Seduced by a Scoundrel (24 page)

“I gave him a purpose in his life. If you don’t believe me, then ask him. He should be downstairs in the dining room.”

“And thence to the gaming tables he’ll go,” she said bitterly. “How will he repay you this time? He hasn’t any more sisters for you to procure.”

He felt the violent urge to stop her insults in the best way he knew how, by thrusting her flat on the desk and mounting her. “A pity, that. I might have negotiated a trade when I tired of you.”

Alicia took a sharp breath that lifted her bosom enticingly. “You are vile.”

“And you are beyond reason. If you had any sense at all, you’d let Gerald make his own decisions.”

“He isn’t deciding for himself, he’s listening to you,” she flung back. “Like any man, he’ll follow the path of temptation.”

“And women know nothing of temptation?” Goaded, Drake pressed himself to her, letting her feel his arousal. It angered him that she could tie him in knots while belittling all that he had worked to build. “I’m afraid it’s too late to persuade me that ladies are angels, pure and ethereal, incapable of lust.”

A delicate flush stained her cheeks. She tilted her head back and met his gaze squarely, her gloved fingers clenched at her sides. “We were speaking of wagering, not bedsport.”

“Ah, but lechery is a far more fascinating topic.”

He would show her who was her master. He brought his hands to her breasts, kneading her through the layers of spencer, gown, and corset. Though she stood rigidly, she lowered her lashes slightly and parted her lips.

“Bully,” she said, a betraying catch to her voice. “Let me go.”

“Beloved,” he taunted. “I’ll never let you go.”

Trapping her against the desk, he took her mouth with deliberate sensuality, using all of his skill to wrest a response from her. She brought her hands up as if to push him away, but instead her fingers caught at his shirt and she arched up on tiptoe, straining against him, opening her mouth to him. She tasted sweet and luscious, and he kissed her deeply, stroking her with his tongue until she moaned with pleasure and he burned with need. Her swift surrender drove him mad. He wanted to feel her, flesh to flesh. He wanted to thrust inside her. He wanted to rid himself of this power she held over him.
Now.

He pulled at her skirts, only to stagger backward under the force of her shove. Disoriented by passion, Drake grabbed for her, but she slipped beneath his arm and darted across the office.

He stalked after her. When she tried to wrest open the door, he planted his palm on the oak panel. “For Christ’s sake, Alicia—”

She spun to face him. Her distraught expression silenced him. His gaze riveted to the unshed tears in her eyes.

“I can’t resist you,” she said in bitter bewilderment. “Not even knowing what you’ve done to my brother.”

Drake felt unmanned by her tears. Wanting to comfort her and despising her effect on him, he bit out, “I’ve done nothing. If you would understand that—”

“No,
you
try to understand,” she said wildly, her gaze stark. “My father shot himself. He fell so far into debt from gambling that he could no longer face his family. And I fear … I fear Gerald may someday do the same.”

Chapter Seventeen

Alicia maintained the pretense of calm all the way to the back staircase. Her footsteps echoed in the narrow shaft. A wall sconce on each landing provided light for the servants, but thankfully, the place was deserted.

Wilting onto the wooden steps, she buried her face in her hands and released her bottled-up tears. She could not understand herself. How could she desire a man who preyed upon the weaknesses of others? How could she have let passion overshadow her hatred of gambling?

She hadn’t meant to hurl the truth at Drake. Few people knew the nature of her father’s death. It had been Lord Hailstock’s idea to conceal the horrifying reality, and grief-stricken, she had allowed him to handle the matter, to sort through her father’s affairs and pay off his ruinous debts. The shooting had been attributed to a thwarted robbery. If people whispered, she had heard none of it. She had kept busy caring for Mama, who had gone out of her mind with grief, and consoling Gerald, a bewildered thirteen-year-old.

She sat there for a while, weeping. Then, on the floor above, a door clicked open. Heavy footsteps descended the stairs.
Drake?

She sprang up, sniffling, scrubbing at her damp cheeks. She must not let him see her weakness. He would use it to his own purposes.

But the man who came into view wasn’t her husband.

He was a tall, rangy giant clad in sober black. The leather patch over one eye made him appear sinister. The butler, she remembered. He had escorted her up to Drake’s office that day she had come to make her desperate offer.

She averted her head and waited for him to pass. But he stopped two steps above her. When he didn’t proceed, she tilted her head back to see him regarding her with faint horror.

“Wilder didna say he’d driven ye to tears.”

Making a final furtive brush at her cheeks, she forced a polite smile. “You spoke to him?”

“Aye. The dastard ordered me to find ye and take ye to yer brother.”

In spite of her distress, she felt oddly cheered by his disapproval of Drake. “Thank you, Mr.…”

“MacAllister,” he said gruffly. “Fergus MacAllister.” He thumped down the steps and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Dinna fret over yer husband. He’s a braw heart beneath all his manly blustering. His mither raised him well.”

Alicia wasn’t sure what
braw
meant, but she did know that Drake had nothing resembling a heart. Biting her tongue, she asked, “Did you know his mother?”

“Aye. We met in Edinburgh long ago, when she was a puir actress, struggling to support the wee bairn.” On that stunning statement, he went past Alicia and tramped down the stairs.

Holding on to the wooden rail, she hastened after him. “Drake was born in Scotland? He never told me so.”

MacAllister snorted. “’Tis no surprise. The lad’s a close-mouthed one.”

“He doesn’t speak with a brogue.”

“Nay. After his mither died, we came to London and he set himself to learning the fancy ways of the nobility.”

“How old was he?”

“Ten, m’lady. And alone in the world save fer me. Times were wretched fer him, then.” He regarded her with a piercing stare. “’Twill take patience to earn his love, ye ken.”

Alicia stiffened. Did he think she
wanted
Drake’s love? Or that she needed advice on her marriage?

She should be offended by MacAllister’s presumption. But he had known Drake since childhood, and she supposed that gave him a certain prerogative. Besides, she couldn’t spoil this rare opportunity to learn more about her husband. “Please tell me about Drake’s mother. And his father.”

Halting on the next landing, the servant shot her a one-eyed scowl. The kindness fled from his grizzled face so that he looked dour and dismal. “’Tisn’t fer me to say. Ye should ask yer questions of yer husband.”

MacAllister opened the door and stalked out. Her lips pursed, Alicia followed him into a broad passageway decorated in muted greens with a tasteful touch of gilding on the arched ceiling. What had she said to make him turn uncommunicative? Was it the mention of Drake’s father?

Perhaps she should not have been so bold. Drake had, after all, been born out of wedlock. He might not even know who had sired him.

Sympathy stirred in her, but she pushed away the sentiment. A lack of paternal guidance did not excuse his faults. He was a conscienceless exploiter. And she would not allow him to get past her guard ever again.

Yet those words sounded hollow to her. She knew he had only to touch her, and all of her good sense vanished.…

At the end of the corridor, the butler held open a door, and she stepped into a vast kitchen filled with delicious smells. Great pillars stretched to the high ceiling, and huge, hanging oil lamps illuminated the cooking areas. The room was a beehive of orderly activity, with a white-coated chef directing an army of helpers who sliced and chopped and kneaded. A stoop-shouldered man drew trays of fragrant loaves out of a tall bake oven. In the center of the kitchen, a table held many silver platters with gleaming domed lids.

Alicia turned to MacAllister. “Is my brother here?”

“Nay, but there’s time aplenty to see the earl. Right now, ye need a wee cuppy.”

A cuppy?

Mystified, she followed him through another doorway and into a chamber dominated by a long table. At the far end, a small group of servants sat laughing and talking, eating their supper. One fell silent, then another and another, as all eyes turned to Alicia.

“Here be Mrs. Wilder, sister to Lord Brockway,” Fergus MacAllister said ominously. “Come make yer bows to the lady.”

The servants quickly gathered their plates. Cutlery clattered. Chair legs scraped the flagstone floor. As a mobcapped maid stood up, Alicia stared at an unmistakable mound beneath the girl’s white apron. Drake employed a pregnant servant?

“Please stay,” Alicia said quickly. “I don’t mean to interrupt your meal.”

Silence reigned for a moment. Five pairs of eyes looked from her to MacAllister and back again.

“We are finished, my lady,” intoned a man at the head of the table. “So it is no imposition.”

Stout and balding, he alone remained seated. With an abrupt push against the table, he moved backward—or rather,
rolled
backward. His chair had
wheels.

Wide-eyed, she watched him advance the chair, capably turning the large wheels with his hands. He stopped in front of her, pressed his hand to his plain coat, and inclined his head in a bow. “The name’s Lazarus Cheever,” he said, enunciating each word. “’Tis a pleasure to meet the lady who tamed our Wilder.”

“Oh … thank you. Though I fear he is hardly tamed yet.”

A nervous giggle escaped the two maidservants standing behind him. Alicia hid her chagrin. It wasn’t like her to speak so familiarly to strangers. The encounter with Drake must have addled her senses.

MacAllister cleared his throat. “Cheever tallies the accounts here,” he grunted. “Oftimes he still fancies himself a thespian.”

“You were once an actor?” Alicia asked Cheever.

“As true and dedicated a performer as ever trod the boards. Until one fateful night when a vigorous sword fight sent me tumbling off the stage.” He jabbed an imaginary blade into the air, then dropped his hand to his lap. “Alas, I lost not only the use of my legs, but my livelihood as well. No one would hire a cripple. That is, no one but the esteemed Drake Wilder.”

“God bless Mr. Wilder,” the pregnant maidservant whispered fervently.

“Go on,” MacAllister prompted her, “tell m’lady yer tale.”

She bobbed an awkward curtsy to Alicia. “Wot ’appened is, Mr. Wilder were the only bloke who’d gi’ me a place after me master used me ill, then tossed me out on the street.”

A freckle-faced footman took her hand. “Y-y-you’re safe now,” he stammered. “W-w-with us.” When she smiled shyly at him, he ducked his head, his cheeks beet-red.

The two giggling maids were orphans, Alicia learned, sisters who had been rescued from a hard life in the workhouse. While they spoke of Drake with a worshipful admiration, Alicia smiled politely.

But deep inside, she felt shaken, unable to withstand a flood tide of confusion. Drake had provided employment for these desperate souls who might have starved otherwise? The conniving rogue who had led Gerald astray also played the philanthropist? How could she reconcile two such divergent sides in one man?

“Go awa’ wi’ ye now,” MacAllister told the servants. “An’ bring the lady her tay.”

The servants hastened out, leaving Alicia alone with the butler. She sank into the nearest chair and frowned down at the burled pattern in the oak table. “Who is he?” she mused aloud.

“M’lady?”

She looked up to see MacAllister sitting across from her, and she searched his gloomy features for answers. The tangle of her emotions stifled her natural reticence. “My husband,” she said in a rush of frustration. “He’s like two utterly different people. The ruthless gambler … and the generous benefactor who helped Cheever and the other servants here. And at home, too.” She paused, faintly astonished to realize the extent of his munificence. “There’s Kitty, our deaf housemaid. Chalkers, the drunken butler. And the coachman—the one who made me late to my wedding.”

“Aye, Big Bill. A braw pugilist in his time, till his brains got rattled a bit too much.” MacAllister tapped his skull, then leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. “And dinna forget Mrs. Yates.”

Alicia stiffened. “What about her?”

“’Tis the most dire tale of them all,” he said. “Wilder found her half dead from a beatin’. Many’s the man who’d’ve driven on by an’ left the puir soul lyin’ in the ditch. But he brung her home, fetched the physician, and had her nursed for months till she recovered.”

Alicia stared, dumbfounded. The woman from Whitechapel who had been battered by her husband. Drake had said the shock had caused her to lose her wits for a while. That defenseless invalid was … Mrs. Yates?

Impossible. But there could be no reason for MacAllister to lie. Not when she could easily find out the truth.

Resentment and understanding warred within her. Against her will, she realized that the impertinent housekeeper must view Drake as her savior. As such, she would feel a certain possessiveness toward him.

Shaken by her own violent jealousy, Alicia wanted to believe she didn’t care if Drake took a mistress. But she couldn’t fool herself. If he dared to kiss and caress any other woman, to do with her that profoundly intimate act that should belong to married couples only.…

Holding fast to her anger, she said, “If Drake likes to help people so much, then how can he encourage my brother to gamble?”

“To gamble?” Regarding her blankly, MacAllister shook his head. “The master didna tell you?”

“Oh, he mentioned something about Gerald having a position here. As a croupier, no doubt. But if my brother so much as puts his hand on a pair of dice or deals a deck of cards, he will be drawn into the game.”