Page 80 of Wolfhaven

His cock was a brand burning into her thigh. Gareth shifted his weight. He pressed into her, filling her. He felt so good. Each withdrawal drew a soft cry from her lips, until they were racing toward the finish.

His control was greater than hers. She would have let him spend inside her, but he pulled out at the last second coated her stomach with his seed instead. Evaine felt the loss of him. Even with their breaths synced and their hearts beating in time, she was losing him.

She pressed her face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in, tracing lazy circles on his shoulder. He was a good man. Rough, not always gentle, but honest. He would sacrifice himself to do the right thing for people he cared about. She wondered if she was making the right decision by leaving.

Yes, a voice inside her piped up. You can’t depend upon men. You have to rely on your own wits to get through this world.

She wished it wasn’t true, but then, the world never had shown her much gentleness or patience.

They stayed like that, their bodies entwined together, until sleep stole over them. Evaine awoke once during the night to find him curled around her. She snuggled closer, wrapped in his warmth with the weight of his arm around her, and an unspoken love that wrapped around her like a spell lulling her back to sleep.

Chapter 35

Gareth

Immediately after breakfast the next morning, he took a shovel and the box and went to the plot where his family going back generations was buried. He strode to the tombstone with the lamb and the dove, and pushed the iron spade into the wet, hard earth. Last night had brought the first hard frost of the season. His breath billowed into the air.

In retrospect, he felt foolish for not suspecting the Cogswells. But why would he? He had believed them to be genuinely loyal servants. They were, after a fashion. They had their own attachment to this place. One he hoped to understand better after searching their cottage.

He rather dreaded what they would find.

For now, he placed the small wooden box in the hole he’d dug, along with the diary, and refilled the hole. He bent and placed a single red rose on the newly turned earth. He had wanted to do this part alone. Evaine had been reluctant to let him do it without company, but she seemed to understand that he needed to say things that were not for her ears.

“Well, Marina,” he said. “I trust your soul can find peace now that you are reunited with your child. We would have made a decent little family, I think. Part of me is sorry that it never came to pass.”

But not all of him. For then, he wouldn’t have met Evaine. He couldn’t keep her. She had made that clear to him. She8 had ambitions that did not include him…but someday, she might be in a different place.

The future was less certain than it had been upon his arrival. Was it only a week ago?

His mother would be frantic. Especially if the truth about how the Cogswells had died came out. He was of half a mind to bury them here on the property and never tell a soul what had transpired.

But that decision would have to wait a bit longer.

“Thank you for entrusting your diary to Evaine. I doubt I ever would have read it if she hadn’t dropped it into the bath. She wishes you well, too. I hope there are no lingering hard feelings.”

There was no answer. He felt a little ridiculous speaking directly to a dead girl. That was why he had needed to come alone.

“Please don’t haunt us any further. Rest now.” He said a short prayer and started back to the house, using his shovel as a walking stick. Thump-stride, thump-stride, he made his way down the path on foot. It would take him an hour to get back to the main house. Already, his ankle ached from the journey out here.

Passing the orchard, he spotted the bay gelding crunching downed apples.

“I thought you’d gone home, you ridiculous animal,” Gareth said. He caught the horse’s broken halter lead and scrambled onto its back, abandoning the shovel among the apple trees. They would find it in the spring. Or never. He didn’t give a shit what happened to the damned thing.

He didn’t know what the future held. Trotting along with his hair blowing in the cold air, he decided that was freeing.

Epilogue

GARETH - 1903

Gnarled ancient oak trees reached across the freshly repaired road, blocking out much of the warm autumn afternoon sunlight, as Lord Gareth Lucan drove his new 1903 Lanchester automobile down the road to his ancestral home. Beside him sat his wife, wearing a plain brown duster and a veiled hat. Behind them, in the rear compartment, sat Hazel Ballard and the dowager duchess of Wolfhaven, with their five-year-old great-grandson, Saul, and two-year-old great-granddaughter, Clara.

“Are you ready for this?” Evaine asked over the loud purring of the engine. He liked these modern motor cars. Even if they were smelly and had a bad habit of breaking down every few miles. They had loaded the vehicle onto the train from London and arrived at Leeds this afternoon. Once the train was unloaded, they had set out for Wolfhaven and only broke down twice along the way.

“I have been back before now. How are you feeling about our triumphant return?” He reached over to squeeze her knee. Evaine twisted to chide their daughter for being rude to her grandmothers before responding.

“Not especially triumphant, to be honest.”

“The house is different now,” he promised. “You’ll hardly recognize it.”