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stood in the shadows cast by the gasolier. He had frightened her before, but now his very quietness terrified her. Without guessing, she knew he'd come all the way from his hotel on Fifth Avenue to talk about Sheridan. He'd come to tell her she was ruined. And though her first reaction was unadulterated panic, her next was a strange relief. At least now the ax had fallen, and she could begin picking up the pieces.
    "Uncle Baldwin—what are you doing here at so late an hour?" she asked, though she hardly needed to. From the corner of her eye she glanced at the servants who had helped her from the carriage. Margaret's husband, the footman, Kevin, quickly averted his eyes, and even Pumphrey , a master of butler's detachment, looked anxious to be excused. They'd known something was up. They'd also known it was bad.
    "Come in here," Didier instructed, ingeniously hiding his drunkenness with precise speech and impeccable attire. Even his dark-blue cravat was as straight as a pin.
    Alana braced herself for the worst. Her uncle was furious. Sheridan might be the cause of their troubles, but somehow she knew she would pay. She knew from the glitter in those magnificent ice-blue eyes.
    She handed her gloves to Kevin, and to the man's credit he looked as if he just might step forward and block her way, disproving Mrs. Astor's theories that there was no chivalry in the working class. Yet just when he was about to move, Alana covertly shook her head and brushed past him. "I must handle this," she whispered in passing. The next time she glanced back, Pumphrey was nodding Kevin in the direction of the basement kitchen.
    Alana stepped into the parlor and watched her uncle pull together the enormous pocket doors that shut them off from the foyer. With any other person this wouldn't have frightened her, yet she knew from their last encounter that Baldwin Didier was unlike any other person. Her stomach lurched, and her palms began to perspire, but she faced him with cool green eyes. "What is so pressing at this hour that you've come all the way down from your rooms to speak to me?" She wanted to get through this as quickly as possible. The bruise he'd left on her cheek still smarted when she touched it, and it was still a trick to hide it with powder. Her insides coiled with anger every time she thought of it.
    "Sit down." Didier's glance went to the old Belter settee her parents had bought during better times, times that now seemed bitterly distant.
    "What must we discuss at this late hour?" She reluc-tantly sat on the edge of the settee, still ready to stand and fight.
    "You may dispense with those nice manners, Alana. You can't afford them anymore."
    Her uncle stood over her; she could smell the spirits reeking on him and on the carpet behind him where his cognac had spilled. He had many vile faults, but she had to admit she had never seen him drunk. Not in the three years he'd held her trust fund.
    "I'm ruined, then?" she asked, a wild surge of panic rushing through her.
    "That's right. You're poor. I bought into the Hudson Bank. They went under today—" he brutally took her chin in hand and spoke very well for one so drunk—"my money with it. They went bust when Sheridan demanded their note. I've lost everything. And now even the almighty Van Alens have lost their last gold dollar."
    She tried to pull out of his grasp, but it was impossible. Momentarily overwhelmed, she released a small moan and inwardly cursed the Sheridan name. The Irishman had been thorough in his rampage. Now she too was a casualty, and the thought made her swing between outrage and helplessness. She had wanted to go to that ball! And because of that, she had almost believed Trevor Sheridan would leave her alone. But he hadn't. In his strange obsession to avenge his sister he had raked her fortune clean just like the others. Yet in her case she hadn't a soul to help her recover. No relatives except the charlatan standing before her.
    Shattered, she had barely