Page 8 of Wolfhaven

“I see,” he said. “I shall leave you to it, then, Miss Ballard.”

The duke strode away, mounted his horse easily, and rode off. Evaine stared after him in disbelief. What a rude man.

She was about to resume chopping when the hinges on the cottage door creaked and a tiny, bent old woman exited, her gnarled hands clinging to the edge of the door. “Who was that, Evie?”

“No one,” she said curtly. “Just a stranger passing by. He’s gone now.”

“What did he want?”

“He asked for directions.” Lying to her grandmother wasn’t her finest moment, but Gran didn’t need to fret over a visit from a stranger. Evaine would handle this. She lifted the axe high and swung it down. This time, the stubborn log split neatly into two pieces. Satisfied, she tossed them onto the small but growing wood pile.

They would get through this. She could fend off a duke. She could survive anything.

Chapter 5

Gareth

Miss Evaine Ballard was certainly not Marina, though he could see why, in his disoriented state after the fall, he had initially thought she was. There was a similarity in the shapes of their noses and eyes, but Miss Ballard’s features were sharper and more vibrant than Marina’s gentle softness.

He hadn’t known his father’s ward well. Despite living under the same roof for a time, she was four years younger, and he had not paid her much mind. He had been a lad of twelve she had come to live under Wolfhaven’s roof, and the roof being a very large one, that gap had been an unbridgeable distance. He had lessons and tutors. She had a separate governess. It wasn’t until he had gone off to school and come back for the holidays months later that he viewed her as something closer to a woman. Yet even then, his instincts had been more protective than romantic.

Marina’s soft gray eyes and brown curls, combined with her plump lower lip, always made her seem as if she were on the verge of tears. In hindsight, he knew that there had been a reason for that. Her guardian had been abusing her, and she felt compelled to keep it a secret.

The wariness in Miss Ballard’s aquamarine eyes…that was where the main similarity came from.

She had been far more disagreeable than the gentle girl who had been his foster sister for a time—until his father’s vile behavior had forced them into a pantomime of being lovers. Perhaps he would have grown to love Marina as his wife if things had played out differently.

Miss Ballard was strikingly pretty. In addition to having one hell of a throwing arm.

Gareth shook his head. One thing he neither wanted nor needed was a woman in his life.

He returned his horse to the stable, rubbed him down, and turned the gelding out to pasture with Cogswell’s old cart horse. Only then, with a ferocious headache building, did he return to the main house.

The eerie silence that greeted him did nothing to improve his temper.

Gareth made his way into the kitchen. The antique brass gooseneck faucet would fetch a pretty sum, as might the central work table, a sixteenth-century relic hewn of solid oak and topped by a thick marble slab. He would rip every last bit of value out of this cursed place. Then he might start another fire and finish it off.

Yes, a cleansing blaze to scour the blight from this land once and for all. That was what he needed.

He hated this place, and it hated him in return. This house was not empty. He was never alone; he was always alone. Wolfhaven was a monument to the fact that he could not protect the people he loved from harm.

This malevolent house was determined to take everything and everyone from him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Staying away didn’t help. The rumors followed him to London.

He killed his bride. Jealous of his own father. Wanted the Wolfhaven fortune all to himself, and look what he’s done with it—ruined a once-grand dukedom.

All twisted around the truth. Gareth hadn’t envied his father. He had been disgusted, ashamed, and furious. He hadn’t killed his bride.

But he would have happily killed his own father for what the duke had done. He couldn’t deny that.

“Bet there are plenty of fools who would pay good money for a piece of a haunted house,” he muttered grimly. It was too bad he couldn’t sell the property itself, for it was entailed upon an heir he would never have.

He reached for a knife to slice himself a piece of bread, and missed. The blade spun away until its point aimed directly at him. It felt like a threat from an invisible hand. Moreover, his vision wasn’t quite lining up. He’d felt marginally better for a while after casting up his accounts on his father’s grave, but now the worst symptoms from hitting his head seemed to be returning.

Thirsty, he turned on the tap and watched a river of rusty water spill from the brass goose’s open beak into the basin below. Waiting for it to clear was a torment. He snatched a glass from the counter, one he’d been using since his arrival yesterday evening, and filled it, gulping the cool, metallic liquid so quickly that he could feel it sluicing down his esophagus into his empty belly.

A low creak of wood from behind him caused his grip to slip. Hairs rose on the back of his neck. He twisted.

Across the room, a large, dust-covered silver serving tray fell from a ledge where it had sat for at least a decade. The clanging crash pierced his eardrums.