Seduced by a Scoundrel - By Barbara Dawson Smith Page 0,2
establishment.”
“He is no longer a boy. Whether you admit so or not.”
“He is prone to youthful impulse,” she countered. “I should know. As his elder sister, I have been responsible for him all his life.”
Drake Wilder’s amused gaze flowed up and down her slender form. “Just how elderly are you?”
His heavy-lidded survey made her skin prickle again, and in a flash she saw herself unclothed, straddling him, his mouth on her breasts.…
“My age has nothing to do with this matter,” she said primly.
“It is indeed relevant. So answer me.”
Was it false pride that kept her from admitting she had been long on the shelf? Better to grant him this one concession. “If you must know, I am three and twenty.”
“Teetering on the brink of antiquity.”
His smile broadened, crinkling the corners of his eyes and creating attractive dimples on either side of that masculine mouth. A light-headed sensation nearly made Alicia sway on her feet. Humor relaxed the harshness of his expression so that he looked almost approachable.
As handsome as sin.
Realizing she was holding her breath, she released it slowly. “The point is, my brother cannot be held liable for a gaming debt. It isn’t legal.”
Wilder’s humor vanished into a calculating look. “Quite so. Yet he is bound by his honor as a gentleman. And he will have nothing left to pay his other creditors. Those debts will land him in prison.”
The weight of that fear threatened to crush Alicia. Only yesterday, the arrival of the bill collectors had alerted her. Bootmakers, tailors, jewelers, and wine merchants had congregated like wolves in the front hall, demanding payment before his lordship settled the gaming notes he had incurred the previous night.
In horror, she had rousted Gerald out of bed and badgered the truth from him. Hanging his head, he admitted to a night of drunken revel. He had wagered their meager savings and gambled funds they did not have. They were destitute.
“Twenty thousand guineas,” she had whispered. “Dear God in heaven, what foolishness possessed you?”
He had regarded her in hollow-eyed despair. “I’ll win back the money, Ali. Just grant me a little time.”
“No! Stay out of the gaming hells. Lest you end up like Papa.”
Gerald had flinched at her harsh words and, taking swift advantage, she had wrested a promise from him to remain at home. Then she had swallowed her pride and gone begging to their acquaintances, but to no avail. The banks, too, had refused to authorize a loan to a woman. She had even visited a moneylender on Threadneedle Street, a wily man with beady eyes who threw her out when she could offer no collateral.
Giving her no choice but to bargain with Drake Wilder.
He lounged against the desk, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. The idle clacking of the dice drew her gaze to his large hands. She wondered how many women had known the touch of those blunt-tipped, masculine fingers. The thought made her quiver with aversion and … something else. Something she didn’t care to examine.
“Have you other family?” he asked.
“My father is dead. My mother is…”—Alicia paused, her throat aching—“unwell.”
“Uncles? Grandparents? A guardian?”
“No one.”
“Then at the ripe old age of twenty-three, you are liable for your brother’s debts.”
She had walked straight into his trap. With her eyes open and her resolve set. “Yes, I am. I trust we can work out a plan for repayment.”
“I trust so.”
He didn’t look as though he trusted her; his eyes were impenetrable. For the hundredth time, she did a mental inventory of the town house, already shorn of all but the most shabby of contents. She could sell the furniture in the spare bedchamber and in the drawing room. She could pawn the silver tea service that she’d hidden for just such an emergency. She could take in laundry and sewing.
“I can manage twenty guineas per month,” she said.
Wilder laughed. “At that rate, the debt would take slightly over eighty-three years to repay. Adding in three percent annual interest, you’d be paying forever. You see, twenty guineas per month wouldn’t even touch the principal. You’d go deeper into debt each year. At the end of eighty-three years, you’d still owe the original twenty thousand plus over one hundred thirty four thousand in interest.”
The magnitude of the liability staggered Alicia. She sank onto a leather chair and clenched her fists in her lap. “You must be wrong. You can’t have calculated those figures without pen and paper.”