Seduced by a Scoundrel - By Barbara Dawson Smith Page 0,106

never to be trusted.

Blinking back angry tears, she shoved aside gown after gown, determined not to overlook any nook or cranny. She focused her mind on reaching into drawers, checking on top of cabinets, her fingers probing in the deepest corners.

At last, dejected, she plopped down on a stool and tried to think of where she hadn’t looked, where Mama might have concealed something she considered to be a treasure. There was no other possible hiding place—

Then her gaze alighted on the cask of fake gold coins, the ones Mama used when playing pirate.

Hardly daring to hope, she rushed to it and dug into the pile of painted tin circles. The metal made a tinkling noise, some of the coins spilling onto the floor. Near the bottom of the cask, her fingers brushed a small bundle.

Alicia pulled it out. Letters, a dozen or so, the paper yellowed and tied with a bedraggled pink satin ribbon. She had known Mama had saved these letters. She’d stumbled across them before, hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the bedroom they’d shared at Pemberton House. Attributing Mama’s secretiveness to eccentricity, Alicia had replaced the letters unread. She had believed them to be a sentimental keepsake of no significance to anyone but her mother.

Until today.

Closing her eyes, Alicia held the packet to her breast. Heaven help her, she shouldn’t look. She didn’t want to read the letters Mama had saved all these years. The letters that she now knew Lord Hailstock had been anxious to find.

For if her suspicions proved correct, she would be giving Drake the means for a far more enduring revenge.

* * *

Having busied himself for the past hour directing a bevy of servants, Drake felt an uncustomary awkwardness when he was finally alone with his brother.

A team of footmen had brought down a mahogany four-poster bed and reassembled it here in the morning room. Several maids had fixed the linens, made a fire in the hearth, and closed the varnished wood shutters. The rug had been rolled up and taken away so that James could roll freely across the pale marble floor. Behind the closed door of a small antechamber, a valet was unpacking several trunks full of James’s clothing.

Watching him pick up a lamp and move it to the bedside table, Drake wondered why he’d agreed to this damned fool arrangement. He should never have allowed his noble younger brother into this house. It was a revenge Drake had never conceived, to steal the marquess’s heir. And he felt no triumph, only a curious sense of unreality.

He’d gained a brother today. And lost a wife.

He tossed back a flavorless swallow of brandy. Though he’d downed half a decanter already, the liquor hadn’t dulled the sharpness of loss. If anything, it had made him maudlin.

Leaving Alicia at Pemberton House had gone against his every instinct. He didn’t know how long he’d stood there in the foyer, staring like a lovesick fool at the closed door to the library. He’d felt the desperate need to bring her back home where she belonged. She would have resisted, but he could have picked her up in his arms and carried her to his coach. She wouldn’t have kicked and screamed; Alicia had too much dignity for that.

But it was that very dignity that had stopped him. He couldn’t forget the look of chilling contempt in her eyes.

His wife despised him. Even more than she had at their forced wedding. And he had the discomfiting fear that this time, he might not succeed in charming her into his bed. He might never again trade witty barbs with her. He might never see her smile at the circus or get tipsy on a few glasses of champagne. He might never hear her soft voice whispering words of love.

His chest tightened with a restless, unfamiliar panic. Why was he dallying here when he ought to be trying to convince her? He had to do something. Having already exhausted his repertoire of excuses, he had no idea of what he’d say to her. Scouring his brain, he started toward the door.

“Hold there,” James said, rolling swiftly forward. “You can’t bring me a brandy and then leave.”

“I’m going to the club,” Drake lied.

“Take the evening off. And sit down, blast it. I’m getting a crick in my neck from looking up at you.”

He’d probably like Drake to bow and scrape like a damned servant.

Wearing a white shirt and dark breeches, his brother stared at him challengingly. Had James been