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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.”
