“With all that he’s said and done, he could never stand up if we all stood against him,” his sister, Dorothy, agreed.
“So we must drag him out into the light, expose him to the same treatment he’s dished out to others, and let public opinion squash him,” Lady Evangeline said.
“Yes.” Lady Briarwood took up the cause, a fervent light in her eyes. “We need to lure him into confessing his true nature and snap the trap closed around him.”
“If he’s so fascinated with us, we should give him what he wants.” Lady Evangeline pushed past her brother to stand by Lady Briarwood’s side. “We should plan a party, a bacchanal, to lure him to the castle. Then we will call him out in front of all of Paris society and watch him burn.”
“Fantastic,” Lady Briarwood said. “We can call it our goodbye ball. Everyone in Paris will want to attend.”
Louis eyed the ladies skeptically as they launched into plans for a ball. Excitement for the idea grew quickly, but Louis had his doubts. Asher and Marshall appeared to have their doubts as well, but Damien and Sebastian were drawn into the excitement of planning.
Louis made his way inconspicuously around the table to where Solange sat, observing the whole spectacle with wide eyes. He knew even before he reached her that she would share his assessment of the situation.
“Whatever they plan, it isn’t going to work,” he said quietly when he reached her.
“Lafarge will expect something like that,” Solange agreed.
“Which is why we must take things into our own hands and bring it all to a conclusion before your dear cousins can damage their reputations even more,” Louis continued.
Solange glanced up at him, the fire that had drawn him in at first sight back in her eyes. “Lafarge won’t have a chance to destroy the McGoverns if we destroy him first,” she said.
“And destroy him we will.” Louis nodded.
Chapter 5
Solange hadn’t felt so much certainty about her chances of finally bringing Lafarge to justice until after she and Louis decided to take matters into their own hands. Lafarge had made a critical error in threatening the McGovern family. Not only were the McGoverns themselves capable of far more than she suspected Lafarge knew, they had friends. Friends who would fight to keep them safe. Friends who weren’t afraid to get their hands a little dirty.
The plan she and Louis hatched involved exposing Lafarge for the crimes he had committed, not just against the two of them, but against a host of others. They had agreed to seek out Lafarge’s other victims and to convince them to come forward en masse. But that task was something Louis had to do on his own. Solange didn’t have the connections or introductions to the people whom they would truly need on their side. As soon as she recognized that Louis’s plan involved her sitting on her hands for at least a day while he visited members of the French nobility, she knew she needed to act on her own.
Which was how she found herself on the doorstep of Lafarge’s Parisian house by midmorning the next day, ringing the bell and praying that her ambitious plan would bear fruit.
“I’m here to see Monsieur Lafarge,” she told the pinch-faced butler who answered the door.
“Monsieur Lafarge is not at home,” the man said, attempting to shut the door on her.
Solange stopped him with a firm hand on the door’s handle, stepping into the entryway so that he would have to shove her aside in order to shut her out. “Tell him his daughter is here to see him,” she said, glaring at the man.
The butler hesitated, studying her through narrowed eyes. For a long, anxious moment, Solange thought he was going 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.