After tugging the fabric wide, he helped her strip down the soaking cloth from her arms and torso. She stomped her way free of her skirts that clung to her legs.
He studied her from head to toe. “Your legs are steady? You can make it back? I’ll carry you.”
“No. I’ll not chance you losing your balance and both of us sinking into the bog.” She lifted herself on her bare toes—the bog had sucked off her short boots as Reiner had dragged her through the mud. Her feet worked, her legs solid enough. “Follow me back, exactly.”
“I don’t intend to step anywhere but in your footprints.”
She nodded, then shuffled around him on the tiny mound they stood on. With the heat of Reiner long against her backside, she studied the undulating shifts in the grasses and mosses that covered the bog. She traced a trail along the clumps back to the roadway, then started to move.
Hop to the right, long stretch, three steps, a leap, and she kept moving quickly, hearing Reiner’s thudding feet squishing into the soft mounds in her wake.
It wasn’t until she jumped to the edge of the roadway, falling to her knees as she scrambled up the embankment—with full, beautiful solid dirt under her body—that she allowed herself a full breath.
She reached the road and stood, spinning around just as Reiner stepped onto the roadway.
He didn’t give her a chance to take another breath before he wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to his chest.
“What in the blasted hell was that, Sloane?”
“Two men.” She wiggled her head backward to look up at him. “I was at the edge of town and one of them grabbed me and tossed me into the back of the wagon.”
“Tell me the bastards didn’t hurt you.” His arms tightened to iron clamps around her.
“No. Suffocated me at best. I saw the bog and hoped it would be my best opportunity to escape. Neither looked able to navigate bog-land. So I chanced it.”
He nodded, an odd mixture of fury and curiosity in his golden brown eyes as he studied her face. “They both sank in there? I only saw the one.”
She looked out across the bog. Grasses swayed in the slight wind, calm, as though the ground had not just eaten two men. “The other sank fairly close to the road.” Her gaze shifted back to his face. “They wanted the book, Reiner. That’s why they took me.”
The slight relaxation of his arms disappeared, and he tightened his hold on her until she squeaked. He abruptly released her, taking three fast steps away as a growl thundered from his chest. He spun back to her. “You should have never been involved in this, Sloane—never. When I get a hold of Falsted I’m going to crush him—taking advantage of you, an innocent, like this.” His knuckles slammed into the wooden side of the wagon.
She let him seethe for only one moment before stepping to him, her hand landing softly on his shoulder. “I’m not an innocent, Reiner. Far from it. I went after Lord Falsted first. I did that. We thought he was the one that ordered the clearing. And then he turned my hate for him onto you—he used me to come after you. He lied to me, yes. But I volunteered. I came to Wolfbridge on my own. I came with nothing but vengeance and hate boiling in my chest. I wanted to see you ruined. To see you suffer. Suffer like I did. Like Torrie did. I had that malice in my soul.” Her head shook. “So no, I wasn’t an innocent.”
He looked back at her over his shoulder, his golden brown eyes piercing her. “And now?”
“And now I thank the heavens that I fell outside your window. That I knocked my head. That I forgot exactly what I was doing at Wolfbridge. It was the only way that I would have ever seen the truth.”
“Which is?”
“You’re not my enemy, Reiner. You never were.” She drew a shaky breath. “I think you may just be the true opposite of my enemy.”
He turned fully to her. “So then marry me, Sloane.”
“You are still to insist upon it?”
“Insist, ask, whatever you need to hear. I want to marry you.” The side of his mouth drew back in a slight cringe. “But I don’t want to tell anyone about it.”
She blinked hard, her head tilting to the side as her bottom lip jutted upward. “That’s not exactly a proposal.”
His hands wrapped around her wet upper arms. “This—you—your body, your mind. I want us married, Sloane. I want your skin under mine without having to feel as though I’ve lost all sense of honor. I want us united not only for that, but also for how I don’t want to ever have to suffer through a week like I just did when I thought you were lost to me forever.”
Her lower lip relaxed a modicum. “Your proposal is getting better.”
“You left me, Sloane, and I’ll not have that again. I cannot bear it. And then when you were just sinking into the bog…” His words stopped as he looked out at the landscape for a long moment. His gaze returned to her, pinning her, his words a low rumble. “My world stopped and I couldn’t fathom moving into the next day without you on this earth.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
He stepped in, his chest brushing the hard nubbins of her breasts through her sopping shift. He looked down. “You realize I can see everything of you through your shift and it is driving me quite mad.”
She had to fight to not touch him, to not splay her hands across his chest. “Don’t change the topic.”
He sighed. “The not telling people—it is just for now. Just until we can marry properly in England.”
“A Scottish marriage isn’t proper?” Her nose wrinkled, miffed.
“It’s proper enough to call you my wife. To have you in my bed without tempting the gates of hell.” His hands moved from her arms and wrapped around her waist. “No, I want to use our proper English wedding to flesh out the very people that have used you to come after me. Those that decided kidnapping you in broad daylight was something I would allow. Falsted is one of them, yes, but there are a number of known entities in the smuggling enterprise arriving at Wolfbridge in a week’s time. A summit, if you will, cloaked in a house party, and I am a breath away from pinning the last leader—one man in particular. Falsted has been my entry to this world, but he’s also long had his suspicions about me—it’s why he sent you after me. Why he sent the one before you. But he’s never had proof of what I’ve been doing—whose names I know, the evidence I’ve collected.”
“Why he’s needed the book.”
“Exactly. I’ve invested in enough of his plots that I’m too valuable to cut out of the scheme without direct proof. Falsted sent you, which means he’s getting desperate. And desperate men break. If we can set him so far off-kilter, I am positive he’ll break and tell me who the mastermind of the whole smuggling scheme is—one way or another.”
She couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips. “Now this is interesting. Your proposal almost sounds enticing—flipping this back upon Falsted and his brethren.”
A smile turned up the corners of his lips. “I hope it sounds more than interesting—at least the marriage part.”
She couldn’t resist any longer and her palms went flat against his wet lawn shirt. “You do realize my grandfather had very different plans for marrying me off? Though only the heavens know what he has been concocting since he finds me unmarriageable now. But I was originally only to marry a man that will prove to be advantageous to the Vinehill estate.”
“Done.” He pulled her tighter into him, her body long against his hard muscles. “If you’ll recall, I just happen to own some of the Swallowford lands—I have no business with them—I merely bought them to gain Falsted’s trust. So I’ll happily sign them over to your grandfather or your brother. They can do with them whatever they want—sheep, tenants—whatever is best for your people.”
“You didn’t even ask of my dowry.” Her eyebrows drew together. “You would do that? Marry me with no gain for yourself? A loss, if anything?”
“I gain you, don’t I?” He said the words so matter of fact, as though marriage was that simple. There was always a gain, always a
n alliance to be had. What he proposed was not marriage. What he proposed was…
Love.
The realization hit her and stole all the breath from her lungs.
One did not get married for love. Sometimes for lust. But never for love.
And never to a man that one had only a month ago vowed to destroy.
Her look dipped down and she stared at the cut of his white lawn shirt, now splattered with fat splotches of mud.
This was the moment.
The moment she would be trading away all thoughts, all ambitions of vengeance if it truly had been Reiner that had ordered the Swallowford lands cleared.
He could be the entire reason her arm was scarred. Torrie was scarred. Her brother dead. Torrie’s family dead.
It was still possible he was the reason.
But Reiner wouldn’t trade his honor to save his own hide. If she knew anything, she knew that. He could have disposed of her in a thousand ways when she was at Wolfbridge if that was his game.
But he didn’t.
Or in the inn after he knew she stole the book. He could have used her own dagger on her and left her in a pool of blood.
But he didn’t.
He could have walked away from her in the bog.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t because he wanted her.
Wanted her, consequences be damned.
Even if he had ordered the lands cleared—even if he was lying to her now—she didn’t know if it even mattered anymore.
For if she couldn’t let go of her vengeance—of that hate being her sole purpose—then she wouldn’t be moving forward. Ever.
She would be Torrie, wishing for death every second of the day. Wishing for her soul to wither away and die. Wishing for everyone around her to feel her pain.
She didn’t want that.
She wanted a future.
A future with Reiner in it.
Her look snapped up to him and she caught his face in between her muddy palms. Her eyes locked onto his. “You walked across a bog for me.”
The side of his mouth lifted. “How far do you need me to walk?”
An uncontrollable smile carved into her face and she lost herself in his golden brown eyes. “No farther. Aye. I will marry you, Reiner.”
{ Chapter 14 }
The thick scent of baking bread wafted into his nostrils and Reiner halted his stride. “This is it.”
Sloane stopped, leaning forward to look past Reiner into one of the shops that lined the main road through the village. She looked up at him. “It is?”
“Yes. The baker will do it.”
“You ken that?”
“I do. I asked when I arrived in the village who the best person to marry a fool was, and this was the answer.” Reiner pointed in the open door. “He’s the man.”
She laughed. “Should I be more miffed that you planned this without me or that you consider yourself a fool?”
“You should take both of those things as the highest compliment. Both of them are testament to your undeniable charm.”
“Charm?” She chuckled. “I didn’t ken you considered attacking you with a dagger charming. I will have to keep that in mind for the future.”
Her fingers flexed forward and she glanced down at her mud-caked right hand that poked out of the sleeve of his tailcoat. He’d watched her try to slough off the mud caked onto her skin while she sat in front of him on his horse on the ride back into Buchlyvie, but she’d only managed to flake off half of the dried muck.
Her bottom lip drew under her teeth. “I’m not at all proper.”
“We are to be married by a baker.” Reiner set his hand onto her lower back and steered her toward the shop’s entrance. “I would venture to say not much of this leans on the side of propriety.”
“But I’m a disaster and not in proper clothes.” Her left hand shifted, hidden in the folds of his dark coat as she clutched it tightly closed in front of her. Her right hand dipped to tug the bottom hem of the coat lower on her thighs. “Maybe I could wash first? He’ll be able to see through my shift to my legs and think I’m a trollop—or worse.”
“Or possibly your shift will silently explain the necessity of a quick wedding.” A lascivious grin that he couldn’t quite control took over his mouth. “Besides, I have grand plans of helping to scrub your body clean and I think it only proper if we’re married first.”
An enchanting blush tinged her cheeks pink. The streaks of mud across her face made it all the more captivating.
He nudged her in through the doorway of the baker’s cottage. “Come—you’ve already managed to ignore the stares of all the passersby on the road with your head held high. Only ten more minutes and we’ll be sequestered in your room.”
With a sigh and a smile, Sloane nodded.
Just as they stepped into the empty shop, a woman—Sloane’s maid by the sound of her—called out from down the lane.
“Lady Sloane, oh my—blazes be the bull. You’re a dreadful mess. What happened?”
“Milly.” Sloane stepped away from Reiner and back into the road. “I took a turn in the peat bog outside of the village.”
“All saints—not the death moors?”
Sloane nodded.
Milly looked Sloane up and down. “And it took yer dress?”
“And my boots.”
Milly’s skewering gaze swung to Reiner. “And who be this? A fine gentleman that saved ye?”
Sloane glanced up at Reiner, a mischievous grin on her face. “Yes. And he is also the Duke of Wolfbridge.”
“What?” Milly made the sign of the cross, backing away from Reiner. “Devil take it, my lady, why are ye letting him touch ye?”
“Because I plan to marry him.”
“No.” Milly gasped, stepping backward, her hand flat on her chest. “Yer not in yer right mind, miss. He’s bewitched ye. Bewitched ye like the devil he is.”
“One could say that.” Sloane’s head tilted to the side. “Or one could also say that he has been unjustly vilified. Either way I plan to marry him in this very moment and if you could see your way back to the inn to request a bath”—she looked to the muddy mess Reiner also stood in—“or two, be brought up to my room, I would appreciate it.”
“Tell them I’ll pay triple for it if it’s done by the time we arrive back there,” Reiner said. “For you as well.”
“I don’t take the devil’s coin.” Milly’s head flew back and forth and she crossed her fingers at Reiner, lifting them high in the air.
“Then do it for me, please, Milly.” Sloane reached out and grabbed Milly’s fingers, pushing them downward. “I will explain everything to you. Just trust that I ken what I’m doing.”
“Don’t rightly know if I can trust yer judgment, my lady, not with him at yer side.” Milly shifted her look to Sloane. “But I will have the bath brought up for ye, miss. For ye’ll need it before we travel onward.”
“Thank you.”
Milly turned away and walked toward the coaching inn.
Sloane looked to Reiner. “I apologize for her behavior.”
“You shouldn’t apologize for other people, Sloane. You were not the one ready to spit upon me.”
“No, but I was the one to put the thought in her head that you were the devil, so it only seems fitting that it has come back about to bite me.”
She turned fully to him, her right hand going to his chest and resting along the cut of his waistcoat. “In recompense, if she only manages one tub, you can go first. I’m far muddier as it is.”
“And I was thinking that’s exactly why you should go first.”
She blinked at him, silent for a moment and then she gave a slight nod. Her right cheek lifted in a half smile. “I wasn’t ready to go in before, but I am now.”
And so, as she stood next to him in a damp chemise, wrapped in his tailcoat, barefoot, her hair a muddy mess, he made Sloane his wife.
And she’d never looked more beautiful.
Never as w
hen she’d smiled at him and the words “I will” slipped from her lips, breathless as though she couldn’t quite believe what she was doing. But she was doing it anyway. Charging forth, not letting doubts or sanity get in her way.
Exactly as he wanted her.
Ten minutes later, Reiner opened the door to her room and ushered her in.
There were two tubs.
Side by side, two large tin tubs swallowed the modest space. Steam lifted off the water as the draft of air from opening the door rushed into the room.
“Wonder upon wonder,” Sloane said as she walked in.
“Maybe Milly reconsidered the beast you just married?” Reiner closed the door and locked it, then moved across the room to set the loaf of bread and wrapped slices of cake the baker’s wife had insisted they leave with onto the table.
“Or maybe she’s afraid of the devil?” Sloane stepped to a tub and swished a finger in the water. Her head lifted and she caught sight of herself in the cheval mirror in the far corner of the room. With a squawk she ran over to it. “You married me like this?”
He spun to her. “Like what?”
She grabbed a muddy clump of her dark blond hair, lifting it to him. “This. Everywhere on me. I knew I was a mess, but this…this…” She turned back to the mirror, her shoulders drooping as she took in her reflection. “No wonder the baker’s wife kept wrinkling her nose.”
Reiner went across the room to her, stopping behind her and looking at her reflection in the mirror. “You were a beautiful bride—the mud can’t hide you.” He lifted the back of her hair, thinking to find a spot on her neck where the mud hadn’t caked. There wasn’t one. He set his lips to her skin anyway.
It drew a slight giggle from her and she spun around, then pointed past him to the tub. “One for you and one for me?”
His eyebrow lifted. “Or one for the first dip and the second to clean off what was left from the first?”
She sighed, her eyes on the steaming water. “Then do go quickly. Maybe the water will still be warm when I get in.”
He grabbed her hand and tugged her to the tub. “What if we both went first?”
The Wolf Duke Page 14
