Dukes By the Dozen полностью

“Son of a duke!” Cora Bradley bit out as she stomped down the lane that wound its way along the river. The same river that the Duke of Monmouth now wanted to turn into a canal to aid the factory owners whose works were being built upstream on the River Welland in Spalding. Because while the Welland flowed fast enough to run their machines, it didn’t allow for carrying to port the products those same machines produced. The new duke’s answer? Build a lock. One that would permit barges to move easily along the river and join in with the new canal recently constructed from Boston.

The same lock that would destroy the free flow of the river through the village and put her father’s grist mill out of operation.

Apparently, the new duke was a staunch believer in progress and innovation. Her father’s mill, with its creaking old timbers and humming grindstones—a mill based upon the ancient Greek mills, in fact—was certainly not that.

Apparently, Monmouth also believed he could run roughshod over anyone who got in his way.

She reached into her pocket to give a good squeeze to the letter that she’d already crumpled in her fist that morning when the duke’s latest attempt to close her father’s mill arrived at their doorstep by liveried footman. The same letter that had snapped her patience and sent her stomping right up to Monmouth’s fancy front door at Bishopswood, demanding to speak with His Grace.

She grimaced at herself. She shouldn’t have confronted the duke like that, leaving the mill in such a hurry that she hadn’t changed and still wore her heavy work apron over her worsted wool dress. Should have given herself a day or two to tamp down her anger and reply in writing instead of confronting him. Should have been able to formulate enough words to make her case for why the mill needed to remain in place, even if just until the end of the year, instead of the angry We will never surrender! that tore out of her as if she were a British general facing down the French and had him staring at her as if she’d just sprouted a second head. Should have stayed rather than turning red with mortification and fleeing from the house. Even now she shouldn’t be cutting across Monmouth land and giving the duke or his agents cause to have her arrested for trespassing.

Instead, she should have gone to her local member of Parliament, a man who had always fancied her and would fall over himself in his rush to provide assistance. In fact, only Samuel Newhouse’s interference on her behalf had kept Monmouth from forcing construction of his lock before now.

But this letter—oh, this one had been the last straw!

To think that he could threaten her by convincing Parliament to pass a new canal bill, giving him rights to destroy whatever structures necessary to ensure the building of His Majesty’s canal, just so he could earn a pretty penny in profits from tolls and warehouses—well, His Grace certainly had another think coming! Not when her father had dedicated his entire life to that mill, not when the next closest mill was nearly ten miles further downstream and therefore difficult for most of the villagers to use. Not even when the duke had offered to buy the mill and at far more than its fair value, which was decreasing more and more every day as a result of her father’s sickness. So much so that she feared the mill would soon be in debt and its grindstones up for auction to the highest bidder.

Certainly not when her father was now dying and had only his memories of a life lived in that mill to cling to. Memories of his late wife most of all, when they’d lived and worked right there on the mill site, which had been the happiest days of Cora’s life. If the mill was destroyed, her last connection to that time would also be destroyed, and happiness for her father’s last days right along with it.

She swiped an angry hand at her stinging eyes. If the newly minted Monmouth thought he could simply bully her and her father into—

Her toe caught. She pitched forward and lost her balance as she stumbled three giant steps forward before she as able to right herself. Stopping, she glanced down.

A small, dirt-covered circle stuck up from a small bump in the path. She reached down for it and brushed away the sod clinging to it.

“A ring?” Or at least, she thought it might be a ring. The oddest thing…a ring, fashioned out of what looked like an old spoon handle that was bent to encircle a woman’s small finger. Surely it had once been silver, complete with an etching of some kind on its surface. But time had tarnished it to black, covering the etching until it was no longer recognizable.