Page 3 of Wolfhaven

He found a room that wasn’t too thickly covered in dust. Clearly, Bess Cogswell, Vernon’s wife, had been in here at some point to air things out and wipe things down. He found clean, if not fresh, linens inside a wardrobe and tossed them onto the bed. They would serve for one night.

Then he lit a candle, stuck a notebook and pencil into his pocket, and made his way back down the hallway. Even mediocre paintings could be sold for a decent sum to nouveau riche Americans desperate to affect a certain degree of class and education. He meticulously noted down the subjects and artists still hanging in the upper hall. Nineteen paintings in all.

Still not enough to clear his debts.

With his stomach rumbling, Gareth went back downstairs, avoiding the servant’s cramped and cobwebbed passageway in favor of a detour back to the main stairs. He had brought with him half a loaf of bread, ham, cheese, and six hard-boiled eggs. He made a meal of it and washed the dry bread down with water from the tap. An elaborate brass faucet in the shape of a goose’s head and neck spat brown filth for several minutes before the water ran clear. At least Cogswell had maintained the pipes over the years.

Everything else was broken. No gas fed into the lamps for him to turn on a light. He should have brought a hurricane lamp and coal oil. All he had brought with him were a few changes of clothes and the food.

A grim smile stretched his lips as he went around testing everything that didn’t work. None of the light switches turned on. The gas stove remained stubbornly cold. Even the ribbons that attached the pulls to bells hung in the servants’ quarters three stories up had rotted out.

No heat. No light. Nothing.

“Good,” Gareth muttered. “Do you see this, Father? Your great legacy, gone all to shit. Isn’t it glorious?” He waited. No one answered. “Aren’t you fucking proud?”

He turned away with a sneer of disgust and retreated to his temporary accommodations upstairs. One night. Then he would be rid of this cursed place, once and for all.

Chapter 2

Evaine

On the fourth morning since her arrival at Wolfhaven, Evaine awoke from a restless doze, shivering and with her stomach rumbling. A harsh cough from the other side of the room yanked her out of bed so quickly that she actually fell onto the wooden floor and skinned her knee.

“Be—careful,” her grandmother warned in between coughing fits.

“I’m fine.” Evaine ignored the blood trickling down her shin. Fully awake now, she helped her grandmother sit up until the spell passed. Gran’s thin shoulders shook like reeds in a wind as she fought for air. At last, gasping, she sat back against the headboard.

“I’ll make you tea,” Evaine said sympathetically.

“You should find something to eat.”

Where? Evaine wanted to shout, but that wasn’t fair. Gran was being more stoic about their lack of food than she was.

Coming to this remote Yorkshire cottage had been her grandmother’s idea. Evaine hadn’t wanted to leave London, but financial concerns had forced her hand. If they’d stayed in the city she might have found work as a clerk, but she probably couldn’t have earned enough to support the two of them, and who would care for Gran while she was working?

They were in an impossible situation. Here, there was no employment to be had, but at least they had a roof over their heads. Gran’s old friend from her days as a debutante, when she was still Miss Hazel Reeves, before she had married into the Ballard family. The bad luck of having been born female meant that when her husband died, she was tossed unceremoniously into poverty. Women rarely inherited family estates, and her own son, Evaine’s father, was dead.

They were fortunate that Gran’s acquaintance had offered to let them live in this old hunting cottage for a pittance. You can forage or hunt for food in the surrounding forest, Lady Phyllis had told them in her letter.

As if Evaine had the slightest idea of how to do either.

She wasn’t stupid. Far from it. Evaine had attended Girton College of Cambridge on a scholarship for an entire, mostly blissful year before she was forced to leave school to care for her sick grandmother. One day, Evaine was determined to go back. She wanted to read law. Fight to change the unjust rules that left women like Hazel Ballard in poverty when the men in their lives passed away.

But there was no denying that she was a city girl through and through. Evaine was good at studying. She could learn how to find food. Admittedly, things were not off to a good start in the hunting and foraging department, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Her dreams were only on hold for a while. For now, caring for her grandmother took precedence above all else. She knew that spending this time with her grandmother was worth any sacrifice—yet she was consumed with impotent fury that she couldn’t provide a better home for the woman who had raised her. Gran deserved to rest and recover from her long illness in comfort.

In short, Evaine felt thwarted and impotent. But she wasn’t giving up. She was swallowing her pride and accepting charity to get through this rough period. This was only a temporary setback.

The kettle whistled, first thin and wavering, then becoming an insistent wail. At least that was a modern convenience. Possibly the only one in this hunting cottage that felt as if it had been frozen in time.

“I’ll see if any of my snares worked once you’re settled,” she said brightly. Evaine would not allow her own frustration at their precarious situation to bubble over in words of anger. She added a meagre scoop of sugar to the brew to help conceal the bitter laudanum-based cough medicine. “Here you are, Gran.”

Meekly, the older woman swallowed down her dosage and grimaced. She took a sip of the sweetened tea to chase away the aftertaste. “Perhaps you can find eggs in a bird’s nest, too.”

Unlikely, as we’re well into October, Evaine thought. They were poorly equipped to survive the winter. She had blistered her palms chopping wood, trying to lay in a good supply before the cold set in, but she had little experience with that kind of backbreaking labor and she hadn’t laid down nearly enough. She would simply have to find gloves and keep going.

“I’ll ask Mr. Cogswell,” she said. “He might know where I could get some chickens to raise.”