Page 35 of Reluctantly His

Damn, I missed Fiona. Why did she have to die so young?

The stab of pain may have dimmed over the decades, but the anger at her loss hadn’t.

“Don’t be so nasty, Lucian. I’m here to help you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen your version of help, and I’m not interested. If my son learns you’re in the building, he’ll have you thrown out on your ass.”

She adjusted the diamond bracelets on her wrists. “You’d throw out a baroness?”

Crossing behind my desk, I tossed on the fresh shirt I had laid across my chair as I prepared to leave for my polo match upstate. “So you’ve taken to giving yourself senseless titles now?”

With her son and daughter publicly shunning her for her manipulative actions in their life that almost cost Harrison his wife, our peers were starting to smell blood in the water.

The powerful combined fortunes and influence of the Manwarring, Astrid, and DuBois families had so far kept them at bay, and we’d avoided an unseemly scandal, but that didn’t mean it was going unnoticed.

She examined her polished nails. “Not me, darling. Baroness Ophelia Zeigler. She’s waiting for me just outside your office.”

Instead of meeting her gaze, I moved to the hidden panel which opened to reveal an executive bathroom. There, I unlatched my watch and set it aside as I kicked out of my stiff, Italian leather shoes. “And why is that?”

“I’d heard you’ve started making inquiries for a suitable match for Charlotte.”

Damn the woman.

Apparently, she wasn’t ostracized quite as much as I’d assumed. She was like a radioactive cockroach.

Slipping my belt off as I stepped into a change of shoes, I said, “And?”

She lifted one shoulder. “The baroness and I are great friends, and I happen to know she’s ready to arrange a similar match for her son, Romney Horace. I thought I could make up for that silly misunderstand with your daughter by helping arrange a match between the two.”

Silly misunderstanding. What a quaint term for being the villainess behind a revenge kidnapping.

I grimaced. And who the fuck named their son, Romney Horace?

The damn British.

She leaned against the door jamb to the bathroom and continued, “He’ll inherit his father’s title one day, making him a baron.”

“A bankrupt baron,” I quipped.

She waved her hand, making her diamonds rattle, which I was certain was the point. “Posh, that’s just a matter of money. What do people like us care about money?”

We all cared a great deal, and she knew that, but I caught her point.

“Charlotte would be a Baroness,” I mused.

Mary stepped forward and put her hands back on my chest. “Exactly, darling.”

CHAPTER 14

CHARLOTTE

I’d been summoned to my father’s office.

Fear and humiliation added to my already foul mood.

Was it possible he had learned about what happened between Reid and me last night?

Could Reid have told him?

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