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Harinck , der Burch, and Wynkoop ." Sheridan watched while Eagan did it. "Now," he said, "are there any more names left?"
    "Just the name Van Alen ."
    Sheridan eased back in his chair and resumed reading. Quite off-handedly, he murmured, "Oh yes, I forgot. Check that name off the list too."

 
4
     
    Alana hardly noticed the covert glances of the servants as she was helped from the Van Alen brown coupé. If it hadn't been raining so hard, she might have felt a tingle of foreboding at their wary gazes, but as she was escorted by umbrella to the front door of her residence, her thoughts were elsewhere, preoccupied with another impending disaster.
    Tonight had been another tedious Monday soiree at Mrs. Astor's. For an evening that should have been made for pleasure, "pleasurable" was hardly how Alana would have described it. Mrs. Astor spoke incessantly of "that wretched Irishman" and "his vile manueverings ," while the men holed up in the library right after dinner, uttering oaths, she imagined, that could have put Mrs. Astor's groom to the blush.
    The Knickerbockers had been hit hard by Sheridan, the man they too now called the Predator. But their financial ruin didn't compare to their outrage at being humiliated. Some Knickerbockers, Alana had heard, were even being chased by debt collectors after losing enormous sums in speculation. That was unheard of in her circle, and it would have amused her—the picture of all that old money being chased down by such a common vulture, the bill collector—if she weren't another ready victim for the Predator.
    She was a Knickerbocker too. She'd meant to attend Mara's debut, but Sheridan didn't know that, and though he'd left some of them alone—the Astors because it was said he admired Willy B. and because he wanted to ensure there was some society left for Mara to be accepted into—Alana wondered if the Van Alen money wasn't just a matter of time.
    In her heart she truly understood the reasons for Trevor Sheridan's wrath. The cruelty of Mara Sheridan's failed debut still stabbed at her too. But as much as she empathized, Trevor Sheridan's vengeance had been too strong and too sweeping to condone. She had a sister and loved her as well, but only a madman would go to such lengths to destroy the people he blamed for hurting his sibling's feelings. So she'd reached the conclusion that either Trevor Sheridan was a madman or there was something about Mara Sheridan's debut that cut into him more than just its lack of attendance.
    Now, disembarking from the carriage in the pouring rain, Alana felt weighted down with worry. The evening had been torture, and while she dreaded feeling Sheridan's wrath upon her shoulders, it had been all she could do not to say something inflammatory at Mrs. Astor's—to blame those licking their wounds in Willy B.'s library for their own misery. She hadn't because she knew she couldn't. Didier made it all too clear to her that, for her sister's sake, she must keep her standing in society. Yet she longed to lash out, and tonight, seeing all those hateful people who had so callously crushed the hopes of a sixteen-year-old girl, she'd found it difficult to restrain herself.
    Tiredly she allowed the butler to take her cape and shake off the raindrops. Pulling on the fingers of her skintight kid gloves, she began on the fifteen buttons at her wrist and slowly strode through the carpeted foyer. She walked unmindful of the glittering blue eyes that watched her from the double parlor, unaware how the gaze ripped down her figure, taking in every detail of her costly appearance, from the pale-peach satin of her gown to the strands of pearls that were woven into her chignon at the back of her neck. The sight of all these expensive trappings so enraged the onlooker that he rose, knocking his cognac from its perch on the arm of his chair. "Alana."
    Hearing her uncle's angry rasp, Alana turned sharply to find him at the entrance to the double parlor. Didier's menacing figure