to physically remove her from the premises or call for some of the toughs she’d seen the night Damien McGovern and Lord Gregory had tried to gain entrance to the offices of Les Ragots to do the job for him. But to her surprise, the butler drew in a breath and stepped back, gesturing for her to come inside.
“Wait here,” he said in a low growl, turning and leaving her in the chilly entryway.
Solange did as she was told, hugging herself and glancing around the dim interior of Lafarge’s house. From what she could see, the man’s home was as cold and forbidding as he was. There was no charm and no life in it, just wealth and ostentation. It gave her a bad feeling that she couldn’t shake during the long, painful time she waited for the butler to return.
At last, the man came back, his scowl as dark as ever. “Come with me,” he said, barely looking at her before turning and retracing his steps down the silent hallway.
Solange pressed a hand to her stomach and followed. The confrontation she had dreamed of for years was finally about to happen, but she couldn’t decide whether she was more excited or terrified. The dark tension that seemed to infuse the walls of the home she walked through didn’t help her anxiety at all.
“In here,” the butler said as he stopped in front of the door to a stiffly formal office at the end of the long hall.
Solange held her back straight and her chin up and turned the corner into the office. Lafarge sat behind a desk, scribbling something on a loose piece of paper in front of him. His desk was piled with ledgers, newspapers, and copies of his own magazine, all arranged in precise order. A gold inkwell with an old-fashioned quill sat on one corner and a tiny replica of a guillotine graced the other corner.
Lafarge didn’t look up when Solange entered the room, or when she marched straight up to the desk and said, “Monsieur Lafarge, your reign of terror is over.”
She waited. Lafarge continued scribbling. Prickles broke out down her back. Anger welled up in her gut. She refused to be ignored.
“You have threatened the wrong family,” she went on, raising her voice. “The McGoverns will not be brought down by a paper tyrant like you.”
Lafarge blew out a breath in what sounded like a dismissive laugh. At last, he put his pen down and glanced up at her. “The McGoverns will be brought down by their own foolishness and misdeeds.”
A thread of panic swirled in Solange’s chest, but she tamped it down. Perhaps she should have investigated exactly what Lafarge was holding over the McGovern clan’s head before rushing into her confrontation. But it was too late now.
“You destroyed my family, sir, and I will not let you destroy another family that I hold in highest regard,” she said.
Lafarge leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers and tapping them to his thin lips. He studied Solange with narrowed eyes, as though amused by her threats. His silence taunted her, but as much as she wanted to ball her hands into fists at her sides—or use one to punch the smug look off his face—she stood straight and tall, refusing to be intimidated.
“You look like my aunt Monique,” he said at last, his grin as haughty as could be.
“I am no part of you or your blood,” Solange snapped, tilting her chin higher.
“Oh, but you are,” Lafarge said. “You’ve got the Lafarge family spirit as well. Why else would you have pursued me across two continents only to stand before me, railing like a child who has just discovered how unfair life is?”
Solange shook with rage. She had not taken the risk of confronting the man to be belittled and reminded of the wrongs that had been done to her.
“I am giving you a chance to surrender,” she said, taking a step toward his desk. “Your time is up.”
He laughed as if she’d told a ribald joke. “It is quaint of you to think so, but you are wrong. My time has only just begun. I’ve decimated the ranks of the French aristocracy, and the English are next, beginning with your precious McGoverns.”
Nothing was going as Solange imagined it would. But in the back of her mind, a tiny voice whispered that she had planned the whole thing badly, been ridiculously foolish for approaching the lion in his den, and was about to