Is it Whittaker?"

"It's my business to know what goes on in me—" he calmed himself, "in
my
own house."

"Yes, of course. All right, you know it. I went to Brooklyn today." She turned and faced him, that note from Daisy Dumont bitter on her mind. "But I couldn't have been the only one out on the town, now could I? You were up early this morning, I see."

"How did you know that?" His gaze locked with hers.

A lump came to her throat when she thought of the hope she had had that morning and how cruelly it was crushed by that letter. "Perhaps I have my spies in this household too."

He paused, obviously not trusting her. "You missed me at breakfast. Is that what this is about? Well, I had some business to take care of. I didn't have time for breakfast."

At hast not here,
she thought.

"Did you come looking for me this morning?" His voice was softer than she'd ever heard it. But even its coaxing quality couldn't take away her shame. Of all the humiliations she could imagine, the worst
was having
to share her husband with another woman.

"I've learned never to go looking for you again." Coldly, she looked away.

"Indeed" was his frigid comment. There was nothing more between them until they left in the carriage.

Mara, as usual, was brimming with excitement over the evening's activities. She was so wound-up that both Alana and Trevor allowed her to chat away, letting her prattle falsely alleviate the oppressive atmosphere between them. But Mara finally seemed to notice their animosity and without warning quieted.

This made Alana nervous, so she began to talk. "You look very nice tonight, Mara. Are you anxious to meet the duke?"

"I've never met a duke before. Will he be frightening?" Mara looked at her brother's scowling silhouette,
then
shot Alana a worried glance.

Alana tried to laugh. She wanted to say
Not as much as your brother
but answered, "Oh no, he'll probably be elderly and quite deaf. I don't think you should worry. We won't see him much anyway. Mrs. Astor, no doubt, has lots of plans for him."

"That's good." Mara smiled sheepishly and clutched her fan.

Her movement made Alana look down at Mara's hands. "That's a pretty bracelet. I've never seen it before, have I?"

"It's new,"
Mara
answered, fingering the square-cut sapphires. "Trevor brought it back for me from Boston."

"It suits you, Mara." Alana did her best to smile, but it was painful. After all she had been through with Trevor, she didn't know why this little fact hurt her so, yet it did. Her husband had gone to Boston during their honeymoon, bringing an expensive trinket for his sister and nothing for his new wife. She'd already shown
a distaste
for his ostentatious jewelry, but the fact that her husband had given her no thought during his trip wounded her. Surely he had brought something for Daisy. Daisy could not go without, as the note proved. It was more than likely Trevor had bought a piece of jewelry for his mistress that could have paid for half the Confederate army, but if he had simply picked a four-leaf clover along the railroad and given that to Daisy, pressed in his coat pocket, Alana would have hated it just as much. It wasn't the cost. It was the emotions, emotions she despaired of ever being able to stir in him.

Delmonico's was fairly glittering with important personages: the Four Hundred, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with representatives from Washington and the mayor's office— all to meet this wildly prestigious duke from England. No one really knew too much about the
Granvilles
, except that they held a huge estate near the Scottish border, that the first duke had been knighted by Henry V, and that they were so illustrious that Victoria and Albert were said to have honeymooned in Granville Castle.

When the arrival of the duke was announced, a hush fell over the crowd. Alana stood with Mara near the back of the ballroom, Mara less interested in the old duke than the fresh young lads that flocked around them like pigeons. The real shock
came
when the duke appeared in the doorway—not the aged rotund whiskered gentleman most believed he would be but a fine-looking young man about Eagan's age.

"That's the Duke of Granville?" Alana blurted out in a rather unseemly manner.

"That lad couldn't be more than twenty-four," Trevor commented, getting a much better look at the man from his great height.

"He's so handsome," Mara whispered.

"He's British," Trevor said.

"He
is
handsome," Alana confirmed, ignoring her husband's remark.

"Do you think we'll be presented?" Mara asked.

"Oh yes, definitely." Alana took Mara's arm and began to lead her to the receiving line.

Trevor stopped them and pulled Alana to the side for a moment of privacy.
"Fair warning, Alana.
The Duke of Granville is British, and I don't want Mara getting mixed up with some damned limey."

Alana looked up at him, her mouth open in shock. "I understand the Irish have some animosity toward England, but really, Trevor, this is ridiculous. You don't even know this man."

"He's British. That's all I need to know. He's not going to be carrying on with my sister."

"How convenient prejudice is. We could take that very sentence, transposing
Irish
for
English,
and hear it from any number of people here tonight."

He twisted his lips in a sarcastic smile. "You've a point there, but nonetheless, Mara isn't going to
no
Brit. That's just the way they work, you know. They see the family coffers dwindling, and they send themselves over to America to fetch home a nice young girl who can pretty up the castle along with her fat American dowry. I can tell you right this very minute, the Sheridan money
ain't
gonna
go for fixing up some damned castle in Northumberland."

Alana listened, knowing that Trevor wasn't aware of how his accent was slipping into his speech. She said, "Mara hasn't even met this duke, and you have her married and begetting his children. Don't you think we should see if they even take to each other?"

"Oh, he'll take to Mara. Look at her—she's sweet and pretty and one of the richest here. She
ain't
goin
'
ta
no
Brit, an'
t'a's
final."

Alana artfully hid her smile behind a satin-gloved hand. She knew she was playing with fire, but after thinking all evening about Mara's bracelet, she felt it was time for a little revenge. "Come along, Trevor, surely
you
—Mr. Stock Exchange, Mr. Railroad, Mr. I-Own-Everything-in-Manhattan, Mr. I-
Always
-Get-My-Way—would like this duke. I'd think you of all people would admire a man whose relations have been able to subjugate a country for over two hundred years, even if that country is your own. After all, isn't that your modus operandi?"

He looked at her, at first shocked, but then he released an unexpected laugh.
"Fine.
You introduce her to Granville. But all bets are off if he wants to marry her. Our agreement does not stand."

"Of all the papers that I signed when I married you, I don't remember ever seeing the stipulation that Mara was not permitted to marry a Brit."

"I can't foresee every possibility."

"No, you can't. All bets are on, Mr. Sheridan.
British or not."

Tight-lipped, he watched her saunter back into the crowd and take Mara to the receiving line.

Like an artist working with a favored medium, Alana made her way through the line. She was pleased to see the duke looking bored as he spoke with Mrs. Van Dam, an aged matron of Washington Square. It would be all the more sweet to capture his attention with Mara.

Through the crowd Alana gave Trevor a rather bold look, then grasped Mara's hand and said to the duke, "Your Grace, I'm Mrs. Trevor Sheridan."

The duke kissed her hand. There was a surprised twinkle in his eye. "Ah yes, I've heard a lot about you, Mrs. Sheridan. Your maiden name was Van
Alen
, was it not?"

Alana smiled, not caring that there was gossip about her. She had had no doubts there would be. "Indeed it was Van
Alen
, but my name is
Sheridan
now." From the corner of her eye she spied Trevor. He was almost scowling at her. She spoke loudly enough for him to hear. "And you'll be hearing more of the Sheridan name, Your Grace, because I'd like to introduce to you my sister-in-law, Miss Mara Sheridan."

The duke bent to kiss Mara's hand. As he straightened, his blue eyes met Mara's, and suddenly his air of ennui was gone. "How
nice
it is to meet
you
," he said, looking down at the blushing girl.

"Miss Sheridan is a native New Yorker," Alana interjected, "and quite fond of our lovely new park. Do you ride, Your Grace?"

"Of course, of course," he answered absentmindedly, his gaze caught in Mara's.

Alana smiled. Everything was going quite well. The duke was struck dumb. How easy it had been. She batted her fan to regain his attention. "Miss Sheridan was just telling me that soon we must go for a ride in the park. One morning, I imagine, right after breakfast."

"That's when I like to ride."

"It
is?"
Alana put her hand to her chest as if she were astounded by such a coincidence. She turned to look at Trevor, who'd heard the entire exchange. He frowned, and she had to stifle a giggle behind her fan.

From his place in the crowd, Trevor watched his wife work her magic on the duke. She was polite, witty, and charming—all the things she'd been bred to be. If one looked closely, one might have seen pride and admiration for her in his eyes, and a healthy dose of fear.

And if one listened well, one would have heard him whisper under his breath what was most on his mind. "No, all bets are
off,
Mrs. Sheridan.
Starting with your next bloody trip to Brooklyn."

"Wasn't he handsome? Wasn't he charming? I felt so clumsy when he asked me to waltz. I must have stepped on his toes four times!" Mara chattered on during the carriage ride up Fifth Avenue when the ball was over.

"Young Granville was quite a gentleman, don't you agree, Trevor?" In the golden lamplight Alana turned to her brooding husband and gave him her most dazzling vengeful smile. "I told him Mara and I would be riding in the park Thursday morning. You don't think he'd believe I was so brazen as to be dropping hints of our whereabouts so that he might 'accidently' bump into us, do you?"