WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations by Kathryn Veque (reading an ebook txt) 📕

her parents so they could tend her and he would not be distracted with it. He thought he’d been doing the right thing, but he longed for her every single day, distracted with the memory of her more than he probably would have been with her physical presence.

It was something he had to live with. Just like he had to live with the guilt of not being able to protect his liege’s daughter when she’d been abducted by Nicholas de Soulis last year. He’d been forbidden to retaliate by Merek himself, who had given him a litany of reasons why it was a bad idea.

Lukas didn’t agree with any one of them.

He was a man with many regrets.

“I just received a missive from the commander of the de Wolfe army, Scott de Wolfe,” he said. “Evidently, the Scots are going on a rampage and there is trouble heading out way. A contingent of de Wolfe troops will be arriving today to help us in the event the Scots move against us.”

Gavriella brushed off her hands and stood up. “War is heading in our direction?”

He shrugged his big shoulders. “It is possible,” he said. “We have heard about the trouble to the north.”

Gavriella nodded, but she was clearly anxious. “We have,” she said. “But trouble rarely comes in our direction. We have a good relationship with Clan Johnstone.”

Lukas could see that she was worried. “It sounds as if this goes beyond just Clan Johnstone,” he said. “According to the missive, the entire House of de Wolfe, all the way to Berwick, has been dealing with this clan war. ’Tis clan against clan, and that is never a good thing.”

Gavriella pondered that. “So de Wolfe is sending men to help protect us in case the situation grows worse?”

“Exactly.”

Gavriella took a deep breath, trying to still her anxiety, as she turned to look at the enormous vault and its contents.

“We must be able to feed them,” she said. “I was not expecting to feed an army, Lukas.”

“I know,” he said. “Do what you can. I’ll discuss the situation with the commander when the army arrives. It is the dead of winter, so we cannot harvest anything further.”

Winter hunger was always a serious threat, one always taken seriously and especially now with the arrival of an unexpected army. “I will see what we can spare,” she said. “Did the missive say what time they would be arriving?”

Lukas shook his head. “Nay, but I would plan on feeding them the evening meal.”

Gavriella nodded in resignation. As Lukas headed off to prepare for the incoming army, she returned to the turnips, piled up in two large heaps – the bad ones and the good ones.

She pointed to the pile of rotting ones.

“You heard the man,” she said to the servants. “Lukas said we have an incoming army to feed. We shall have to go through every single turnip and cut away the rotted parts and try to salvage the remaining good. We shall need more help for this. Iva, go into the kitchens and find anyone who can help us. We’ll need baskets to haul up the vegetables to the kitchen yard. Tell the cook we must make a stew to feed two thousand men, so we’ll need the massive iron pot she uses for boiling hide. It needs to be cleaned and put over the fire in the yard. Hurry, now – there is no time to waste.”

Iva, a tiny old woman who moved swiftly, took off running. That left Gavriella with the remaining servant, a woman she had known all her life. She sighed heavily.

“That leaves you and me, Meli,” she said. “Get a knife and let’s start going through these turnips. Cut the mold off completely and save what is left, even if it is just a tiny piece. Every little bit will help.”

Meli, round-cheeked and dedicated, went to work alongside Gavriella, who picked up the knife that Iva had left behind and began cutting out the rot on one turnip at a time. She threw herself into it, as she threw herself into everything these days because it took her mind off the situation at Falstone.

The realities of what her life had become.

The truth was that it had all started last year with that horrible abduction she tried so hard not to think about. But the situation had only gotten worse since her returned from London. Her flight from London had been a confusing, disorienting thing because it had happened so quickly. One moment, she was there and in the next, she was heading home. She did not regret her fight with Aurelia, however. In fact, she really didn’t regret anything, not even the visit to Gomorrah, because she wouldn’t have met Andreas otherwise.

The man who was on her mind every moment of every day.

She was still overcome by memories of the evening she left. Though she’d initially believed that the separation between them had been for the best, increasingly, she was overcome with remorse and longing. Being unable to get word to him had haunted her. All she could think about was Andreas sitting in that tavern, waiting for a woman who would never come. She wondered how long he had waited before he realized that.

She wondered just how much he hated her now.

Being made out to be a liar had been bad enough but, in the end, the inability to tell Andreas exactly why she hadn’t been able to meet him was even worse. Had she known what would have happened on the afternoon she returned to The Asher, then perhaps she would have conducted herself differently.

Perhaps she would have been more obedient and more apologetic to her Aunt Drucilla. She had relived it over and over in her mind a thousand times, but every time she came to the part where Aurelia accused her of wrongdoing, she knew she would have fought back. She couldn’t have stopped herself. Something about Aurelia brought out the fighter in her.

But that fight had cost