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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.
