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His mouth pulled to a tight line. “She doesn’t have it in her, Vicky. Trust me.”
Her hands tugged on his coat. “No, please, Uncle Reiner, she wants to ruin you—kill you—don’t go.”
“I have to, Vicky.” He peeled her fingers away from his lapels and stood from the bed, picking up the rope and rag as he moved. “I’ll send Miss Gregory in to sit with you tonight—every night until I am back. Mrs. Flurten and Claude and Lawrence will also always be around you. You are safe, do you understand?”
She nodded. “But what about you, Uncle Reiner? How will you be safe?”
“Sloane isn’t about to hurt me, Vicky. And I cannot let anything happen to her either.”
He turned from Vicky’s distressed blue eyes and walked out of the room.
Vicky was wrong. Wrong about all of it. She had to be.
Sloane was probably downstairs at this very moment, chatting with their guests.
He was sure of it.
~~~
Reiner stood at the edge of the ballroom just inside the open French doors leading to the gardens. He searched the couples gliding across the dance floor, the melody of a waltz floating down from the minstrels’ gallery along the north side of the room.
A waltz. Of course.
Every nook had been checked. Every face looked upon.
Sloane was no longer at Wolfbridge.
His butler appeared next to him and Reiner couldn’t quite yank his eyes away from the merriment of the dancers, willing his wife to appear in the arms of a random man—any man. It didn’t matter who she was touching, just that she appeared.
He leaned sideways to Colton, his eyes focused forward, his voice low. “Anything?”
“No, your grace. Every room has been checked, one level at a time with watchers at all the stairs. There was no slipping past us. The same in the gardens.”
As expected, but still a blow to his gut. “Where is her brother?”
“We checked with them first. All of the Scotsmen were in their rooms. They are preparing to leave Wolfbridge, your grace.”
“Good riddance.”
Reiner’s eyes narrowed. Across the ballroom Falsted stepped out of the billiards room, smoothing the front of his tailcoat.
Reiner charged across the ballroom, cutting through the dance floor with no regard to the twirling couples stumbling in his wake.
Falsted jumped like the weasel he was just before Reiner wrapped his hand around Falsted’s throat. He shoved him backward into the billiards room before he could consider what he was doing in front of an audience.
“Clear it.” His yell thundered into the billiards room and all the men jumped, quickly scurrying through the doorways.
Footman closed the doors and Reiner spun Falsted to the nearest wall, slamming him back against the plaster as his fingers tightened about his throat. “Tell me where my wife is, Falsted.”
Falsted’s hands scrambled against Reiner’s arm. “Why would I know that?”
Reiner loosened his hold for a second, then cracked Falsted’s head against the wall again. “You know exactly what Bockton’s plan is—he has been exposed and now he means to escape. And the bastard took my damn wife with him.”
“I—I don’t know anything.”
His fingers gouged into the flesh of Falsted’s neck. “He is not nearly the threat to you that I am, so tell me where in the hell he has taken my wife.”
Falsted’s head shook back and forth. “No—no, he wouldn’t.”
