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“It has doubled your weight—you cannot jump with that thing swinging and weighing you down. I’ll not chance you losing your balance.”
Her look veered across the vast open bog. “But we are in the open. And it is one of the only two dresses I have with me.”
His eyebrows cocked as his gaze swept downward. “You think it is salvageable?”
She glanced down at the putrid muck now sunk into every fiber. “No.”
He nodded and stretched his arms around her, his fingers working the buttons down her spine.
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.”
