At Love's Cost

Stafford Orme didn't want this journey. The wilderness holds no allure for a young man whose only certainties are uncertainty and an inheritance shrouded in doubt. But his cynical companion Edmund Howard, a man whose name is synonymous with world-weary detachment, finds himself inexplicably bound to Stafford's imperious will, and into the wild they ride. What begins as a reluctant expedition through breathtaking landscapes becomes something neither man anticipated: an encounter with Ida Heron, a woman whose grace masks a fierce independence and whose family carries burdens of their own. As Stafford's fascination deepens, he must confront what matters more, his ambiguous lineage and the duty he owes to names he barely understands, or the pull of something real and immediate in the arms of a woman who challenges everything he thought he knew. Garvice weaves wilderness spectacle with the intricate dance of class and desire, asking what we sacrifice when love demands a cost.