Last Chance for Paris - Merry Farmer Page 0,1
forcing herself to accept the explanation. She knew it was true. Why else would Lord Sinclair leave his comfortable home in England to travel to Côte d'Ivoire, spend months under Lafarge’s roof, and leave wealthier than when he’d arrived?
“Quick,” Madame Boucher whispered to her. “While the music is still loud. You can make your way up to the balcony and shoot him from that box nearby.” She pointed to an empty box only a few feet away from the one where Lord Sinclair and Monsieur Lafarge sat. “Though if it were me, I’d save time and shoot both of them.”
“No.” Solange shook her head. “I want Lafarge to suffer. I want him to know what it feels like to lose a son, just as my father—” She snapped her mouth shut over her words, not wanting to reveal more. “I want him to grieve first, to lose everything. Then he can die.”
Madame Boucher laughed. “Such a bloodthirsty little savage.”
The comment rankled Solange’s nerves, as did the way Madame Boucher clapped her back before stepping away to go about her business at the cabaret. If there was one thing Solange despised more than anything else, it was being called a savage, simply because she was African. Her father was a leader and a wealthy man. She was raised in a grand house with servants, given the finest education money could buy, and trained in music, dancing, and art. She was every bit as refined and accomplished as the aristocratic ladies she had spent the last few years with. But they didn’t see that. They saw a dark-skinned savage.
She clung tight to that anger, moving out of the shadows and making her way to the nearest door that would lead her to the stairs up to the balcony level. She would have her revenge. She would avenge her family in the process. And then she would try to assemble some sort of life from the ashes.
Determination filled her, but it was dashed to pieces in an instant by a cheery voice just on the other side of the doorway. Before she could duck into a corner or run away from the door, none other than Lady Roselyn came bursting into the cabaret hall, followed by two of the younger McGovern cousins, twins Heather and Sage McGovern.
“Of course Asher will never approve when he hears that we’ve abandoned touring old churches to come here,” Roselyn was in the middle of saying over her shoulder to the twins. “But personally, I think he is cruel to insist we miss out on a spectacle like this, and—oh! Solange. Is that you? What are you doing here?”
Solange’s jaw dropped and panic tightened her throat, but she managed to say, “Lord Addlebury insisted I keep an eye on you.”
It was a lie, but Roselyn blushed and looked like a child who had been caught stealing cake from the kitchen all the same. “Oh, Asher,” she said. “He does like to fuss. But we’ve only come here to see what all the hubbub about this new dance, the can-can, is all about and—oh dear heavens!”
Roselyn burst into laughter as she turned to gape at the stage full of flashing skirts and stockinged legs kicking. Solange let out a breath, glad that she was no longer the center of attention, but dreading what might happen next. Miss Heather and Miss Sage had their arms looped so tightly together that they might have been conjoined twins. Their eyes were huge as they took in the spectacle.
“This is absolutely splendid,” Roselyn went on, grabbing Miss Heather’s arm with one hand and Solange’s with the other and dragging them deeper into the hall. “This is magnificent. I wonder how they do that.”
She cut through the audience, garnering more than a few appreciative looks from red-faced gentlemen with ill-fitting trousers as she went. Someone grabbed a handful of Solange’s backside, and judging by the high-pitched squeal from Sage, she’d received the same treatment. But Roselyn pushed forward, apparently wanting to reach the stage itself.
Solange glanced over her shoulder, up into the box where Lord Sinclair and Monsieur Lafarge were still engaged in conversation. Her pistol was heavy in her pocket, just as her heart was heavy in her chest. There was no way she would be able to shoot from the center of the crowd of gawping spectators without being caught in an instant. And as much as she wanted Lord Sinclair dead, she would rather die herself than do anything to cause