our…liaison.”
Lord Gordon’s top lip curled back as his gaze swept over her with complete contempt. “If I had known of your…proclivities, I would have put you to work in a brothel myself. As it is, you not only now seem to have found your proper place in the world, but you also look like the slut that you are. Like the slut your mother was,” he added harshly. “She would open her legs for any man who smiled at her too,” he sneered.
Chloe’s hands clenched so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palms. She willed herself not to respond as she wished to and slap this man’s bloated and overindulged face. “I somehow doubt that. But the important thing,” she continued as he would have spoken, “is that she did not smile nor open her legs for you. Now I believe you said you had something you wished to talk to me about?”
That vein at his temple throbbed more noticeably. “Do not take that defiant tone with me, young lady, or I will give you cause to regret it.”
“By administering another one of your beatings for some imagined misdemeanor?”
He nodded sharply. “One such as you have not yet known. I do not appreciate you having necessitated me chasing over half the city searching for you, only to find you here, of all places.”
“You did not do this chasing personally, it would seem,” she drawled.
He huffed out an irritated breath. “I have better things to do with my time than waste it looking for ungrateful young chits who do not know when they are well off.”
“Well off!” Chloe repeated incredulously. “You kept me locked away in a room in the attic, with barely enough food to sustain me. You would beat me without provocation and then beat me again whenever you decided I had erred in some way. I could not rise from my bed for a week the last time you whipped me.”
He snorted. “You do not seem to have suffered any lasting ill effects.”
Chloe shook her head. “I do not understand why it is you seem to dislike me so much when all I have asked is that you treat me like the step-niece I am to you.”
His nostrils flared. “You are also Niamh’s daughter, born during her marriage to my stepbrother.”
She eyed him curiously. “Why do you hate them so much?”
“I hated her,” he corrected harshly. “My stepbrother was merely another besotted fool who fell under her Irish spell. You are her twin in looks.”
“If you felt this way, why did you not let my Aunt and Uncle Bayliss take custody of me two years ago?”
“I have already told you it was their choice. Not only do they hold you responsible for your parents’ deaths, but they did not want a penniless orphan living in their home and eating their food either.”
Chloe drew in a sharp breath at what she now knew to be this bitter man’s deliberate cruelty. Her aunt and uncle did not hate her, nor was she penniless. Her inheritance was something else this man had deprived her of.
“Did you always hate my mother?” she probed.
She was certain that her parents’ solicitor had already heard enough to know of the deceit practiced upon him by Lord Gordon in regard not only to her still being alive, but the cruelty with which she had been treated by her so-called guardian in the two years since.
The questions she asked now were for herself.
Lord Gordon currently appeared to be fighting an inner battle. He finally gave up as the vitriol poured from his lips. “Niamh showed herself to be an ungrateful chit when she refused my proposal of marriage,” he bit out contemptuously.
Chloe was stung into defending her mother. “She was everything that was kind and gentle.”
“She was an idiot who later fell in love with and chose to marry my younger but untitled and much poorer stepbrother.”
“Which proves my point of her not being in the least contrived or mercenary,” she maintained stubbornly.
“Do not talk back to me, girl, or I’ll make sure you regret being alive,” he warned harshly. “I warned Gerald against marrying her, but he wouldn’t have it, always maintained their love for each other was and always would be enough. Well, I might have had to wait almost twenty years, but I am certainly the one who has had the last laugh, because after they both died, I could do as I wished with their beloved and overindulged daughter.”
Chloe’s heart clenched at