Page 24 of Wolfhaven

The kettle whistled loud enough to wake the dead. Evaine jerked out of a doze and found Gran bustling around the enormous kitchen cheerfully making tea.

“You’re awake,” she said. “You’ll never believe what I discovered. A water closet.”

“Really?”

“I assume this house tapped into well water when it was plumbed. I had to run it for a time to clear it, and the toilet required a good scrub, as did the tub⁠—”

“Gran. Tell me you didn’t do all of that.”

“I have weak lungs, not a weak back,” she answered indignantly. Occasionally, Hazel would have a good day, overdo it, and relapse. She always believed such days were real turning points and not a temporary improvement. “I am not an invalid. It was nice to feel useful.”

“You did all of this without your medicine?” Evaine asked skeptically.

“I feel better without that vile stuff,” she said, thumping her chest with one thin hand.

“For now.” Evaine pushed up from the chair she had slept in with a creak. Her neck was stiff and her back ached. Her left shoulder might never be the same. She rolled her arm in an attempt to loosen her muscles.

“The duke is right, you know. The medicine is habit-forming. I shouldn’t be so dependent on it.”

“It’s the only thing we’ve found that brings you relief,” said Evaine.

“I’ve heated water for a bath. It took me a few trips to fill the tub with warm water, but you’ll find it delightful to wash properly.” The rapturous expression on her grandmother’s face made her smile. “After you get cleaned up, we can go and fetch the rest of our belongings from the cottage and look for a room in here. We have moved up in the world, my dear.”

Evaine hesitated. Marina’s diary lay on the floor next to the chair she’d been sleeping in. She had read most of it before dozing off, but there were sections she wouldn’t mind reviewing.

Others, she would be scrubbing from her brain for the rest of her life.

That poor young woman. Gareth’s father had been a monster. The horrors she had read in those pages left her doubting her own convictions about the existence of ghosts. If anyone deserved to haunt a place in their afterlife, it was Marina Corbett.

The previous Lord Lucan had taken obscene liberties with a young girl. Left her pregnant and alone at the tender age of fifteen. To add insult to injury, the wretched man had apparently stolen the money entrusted to him for her dowry. She had managed to sneak into his study and find records of stocks and bonds held in her name that had been sold, with no record of them ever being reinvested. She felt trapped, degraded, and frightened long before the evidence of the duke’s cruelty had taken root in her womb.

One thing was abundantly clear—young Marina had been hopelessly besotted with her four-years-older foster brother. Hopeless in the sense that she was painfully aware that he held only brotherly affection for her.

Worse, though Gareth was the subject of her romantic fantasies, Marina blamed herself for being too sullied to attract such a handsome lord. The passage where she described Gareth’s discovery of his father’s disgusting conduct and offered to marry her on the spot had to be the most tragic thing Evaine had ever read. Still, it was fascinating to see the man through Marina’s eyes.

Lord Gareth is leaving for university soon. At least when he was attending Eton there were no girls. A handsome duke such as he will undoubtedly be plagued with female attention. My only prayer is that his naturally reticent and somber nature will preclude him from falling in love with someone else. As much as I detest his father, who placates me with small compliments while robbing me blind and forcing himself upon me whenever we’re alone, I wish for Gareth to see me as a worthy duchess.

Then, several months later, after a lengthy, despondent passage where Marina realized the truth of her condition, came a burst of excitement. Lord Gareth is home for Christmas. He caught his father forcing himself on me. The men came to blows. I confessed my plight to Gareth, and would you believe, he offered to marry me on the spot! I know he is only doing it to try and save his father and the family from a tremendous scandal, yet I am the happiest woman alive. I shall pretend the baby is his and put this whole dreadful experience behind me.

How devastating that her dream had finally come true, but in such a twisted fashion.

Gran was right. She did need a thorough bath to wash away the ephemeral layer of filth that had lodged in her mind upon reading Marina’s diary. A short time later, Evaine shed her nightgown and sank into the lukewarm water with a sigh. She flipped to the pages near the end of the book where Marina’s neat, girlish handwriting began to devolve in legibility.

The second banns have been posted. I can hardly believe this is happening. The housekeeper found an old wedding dress that she is altering to fit me. I wanted a new one, but Lord Lucan said I hadn’t the money. I told him that was false and he was stealing from me, which was reprehensible. I got too haughty and told him I would soon be beyond his reach. He said the cruelest thing—that I would never be beyond his reach, not even when I was in my grave. He put his hands around my throat and choked me. I shall have to curb my tongue around him for a few weeks longer. I cannot wait for Gareth to take me away from this house. I yearn for London. For him to make me new again.

Two lines down, almost as an afterthought, was the sentence, I saw a small wooden chest filled with gold like a pirate’s treasure on Lord Lucan’s desk. I can’t prove that money is mine, but I believe it to be true. Where does he keep it when he isn’t counting his stolen gold?

A chest full of gold would go a great long way toward restoring prosperity to the duke—but under the terms of their agreement, Evaine would only be entitled to a fraction of its value if she could find it first.

Distantly, the kettle boiling down the hall in the kitchen whistled loud and long. She was of half a mind to go make sure Gran was attending to it. Just as she was about to get out, the shrill sound stopped. Evaine sank back down and resumed turning the pages of the diary in search of any clue she had missed.

She didn’t believe in ghosts. She didn’t. But if she were to put credence in phantoms and haunts from the dead, she would definitely believe that Marina’s ghost had put the journal on that console table for her to find…which meant that—if one were to entertain the notion of ghosts—the heavy footsteps she had heard following them in the forest must have been the duke himself⁠—

The water closet door flew open, banged against the wall, and jumped back again.

Speaking of dukes…

Evaine startled and dropped the precious journal into the water. It floated there, the ink running, as Gareth’s wild and cold blue gaze raked down her naked body. His brow pleated into a scowl.