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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.”
