“There are more ways to bring a man to justice than the law,” Louis insisted.
“Mob justice, perhaps?” Lafarge stood with a laugh, crossing to a table that held various decanters of deep red and amber liquids. “The thing about the mob, Lord Sinclair, is that they fear themselves as much as they hate whoever holds the axe above their heads.”
“Perhaps individually,” Louis said, twisting to face him. “But not when they come together with a united cause.”
“A cause which will instantly evaporate as soon as one or two of them get wind that I have more secrets to reveal. Secrets that will crush what little they have left.” He selected a decanter and poured himself a drink. “Brave men turn to cowards when faced with the possibility of losing everything a second time. Or a third.”
Louis frowned. He hadn’t expected Lafarge to be cowed, but he’d expected more than boredom. “What do you want?” he asked. “Is it money? What will it take to get you to retire and leave the rest of us in peace?”
Lafarge shook his head, then swallowed a gulp of his drink. “I have more money than you could possibly conjure up to pay me off. And I have more power than any of you who oppose me. What else is there to care about in life?”
There was so much more. In an instant, love and family came to Louis’s mind. Peace and friendship. Living a good life in a quiet, safe place, surrounded by joy and affection. Those were the things he wanted beyond any shadow of a doubt. But he was certain that Lafarge devalued all of those things.
“Money doesn’t last,” he said. “And power shifts with the winds. You’ve built nothing else for yourself, so I understand why you think you hold all the cards. But you do not, sir.”
“You have no idea how wrong you are,” Lafarge said, placing his glass back on the table. “Money and power are everything. All else is foolish and sentimental. I crush fools for pleasure and ruin sentiment for fun.”
“It will be your downfall in the end,” Louis said, then bowed sharply. “Good day, sir.”
He turned to go, but Lafarge stopped him with, “And just where do you think you’re going?”
Louis pivoted back to him. “To join with my friends in planning your destruction,” he said.
“Oh no. That won’t do. Durand,” Lafarge called to the butler hovering in the doorway. “Have Lord Sinclair taken down to the cellar and shot. Make it look like a suicide.”
Louis’s senses came alive with energy and he bolted toward the door. Before he could pass through, the butler, Durand, grabbed him and slowed his pace. Durand shouted something in French, and within seconds, two burly men shot out from one of the side parlors, racing to help subdue Louis. One threw a punch at Louis’s head, and the world went black.
Chapter 6
Solange dragged herself to her feet with a furious growl, then pivoted to run back to the door.
“Let me out,” she shouted, banging on it with both hands. “Lafarge! Release me at once!”
She banged again, but knew her protests would be useless. Lafarge was far off, in his office. The butler who had locked her in the room wasn’t about to return to free her. And if she were honest with herself, none of the servants in the house were likely to rush to the rescue of an unknown woman.
She slammed her fists against the door one more time with a wordless cry of frustration. She had been so incredibly stupid to charge into Lafarge’s house, into his clutches, without a solid plan and without someone watching out for her. No one knew where she was, and after the way she’d slipped away from the McGoverns several times during their Parisian visit, no one would be overly concerned by her absence at the palace. She’s let impulsivity and her desire for revenge take over her good sense, and now she was in real danger.
She leaned her forehead against the door for a moment, letting her shoulders slump and misery overtake her. For years, since discovering the truth of who she was, she’d been disgusted with her mother for falling into another man’s arms and then digging her grave deeper by lying about it for so long. But now she understood that people weren’t perfect. They made foolish decisions, particularly when their heart and their pride were involved. They acted on impulse and behaved like fools. She was as guilty as the next idiot.
With a long intake of breath, she pushed away from the door and turned to face the room. She might have been locked in, but she wasn’t trapped yet. There had to be another way out. She took a few steps deeper into the room, surveying the scene. There were two, tall windows at the far end of the room, which meant escape was possible. And it was always possible that there were hidden doors in the walls. Every spare inch of the walls was hung with paintings or had cabinets and display cases pushed up against it.
Solange blinked, her breath catching in her lungs as she took a closer look at everything around her. The room had the feeling of an overcrowded museum gallery. She recognized the paintings as those of grand masters, Rembrandt, daVinci, Titian, and more. The glass-fronted cabinets held everything from jewelry to gilded snuff boxes to ancient Egyptian statues. The furniture was mismatched, but every piece was exquisite. Beyond exquisite. The sofas that faced each other in the center of the room, a low table between them laden with papers, ledgers, and files, were pieces of art.
She pressed a hand to her stomach and walked forward, her eyes wide as she studied the objects in the room around her. She began a circuit of the room that took her past each of the cabinets and their contents. There were enough gems and gold in the cabinets to buy a small country. Most of the pieces were feminine—bracelets, necklaces, and rings. Some of them were arranged with miniatures of beautiful women.
Solange swallowed hard. The women must have been Lafarge’s former conquests and the jewels the prizes he’d collected from them. Her blood ran cold as she remembered some of the last words Lafarge had said before ordering his butler to drag her away. “Take her to the trophy room.”
She moved on to the next cabinet, a shiver passing down her spine. Was she a trophy now? A memento from her mother? Surely there had to be something else that belonged to her mother in that room. Lafarge didn’t seem to be the sort of man to let someone go without a token.
She moved faster, scanning the cabinets for anything she might remember from her childhood, any bits or baubles that had been important to her mother but had disappeared. Nothing looked familiar, though. Her mother had never been one for lavish jewels or frippery. And with all the nationalities represented by the articles in the cabinets, none of them were from Côte d'Ivoire. Perhaps Lafarge had taken something else from her mother, something more like the furnishings or paintings.
She started to turn away from the cabinet, but something caught her eye. Resting on a pillow of deep blue velvet in one of the cases was a large, old brooch of gold set with rubies. Beside it was a miniature of a young woman who had Louis’s eyes.
“The brooch,” she whispered, touching the cabinet’s glass.
She searched for a way to open the cabinet but couldn’t find one. There didn’t seem to be any locks or hinges or any way to get inside. It was as if the cabinet had been made with the objects inside of it. But she was determined to retrieve the brooch for Louis.