Seduced by a Scoundrel by Barbara Dawson Smith Page A

“Planning to move in?” she said icily.
    “As a matter of fact, we’ll live at my house near the club.”
    “Not without Mama. And you’ll allow Gerald to stay here without charge.”
    “Agreed.” He looked more amused than angered by her demands. “And now I will have your promise to be my wife.”
    His superior height required her to tilt up her chin to hold his gaze. With studied poise, she clasped her tense fingers together. “Only if you promise to cease your attentions when I tell you so.”
    That sly grin came again. “ If you tell me so.” His heavy-lidded gaze caressed her, roving up and down, lingering at her breasts and hips until her skin prickled. “Beneath all that refinement, my lady, you’re flesh and blood. And before the Season is out, you’ll come begging to share my bed.”
    *   *   *
    Gloom shrouded the sparse furnishings in the bedchamber. Standing by the night table, Alicia measured several drops of laudanum into a cup of weak tea. She added a crumbling of coarse brown sugar, stirred the liquid until the lumps dissolved, and then turned to the woman in the four-poster. “Your posset is ready.”
    Sitting against a bank of goose-feather pillows, Lady Eleanor looked lost in the huge bed with its swags of aging rose velvet. A white lace nightcap perched on her silvering fair hair. She kept her tattered moleskin cape tucked close like a young child might hold a beloved blanket. The sputtering tallow candle added luminescence to her blue eyes.
    “Ah, ye’re a dear,” she said, accepting the chipped china with the reverence worthy of a communion cup. “Bless ye for takin’ me in. ’Tis ever so cold and lonely to sleep in the alleys.”
    Alicia concealed a grimace at the irony of her mother’s current delusion. The Countess of Brockway had never spent a single night out on the streets, and never would if Alicia had her way. They shared this bedchamber, partly because it was cheaper to heat one room than two, and partly so that Alicia could keep a close watch on her mother. Before the doctor had prescribed the laudanum, she’d had a habit of wandering around the house during the night, sometimes venturing up to the darkened attic to search through the trunks of antique clothing left from decades of Pemberton ancestors. Alicia feared Mama might knock over a candle and set the house afire, not to mention cast herself into danger in other ways.
    Once, after garbing herself in heavy brocaded robes as the Queen of Sheba, Mama had taken a nasty tumble down the steep wooden stairs. A sprained ankle had incapacitated her for a fortnight. Another time, fancying herself to be Joan of Arc, she had found a battered breastplate and an old dueling sword, and Alicia had caught her in the foyer, ready to charge out the front door and into the night.
    Heaven knew, she needed a guardian angel. Not a devil of a son-in-law who would dislodge her from these familiar surroundings.
    Torn between anger and affection, Alicia reached down and smoothed a stray curl from her mother’s brow. “Drink now,” she murmured. “Every last drop.”
    Obediently, the countess drained the cup and handed it back. Then she patted her lips with a lace handkerchief, which she tucked into her voluminous sleeve. Like a child, she snuggled down and let Alicia settle her beneath the embroidered coverlet.
    A contented sigh eddied from Lady Eleanor. “I been thinkin’, dearie. There’s somethin’ so familiar about ’im.”
    “About who?”
    “That polite young man of yers. I wonder if ’e’s bought posies from me before.”
    Alicia stiffened, though she was careful not to show her rancor. “I’m sure you’re confusing him with someone else.”
    “One don’t forget such a ’andsome gent. He was smitten with ye, buyin’ every last flower. Ah, ’twas so romantic.”
    Alicia avoided looking at the vase of bedraggled blooms, which she’d placed on the mantelpiece for her mother’s sake. She resented the oily