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Her tight brow twitched. “If you’re about to judge my relationship with Will, please spare me. This is the twenty-first century. Women and younger men are no different to men your father’s age falling for women or men half their age.”
I shook my head. “How can you be so cold? You were married for thirty years.”
“We’ve changed. Or I should say, your father’s changed. He was once ambitious and dreamt of making the Lovechildes as respected as the royal family. Since he started hanging out with pretty boys, he’s lost his drive. This irrational nonsense about leasing the land to farmers ad infinitum proves that.”
“If you want me to switch camps and vote on the resort, then forget it. Our leased farms produce a quarter of the food for this region.”
“The economies of developing countries have a right to expand. We’re helping them transition from poverty to working class.” She inclined her head.
“While denying our people jobs?” I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not in the mood to discuss politics.”
“Nor am I.” She tapped her pen on the desk. “I insist you stop seeing the maid.”
“I’ll see whoever I like.” I sprung up off my chair.
She pointed at my vacated seat. “Sit.”
I puffed out a breath and returned to the armchair.
“Lovechildes do not have relationships with the bourgeois. If you must bed them, like your playboy brother, then fine, but do it out of the spotlight. You know how people love to gossip.”
My jaw clenched as I bit back a tirade.
She sat forward and crossed her hands over the green leather-lined desk. “How do you think she came to be here?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she didn’t just turn up here by normal employment methods.”
“Get to the point, Mother.”
She flinched at my gruffness. “Reynard Crisp arranged it.”
My jaw dropped. “What?”
“She was auctioning her virginity of all things.” She shook her head. “How tacky. Only a commoner would behave like a gutter slut.”
Nerves churned away in my stomach. My brain burned with a flurry of questions. “Crisp knew about that?”
She nodded slowly. Her lips curling slightly. “Rey bought her. And now you’re sleeping with her.” Alarm lit her face. “I hope you weren’t there. Please tell me you’re not frequenting these tawdry establishments. Not a Lovechilde. You can have anyone.”
I lifted my palm in the air. “Hey. Stop. I happened to be walking by when Theadora was being attacked.”
I was still trying to process Reynard Crisp being the man who’d offered to buy Theadora’s virginity. I wanted to chuck up from revulsion.
A roar remained trapped in my chest, in storage for Crisp, because when I’d finished with him, he’d have to get that smug face reshaped.
At least now I understood why that slippery snake was all over Theadora at the dinner party.
Taking a deep breath, I continued, “As I passed the laneway, I saw three men dragging her back into that club. She’d been drugged, and I basically saved her from being raped.”
I wanted to slap myself for not reporting the incident to the police.
“That’s her side of the story. You don’t know for sure. It could have been a performance. A game.”
My forehead contracted. “A game? How would she have known I was going to be there?”
She shrugged. “There are pictures, you know.”
