Her tongue flew to the roof of her mouth, gagging on the thought.
She’d ignored her instincts. Her common sense. Let a moment of raw desire overtake every sane thought she owned.
She should have stuck to vengeance. It was easier.
“Sloane.” Reiner moved behind her, so close she could feel his heat along her bare shoulders. “I know this is messy and wrong and I wish I knew the truth of the matter myself right now. I won’t know until I’m back at Wolfbridge and can look into the papers. But I needed you to know so if I am wrong about it, you won’t be caught unaware later.”
“Caught unaware?” She spun to him. “Caught unaware? That is exactly what this is, Reiner. You swore to me you had nothing to do with it—and now—now what? A day later and maybe you did do it? What am I supposed to do with this information? My brother died. Died.”
She whipped back to her valise, yanking it open and reaching in. Her stays, crumpled in the corner. The only dress she had now stuffed haphazardly into the bag.
This wasn’t how she’d packed it. Her clothes had been half-folded when she had tossed them back into the bag yesterday. Careless, yes, but not stuffed with all disregard to wrinkles.
Her mouth went dry as she started yanking garments from her bag. “Tell me you didn’t go through my bag, Reiner.”
He didn’t say a word.
She ripped her dress free from the bag, digging, tossing stockings and gloves to the floor by her feet. “Did you go through my blasted bag, Reiner?”
“I did.” The words came out in a sigh.
Hell. He wouldn’t have.
She reached the bottom of the valise, her fingers shaking as she worked her nails into the lining to flip the false bottom upward.
Her nails setting hold, she tugged up the bottom flap.
The red leather book sat in its place, just as she’d left it.
Her breath held, she flipped open the cover and thumbed the pages to the air. The rows and columns of names and items and numbers, just as before.
The air in her chest stuck, unable to move outward or inward.
Her brow furrowed and she looked over her shoulder at him.
“What?” Fear struck through his brown eyes. “The book?” He ripped the bag from her hands and looked in the bottom. He exhaled relief.
She stared at his profile, her words breathless as she still could not find the air in her lungs. “You knew where the book was?”
His mouth pulled back in a terse line as he set the valise on the table and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Yes, I did. I found it after you left the room yesterday before I went after you.”
“You found it, yet you left it in there?”
He looked to the book and his lips pulled inward for a long moment as he shook his head. A man on his way to the gallows. “I did, but I didn’t want you to know I pawed through your belongings.”
“But why? Why not take the book? It’s what you came here for.”
His look whipped to her, his eyes narrowing as his voice dipped into a barely controlled roar. “I came here for you, Sloane. You. How many times do I have to tell you that?” His body turned to her, his bare chest grazing her breasts. “The book—yes—it’s what I told myself I was after—what I was here for. But when I found it…”
“What?”
“When I found it I realized it was just an excuse. I’m irate you took it, yes. Livid, actually. But when I saw it, I instantly wished I never had. It was just a bloody excuse.” His hands went to the sides of her face, his palms cupping her jawline. “Because it was you. You are what I was here for. You. And that damn book—you can take it and do whatever the hell you want with it.”
Her breath finally dislodged from her chest in a rushing exhale and her head went light. He could have taken the book yesterday and disappeared.
But he didn’t.
He stayed.
Stayed for her.
Her hands went to his wrists next to her face, clasping them with all her might. Her look skewered him, attempting to read his every intention down to his soul, and then she pushed words up through her chest. “You stayed for me?”
“How many times do I bloody well have to say it, Sloane?”
Her eyes flickered to the bag, then to her husband.
Husband.
In that moment, it truly struck her—the first time she’d dared to truly consider him her husband. Dared to let blind faith in this man standing before her take over all her misgivings—overcome all her distrust.
Husband.
Her husband.
And that meant a lifetime with this man.
No matter what he’d done. No matter what errors in judgement he’d made in the past.
Which meant she had better start letting trust win the constant battles in her mind.
Her eyes locked onto his. “No more times. I think…I think now I heard you. Believe you.”
{ Chapter 16 }
“Is it much farther from the main road?” Adjusting on his saddle, Reiner looked past Sloane on her horse to the rocky outcroppings that butted into the rolling fields along the road.
Sloane had insisted she needed to take a detour from the main road south. When he’d believed it was to be just a quick side trip to a friend of Sloane’s, he’d thought to indulge her. But now they were far from the main road and they needed to be on their way if they were to make it to the next coaching inn by nightfall.
His gaze landed back on his wife. Wife. The word swirled around in his mind with an odd mixture of disbelief, relief and—if he was honest with himself—joy. His body needed hers like no other, and he was quickly finding out just how much his mind and soul needed her as well.
A gust lifted a wavy strand of blond hair across her high cheekbones that had turned rosy in the brisk wind. He took in her profile—for as delicate as her features were, they hid a fiery soul of iron. She didn’t shrink to anything—including him. The exact opposite of what he’d imagined wanting in a wife. But also the exact match he needed.
He shifted the reins in his hands. “What did you give to your maid before we left Buchlyvie? You are positive you can survive without her until we reach Wolfbridge?”
Her gaze shifted to him. “Your fingers work buttons just as well as hers do, Reiner. Unless you think it beneath you to help me dress?”
“I will happily button up anything in the morning I get to unbutton at night.”
A wanton smile crossed her face and she laughed. “So then I will survive quite nicely until we get to Wolfbridge.” She glanced over her shoulder at the craggy hills they had just passed and then looked back to him. “I wrote a letter this morning while you were arranging Milly’s coach and our horses. Milly is to deliver it to my brother at Vinehill in five days’ time. I told her it shouldn’t be in Lachlan’s hands until then, so I can only pray she has the patience.”
“What did it say?”
“I was reporting upon our upcoming nuptials at Wolfbridge. I didn’t want it delivered earlier, or there will be hell to pay with both Lachlan and my grandfather. Five days should give us enough advantage in time to travel back to Wolfbridge and for the marriage to take place. By then, it will be too late for Lachlan to attempt to stop the wedding, if he were to get the rogue thought to do so into his hard head.”
Reiner nodded. “Your brother was a soldier, you said?”
“He was. He fought for years on the continent, and I do believe he was most at peace with himself when he was fighting. He had come back for a visit just days before the fire. And then he just stayed at Vinehill after Jacob died. He’s heir to Vinehill now, so he’s been making a poor attempt to adjust to the new role thrust upon him.”
“Poor, how?”
She shrugged. “Everything makes him angry. Our grandfather. How things are managed. The numbers. The petty problems that come through his door. I think the anger is still his reaction to losing Jacob.”
“You three were close?”
“The four of us,
including Torrie—yes.” A bright smile lit up her face. “We were a band of glorious mischief upon Vinehill. We probably were until the day of the fire. Our grandfather never much regarded us—except for Jacob, as he was heir. But we were happy—I was happy—we had our own little family that no one could break.”
A pang cut across Reiner’s chest. “I could describe my sister and myself in just the same way.”
Her eyes went wide. “You? Mischief? I don’t believe it.”
“Well, maybe not blatant mischief. But Corentine and I were each other’s unfailing rocks.”
“You still deeply feel her death?”
He nodded. “So I can imagine how raw Jacob’s death must be for you. For Lachlan. I understand why you came after me. Corentine’s death is why I’m determined to take down the smuggling scheme and I’ve let nothing get in the way of it. But even at that, I fear it will not be enough.”
“Not enough?” She stared at him for a long moment. “Because you blame yourself. You said that very thing. All that anger that I have, I turned it outward, toward Lord Falsted and then you. But you—you turned all that inward upon yourself, didn’t you? That raw, raging pit in the bottom of your stomach that is determined someone should pay for the death.” She blinked hard, an exhale leaving her mouth. She glanced about for a moment, then her gaze pierced him. “You hate yourself for it, don’t you, Reiner?”
His breath unsteady, the horses continued for twelve more steps before he dared to meet her stare. “For those moments in time. For my stupidity in not calling for her midwife sooner. For not stopping the decrepit old midwife and the doctor from everything they did wrong to her body during the birth. Yes. Yes, I absolutely hate myself. If I had only listened to my sister when she’d first told me to send for her midwife, Corentine would be alive today. If I hadn’t been too busy. Too absorbed in things that didn’t matter, I could have saved her.”
“You cannot ken that.”
“Yet I cannot escape the possibility.”
Silent and with a slight nod, she drew a deep inhale that lifted her chest, the cut of her lavender riding dress rustling against her skin. Silence he was grateful for.
She looked around her and her hands tugged on her reins, stopping her horse.
“This is it.”
Reiner halted his steed and looked about. What looked like ruins of several cottages and barns sat just to the left of the road.
Before he could even think on it, Sloane slid off her saddle, dropping her reins, and started walking into the group of buildings.
He looked closer at the rubble. The overgrown summer grasses hid much of it, but he could just make out the blackened stones. The scorched earth.
All of the buildings had been burned to the ground, possibly in the not too distant past. Weeds snaked up the triangular wooden poles in an abandoned vegetable garden in the center of the buildings. Reiner studied the land from the height of his horse as Sloane walked past the garden. Four—no, five buildings had once stood in this spot. Two cottages, possibly. A couple barns.
Buildings that had been burnt to the ground, only the charred skeletons of stone foundations giving evidence of where they once stood.
His chest heavy with stones he could not shake, Reiner dismounted, following Sloane into the center of the destroyed buildings, his look riveted on her back.
This was it. This was the place.
She paused ten feet from the remains of one of the cottages, her gloved left forefinger pointing to the ground. She didn’t turn back to him, her voice wooden. “This. This was where Jacob dropped us after dragging us from the burning cottage. Where Torrie rolled, screaming, writhing as the flames ate her legs. Where my arm was burned trying to help her.”
She veered to her right, stepping over the low stones that had once marked the foundation of a cottage. As she walked through the rubble, her head remained down, her eyes searching. “This. This was where I searched the earth for Jacob. It was days later when the agony of my arm wasn’t so overwhelming that I had finally ceased retching every hour with the pain. I came here and I stood, railing at myself for hours. What if I had stopped Torrie that day from ever leaving Vinehill? What if I hadn’t agreed with her that it was a good idea to try and stop the clearing? What if I hadn’t run into the cottage after her? What if I had grabbed Jacob’s arm and not let him go back into the inferno in the cottage?”
Her voice drifted off and she spun in a slow circle, her gaze still locked onto the ground, searching. “Lachlan said they couldn’t find any remains, that the fire burned too hot. But I didn’t believe him. So I made him bring me here. And I searched, searched for hours in here and could find nothing. No evidence of any of them.” Her fingers flipped upward into the air. “Like they were just gone. Never even existed. Jacob. Torrie’s parents. Her brother. It was as though the world had refused to acknowledge that any of them ever even set foot on the earth. That they were ever anything—walking, talking, breathing, laughing—loved.”
She drew in a sob, her voice catching. “That they meant something. They were just…gone.”
She shook her head, her face tilting up to the sky as she blinked away tears that had swelled in her eyes. Streaks of wetness clinging to her cheeks glistened in the sunlight. “It wasn’t until it was dark and I was heaving up bile that Lachlan dragged me away. He didn’t ken what to do with me. Leave me or pull me away. And I didn’t ken what to do with him. He wanted to find Jacob just as much as I did. Or maybe he lied to me to spare me of how he looked in the end—I don’t ken.”
Her lips drew inward for a long breath. “That month at Wolfbridge when I believed he was still alive—and then I remembered. It was like losing him all over again. All of it, all over again. All the pain…” A sob choked her words away.
For how brutal the need was to go to her, to gather her into his arms and hold her against all of the terror she’d suffered, Reiner remained rooted to the ground. She had brought him here for a reason, and he was terrified at what that reason was.
Her face still upturned, her eyes closed for agonizing minutes until the tears stopped streaming and her head dropped. She swiped the wetness from her cheeks and looked at him.
“I needed you to see this. To see what happened here.”
His voice as even as he could make it, he took three steps toward her, his toes touching the barrier of fieldstone between them that had long since tumbled from the foundation. “Why are you showing me this, Sloane?”
Her gaze pinned him. “You ken why, Reiner.”
“I didn’t do this. I explained that…unless…unless it is that you don’t believe me?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not. You took on this land as your responsibility—how many more lands are there that you don’t ken what is happening upon? I needed you to see this so that you ken—I need you to be responsible for whatever you bring upon these lands. I want you to be a force for good. Not for…” Her left hand lifted, sweeping around her. “Not for this. Not for unleashing terror across the land—erasing innocent people from their homes. Not for destroying lives.”
“If I could change anything of what happened, Sloane, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“That, I do believe.” A smile, achingly sad, lifted the corners of her mouth and she stepped toward him, her feet stopping on the other side of the foundation. “We are both living in maelstroms of ifs, Reiner. And I have not been able to bring myself to ken what to do with all of them.”
“But you do now?”
“No. I don’t.” She shrugged, looking over her shoulder at the carcass of the cottage. “Maybe I’ll never ken how to deal with the ifs and they will always hold a cloud over my head, dark regrets that will weigh upon me until my death.”
His heart splintered for her pain. For pain he wanted to take from her but didn’t have a clue as to how to do so.
“I visited Torrie several days ago.”
“You did? How is she healing?”
Her gaze swung back to him. “Terribly. She is so bitter—so very, very bitter—and I cannot blame her. She is in pain constantly. How could she not be bitter? How could she no longer want life? How could she not rail and hate everyone around her?”
His words dipped low. “She wants to die?”
Sloane nodded, fresh tears cresting on her lower eyelashes. “But she was such a beautiful soul before this. The best out of all of us.”
“She was?”
Her lips drew inward for a long moment. “If one is lucky, it is the people around you that make you a better person—Torrie did that for me—for all of us. We were all better people because of her kind spirit. A spirit that has been extinguished and I fear will never return.” Her hand swept around her, and she followed it, stopping with her back to him. “She could have died here, just the same, for how this has destroyed her.”
Reiner stared at her back. She was pulling away from him. Removing herself. Not a full day married and his wife was already leaving him.
And he couldn’t do a thing about it, for this could very well be his fault.
He could reach out and touch her, grab her, pull her to him. But that would be forcing her—capturing her. And the one thing he knew was that she needed her freedom. It had been the only way to her heart at Wolfbridge. He prayed it would be again.
The wind caught the loose length of her hair, lifting it and setting it about her shoulders. It made her shake her head, snapping her out of the past, and she turned fully toward him.
For a long breath, she stared at him with her blue eyes. Stared at him with the weight of the world in her gaze.
Then her right hand lifted, reaching out over the stones of the foundation to slide along his palm. Her fingers entwined with his, her voice shaking. “I don’t want to be destroyed, Reiner. I have to move forward—push onward whether I wish to or not. Push forward and not make the same mistakes again. Learn from the past.”
With a sweeping glance about her, she stepped over the stones to stand before him. Her head tilted up, her gaze intent on his face. “And you do too. I needed to see this place again. I needed you to see this place. Because what matters is the future, Reiner. Our future. And with that, everything you touch, everything you have control over. I need you to care. Care enough to never let something like this happen again.”
The Wolf Duke Page 16
