Выбрать главу

But if she returned it to the ground or placed it on top the stone wall, would it become lost again, never to be found by its owner when she realized it was gone and traced back her steps to hunt for it?

No. Monmouth might be a vile, selfish peer who gave no consideration to a person’s property. But she would never be like that.

Taking from her pocket the pencil she used to mark the orders at the mill, she unfolded the crumpled letter and tore off a strip of paper across the bottom of the page. She laid it onto the rock wall and wrote,

I found this on the path. I hope the love it symbolizes leads you back to it.

Not daring to write her name for fear of being arrested if Monmouth found the note before the ring’s owner, she removed a pin from her hair and speared the note to the trunk of the nearest tree. Then she slipped the ring over the pin, to let it dangle in place by the note, and hurried on toward the mill.

JOHN DANIELS, Duke of Monmouth, called to the dogs to stay close by his heels as they ran ahead down the lane. He rolled his eyes when they glanced back at him, then ignored him and went bounding onward.

But of course they did. Even the hounds were smart enough to realize that he was nothing more than an imposter in duke’s clothing.

The pretense of his new life would have been laughable, if not for the fact that it was killing him.

Christ! How was he supposed to lie around, doing nothing? But that was exactly how his new life as a duke was meant to be led. Sitting around Bishopswood like a damnable piece of furniture. Having servants waiting on him at all hours, answering whatever tiny need he had and acting offended if he dared do it himself. Being told that a man of his newly acquired rank and influence wasn’t supposed to do anything even remotely resembling work, including running his estate and overseeing his business interests when he employed land agents and accountants to do it for him.

He was a man of action, his body built for hard work, and that was exactly how he’d spent most of his life—picking up a sledge hammer, a pick or shovel, an axe…whatever tool was needed as he built a series of warehouses across England that capitalized on the country’s improved transportation during the past two decades. The son of a mercantile owner, he’d started into business with only a shovel and the muscles in his back, saving his money until he had enough to buy his own warehouse along Bridgewater’s newly built canal from Birmingham. Only four walls and a questionable roof, but it was enough to earn a trickle of income that he could roll into purchasing another warehouse, which led to another and another, until he had a string of them. Soon he’d moved beyond the canals and bought several buildings in the port towns along the coast. More buildings, more income—enough to live a life of comfort.

But that life had been nothing compared to the unfathomable wealth that buried him alive last winter when an unknown cousin he’d never met died unexpectedly without an heir, slamming a fortune and dukedom onto his shoulders.

Overnight, he went from being a man of work and accomplishment to one of forced leisure, a peer who not only never had to work again but was expected not to. And he hated every moment of it.

His secretary Watson assured him that he couldn’t refuse the title. That no one in the history of England had ever refused the inheritance of a dukedom. It simply wasn’t done! Wasn’t certain it could be done, even if he insisted on it. Then the man had stared at him as if he’d fallen off a turnip wagon and wasn’t smart enough to get out of the road.

Something had to change in his new-found life, or he would go mad. He had to do something…work, build, put his mark on the world beyond adding his name to a long list of dead Monmouth dukes. Which was why he was championing the canal project through Little London. Beyond the undeniable good it would do for the surrounding area, the additional jobs and income it would bring to workers and their families, it would give him the sense of purpose he craved.

If the frustrating woman at the mill would simply get out of his way.

Miss Cora Bradley. The woman was beautiful, no doubt about that, with eyes that could see right through a man and a smile so brilliant that it could cut glass. She was an undiscovered jewel in an otherwise ordinary village who could have given any fine lady in London a run for her money when it came to raw allure. Even when she’d stormed into his house that morning to confront him about his latest offer regarding her father’s mill, dressed in a brown worsted wool dress and dirty apron, her toffee-colored hair piled loosely on top her head, she possessed a spirit that was breathtaking.

But with that beauty also came the obstinacy of a mule.

In aggravation, he snatched up a stone from the lane and hurled it into the woods to set the dogs on chase.

A more stubborn, outspoken woman he’d never met, one unafraid to face down a duke and raise all kinds of trouble for him in Parliament with the local MP. One so committed beyond reason to keeping that little mill in operation that she’d refused to listen to logic about how the village would benefit by the dozens of new jobs that would be created by the factories further upstream. She’d flat-out refused his offer to buy the mill and the little freehold parcel of land on which it sat, at a price so far above what it was worth that any other reasonable business owner would have jumped gleefully at it.

But oh no. Not her. She stormed past his butler and right up to his desk, jabbed her finger in the air, and boldly declared, “We will not surrender!”

When she spun on her heel and marched out, he stared at her, stunned speechless. He knew then that this fight was a long way from finished.

A movement by the trees caught his attention, and he halted in his steps.

A bright whiteness, small and fluttering. Surely nothing more than a leaf stirring in the afternoon breeze. But as he walked closer, he saw the note pinned to the tree trunk, along with a tiny metal hoop—

No, not a hoop.

A ring.

He lifted it from the pin and examined it, and nostalgia twisted at his lips. Then his smile blossomed into a full grin when he read the note. After his encounter with Miss Bradley that morning, it gave him a needed lift in spirits.

So did the ring. He turned it over in his hand, and a distant memory emerged from the far back of his mind. His grandmother’s ring. She’d had one just like it, fashioned by his blacksmith grandfather, who’d been unable to afford anything more expensive. But that ring was more precious to her than all the jewels that his new-found dukedom could have bought, because it was made specifically for her. A ring as unique as their love.

Lost so long ago that the engraving was illegible, with the black tarnish most likely permanent, the ring’s true owner would be impossible to find. Certainly not through an unsigned note pinned to a tree. But whoever had left it here was optimistic enough to believe it could be reunited with the woman who had worn it and completely forgiving to whomever had lost it.

“If only Miss Bradley could be that forgiving,” he muttered before continuing his walk and whistling to the dogs to follow.

He couldn’t have said why three hours later he returned to the tree with a thank you note that he pinned to the trunk, or why he slipped the ring into his pocket to take it back to the house with him. But he knew exactly why he left his note unsigned. Because he wanted to be someone other than Monmouth. Because he wanted to be nothing more than a man whose grandmother wore the same simple ring.