“What did she say?” He attempted to shift his voice into calmness even as a rock was dropping to his stomach.
“She said you were a fool in love and that she wanted to ruin you. She said she wanted to take her pound of flesh from you. That she would use some book to undo you. That you fell in love with her and she would use that to destroy you. But that isn’t the worst.”
His lips stretched to a tight line. “What is?”
“She said you would never let your ruin affect me or her—that you would take care of the matter yourself—she meant you would kill yourself before letting harm come to us.”
“Vicky—”
“No—she said it, Uncle Reiner—she said it and she meant it. You would kill yourself.”
“I’m not going to kill myself, Vicky. You can be assured on that.”
But he was about to murder someone.
Sloane had said nothing of this when she’d reported on her conversation with Falsted.
Nothing about how she was plotting his demise.
“You aren’t? But what if you are ruined? Why would she do this? I thought—I thought she lov—”
“I’m not about to kill myself or be ruined, Vicky. I can assure you of both of those facts.”
Her eyebrows lifted high on her forehead. “You can? But how?”
“I will take care of the matter, Vicky. That is all you need know.”
Her eyes went impossibly round. “But you promised you wouldn’t hurt her, Uncle Reiner.”
Reiner eyed his niece. Even with all she’d heard, she was still protecting Sloane.
Damn that he had promised her.
He nodded, setting his tone to neutral. “I did. And I won’t.”
Vicky exhaled a sigh of relief.
“It is time to sleep.” He stood and walked out of the room in silence.
Silence that belied the fury in each step he took.
He closed Vicky’s door behind him and stilled.
To the right, his chambers and bottle of the finest 1810 Renault & Co cognac.
To his left, Sloane’s room.
He spun to the left.
Just as his hand, vibrating with rage, reached the door handle to Sloane’s room, two men stumbled around the corner of the hallway.
Blast it.
“Hey—stop there, ye bastard. You’re not married to her yet or so you’d have us believe.” Sloane’s brother fumbled toward him, a full glass of spirits swinging in the air and sloshing drops onto the floor. One of his men, Domnall, followed at his heels.
Reiner’s fingers dropped away from the door handle. “What would you know of it?”
“I ken she made the bloodiest stupid mistake of her life entangling with the likes of you. I ken about your—”he paused, searching for the word by swinging the tumbler clenched in his hand in the air—“escapade in Scotland.”
Reiner crossed his arms across his chest, skewering Lachlan with his look. “You know nothing.”
Lachlan’s forefinger flung out from the glass, nearly touching Reiner’s nose. “You’re calling my sister a liar?”
“I’m questioning the truths your sister likes to live in.”
Lachlan rushed in on him, his toes hitting Reiner’s boots. “My sister doesn’t lie, you bloody bastard.”
Domnall reached around Lachlan, clamping his arm across his chest and yanking him backward.
It didn’t slow Lachlan’s words, his finger still jutting into the air with every word. “She is the most honorable one in the lot of us and if you harm one hair on her head I’ll string yer cankerous maggot ass—yer moronic English innards from here to Glasgow.”
Reiner didn’t flinch. “You don’t know your sister nearly as well as you think you do.”
Domnall pulled Lachlan away, dragging him down the hall.
“She doesn’t lie, ye bloody demon. And I’ll be meeting you in hell if it’s the last thing I do.” Lachlan kept up the tirade until Domnall dragged him around the corner.
Reiner stood outside of Sloane’s door, watching the corner, waiting for Lachlan to escape and rush back into the hallway.
Minutes passed.
No one.
He flexed his clenched hands, stretching his fingers as he let his arms drop to his sides and he turned toward Sloane’s door.
An unmoving stone, he stood there, silent.
Unable to reach for the door handle. Unable to walk away.
Sloane was a liar.
But who was she lying to?
~~~
He married her with fury.
Fury in the rumble of his voice as he said, “I will.”
Fury in his fingertips as he gripped her hand.
Fury in the edges of his golden brown eyes anytime they ventured near her face.
Not that he looked at her directly.
He hadn’t done that since the night before in the garden.
The entire day, from the wedding, to the marriage breakfast, to the afternoon festivities, to the ball, he’d avoided looking at her directly.
Even as he took her in his arms for the opening dance of the ball, his fingers pressed into her flesh, pounding in anger with every heartbeat. He didn’t look down at her, didn’t so much as even acknowledge that she was now his wife twice over.
Aside from that one dance, she hadn’t been near her husband, much less touched him in the last twenty hours. Not one private moment together, and it was all clearly of Reiner’s machinations.
He’d shunned her all day and three hours into this blasted ball and she’d had enough of it. But even more importantly, she needed to know why.
When she had left him in the garden the previous night, he had barely been able to keep his lips off her neck, his hands off her bottom.
But something had happened between that moment and the morning when she joined him before the clergyman.
Sloane took the glass of cherry Ratafia that Lord Apton offered her and eyed her husband over the bobbing heads of the guests dancing, drifting away from the conversation with the crowd about her. Reiner stood at the south end of the ballroom deep in conversation with Falsted and another man she had not seen before today. Quite possibly the man Reiner had been waiting to be introduced to.
She smoothed the gold braided band high about her waist, an elaborate adornment against the rose pink of her silk gown that had twisted during her last dance. A dance not with Reiner.
As much as she wanted to stomp across the dance floor and drag her husband into an empty drawing room and pin him down until he told her what was amiss, she also didn’t want to put his plan in danger. Whatever he was plotting with Falsted could be the key to putting this whole sordid mess behind them.
A life without lies. Without distrust. Without vengeance.
The gleam in Falsted’s eye when she had told him she still planned to produce the book for him had sent bile up her throat. The man was determined to ruin her husband.
And she needed all of this danger—all of this intrigue—to end.
She wanted Reiner. She wanted Vicky. She wanted the three of them together in peace.
It was still an hour before the lavish dinner was to be served and she needed to get her husband alone before the meal or she wouldn’t be able to swallow a bite.
Lord Falsted stepped away from her husband, leaving Reiner chatting with the other man. Sloane pounced.
She excused herself from Lord Apton and weaved her way through the crush of people that were thick along the outskirts of the dance floor. Wolfbridge held a healthy number of people, but she would venture to guess there was more than double the amount of people in attendance this evening over the last.
She managed to avoid getting sucked into several conversations along her route and was stepping up to Reiner within two minutes.
He saw her approach—she’d seen his sidelong glances in her direction—yet his attention stayed on the gentleman next to him. Slightly shorter than Reiner, the man had ghastly white skin set below the darkest hair—the whole of
it lending him the appearance of a serious illness, even though his body appeared robust and trim.
She looked from the stranger to her husband.
Nothing.
With a distinct clearing of her throat, she looked back to the stranger.
Reiner’s voice was tight as he motioned to the man. “Duchess, I present to you Lord Bockton. Lord Bockton, my wife.”
“Ah, so this is the Scottish beauty you wed this morning.” Lord Bockton bowed to Sloane. “I regret I only arrived this evening and missed the day’s festivities.”
Sloane smiled at the man. “We are just happy you have managed to delight us with your presence now, Lord Bockton.”
“I have heard much of your charm, your grace, and I see it has not been exaggerated.”
“My charm may suffer in a moment, Lord Bockton, as I must excuse myself and my husband from you as I need a private word with him.”
“Of course.” He inclined his head to Sloane, then turned to do the same to Reiner. “Your grace.”
Lord Bockton exited into the throng of people along the wall with the French doors that led to the gardens.
Reiner kept his stare secured onto the back of Lord Bockton’s pomade-thick hair.
“You aren’t even going to look at me?” Her gaze on their guests, she whispered the words through a benign smile plastered on her face.
“To be honest, I don’t know if I can, Sloane.” The words were cold. Callous.
“Well, you can follow me without looking at me.” She glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye. His jaw was set hard. So hard it was straining. Quivering. “So for our guests’ comfort, I suggest you do so now before I explode in front of the lot of them.”
Without waiting for a reply, she stepped around Reiner and exited through the wide south entrance and walked as fast as her feet would carry her up to her chamber. She stopped at the entrance, only to be yanked to the side as Reiner grabbed the back of her upper arm when he passed her.
“My room. It’s the farthest from ears.”
With his fingers digging into her arm, he walked them to the end of the hall, flinging open the door to his chambers and thrusting her into it.
His grasp gone, she stumbled a few steps before catching herself on the back of a plump wingback chair by the fireplace to her right.
She hadn’t been in this room since she rifled through it to steal the red ledger book. Her gaze landed on the secretary that sat next to the window. The one she had to pop the lock on to unlatch the false bottom in the third drawer down on the left side.
Reiner slammed the door closed and turned toward her, his chest heaving, the full fury he had been suppressing all day unleashed. “I’m a bloody fool in love, Sloane?”
She pushed herself from the wingback chair, straightening her spine, her head shaking. “You are what?”
The gold in his brown eyes swirled in the cold rage of a hundred converging hurricanes. “Vicky told me everything—she heard everything of your damned conversation with Falsted.”
The blood ran from her face, her cheeks tingling with loss of feeling. “She what?” Her head dropped forward, her mind in a flurry. “The shadow in the hall—it was her.” Her look whipped up to meet his piercing glare. “No, stop. It’s not what you think. Not at all.”
His hands curled into fists at his sides. “And just what exactly am I supposed to think, Sloane?”
She took a step toward him. “You’re supposed to trust me—that’s first.”
“Or am I to think that the bitch that I married wants to see me kill myself—but only after she revels in all my power and wealth?”
She reeled a step backward, his words said with such venom her stomach twisted into pain. Her palm tight against her belly, she forced her shoulders high and pulled them back. “Tell me you did not just mean those words.”
“They weren’t my words, Sloane.”
“Yes—yes I said those words to Falsted—he cornered me and was demanding the book. He doesn’t even ken I already have it, so those weren’t his men in Buchlyvie. He was questioning me—he wanted to ken what I was doing marrying you, so I had to lie—had to say those things.”
“Or are you lying now?” The malice in his voice sharpened. “You’ve gotten so good at it you cannot tell the difference?”
“No—you stop.” She charged toward him, halting only a breath away. “Just last night you demanded I trust you—that the games you were playing with Falsted would not hurt me. But now you cannot do the same for me? Trust that whatever lies I told him were necessary to keep you safe—to keep me safe?”
His eyes narrowed at her, his breath still seething.
Her hands went to her hips. “Why do you get all my trust, while I get none of yours?”
She stared at him for a breath that she held for far too long.
Held, because she was either going to be destroyed or delivered by the time she exhaled it. This was the one moment to determine whether she was to have the husband she wanted above everything or have a broken marriage, every day from here till death torture.
He let loose a long, steaming sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her breath came out in a puff, her eyes closing. An opening. The smallest of gaps, but a chance.
It took her another five heartbeats before she could open her eyes and look at him. “I didn’t think anything more on the lies I spoke once he told me of the Swallowford lands you agreed to purchase and have cleared. I was so angry it was all I could concentrate on. And I haven’t been alone with you since last night in the gardens.”
She dared to lift her hand and settle it on his chest. “The words I said were the most evil, the most vile thoughts I could think—the makings of my own worst nightmare.” Her eyes closed, her words shaking. “I cannot lose you, Reiner. Especially not to lies that never should have been spoken.”
His lips against hers, hot, still seething, sent a jolt of disbelief down her spine.
He believed her.
And he wasn’t too stubborn to admit it. Or at least, she hoped that’s what his lips on hers meant. He could just as easily be kissing her goodbye.
His hands lifted, his palms capturing the sides of her face as he deepened the searing kiss. The heat of his body so overwhelming that her breath left her. He wanted her—fully and truly and completely—and she couldn’t doubt it anymore.
She managed to wedge her head backward, breaking the kiss, her eyes searching his face. “With all of this, you married me anyway this morning?”
His lips brushed hers. “We were already wed.”
“But you knew you could have petitioned for a divorce with our marriage in Scotland.” Her hands crept up his chest, her fingers wrapping around his neck. “But you didn’t—you still bound yourself to me—beyond all recourse—in that ceremony.”
“You’re mine, Sloane—come threats or lies or sunny skies. You’re mine through it all—you have been since the moment I first kissed you. What this is between us—it cannot be denied. And if I have to trust you above all others for that”—he paused, taking a deep breath—“then I trust you above all others. You can tell me the moon is as pink as your gown, and I’ll believe you. I may question you, but I’ll believe you. And then I’ll order some spectacles.”
She laughed, pulling herself upward to find his lips once more. A kiss so deep, so full of promise and hope for the future that her toes curled, her body aching for him.
She jerked her lips away from his with a yelp, her face crumpling. “Wait—Vicky—oh, no. No, no—what she must be thinking of me. She must be so scared.”
His right cheek pulled up in a slight smile. “She’s still your champion—she didn’t want to tell me. She was crying and I made her tell me what was wrong. And even when she did, she made me swear not to harm you.”
Her bottom lip jutted upward. “I must go see her. This isn’t right that she thinks this of me.”
Reiner nodded. “I don’t think she’s been out of her room
all day. We’ll visit with her together.” His fingers went to his forehead. “Except the dinner will be starting soon, so I must see the guests into the great hall for that. But you go to her directly.”
“Oh, I don’t want to fail my hostess duties my very first night as duchess. But Vicky…”
His fingers followed a lock of hair pulled into her upsweep. “Vicky is the most important thing at the moment. Join us when she is soothed. I will make excuses for your absence.” He paused, cocking his head to the side as a mischievous grin lifted his mouth. “Or no excuses. This is our home and we get to do as we please. I’ll see the guests into dinner and you will see to Vicky—tell her all.”
Sloane smiled, so wide it hurt her cheeks. “I made a good choice when I dragged you in front of that baker.”
He guffawed. “I think we both know it was me doing the dragging.”
She stepped around him to open the door, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.”
Laughing, he swatted her backside on the way out the door.
{ Chapter 20 }
“Vicky?” Sloane knocked again on Vicky’s door as she glanced to the right at the empty hallway. She’d searched all the nooks and crannies Vicky liked to hide in during parties—her new niece had shown her each spot proudly when Sloane had first stayed at Wolfbridge. Spots where she could watch and listen but no one would notice her.
But Vicky was not in any of them. So Sloane had reversed course and come to her room again. There had been no answer in it an hour ago, but maybe Vicky had slipped back up here while Sloane had been searching.
The cacophony of music and voices floating up from the dining in the great hall trickled through the air, but she could still hear rustling from inside the room. She knocked on the door again. Vicky could be stubborn and Sloane knew she was resisting opening the door for her.
“Vicky.” She knocked. “Please, I must speak with you.”
No answer.
Stubborn or not, Sloane needed to right this wrong with Vicky immediately.
She set her fingers onto the door handle and cracked the door to give Vicky time to prepare for the intrusion.
The Wolf Duke Page 20
