The Bride Sale Read Online Free PDF Page B

panniers were stuffed full, a sight that brought a brief smile to James’s face, for it was his ore, from his mines.
    The wind carried the distant sounds of Wheal Devoran upon it: the low rattle and clang of the draught bob pumping water up from the lowest reaches of the earth, slightly muffled by the mizzling rain that had begun to fall. It was the sound of a working mine and gladdened the heart of any true Cornishman.
    â€œâ€™Tis a good lode this year,” he murmured.
    The woman started at his words but did not turn around. Damn her skittish hide. He would keep his mouth shut until they had reached Pendurgan.
    In the meantime, he must devise a plan. His servants dared not question him. But Agnes…He would have to tell her something. He must contrive some reasonable explanation of how he had left for Gunnisloe alone and returned with a young woman in tow.
    And then he must determine how he was to keep away from her.
    Damn, damn, damn.
    Â 
    The last of the mules trudged past the carriage, led by two unsmiling men whose faces and clothes were caked in mud, giving them a dark, almost featureless appearance. They wore broad, stiff-looking hats with odd little stubs of candles stuck on the brims.
    A shiver fluttered down Verity’s spine. What sort of place was this? She had grown up in the lush wolds of Lincolnshire, where the landscape was as different from this desolate spot as it could possiblybe. Even Gilbert’s home in Berkshire, though ramshackle and remote, had been nestled in the wooded downs. Nothing in her life had prepared her for such a place as this, with hardly a tree in sight, and those solitary few naked and black, as cheerless as the land. It was grim and alien, with its curious ruins and rocky moors, everything a harmonious gray.
    And as though Lord Harkness had arranged it especially for her, it began to rain in earnest. A hard wind buffeted the coach so that it swayed and rocked along the rutted road. Verity sat huddled in her corner as they were pitched from side to side, and the sound of the wind mingled with the creaking of the carriage to create a shrill and mournful howl.
    She kept a firm grip on the leather strap. She ought to have wrenched her gaze from the distressing, inhospitable landscape, but then she might have been tempted to shift her concentration to the silent stranger at her side. She could not ignore his closeness, or the jolt of apprehension that shook her like a sort of electrical shock each time the rocking of the coach caused her thigh to brush up against his.
    The carriage slowed as the rain beat down more violently. Its wheels flung up mud from the road to splatter the window. Within minutes the view of the forbidding moorland had become entirely obscured.
    Verity turned away from the window at last, closed her eyes, and imagined that when she opened them, she would find the sunny skies and gentle green wolds of Lincolnshire.
    A slight movement at her side caused her to open her eyes. Curious, she slanted her gaze toward Lord Harkness, keeping her head forward so he would notnotice. She shifted a fraction of an inch, just so she could peek at him beyond the brim of her poke bonnet. He, too, stared straight ahead. He had tossed his tall beaver onto one of the crates on the opposite bench. His hair looked black as a crow’s wing in the gray light of the carriage. It grew long over his ears and hung slightly over the high collar of his shirt. It appeared to be dusted with silver at the temples, but that may have been a trick of the light. His profile showed a firm jaw and a strong nose with a slight bump along the ridge. She could not see his eyes, and indeed had no wish to do so, recollecting that brief but intense moment when their eyes had met in the town square.
    Suddenly the coach lurched sharply, pressing Verity against the back of the bench as it began to climb a steep slope. The rain pounded hard against the windows, washing away most of the mud and