“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 pay the price in humiliation.
“You underestimate your enemy,” she said, scrambling for a way to gain the upper hand. “I’m giving you a last chance to stop publication of your filthy gossip rag and to leave Paris.”
Lafarge laughed harder and shook his head. “Who are you to dictate those sorts of terms to me? You haven’t even threatened me. Why should I end a lucrative operation that provides me with immense personal satisfaction on the word of a silly girl?”
“Because I am not just a silly girl,” she said. “I am the woman who will end your life, as you have ended the lives of too many before me.”
“You think so?” The amusement flashing in his cold eyes was infuriating. “You are nothing but a byproduct of a plot I grew bored of.”
“You destroyed my family,” Solange growled.
“So what?” Lafarge shrugged. “Who cares about some tribe in a backward country no one cares about?”
“I do.” She took another step forward. “And I will have my revenge for everything you did.”
“Really?” He tapped his fingers against his mouth again. “And how do you propose to do that? Did you bring that little gun of yours to shoot me? Have you sent your friend, Lord Sinclair, to do the dirty work for you? Do you have clever plans to expose my identity to all the aristocrats I’ve wronged over the years so that they will attack me all at once?”
Solange gulped. He’d guessed everything they’d planned to do and likely more. He was several steps ahead of them already, which meant the danger to herself, Louis, and the McGoverns was greater than she’d imagined.
“I’m giving you one final chance to end your operations at once or suffer the consequences,” she said in a tight voice.
Lafarge let out a sigh. “I don’t have time for this. Durand, take Mademoiselle Lafarge to the trophy room,” he called past Solange to the butler, who had watched the entire confrontation from the doorway.
“Very good, sir.” The butler nodded, then came forward to clamp a surprisingly strong hand around Solange’s arm.
“I will take my leave of you,” Solange said, trying to shake the man off. His grip was like iron, though, and she couldn’t break away from him.
“I should thank you for making my job easier,” Lafarge said, picking up his pen and looking at the letter he’d been writing instead of her. “Usually I have to work much harder to collect my trophies. Thank you for walking right in and surrendering.”
“I have done no such thing,” Solange protested as the butler pushed her out of the room. “I came here to give you a chance to leave while you can, not to—”
She wasn’t able to finish her rant. The butler yanked her out into the hall and dragged her back the way she’d come until they reached a side corridor.
“Get off of me. Let me go,” she shouted at him, pulling and twisting and doing everything she could to break free. “Unhand me at once.”
Her struggles were as useless as beating against a marble statue. The butler’s strength far outweighed hers. She stumbled along as he brought her to an unmarked door, opened it, then practically tossed her into the room. She fell onto a rich, oriental carpet, scraping her hands and bruising her knees as she did. Before she could recover enough to stand, the butler slammed the door and locked it with an ominous click. Solange was trapped.
If there was one thing Louis was certain of, it was that he would do whatever possible to protect Solange from whatever evil forces assailed her. And no forces were more evil than Lafarge. All he cared about was ending the stress and torment Lafarge had her in. After that threat was removed, he would do whatever it took to keep her in his life permanently, as his wife. Damn the consequences society would likely rain down on him for picking such an unusual bride, but he’d never felt the things he felt when he was with Solange with anyone before, and he doubted he would feel those things with anyone after her.
Those feelings were foremost in his mind when he knocked on the door of Lafarge’s Paris home, determined to bring an end to things before Solange became any more involved than she already was. He’d called on several of Lafarge’s victims throughout the morning and received an overwhelmingly positive response to his and Solange’s plan to form an army against the man, but if he could bring Lafarge to heel without having to cause a scene, he would.
It was a long time before the door was answered. Louis had to ring the bell and knock several times before a harried butler opened it. The man was red-faced and sweating just a bit, as though he’d run through the house to get the door or been involved in some sort of physical exertion before answering.
“I’m here to see Monsieur Lafarge,” Louis said as formally as he could.
The butler sent him a resentful look, as though his day were already difficult enough, and shook his head. “Wait here,” he said, letting Louis inside, but only as far as the entryway.
Louis waited, his hands clasped behind his back, but something about Lafarge’s house didn’t feel right. He wasn’t sure if it was the knowledge that a salacious press was running somewhere on the premises or that Lafarge was plotting away close by. His unease could even have come from the knowledge that his mother’s brooch might have been in the next room, within his reach. Whatever it was, the hair on the back of his neck stood up and his senses felt raw.
“Monsieur Lafarge will see you,” the butler said once he returned. He gestured for Louis to follow as he made his way swiftly down the hall.
Louis had to walk fast to keep up with him, something else that didn’t seem right. For a moment, he thought he heard banging in a room tucked away somewhere in the house, but it stopped before he could place what it might be.
When they reached the office where Lafarge sat behind a desk, signing his name to some sort of letter, Louis approached him boldly.
“Monsieur Lafarge, I have come to ask—no, demand—one final time that you return what is rightfully mine and that you shut down your press and your nefarious activities at once.”
Rather than looking startled or alarmed, Lafarge merely glanced up at him and let out a long sigh. “Does no one have anything better to do today than threaten me with hollow promises of vengeance?”
The question knocked Louis off-guard. “This has gone on long enough,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and facing Lafarge like a general on a battlefield. “I demand you return the brooch, pack up, and leave Paris or I will be forced to use the considerable influence in my power to bring you down as you have brought so many others.”
Lafarge glanced up at him with a bored expression. “And how do you propose to do that? By involving the law?” He shook his head. “The law wouldn’t dare to move against me. I have too much information that certain people would not want to get out.”