Page 53 of Tamed By her Duke

It baffled the mind.

“Is there some sort of…local fete going on in the village?” she asked, her words puncturing the silence in the carriage. Grace was becoming quite the connoisseur of silences when it came to matters between herself and her husband. This one was downright odd. Caleb seemed tense but also…nervous?

Though that was impossible. Caleb wasn’t a nervous kind of man.

“No,” he said shortly, frowning at her—and proving a point. A more nervous man might have madesomeconcessions to politeness. “Why would there be?”

“Because…we’re going to the village?”

He frowned harder. “Do ye not want to go?”

“No, I do,” she assured him hastily, even if she wasn’t entirely certain that this was the truth.

After two days of jumping at shadows and being plagued with an unending stream of nightmares every time she closed her eyes, Grace knew she could not simply go on as she had been. Though part of her wished to pretend she’d never seen the mill, wished to block it from her mind entirely, a wiser part of her recognized that this was impossible.

She couldfeelits presence. She had to do something.

And so this journey was a test. A reminder that even though the building stood, a sepulchral reminder of the years she’d spent trapped within its falls, never knowing freedom, scarcely ever seeing the sun—even then, it could not harm her.

A building was just a building. And she was a duchess now, damn it! She wasn’t going to skulk inside her own home—wasn’t going to let herself be imprisoned again, this time by her own fear.

Besides, Caleb would be here. Even if she was not powerful enough to withstand her terror, her husband was implacable.

He would protect her. It might not arise from tender feeling. He might merely be protecting the investment he’d made in securing the future of his line.

But hewouldprotect her.

She reminded herself of this point—that even if Caleb didn’t like her, he valued her to a certain extent—repeatedly as the sights outside her window grew increasingly familiar.

“Oh!” she said when she spotted a tavern she recognized.

Her husband sat up sharply like she’d poked him with a hatpin.

“The tavern? Ye want to eat at the tavern? It’s nae fine fare, ye ken, but we can stop.”

For a moment, Grace wasalmostdistracted by this shocking turn toward solicitousness. Her attention quickly reverted, however, to the way the idea appealed.

She didn’t need to actuallyseethe mill, did she? It wasn’t cowardice; it was wisdom. She’d see the place she’d been after she was rescued, and that would remind her that the rescue had happened, and then she could stop flinching every time the house creaked—which was constantly, given its age.

Yes. This would work. It would certainly work.

“That sounds lovely,” she said, clasping her hands together in delight. This, she allowed, might have been abittoo far, as her husband was looking at her as though she was making him contemplate a nice, comfortable asylum for her somewhere.

He did not comment, however, instead rapping on the roof of the carriage to indicate to the driver that they wished to stop.

Grace tried not to let herself be transported back in time when her foot hit the packed earth of the tavern’s stable yard. She pressed the fine linen of her day dress between her fingers, using the sensations of her cotton gloves against the lightweight fabric to orient her. She hadn’t been wearing anything so fine, then. She’d been wearing the cheap wool dress that she’d always worn, the fabric too heavy for summer and too light for winter.

The reminder worked, though it was not half so successful as the feel of Caleb’s muscles beneath her fingers when he loopedhis arm through hers. She clung with a bit more force than was strictlyde rigeur. If Caleb was here, this was now.

The past, she told herself over and over like a prayer, could not touch her.

Another difference: when she’d entered the tavern with Frances and Evan, nobody had cared a jot. Now, however, when she entered with Caleb, voices fell silent, and heads swiveled to face them.

“D’ye think they recognize us?” Caleb muttered out of the corner of his mouth, and it was so unexpected that it startled a laugh from Grace, despite everything.

He looked, she thought, extraordinarily pleased with himself.

A young woman, Grace’s age or perhaps a bit older, hurried toward them, hastily wiping her hands on a cloth. She was dressed nicely enough to suggest that she was no mere barmaid, but rather the proprietress. Her apron, for one, was spotless. Aprons never remained spotless when doing actual chores, no matter how hard one tried, Grace knew.

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