Seventh Bride Read Free Page A

at him as if he were a viper.  
    She dropped a curtsey, remembered too late that she was wearing breeches, and had to make do. Damn.  
    “I’m Rhea. The, uh, miller’s daughter. My lord.” Your fiancée, but we won’t talk about that.
    “A pleasure to meet you,” he said, inclining his head.  
    They stood in awkward silence for a moment. Rhea’s hands were sweating, and she tried to rub them unobtrusively on the sides of her legs. He was studying her closely, and she was acutely aware of her coating of flour dust, and the mud coating one foot, and the ring around her left ankle where the flour had met the mud and hardened into a grey paste.
    “Have you given any thought to my proposal?” he asked, as calmly as if he was asking for a bag of flour, and not for the rest of her life.
    “Errrr,” she said.  
    Young women married much older men all the time. It happened a lot. Childbearing was dangerous business, and there were a lot of widowers out there. There was nothing unusual about it.  
    So why was she so convinced that this was wrong?
    “You have a choice,” said Crevan.  
    She should tell him no. If she told him no, he’d go away. It would all have been a mistake. Aunt would never forgive her, but Aunt never forgave anything. She still hadn’t forgiven Rhea for giving a beggar a loaf of bread five years ago, and brought it up on special occasions.  
    Rhea opened her mouth, and her father came around the side of the building.
    “My lord!” he said. “My lord, I saw your horse—forgive me, can we offer you any refreshment? Wine or ale?”
    “No, indeed,” said Lord Crevan, nodding to the miller. “I was just making the acquaintance of your daughter, in fact.”
    “Ah—er—yes,” said her father. “This is Rhea, then.”
    Rhea was slightly gratified to see that she wasn’t the only one who babbled in front of the lord, but she still wished he wouldn’t. He was her father, after all, and the miller, one of the most respected men in town. She wanted him to do better.
    “Well?” asked Lord Crevan, a smile playing around his lips.
    It took Rhea a moment to remember what he had asked, and then her heart, already sinking, seemed to settle in her toes.
    “I—uh—I’m not sure—”
    The smile deepened. Rhea shot her father a pleading look.
    “She’s very flattered by yer offer, my lord,” said her father firmly.
    “Is she?”  
    Rhea felt like a mouse caught in the mill gears. No matter what she did, they were going to grind her to bits. “Yes, very flattered,” she said faintly.
    “I am certain she will be worth it,” said Crevan, and held out a hand.
    Automatically, she held hers out to shake, and instead he caught it.
    He looked at the silver ring on her finger—the engagement ring, the ring that said Rhea was now his—and he smiled.  
    Then he brought her hand to his lips, and kissed the back of it.
    Rhea watched this with the expression of someone who has just been handed a dead flounder.
    She had read about hand kissing. She knew it happened. It had always struck her as sort of romantic, and yes, she’d had a few daydreams about meeting a man who would kiss her hand, and it would be like a lightning bolt through both of them, and then he’d tell her that he was really a prince wandering the land in search of the maiden of his heart, and now he’d found her, and he would sweep her off her feet and take her back to his castle and she would never have to help dig an outhouse again.
    Rhea’s imagination tended to get a little fuzzy after the bit where they got back to the castle, but was very clear about the outhouses.  
    But this…this was not like a daydream.  
    It wasn’t that he slobbered or anything, but it was rather desperately embarrassing. It was wrong. Lords do not ride up on giant roan horses and kiss the hands of miller’s daughters. Well, sometimes they did, but only ravishingly beautiful miller’s daughters, like the ones in the stories, who were brave