Lions and Lace by Meagan McKinney Read Free Book Online Page B

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