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The corners of Falsted’s mouth strained so low they almost reached his jawline. “Yet if he’s ruined, your reputation will be as well.”
“Do you think he would let it go that far?” She shook her head, maintaining the facade even as her tongue curdled over the words. “He’s far too honorable for that. He adores me and he will take care of the matter himself long before he lets his ruin affect me or his niece.”
“He’ll off himself.” The edges of his mouth curled up, salivating. “Conniving wench.”
“Yes. And I’ll be left with a sizeable estate and the power of the title.” She smiled sweetly. “But you do not get to call me sour names, Lord Falsted. We may be at the same purpose where the duke is concerned, but that does not give you reign to speak on my person. I don’t like to think of it as conniving. I much rather like to think of it as doling out due comeuppance.”
His vulture eyes fixed on her for a long moment as his fingers ran up and down along the edge of his lapel. He nodded to himself. “You may just be far more valuable than I had given you credit for, Lady Sloane. Perhaps there’s someone you should meet.”
Her head tilted to the side as she pinned him with her stare. “Why?”
“He would be very interested in your plan and in your ability to sway the Wolfbridge investments. He’s someone you would do well to ally yourself with.” Falsted inclined his head, either threatening or confiding, she wasn’t sure.
“Do not make presumptions about who I wish to ally myself with, Falsted.” She forced another smile. “That said, is the man here at Wolfbridge?”
“Not yet. He’ll arrive tomorrow.”
She dipped her head toward him and started to move out of the room. “I assume you will find an opportunity to make introductions?”
“You may depend upon it.”
Just as she stepped into the hallway, movement in the shadows of a doorway five paces away caught her eye. She started toward the movement, but then Falsted cleared his throat behind her.
“There is one more thing, my lady. So you are aware, the duke just made a deal with me tonight to purchase the remainder of the Swallowford lands that abut your grandfather’s estate.”
She spun back to Falsted. “He did what?”
“The duke is purchasing the lands. He requested they be cleared as the others were, so you would do well to advise your brother to encourage any remaining residents to vacate the lands.”
She reeled backward, stunned, his words slicing her open from head to toe. Her shoulder blades banged into the opposite wall of the corridor.
Out.
She had to get away from the man before she crumpled.
With a gasp for a raw breath and a slight shake of her head, she veered toward the staircase, her entire body shaking.
Her legs moving on their own, she flew down the stairs, her feet slipping on the smooth edges of the steps. Only by luck did she make it down without falling and breaking her neck.
Blindly, she moved through the corridors, keeping a hand on the walls to stay upright, fighting the pain in her gut, vicious as it twisted deep into her body.
Reiner wouldn’t have.
Wouldn’t dare.
Couldn’t have.
Could he?
~~~
“Here you are.” Reiner walked past the tall hedge in the shadow of the night and the neatly trimmed evergreens brushed his shoulder and spilled a woodsy scent into the air. “Everyone has retired and you weren’t in your room.”
Sloane jerked, her body twisting in the moonlight toward him, her eyes wide.
Reiner walked around the bench Sloane sat on deep within the cove of perfectly manicured shrubbery. She’d been facing the fat moon sitting just above the tips of the evergreens, so big it filled the lower half of the sky. He’d been searching for her for the last half hour since he’d passed by her room and discovered she wasn’t there.
She stayed seated and he stopped in front of her, looking down at her eyes, at her face, now in the dark of his shadow. There hadn’t been even a hint of smile when she had seen him. Not the slightest curve along the edges of her mouth. Just the straight lines of her lips, almost as though she was wrestling them into submission.
