The Lost Son Returns as the Duke novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Mill Wheel
I ran.
The captain shouted something behind me, and I did not hear it.
The mill lane was empty, a ribbon of churned mud.
The black wheel at the end of it turned slow in the brown water.
Behind me the village came, a hundred of them, with the riders strung out on either side.
Ranulf had gone up.
I saw him on the gantry above the race.
It was a plank walkway that ran along the top of the great wheel to the sluice gate.
He stood against the rail with Merewyn in front of him and the knife flat to her ribs.
"Come up, Duke," he called. "Come up and talk."
The mill hands lined the bank.
Among them stood the boy of fifteen who had begun the clapping, with his mouth open.
"Let her go," I said from the bottom of the ladder.
"Why would I?"
"Because you can't carry her far, and the whole of Thornwick is watching."
He laughed.
It was a high, wet laugh, the laugh of a man who has been afraid for hours.
"They're watching me win," he said. "My father will have the church by now, and the bishop's clerk is coming. I need one thing. A horse, and a road."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Lost Son Returns as the Duke are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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