Flames flickered in the fireplace, lending plenty of light to the room. Vicky had to still be awake—or maybe she was pretending to be asleep.
Sloane pushed the door open a bit further, stepping into the chamber.
She wasn’t fully into the room before a hand grabbed her wrist, yanking her forward and slamming the door closed behind her.
Vicky wasn’t that strong.
Sloane found her footing before stumbling to the floor and she spun. Just to the left of the door waited Lord Bockton—and Vicky. Vicky stood next to him in her nightgown, shaking, with a white strip of cloth cutting tightly across her mouth. Her hands bound behind her, tears were streaming down her face as strangled whimpers smothered against the cloth on her tongue.
“What?” Sloane’s hands flew outward to her niece and she rushed toward Vicky. “What are you doing?”
“Stop if you value your life, your grace.” Lord Bockton flashed something silver through the air.
A pistol.
Hell.
Sloane skidded to a stop. Still too far away from Vicky. Too many steps to reach her.
She tore her gaze off the girl and looked to Bockton. “Please, Lord Bockton, what are you doing with my niece?”
He glanced at Vicky and then grabbed her arm and started to drag her toward the door.
“Stop.” Sloane jumped in front of them, blocking the door while attempting to ignore the pistol aimed at her body. “Let her go. What do you think you’re doing?”
Lord Bockton shoved Sloane to the left with the backside of his gun hand. “Ensuring safe passage out of England. The girl is my insurance against the duke stopping us.”
Sloane flailed off balance for a step, then caught her feet, spinning to grab his wrist that held Vicky’s arm, her words frantic. “No—stop, you can’t take her. Take me.”
He stilled, looking down at her, his pale skin glowing eerily in the light of the fire as a haunting chuckle rang from his throat. “I was hoping you would say that, little birdy. I’ll take both of you.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “It was you—you are the one that Falsted wanted to introduce me to. You are the one that the duke wanted to find. He found out who you are, didn’t he? He’s going to see you hanged.”
“So he did. The idiot Falsted told him. And now the intrigue is over. My only thought now is to remove myself from this land before that becomes a reality.” He waved his pistol in Sloane’s face. “And you two will ensure that happens.”
“No.” Sloane screamed the word, trying to wedge herself between him and Vicky. “You take me—not her. You take her with you and I will fight you every step of the way. Leave the girl and I’ll happily go with you.” She wedged both of her hands on the arm he held Vicky with and yanked at it. “Falsted told you of my plan—I ken he did. That I am waiting for the right moment to ruin the duke. Nothing has changed. I still want the man to suffer. You can escape this without taking the girl.”
She took a sudden step backward, curbing the desperation in her voice. Desperation shrieked of lies. She couldn’t have that. Not if she was to save Vicky.
She wasn’t prepared to deal with a madman, but she didn’t have a choice. And that’s what Bockton was. Utterly mad.
And the only thing that madness responded to was more madness.
She steeled herself, setting her voice to cold disregard. “You see how the duke loves me. He’ll do anything stupid for me. Like follow me into a death trap.”
“Death?” Bockton’s eyes flickered to her with a glimmer of interest.
She nodded. “I leave with you now, and it will give you time to arrange it. The duke disappears and you have nothing to worry about.” She flicked a finger toward Vicky. “The girl he doesn’t care for much at all. I doubt he’ll even realize she is gone. But me—me, he will miss.”
Vicky’s eyes went wide, then shut tight with a tortured sob.
Sloane knew her words were killing Vicky, wounding her to the core, but there was no recourse for it. She had to get this madman out of Wolfbridge and away from Vicky—away from Reiner—any way she could.
Her look sliced into him. “Lord Bockton, you are beginning to bore me.” She nodded to Vicky. “If you cannot grasp the fact that the girl will only hinder us as we get you to—where is it you plan to escape to?”
His head jerked back slightly. “I have one of my ships off the coast.” Bockton’s eyes narrowed, his words high and thin, just like his face. “I have heard Falsted’s version, but tell me yourself what you have to gain with this.” A command, not a question.
“You ken I wish the duke to be ruined?”
Bockton nodded.
Sloane shrugged. “If the duke comes after us to retrieve me from you, I win. Either he dies in an unfortunate accident or he saves me and my plan to destroy him with the ledger book and Falsted’s help will continue. If he doesn’t come after me, I escape with you and start a new life elsewhere—I’m positive you can accommodate that in exchange for my assistance—and the duke has the humiliation and scandal of a wife that abandoned him on his wedding day to suffer. Whichever way it falls, I win, he loses.”
Another heaving sob shook Vicky.
For all Sloane wanted to wrap her arms around Vicky, squirrel her away and hide her in a corner where her niece would never get hurt, she held her arms solidly on her sides. No emotion. Emotion would betray her.
A smile, slick with how it wormed its way onto his mouth, stretched his thin skin tight. “We will have it your way. You, not the girl.”
Sloane flicked her head toward the bed. “Set her on the bed, tie her foot to the rail. She’ll be fine until morning when the maid finds her.”
Bockton’s lifeless eyes skewered her. “You will come willingly?”
“Absolutely.” She nodded, biting back bile chasing up her throat. “I have just as much to gain. And just as much to lose.”
~~~
Reiner’s knuckles rapped on Vicky’s door.
Sloane hadn’t made it down to the dinner, which meant her conversation with Vicky was taking much longer than anticipated. Maybe all his niece needed was for him to assure her that Sloane was to be trusted.
Hell, Vicky probably already did trust Sloane more than him. A fact that would have made this all the more difficult for Vicky—not knowing who to turn to, to trust.
He knocked again on the wood, leaning his ear toward the door to listen below the strains of music and the buzz from the dancing that had resumed in the ballroom.
A small thud. Nothing more.
Another knock and he opened the door. His body froze.
Vicky sprawled on the bed, her hands bound behind her back, a gag tied about her mouth, and her foot tied to a bottom post of the bed. Her other foot swung in the air, thunking onto the wood post and making only the slightest sound.
Dammit. Not Vicky. Not the one person that couldn’t defend herself. The one he was supposed to protect above all others. He swore it. Swore it to her mother.
Rage like he’d never known seared through his veins. He rushed to Vicky, his fingers franticly untying the rag across her mouth.
He tossed the strip of cloth onto the floor, his fingers furious on the knot binding her wrists awkwardly behind her back. “Vicky—blasted rope—what happened? Who did this to you? And where the devil is Sloane? She was supposed to be here—be in here.”
A sob twisted into a cough in her throat and Vicky shrank away from his barked words. Angry, vicious words.
He had no place yelling at her. Not when she’d just been terrified so.
He coughed, trying to clear the rage from his throat, and reset his voice. “I didn’t mean to yell, Vicky. I’m just horrified to find you like this—none of this is your fault.” He ripped open the last thread of rope and freed her wrists. His hand on her back, he sat her up and then moved to the rope about her ankle at the foot of the bed.
He glanced up at her from the knots.
Stupefied and shaking, tears streamed down her cheeks. She’d
been terrorized beyond comprehension.
But he needed answers from her. “Vicky, I know you’re scared, but you need to find a way to talk to me right now. Fight through the tears to tell me what happened. Sob, cry, whatever it takes to get the words out, I need them. Tell me who did this to you.”
A stuttered wail, and then words formed on Vicky’s tongue. “She—she told him to tie me up like this.”
Reiner’s fingers stilled. His body froze as the blood in his veins turned to ice.
It took him several seconds to lift his gaze to his niece.
His words a tortured whisper, his look found her tear-stained face. “Who told who to tie you up? This is important, Vicky.”
“Sl—Sloane did.”
All air left his body, his heart stilling.
He didn’t hear her right. He couldn’t have.
“Sloane did what?”
She gasped a solid breath and words tumbled out of her lips, her tongue not fast enough to keep pace with the rush. “She told him to tie me to the bed before they left. He had come in here after I was done watching the dancing. He followed me and told me not to scream or he’d choke me. And I believed him. And he tied me up—my arms and then shoved that rag in my mouth and tied it around my head and it hurt—it hurt so much, Uncle Reiner.” Her face crumpled, tears flowing again.
Reiner let loose the last knot on her ankle and reached out, wrapping his arms around her, bringing her to his chest. She came willingly, happily—a safe haven in the middle of the maelstrom about her.
“Wait.” He tugged slightly away from Vicky so he could look down at her face. “He had already tied your arms together before Sloane was in here?”
“He did. He had tied me up and was going to take me, but then Sloane came in the door.”
“Did he say why he tied you up?”
Her head shook and then collapsed against his chest, her fingers tight on the lapels of his tailcoat. “No. Just that I better walk with him and better not scream or try to get away.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Sloane called him Bockton.”
He gasped, raging breath filling his lungs. “So he was planning on taking you out of here when Sloane came in?”
“Yes. And she said awful things again—awful, awful things. She said I wasn’t worth as much—that you wouldn’t care if he took me. That he should take her because it would destroy you if she left and I was nothing to you.”
“So he decided to leave you here?”
“Sloane said I wasn’t worth the trouble. That I wasn’t worth anything.” Her words cut out with a sob. “Then she left with him.”
“Did he tie her up?”
Vicky shook her head. “No. She said you would either follow her and then meet with an unfortunate accident or if you saved her she could come back and ruin you as she had planned. She said either way she would win. She means that she wins when you die, Uncle Reiner, and I don’t want you to die.”
“I’m not going to die, Vicky.” His hand clasped to the back of her head, smoothing her hair. “But I am going after Sloane.”
“No.” Her head jerked away from him. “You can’t. She wants you dead and I’m scared and I don’t want you to go. Why is she like this? I thought…I thought she loved us and now she wants you hurt or dead.”
His mouth pulled to a tight line. “She doesn’t have it in her, Vicky. Trust me.”
Her hands tugged on his coat. “No, please, Uncle Reiner, she wants to ruin you—kill you—don’t go.”
“I have to, Vicky.” He peeled her fingers away from his lapels and stood from the bed, picking up the rope and rag as he moved. “I’ll send Miss Gregory in to sit with you tonight—every night until I am back. Mrs. Flurten and Claude and Lawrence will also always be around you. You are safe, do you understand?”
She nodded. “But what about you, Uncle Reiner? How will you be safe?”
“Sloane isn’t about to hurt me, Vicky. And I cannot let anything happen to her either.”
He turned from Vicky’s distressed blue eyes and walked out of the room.
Vicky was wrong. Wrong about all of it. She had to be.
Sloane was probably downstairs at this very moment, chatting with their guests.
He was sure of it.
~~~
Reiner stood at the edge of the ballroom just inside the open French doors leading to the gardens. He searched the couples gliding across the dance floor, the melody of a waltz floating down from the minstrels’ gallery along the north side of the room.
A waltz. Of course.
Every nook had been checked. Every face looked upon.
Sloane was no longer at Wolfbridge.
His butler appeared next to him and Reiner couldn’t quite yank his eyes away from the merriment of the dancers, willing his wife to appear in the arms of a random man—any man. It didn’t matter who she was touching, just that she appeared.
He leaned sideways to Colton, his eyes focused forward, his voice low. “Anything?”
“No, your grace. Every room has been checked, one level at a time with watchers at all the stairs. There was no slipping past us. The same in the gardens.”
As expected, but still a blow to his gut. “Where is her brother?”
“We checked with them first. All of the Scotsmen were in their rooms. They are preparing to leave Wolfbridge, your grace.”
“Good riddance.”
Reiner’s eyes narrowed. Across the ballroom Falsted stepped out of the billiards room, smoothing the front of his tailcoat.
Reiner charged across the ballroom, cutting through the dance floor with no regard to the twirling couples stumbling in his wake.
Falsted jumped like the weasel he was just before Reiner wrapped his hand around Falsted’s throat. He shoved him backward into the billiards room before he could consider what he was doing in front of an audience.
“Clear it.” His yell thundered into the billiards room and all the men jumped, quickly scurrying through the doorways.
Footman closed the doors and Reiner spun Falsted to the nearest wall, slamming him back against the plaster as his fingers tightened about his throat. “Tell me where my wife is, Falsted.”
Falsted’s hands scrambled against Reiner’s arm. “Why would I know that?”
Reiner loosened his hold for a second, then cracked Falsted’s head against the wall again. “You know exactly what Bockton’s plan is—he has been exposed and now he means to escape. And the bastard took my damn wife with him.”
“I—I don’t know anything.”
His fingers gouged into the flesh of Falsted’s neck. “He is not nearly the threat to you that I am, so tell me where in the hell he has taken my wife.”
Falsted’s head shook back and forth. “No—no, he wouldn’t.”
“He bloody well did. He took my wife to ensure his escape.”
“I—I cannot—he’ll kill me.”
Reiner shoved his face in Falsted’s, the fury of a thousand Roman warriors at his lips. “I know you’re a sniveling coward when it comes to that bastard, but now you have someone even more deadly to worry about—me. So where in the blasted world is my wife?”
Reiner’s hold around Falsted’s neck cut his air and all the man could do was nod.
Reiner slightly eased his fingers from Falsted’s neck. Just enough for air.
Falsted gasped, his fingers still clutching Reiner’s arm, but too weak against Reiner’s strength. “Fine.” He coughed, his throat barely letting wheezed words through. “I shouldn’t have told you of him. He’s on his way to one of his ships to escape. The closest one is on the coast off of Butterwick. He means to get to the continent and still run his smuggling empire from there.”
Reiner dropped his hand from Falsted’s neck.
Hell and damnation.
At night Butterwick was only a six-hour carriage ride away. Four by fast horse. And then to navigate the salt marshes and lagoons, another two, possibly. And Bockton had left
two hours—maybe more—ago.
He stormed out of the billiards room. Colton was standing just outside, waiting discreetly. Good man.
“Get her brother.”
“I just received word that he has set out with his camp.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Colton nodded.
“Where to?”
“I assume the northern route, your grace, but it has not been confirmed. They departed an hour past while we were searching for her grace.”
Damn, her brother was now an hour in the wrong direction. An hour he couldn’t spare.
“And Sloane wasn’t with him—you are positive?”
“No. Not according to the two stable boys that helped pack their wagon. I did send a rider out to verify the information and their route.”
Reiner stepped back inside the billiards room and looked at Falsted. The man still slumped against the wall, catching his breath. “It is you and I, Falsted. You know where the ship is so you’re going to bring me to my wife and that heinous bastard.” He stepped toward Falsted, his voice a growl. “And if you’re wrong about this, may the devil take pity on your soul as I rip it from your body.”
{ Chapter 21 }
Sloane gave one last glance over her shoulder before she stepped into one of the three skiffs set on the shore of the small cove of shifting sands.
No one.
Trees beyond the cove.
Sandy shoreline about her that lifted into a dune hugging the cove.
A tidal waterway surging inward at the crux of the three-quarter circle of sand.
And not a soul in the early morning light.
Not Reiner. Not her brother.
No one.
She had hoped against hope that someone would find Vicky before Bockton’s carriage got too far from Wolfbridge. Vicky was safe from him. That was what had mattered. But once they were off Reiner’s lands, she would have welcomed anyone to intervene and extract her from Bockton’s clutches.
But for what she’d had to say about Vicky in order to get Bockton to leave her at Wolfbridge, she didn’t expect her niece was about to encourage anyone to come after her.
The Wolf Duke Page 21
