Benedict's Challenge - Carole Mortimer Page 0,45

this reminder of how much her parents had loved her. “Such as lie to me, starve me, and whip me whenever you felt so inclined.”

“Yes, all that,” he confirmed without apology. “I found it especially gratifying when I could imagine that it was Niamh I was starving and beating.”

Chloe gave a shudder. “I cannot believe my parents would ever have left my guardianship to someone as wicked and cruel as you. Nor can I imagine my parents having left me completely destitute and so at your mercy.”

“There was no money, just the burden of you,” he sneered. “And in return for my generosity, you have behaved the ungrateful wretch.”

She gasped. “For what have I been ungrateful? Being locked up by a sadistic monster—” She broke off as Lord Gordon’s hand hit the side of her face with such force, she was almost knocked off her feet.

Chloe thought she heard a gasp from behind one of the walls, but she concentrated on staying out of Lord Gordon’s reach as she cradled her painful cheek. “You are a monster,” she repeated defiantly. “And I shall thank God every day that my mother was wise enough never to agree to marry you.”

“You ungrateful little bitch.” He glared his dislike of her. “Perhaps I should just leave you here?” He glanced at their surroundings. “It will give me great pleasure to think of the men here pushing your legs apart and taking you, again and again, night after night—” He broke off when the door behind him burst open, his eyes wide as Benedict strode purposefully across the room, an expression of thunder upon his handsome face as he grasped the older man about the throat.

He used that leverage to drag Lord Gordon back until he had him pressed up against the wall with his feet dangling several inches above the carpeted floor. He thrust his face close to Lord Gordon’s. “You may thank your step-niece for the fact that I am not currently beating you to within an inch of your life, you worthless piece of—” He broke off to draw in a long and steadying breath. “You will shortly be going to prison, where it is to be hoped that your fellow prisoners, most, if not all, having led a far less privileged life than you, will subsequently make your time there a living hell.” He allowed the older man to slide down the wall far enough he now stood on his tiptoes.

“On what charges will I be sent to prison?” the older man managed to bluster past that hold on his throat.

“A claim of unlawful guardianship and theft of that child’s inheritance after illegally declaring her dead,” another man voiced quietly.

Lord Gordon tilted his head so that he could look at the somberly dressed gentleman standing near the doorway, and next to him, Julius Soames and Jimmy. “I recognize Andover, but who might the two of you be?” He glared at them.

Jimmy straightened to his full height of just over six feet. “I am Lord James Metford.”

“Any relation to the Earl of Ipswich?”

Chloe could see Jimmy fighting an inner battle with himself before he released a determined breath. “I am the Earl of Ipswich.”

Lord Gordon snorted. “The last I heard, that title belonged to Adrian Metford.”

“The last he heard too,” Jimmy acknowledged scornfully before he glanced at Benedict. “I have decided to correct that error at the earliest opportunity.”

Benedict could see from the determined light in Jimmy’s eyes that the younger man aimed to do much more than that, and that his reason for doing so was Benedict’s sister, Beatrix.

“I will come with you,” Julius Soames offered. “In the meantime… Mr. Glover, I believe you have more to say on our present situation.”

“Glover,” Lord Gordon echoed sharply. “As in Glover, Glover, and—”

“Eccles, yes,” the solicitor confirmed. “I was the legal representative of your stepbrother and his wife, and subsequent to that, your step-niece. The step-niece you informed me, and produced a death certificate to confirm it, had died in the same accident as her parents. In view of Miss Gordon’s presence here tonight, I take it that death certificate you produced for me was counterfeit and you had procured it for illegal purposes?”

“Prove it,” the older man spat.

The solicitor stared at him coldly. “Presenting a false paper as evidence your step-niece was dead is illegal and has serious consequences. As does your unlawful imprisonment of that niece within your home. And the acquisition of her inheritance with that same false death