CHAPTER 4
JOHN dug his heels into his horse’s sides and urged the gelding faster across the field. Two nights without sleep. Three days without a note of explanation. Three damnable days of wondering what Cora Bradley had been up to in leaving him those notes. In accepting the invitation to the masquerade. In letting him whisper such things to her that the mere thought of them had his blood boiling in a way that the act itself with other women had never done.
Christ.
She knew who he was. Had to have known all along—
No. She didn’t know. Just as he had no idea until he removed her mask that the exquisite creature who’d captured his imagination through all those letters and stolen kisses was the woman who’d become the bane of his existence.
Apparently, she still didn’t know, or the exasperating Miss Bradley would surely have been at his doorstep by now, demanding an explanation. At gunpoint.
If anyone deserved an explanation it was him. What the devil had she been doing on Monmouth land in the first place, then returning after dark, alone, when it wasn’t safe? He could have been anyone, for Christ’s sake. A criminal. A murderer.
“A damn duke,” he ground out through gritted teeth and lowered himself closer to his mount’s back to urge him on faster.
But all the horses in all the world would never be able to outrun the vexation that ate at him over learning her true identity. Or that even now he wanted nothing more than to carry her away and make love to her.
Unable to stop himself, he reined in the gelding and turned the horse toward the lane that cut through the edge of the woods and past their tree. He didn’t expect a letter after so many days, but his foolish heart wouldn’t give up hope.
He saw it as he neared, appearing on the tree as if through sheer will. He didn’t trust it not to be a mirage. Even as he unpinned it from the trunk, he worried it might be nothing more than a fancy of his imagination.
Then he paused. He’d read dozens of her letters since they’d started their exchange, but this time, the note had his given name written on the outside of the fold. Nothing would be the same between them again.
I wish I could explain why I left the ball the way I did—had it been only we two, I would have stayed and danced away the night with you. We could have watched the sun rise together over the fields at the break of a new day, with new hope, new possibilities…
He clenched his jaw. He’d selfishly wanted just that, and more. But she’d ended those possibilities when she fled. Even after all they’d shared, she refused to trust him once the masks fell away.
I went to the ball looking for a friend and was instead exposed to the enemy.
His heart stuttered. She meant Monmouth. Him.
Damnation, he wasn’t the enemy! If she’d only waited a few seconds more, only saw who he was behind the mask and let him explain—
She would have hated him.
His eyes burned as he read on.
That night was a mistake. Not you, John—you were wonderful, perfect, everything I could have imagined.
Except that he was Monmouth. The man who wanted to put her father’s mill out of business.
We should never have tried to meet, I know that now. Our world should have remained one of letters, where we were safe. So there will be no more notes from me. I hope you understand how much you and your letters meant to me and that I will always carry you in my heart.
Understand? She thought he was the devil himself. A mistake. The enemy. Everything except what he wanted, which was to be accepted as the man he was. He snapped out a curse at her, at himself, at the universe—
He didn’t want understanding. He wanted an explanation. He deserved one, and not in some letter but from her own lips.
He mounted his horse and urged it into a gallop toward the river. And the mill.
Because it was mid-afternoon, the mill was quiet. The door was thrown open to the warm October day, and he paused in the doorway to remove his gloves and allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness inside.
An older man stuck his gray head over the stair railing to call out to him from the floor above. “Good afternoon!”
“And to you.” He stepped inside. “Are you the miller here?”
“Aye.” He grinned good-naturedly and came stiffly down the stairs. With each step, his hips and knees hitched, making him resemble a wooden marionette.
John furrowed his brow at how the man moved. He’d never met Arthur Bradley in person before. He hadn’t been at Bishopswood long enough to meet most of the villagers by simply coming and going through the area, and all the interactions he’d had regarding the mill had been through Cora, with no reason to visit the mill in person when he could send his estate agent or secretary instead and spare himself her wrath.
Now he regretted that distance.
Bradley wiped the dust from his hands as he approached, then frowned at John’s appearance. He wasn’t dressed like someone who brought grain to a mill. “What can I do for you, sir?”
So…Bradley didn’t recognize him. Good. With a smile, he glanced around at the building’s main floor and dodged the question. “You’ve got a fine mill here.”
“Thank you.” Bradley slapped his hand affectionately on one of the beams. “She’s small but fierce.”
He chuckled at the Shakespeare reference. Now he knew where Cora got her wit and education. “And apparently Greek.”
Bradley’s eyes shined in surprise. “You know your mills.”
“Not nearly as much as I should.” The irony behind that was biting. But Cora wasn’t here to give him the explanation he wanted. He slowly circled the small grinding room. “It was an easy guess, since you don’t have a mill wheel or sluice.”
“Aye. Don’t need them. The river’s deep and fast enough to drop a shaft below.” Like a proud parent, he gestured John over to the grinding mechanism and millstones. “We’re built out over the river, so the current drives the paddle below, which turns the bottom grindstone.”
He arched a brow, his knowledge of mills coming to an abrupt end. “The bottom stone?”
“Mills with wheels and windmills rotate the top stone. Ours rotates the bottom. The grinding takes up less room this way, and there’s less mechanism to upkeep.”
“But your stones are also smaller than others I’ve seen.” John waved a hand to indicate the grindstones. “Which means you grind less grain and take longer to do it.”
Not the best situation for a business. No wonder they made such little profit. Even in a small village the size of Little London, where cows and horses outnumbered the villagers, the mill should have been busy year round.
“Had to build the mill this way. Had no choice.” With a haunted smile, Bradley released the brake to start the wheel turning, then moved over to the large bin that stretched up to the first floor and pulled the lever to spill more grain down onto the grindstones. “I’d fallen in love.”
John’s gaze darted to the miller, but the man’s focus never strayed from the grain falling evenly onto the turning stones.
“I started this mill in order to win my wife’s hand.” He glanced around at the dusty old beams and bags of flour stacked against the walls that were ready to be picked up, the large scale that hung from the central beam, the dozen or so pieces of paper that listed each order pinned to the wall behind the counter in the corner and stirred slightly in the soft afternoon breeze coming through the open doors and windows. “Lucy’s father refused to let me marry her until I was able to provide for her and our children, but all I owned in the world was this tiny piece of land. It wasn’t big enough to farm, but it had trees that I could use to build a mill and the water to power it. So that’s what I did. Had to go into debt to purchase the grindstones, though.” Nostalgia touched his voice. “Took me three years to pay them off, and all that time Lucy waited. She could have had any man in the village, but she believed in me.”