Page 25 of Wolfhaven

“If you want a bath, you shall have to wait your turn,” she said severely, fishing the ruined book out of the water and holding it up. After what she had just read, it was ridiculous to feel self-conscious. Gareth had witnessed far worse.

But he hadn’t seen her naked body, and she didn’t much appreciate being surprised this way. She felt hot and flustered. She buried her feelings beneath a thick layer of bravado.

A lovely bath, ruined. Pity, that.

“I—forgive me, Miss Ballard.” He jerked his gaze away, studying the encaustic tiles as if the pattern contained a code only he could decipher. “I took too much of your patent medicine last night. I had a dream…I thought you were drowning. Or I was. You were screaming.”

“That was the kettle,” she said, annoyed now. “Out. You can have your turn in a moment.”

He cast her one final look—keeping his gaze scrupulously on her face—then turned on his heel and exited with a second bang of the door. A strange laugh bubbled out of Evaine. There was nothing humorous about what had just transpired. A release of tension. A belated expression of surprise at the way scars wound down his naked torso. The swirling, thick scars looked as if his flesh had melted, then set in the pattern it now occupied.

Sympathy warred with her ire, and won.

There had been a strange light in his piercing blue eyes as if he hadn’t been wholly in charge of his actions. She shouldn’t have allowed him to go off with the entire bottle of medicine last night.

She stepped out of the water and flipped through Marina’s diary, dismayed at how badly the ink had run. She set it to drip-dry on the edge of the claw-foot cast-iron tub, patting it with the corner of her towel, staining it blue in the process.

“Damn,” she muttered. “How will I find the treasure now?”

Chapter 13

Gareth

Idiot.

Fool.

Gareth did not possess an adequate vocabulary to express what a stunningly stupid person he was. Clearly, the blow to the head he’d suffered had scrambled his wits.

A kettle’s whistle was not a woman’s scream. He was not a hero. He was a confused man who had barged in on a lady in her bath.

The dream had seemed so real.

He hadn’t realized the other water closets were still functional. He’d been using the toilet across the hall from his room since he arrived, filthy though it was. He had briefly noted how the pipes in the kitchen and bathrooms hadn’t burst or sprung leaks in a decade of neglect. Cogswell’s work, undoubtedly. It should have occurred to him that the women would make use of a washroom conveniently located to the kitchen where they had set up camp.

Gareth had to find enough money to give Cogswell and his wife a decent pension. It was the least he owed them after every other servant had deserted the house in the aftermath of the fire.

He stomped upstairs and dressed properly. On his nightstand was the empty bottle of laudanum-laced medicine. He eyed it with disgust. He’d stolen an old, sick woman’s cough syrup and drunk enough of it to give himself wretched dreams. Then, he had barged in on the poor woman’s granddaughter naked in her bath.

His eyes squeezed shut. He was about to do something even worse than all of that. Shame coiled around him as he unfastened his trousers.

It’s only to take the edge off so that you can be polite company around Miss Ballard, he told himself. Ultimately, taking his cock out and stroking it was for her benefit—so that he could behave like an approximation of a respectful gentleman when he saw her again.

How humiliating that simple attention from a near-stranger stirred him physically. He was a grown man, not a desperate youth in the throes of his first discovery of the pleasures of the flesh. Despite this, the memory of Miss Ballard’s pale breasts, tipped with rosy-hued nipples, floating gently in the bathwater, had gripped him with such force that he could not put off seeking relief for a moment longer. Gareth stroked himself furiously, resting his arm against the wall and his forehead on his arm, suffering as he stroked his cock and imagined Miss Ballard’s red lips parting around the head, her thighs opening willingly. Envisioned the sheer relief of sliding into her greedy wetness and burying himself to the hilt.

With a tormented groan, he came on his own hand.

He was a disgrace. He was as vile as his sire had been. Lusting after a woman who regarded him as if he were a specimen of insect, and she a scientist, studying him.

He was a duke who could barely speak civilly to a woman, even when he wasn’t desperately attracted to her. A noble who was deliberately dismantling his own legacy. He had nothing to offer her. No woman in her right mind would want a man like him. Miss Ballard was intelligent enough to know a disaster when she saw one—and still he was drawn to her like a moth singeing its wings on an open flame.

His momentary self-pleasuring had the desired effect of dulling his physical ache for her touch. Though his hands trembled as he washed up, he felt steadier for having done it. If only he could wash away his guilt as easily as he did the rest of the mess. Gareth was able to dress properly in a fresh pair of trousers, shirt, and woolen vest before venturing downstairs a second time.

Miss Ballard and her grandmother were still in his kitchen. His self-possession wobbled, but he righted it by straightening his spine and saying, “Now that I am properly awake and no longer befuddled by strong medicine, I would like to assess the damage to the cottage.”

“I assure you the destruction is complete. It will need a new roof before we can live there again. Repairing it before winter sets in will be ambitious.” Miss Ballard was cutting ham into pieces and preparing to throw them into a pan. To her right sat a bowl with eggs and a pile of shredded cheese. “Sit. I’m making omelets. Moving house can wait until we have eaten our breakfast.”

Gareth pulled a rickety chair over to the listing drop-leaf table where her grandmother was eyeing him with bright-eyed interest.