The Wolf Duke

by K. J. Jackson

  Her mouth clamped closed.

  The blasted man still didn’t believe her.

  Still didn’t believe she had no clue as to how she got to Wolfbridge and what she had intended to do there.

  With a strained nod, she spun from him and went to the door.

  He didn’t attempt to stop her.

  { Chapter 7 }

  He’d managed to avoid her for two days.

  Reiner opened the door of his study, glancing down the main hallway. Shadows hugged the corridor with only a few sconces lit so one didn’t stumble—beyond that, it was silent, not a soul nearby.

  He opened the door fully with a shake of his head. What had he sunk to? Hiding in his own house.

  But he wasn’t ready to see the exasperating woman again. Not after that kiss.

  A kiss that had seared him with a fiery blade straight through his chest. A kiss that had too quickly sent his blood to boiling, his cock straining.

  The scorn that she’d walked into the study with—that she’d blasted at him—should have sent him into a wrathful fury. Instead, it had sent his lips onto hers. His body aching to touch her.

  And it wasn’t just because she was beautiful—he was a master at avoiding the snares of beautiful women. Or at least he had been once.

  No, it was her bloody outrage at the injustice of what he’d done to his niece. Outrage on behalf of the one person that mattered to him in this life.

  Sloane had raged into his study, defender of the innocent.

  The worst part about it was that the blasted woman was right. He had used Vicky for his own purposes. An imbecilic plan.

  Reiner stepped into the hallway, peering into the shadows at the far end of the corridor.

  He didn’t want to risk another encounter with her tonight. Not when it was late and he was exhausted.

  He couldn’t afford to fall into her snare again. He had let his guard down once before—let a beautiful woman prey on his cock. It’d been four months since the witch, Madeline, had snaked her way into his bed and nearly cost him everything. And she hadn’t been half as beautiful as Sloane.

  Sloane needed to be off limits, no matter what his cock insisted upon. No matter that he found himself staring at her from afar, longing to be touching her body, basking in her laughter.

  Off limits, for the destruction she could cause.

  That was assuming Falsted had sent her as his next spy.

  The irksome thought popped into his head. The thought he’d been ignoring ever since he saw her lying prone on the ground below the vines.

  What if Falsted or one of his other enemies hadn’t sent her? What if she wasn’t there to ruin everything—ruin him?

  What then?

  For his actions against Sloane had been grievous, in the least. Absolutely barbaric in the worst.

  Locking her in a room.

  Keeping her here against her will.

  Kissing her when she was his captive.

  He had all the power and she had none, and he well knew that fact.

  Never mind that she’d kissed him back. That her body had pressed into his. That soft mewls had escaped from her throat.

  Disgust at himself curled his lip and he started down the hallway.

  Halfway to the main staircase a grumble echoed into the hallway from behind him. He spun and retraced his steps toward the sound.

  Another grumble and then a small squeak—almost as though a scream was cut off.

  Reiner opened the door to the library.

  The rug was still rolled up from the dancing Sloane was practicing with Vicky. The furniture askew throughout the room—chairs against walls, tables pushed to the edges, and the settee had been dragged over to sit in front of the hearth.

  Low flames still flickered in the fireplace and in their shadows Reiner spied two lumps on the settee. He stepped fully into the room.

  Sloane and Vicky had both fallen asleep with Vicky curled into Sloane’s side. A book sat on Sloane’s lap, open with a few pages fanning upwards.

  He looked about the library. Where were Claude and Lawrence? Neither one had been in the hallway, keeping guard like they had been ordered to do.

  His gaze dropped back to the settee. His niece looked content, a small smile even turning up the corners of her mouth as she slept.

  It was Sloane that grumbled, soft moans raw in her throat, almost as though she was in a bad dream she couldn’t escape from.

  With a sigh, he moved around the settee and jiggled Vicky’s arm. She didn’t awaken.

  Not wanting to scare her awake, he slipped his hands between Vicky and Sloane and picked his niece up. She curled into him, her face tucking into his neck. Just like she’d done when he’d picked her up as a tiny child.

  He carried her up to her bed, tucking her tight under the covers. Probably too tight, but he wanted her to feel like she was still curled up with someone.

  Clicking the door to Vicky’s room closed, Reiner paused. He should just turn toward his room and retire himself. Leave Sloane to her slumber down in the library.

  Two steps toward his chambers and he heard Sloane scream. A real scream this time—not the muffled agony escaping from her throat earlier.

  Within seconds he was down the stairs and to the library.

  For the hundreds of possibilities that scattered through his mind as he flew down the stairs, he didn’t expect to find Sloane still on the settee, still dead to the world.

  But now her body thrashed, screams ripping from her throat every other breath.

  “Sloane.” Reiner set his hand on her shoulder, gripping tight and shaking her. “Sloane.”

  A scream choked off as she jerked upright, her eyes flying open.

  She sat stupefied, blinking, her eyes going from the fire to Reiner as she tried to orientate herself to the world around her.

  Reiner was afraid to release his grip on her shoulder for fear she would slip back into whatever dream had a death hold on her.

  His hand still on her shoulder, he sank to balance on his heels, his eyes level with hers. “What was that? Your dream? You were screaming.”

  “Dream? I was screaming? I…” She blinked hard, her eyes closing as she tried to conjure the memory. A shiver ran through her and she shook her head. “I…I don’t ken. I cannot see…but it was awful—the most brutal pain in my chest—as though my heart was being ripped out.”

  Her eyes opened to him, a flush of pink filling her cheeks. “I—please excuse me.” She pushed up from the settee, her shoulder dipping so his hand fell off her, and she moved around him to gain her feet. The book fell from her lap and thudded to the ground.

  She made motion to pick it up, but then gasped, falling backward and landing hard on the settee. She glanced at him, her blue eyes bewildered. “It seems to have taken my legs out from under me.”

  Reiner nodded, standing straight. “It appears to have done a little more than take your legs out from you. It terrorized you, full and through.”

  “It did?”

  “The way your body was just thrashing about—yes.”

  “I was thrashing?”

  He nodded. “And screaming.”

  “Oh.” Her gaze, still stupefied, went to the fire. The blush that tinged her cheeks deepened.

  “Did you remember something?”

  She shook her head. “No…I thought…no.”

  Reiner went across the room to the mahogany sideboard and he picked up the thick-cut glass decanter of brandy. Into a tumbler went several healthy swallows of the amber liquid. He brought it back to Sloane and held it out to her. “Promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “When you do remember, you come to me first.”

  Her gaze lifted to meet his and, her hand shaking, she took the glass from him. Her look dropped to the fire. One sip. Two. Three.

  Half the brandy gone and she’d not even flinched at the strength of it.

  But she hadn’t answered him.

  Her gaze remained on the f
lames. “Vicky wants to sing for you, but she’s afraid to do so.”

  He blinked hard at the odd shift in topic. “She is? Why? She has a lovely voice.”

  “She thinks it makes you sad.” Sloane’s blue eyes lifted to him. “And she doesn’t want to make you sad.”

  His bottom lip jutted up in a frown.

  “So it does make you sad?”

  Reiner shrugged. He should leave the room. Cease this conversation now.

  In spite of the rational thoughts in his head, his blasted mouth opened. “I killed my sister just as surely as I had sent a blade into her heart.”

  “What? No.”

  He exhaled a long breath. “Corentine, my sister, was staying here at Wolfbridge when she gave birth to Vicky and then died a day after. It was after she and her husband had both left for India to visit lands he acquired. My sister realized a month after they departed she was with child, so she came back directly to Wolfbridge to stay, as neither of them wanted the child born anywhere but in England. My brother-in-law was supposed to follow her back in three months’ time. He never did.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what delayed him. I don’t know why he stopped returning Corentine’s letters. We feared his death, but never heard word of what happened to him. I sent missives to him of Corentine’s death and Vicky’s birth, but I’m not positive he received any of them. The only thing I discovered was that the last ship he was seen on was lost in a storm.” Reiner ran a hand through this dark hair. “Had he been here—Corentine may still be alive.”

  Sloane shook her head. “How can you say that—the danger of birthing a child does not discriminate between who is in the room.”

  “Ah, but it does. If he had been here, they would have been in London near her midwife. Corentine knew her babe was turned wrong inside of her—the midwife had told her that and was to flip the babe before she came. Corentine asked me to have her midwife brought from London, but I didn’t do it soon enough. If I had sent for the midwife even a day earlier…everything would be different. The midwife wouldn’t have…” His head tilted back and he shook it, trying to clear the memories.

  It took several breaths for his gaze to drop to Sloane. “The midwife would have made it here in time. She would have turned the babe. But instead all I had to offer Corentine was a decrepit old midwife and an inept doctor that had no business birthing babies. Corentine died sixteen hours after Vicky was born. My fault.”

  “You don’t know what would have happened if her midwife had made it here.”

  “Exactly. Corentine could have lived. Vicky could have her mother.” His words stopped, his lips pulling inward for a long moment. “Vicky looks just like my sister. Sounds just like her.”

  Sloane twisted the tumbler of brandy in her hands, staring at it for a long moment. Her look lifted to him. “Do you ken she carries about a letter from her mother?”

  “What do you know of it?”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “I wrote it.”

  “You did?”

  “I had to. Corentine was dying and she wanted to leave Vicky with something of her—something of her mind, words of hers. But she couldn’t lift her hand because she was so weak at the end.”

  “So you wrote those words about how cantankerous you are?”

  A sad smile lifted the right side of his face. “I could not refuse her. I’d never seen my sister so happy as when that child was born. Those few minutes she had with her daughter—they were everything to her. Her life well lived for those few, precious seconds when she could hold her babe. Vicky was everything to her.” He nodded. “So she dictated the letter. I wrote the words as she spoke them. Though she did manage to sign it.”

  “You loved her deeply, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. It was always just my sister and I until she married and left Wolfbridge.”

  “That explains why Vicky’s singing makes you sad.”

  He turned from Sloane and walked over to the sideboard, then poured himself a tumbler of brandy. “Maybe it does. She sings exactly like her mother. My sister was only a year younger than me—there wasn’t a time she wasn’t with me. Corentine was always singing—always—and she had the most beautiful voice. She was the one bright light in my life.”

  He took a healthy swallow of the brandy before walking across the room to Sloane and stopping by the fireplace. “I was devastated when she left for marriage, even though I knew it had to happen. But I would get letters from her telling me how much she missed me and England—she never wanted to be away.”

  “What of your parents?”

  He turned to her. “My mother died when I was three. We rarely saw our father. He died when I was sixteen.”

  “Why did you not see him?”

  “He enjoyed life in London far more than here at Wolfbridge.” He dropped his gaze to the fire for a long moment, thinking he could cease the conversation. Again, his mouth opened on its own accord. “He was a cold man. Any time that we did spend together he was grooming me for the future. ‘Crush those that cross you. A man of your stature needs no one. Emotion is weakness.’ Dictums that were drilled into my head ever since I could understand words. But then I had Corentine and she buffered all of what he was.”

  With a slight shake of his head, he looked to her. “And your mother and father?”

  She shrugged. “They died of consumption when I was three. I don’t remember them. Jacob and Lachlan—my brothers—raised me. And my cousin Torrie is the same age as I and always lived with us, and we raised each other. She’s my sister for all purposes. Those three, they are my family.”

  “Not your grandfather?”

  Her lips drew inward for a breath. “My grandfather is…difficult. Demanding. He has always been so. But it has been easiest for me. I wasn’t the heir or the bothersome spare. I have been useful as a pawn for alliances—that is all.”

  A frown set into his face. “He sounds much like my father.”

  Sloane took a sip from her tumbler, her canny blue eyes contemplating him. “The more I know of you, the more of a mystery you are. I cannot place you—place your kindness when you choose to show it.”

  “I’m not the ogre you think I am?”

  Her shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “I don’t know what you are. If I could remember how I got here—why I’m here—maybe all of this would make sense. But you—you I cannot unravel. You don’t make sense.”

  His eyebrows slanted inward. “In what way?”

  “You hold me captive, but give me free rein of everything here—including access to your niece. If you truly thought I was a threat, you would still have me locked up in that chamber next to yours.”

  “True.”

  “So why continue to hold me here?”

  You’re mine to protect.

  The rogue thought flew through his head, gnawing with razor sharp teeth hard into his mind. A thought that didn’t make it to his lips.

  He’d been fighting it, fighting it since the first seconds he’d wrapped his arms around her when she was screaming in her room.

  She was his to protect.

  And that she’d added a spark to his life where there was none. That he was lonely and he hadn’t realized it until the very moment she smiled at him after they had danced. That her smiles and laughter infected everyone around her—lightened everyone around her. That her outrageous tales of brave Scottish warriors and their outlandish antics entertained them during dinners—so much so they would often forget to eat. That her mischievous grin when she was conspiring with Vicky to escape his niece’s lessons made him chuckle instead of groan. That he wanted her—her body, her mind.

  He said none of that. Couldn’t say any of it. Not yet. Maybe never.

  So he stared at her silently for a long moment. Her blue eyes never wavered from his.

  Reiner cleared his throat. “Maybe you need to stop thinking of this as being held captive. Maybe I will make more sense if you shift your
thinking. You’re my guest, being encouraged to stay until you can recall what you hoped to accomplish here. You remember and we both win.”

  “Is that what you think this is?”

  He shrugged. “It makes it more palatable for me.”

  She snorted a laugh. “Call it what you wish, Reiner. I’m your prisoner.”

  He stifled a sigh and moved to sit down on the far side of the settee. He couldn’t argue with her truth. His elbow propped on the curve of the carved mahogany arm of the settee and he angled his body toward her. “It is an unfortunate happenstance. But I cannot let you go until I know the truth. Too much is at stake. The safety of my niece is at stake.”

  Her eyes flew wide in alarm. “Vicky is in danger?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not about to take that chance.”

  Sloane nodded, her forefinger rubbing along the top rim of her glass. Her gaze fell onto the fire and her lips parted. “I’ll tell you one thing if you tell me one thing.”

  “Something of importance?”

  She nodded.

  “I am willing if you are.”

  Her stare remained on the flames of the fire. “I can climb. Climb really well.”

  His head tilted to the side. “Climb what?”

  “Climb the types of vines that grow on castles.” She looked to him, her voice just above a whisper as though she were revealing her greatest secret. “The castle I grew up in had ancient vines growing up along the south wall. My brothers and Torrie and I, we would all play a game. Valor of Vinehill—where we would storm the castle. The game included climbing the vines to gain access to the upper floors. I spent summer after summer climbing vines three, four, five stories high.”

  “You’re saying—“

  “As unlikely as it is”—she rushed on, her face scrunching with her words—“it’s entirely possible I was trying to gain access to your chamber by climbing up the vines if that’s where they led to.”

  “So…”

  “It is possible that you are right. That I am here to ruin you. Or do something to you. But I do not ken what that thing is. It may very well be happenstance that I was walking by your castle and stumbled and hit my head.”