“Because I’m still the man you think is your enemy,” he murmured.
At that blatant truth, she lowered her face away, but not before he saw the glistening in her eyes. His chest clenched as he slowly drew his hand away from her and smoothed down her skirts.
She slipped off his lap to return to her place beside him, putting even more distance between them than before. Except for lips swollen from kisses and cheeks flushed pink from desire, anyone looking at her would never realize how close he’d been to making love to her.
“If things were different between us, if I wasn’t the man who wanted to put through a canal and you weren’t the miller’s daughter”—He couldn’t resist reaching up to tuck a stray curl behind her ear—“would you let me love you?”
“But things aren’t different,” she dodged softly, her shoulders falling.
“Oh, I think things are very different now.” And if he had his way, they’d be even more different in the coming weeks.
“You’re a duke and I’m a villager. I could never be anything more to you than a mistress.”
No, you could be my entire world. “I’m just a man. One you know so much better than you think.”
She lifted her face, and her watery eyes held his, in silent challenge to his assertion. “Do you still want to put through your canal?”
“I want to bring jobs to the area, good jobs that will make certain that all families have enough food to eat and candles to chase away the darkness, rather than just those tenants who happen to have a kind lord of the manor. Why is that wrong?”
“At what cost to my family and to our village?” She shook her head in frustration. “What good is being able to buy grain if there’s no one who can grind it into flour for them?”
When a tear slipped free and fell down her cheek, he knew they were at an impasse. No amount of kisses or caresses—or letters pinned to trees—could soothe away her pain.
Silently, he pulled on his gloves, then reached for the ribbons to drive them back to the mill.
CHAPTER 6
THE BUTLER BOWED HIS HEAD. “His Grace will see—”
With a determined stride, Cora stormed out of the drawing room past him and through the house to the study. She clutched Monmouth’s latest proposal for the lock in her fist.
The nerve of that man! To send this proposal now—oh, he deserved the tongue lashing she planned on unleashing. His Most Noble Dukeness could go rot for all she cared!
Except that she did care, which was the worst part of it all.
Since their embrace, Monmouth had been exceptionally gracious to her and her father, who had an amused glint in his eyes every time the duke paid a visit to the mill. As if Papa didn’t recognize the man as the enemy. Monmouth had gone out of his way to seek her out…to invite her on drives through the countryside and walks through the village. To invite her to sit in his pew during Sunday service. To help him deliver the bags of flour he’d purchased to give to the orphanage in Spalding and to the vicarage in Little London, where he’d spent time in both places playing with the children. He’d even asked for her help in paying visits to three widows who had managed to stay on in their small cottages after their husbands had died, all of whom had gone on repeatedly about what a kind man he was.
Drat him! It was incredibly hard to hate a man whom children and widows adored.
Which made her wonder—was he doing all this simply to charm her into relinquishing her opposition to the lock and canal? Or was he hoping to get her back into his arms? The past few weeks felt as if he’d set a task for himself to convince her that he wasn’t the enemy after all.
But with this latest proposal for the mill, he’d proven himself to be nothing more than a wolf in duke’s clothing.
“You have gone too far,” she declared as she charged into his study. “What kind of scheme are you planning now, Your Grace?”
He rose slowly from behind his large desk, placing his hands flat on the desktop as he leaned toward her. “A grand one.” When he gestured toward the chair in front of the desk for her to sit, she obstinately remained on her feet. “You’ve read my solution, then.”
“How is this a solution?” In frustration, she slapped the letter onto the desk. “It’s simply another attempt to close my father’s mill!”
Which hurt more than she wanted to admit, because she’d hoped that in all the time they’d spent together that he would have realized she and her father had no intention of dropping their opposition to the lock. And that he wasn’t a heartless aristocrat who cared nothing about what happened to them.
“If I wanted to close your father’s mill, I would have already done so weeks ago and built the lock. There would have been nothing you could have done to stop me.”
His voice was slow and controlled, but she couldn’t deny the truth behind his words.
The river ran through Monmouth land. The only reason she’d been able to keep the lock from being built so far was because her father’s mill perched along the river on a freehold, and Parliament wasn’t ready to toss over private landowners for the sake of progress, not even the small ones like her father. But she wouldn’t be able to keep up the opposition for much longer. Samuel Newhouse had told her only days ago that a new act was going before Parliament that would allow the crown to do just that—seize whatever land it liked for canals, as long as the seizure benefited the general population. A new stretch of canals connecting growing factories to the existing network of waterways would do just that.
“Then why haven’t you?” she forced out through her growing frustration.
“Because I have no intention of shutting down your father’s mill. What I want to do is move it. Every last board and stone.”
Her heart jumped into her throat. Something about the way his eyes shined triggered a memory at the back of her mind, yet one that remained in the shadows…
“I’m proposing a compromise.”
“This isn’t a compromise.” She tapped an angry finger on the letter from his secretary. He hadn’t even had the decency to bother to write to her himself. “Our mill requires a fast current. There’s no where else along the river that provides that.”
“There is if we build a sluice for it, to channel the water so that it moves quickly beneath the mill. You’ll have more than enough power to grind flour day and night.”
“We can never afford that.”
“I can. Especially if I give you the new plot of land where it will sit.”
Her heart slammed brutally against her ribs. She didn’t dare hope—“But you want to move it onto Monmouth property. You wrote that in your proposal.”
“Yes. And closer to the manor house.”
“Why?” Surely, he wanted the opposite—to put her as far away from him as possible.
“Because it will make it easier for you to oversee the mill.”
He’d gone mad. The mill would be further away from the village. “My home is—”
“Here in Bishopswood Hall.” Electricity pulsed palpably between them as his gaze locked with hers. “Where you’ll be living with me as my duchess.”
The air knocked from her lungs, and then she did sit. Rather, she collapsed into the chair as her knees buckled beneath her.
She stared at him, her mouth falling open. This was a joke—he had to be joking…except that it wasn’t a very humorous joke, and his handsome face was serious as he waited for her to reply. To say anything.