The Bride Sale Read Online Free PDF

with her tight hold on the strap.
    If only she would look at him. If only she would say something.
    It occurred to James that he had yet to hear the sound of her voice. She had not uttered a single word during the entire ugly proceedings. Not to her husband. Not to Jud Moody. Certainly not to him.
    As the carriage clattered and bounced over the broad granite cobbles of Gunnisloe’s main road, he wondered what sort of voice she might have. He supposed it depended on where she was from. Moody had called her a foreigner, but that merely meant she was not Cornish. James gazed out the window at the squat, close-built granite cottages lining the narrow road and thought how bleak and colorless this part of Cornwall must appear to a stranger.
    In some irrational way, her continued silence irritated him. He felt certain she would not speak or in any way acknowledge him, or their situation, until it was absolutely necessary. She was all wrapped up in a fierce sort of pride that had allowed her to survive the spectacle at Gunnisloe. She would not break just yet.
    At any other time he might have admired such strength of character, but he was not disposed to such nonsense just now. Her quiet self-control, her infernal dignity, began to grate on his nerves. She was an enormous inconvenience, an unwanted and awkward responsibility he cursed himself for taking on.
    And so, as the carriage lumbered along, the awkward silence continued, punctuated by the rattle of the windows and the clanging of the swingle bar as they left Gunnisloe behind and passed onto the deeply rutted, muddy road.
    James wondered irritably if he should break the silence. But why should he make the effort when she was the one complicating his life? Besides, she—Verity, he remembered—was clearly frightened. Her savage grip on the leather strap signaled the level of her anxiety.
    Of course she feared him. The bloody fools in Gunnisloe had seen to that. She had heard their malicious whispering and hollow concern—these same people who had been ready to toss her over to Will Sykes. But the big smith was merely gross and filthy, essentially harmless. They considered James the worst sort of monster, as though they feared he meant some kind of harm to her.
    And the truly frightening thing was, they might be right.
    His gaze wandered and took in the passing landscape. Damnation. He ought to have told his coachman to take the longer, southern route to Pendurgan, along the lush banks of the river. This road ran straight through one of the harsher stretches of Bodmin Moor. She probably thought he was escorting her to some kind of devil’s lair.
    As he watched her, James realized the view out her window was even more ominous than his own view of the faraway tors. For in the distance stood the ruined buildings of Wheal Zelah, a mine that had played out in his grandfather’s time. The derelict windlass and crumbling engine house were a common enough sight in Cornwall, but what would this woman make of them, and of the slender chimney starkly silhouetted against the purple sky of dusk? And the slack heaps arranged like pyramids at the base? For one unacquainted with mines it must surely appear strange and godforsaken.
    The coachman slowed the horses and edged toward the side of the road as though to allow another carriage to pass. Few carriages besides his own ever took this road, so James leaned toward his companion to get a better look out her window, where the other vehicle would pass. She flinched as his shoulder touched hers. He muttered a Cornish oath and pulled away at once, silently damning the woman for making him feel so awkward. “I beg your pardon,” he said under his breath.
    The carriage came to a complete stop to allow an approaching mule train to pass. James gave a soft but thoroughly wicked chuckle over what she would make of this peculiar sight. The big gray mulesmarched in pairs with panniers of copper ore slung over their backs. The