Page 74

“What do you want?”

“Why’d you come back? All these years you let Wolfhaven go to the dogs.” Cogswell spat. He pushed a shell into the chamber.

“It was time.”

Cogswell aimed straight at his chest. Gareth licked his lips. His mind raced. Fragments and pieces clicked together to form a picture.

One he did not like. At all.

“I won’t let you destroy the place,” the groundskeeper said. “You should have stayed in London. Had your own passel of brats. Kept the name going. Stayed away from here. We were taking good care of the place, weren’t we, Bess?”

The odd female appeared at the periphery of Gareth’s vision. Startled, he turned abruptly. Bess moved in an awkward crabbed fashion, but suddenly she straightened and showed her teeth from beneath a brown wig. She held a red object draped over her arm.

“You were pretending to be Marina’s ghost in an attempt to scare me off,” Gareth said in a rush of breath.

“Not only you. That nosy bitch and the old woman, too.” She unfurled the cloak and draped it around her shoulders. “It is mighty chilly out here. I am all gratitude that your little whore left her cloak.”

They meant to kill him, Gareth realized. The cloak had been missing this morning. Evaine had spent the better part of an hour searching for it before finally giving up. It would be their proof that Evaine and her grandmother had shot him and run off into the night.

An easy story to sell to the authorities. Two impoverished women had taken up with a duke, shot him in a dispute about money, and run off.

He’d made it easy for the Cogswells to pin the blame on them by driving the women away. His hands balled into fists.

He hadn’t protected Evaine at all. He’d put her in grave danger. Just like he’d done with Marina.

“We weren’t best pleased when the Ballard women showed up,” said Cogswell. He handed the shotgun to Bess. “Put a real wrinkle in our plans. I thought I could reason with you. But you were determined to destroy this mansion.” He sauntered toward the ruins, casting an admiring gaze along the hulking form of Wolfhaven against the darkened sky. “This place has a soul. Mine is tied to it. So is yours. The land beneath our feet is soaked with the blood of our forefathers. Wolfhaven is too powerful for you to destroy.”

“It’s a fucking house, Vernon,” Gareth seethed. “A pile of rocks and wood where generations of bad men have lived.”

“Wrong!” Cogswell shouted. “It’s history. Mine and yours. I have every bit as much of a claim to it as you do. Your forebears never could keep their pricks in their pants.”

Gareth believed it. Vernon could well be the natural offspring of his grandfather or even his great-grandfather. Like many lords, they had never been particularly discreet about where they sowed their seeds.

But this man was not his kin. And he had no real claim to this place, either.

Cogswell yanked the axe from the wood and cast Gareth a sly glance. “Like father, like son. You fucked that girl. Should’ve married her while you were at it. Might’ve let you live if you were planning to continue the grand Lucan lineage.”

Clearly, Cogswell had higher esteem for the title than Gareth did.

He had many regrets. Scaring off Evaine was not one of them. He did, however, regret letting her go without telling her how much she had meant to him.

He had one other deep regret. One that he might still be able to rectify before he joined his bride in the afterlife.

“Let me bury Marina’s baby before you kill me,” Gareth pleaded. He’d left the box in the shelter of the ruins. His sword-cane, too, not that it would have done any good against a shotgun.

“I think not. That would invite questions. This is cleaner.” Bess took aim. “I can see how it all played out. You and that Ballard bitch had a row. She shot you. Got blood all over her favorite cloak. Took her grandmother and ran.”

“Such a simple ending. Almost too easy.” Gareth kept his eye trained on Bess. “Don’t you think the Lucan lineage deserves a more fitting end?”

He was not going to go easily into his grave. He would bury that baby with its mother before he died, or he would haunt the ever-loving fuck out of these ghouls.

But he was determined not to die by their hands.

“No,” Bess snapped, leveling the shotgun at him. “You deserve nothing but death.”

So much for his intention to survive this.

Gareth backed away one step. Another. His ankle protested. From the corner of his eye, he saw Vernon raising the axe behind him.