They Gave the Doomed Duke the Wrong Bride novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: The Collector

The commander let him in.

He had no choice. The saddlecloth carried the crown.

The tax collector rode into the yard as if he owned it. A plump man in good furs, with a ledger under his arm and three bored soldiers behind him.

He saw the bread in the children's hands and smiled.

"Well," he said. "Somebody's been lying about their harvest."

"There was no harvest," the commander said. "The fields went to seed while the men were at the Pass."

"Then where did the bread come from?"

Every eye in the yard went to the granary door.

He walked over and looked inside.

His smile got wider.

"Three hundred sacks, at a guess. The capital will be grateful. Load it at first light."

One of the widows stepped in front of the door.

His soldier shoved her aside.

I came down off the granary step.

"You'll want to read the stamp first," I said.

He looked me over. Rose wool, fox collar, ink on my fingers.

"And you are?"

"The Duchess of Draycott. The traitor's wife."

He laughed. "Then you're an exile, madam, and you've no say in anything."

"Read the stamp."

He sighed and bent over a sack.

"The Crown's mark," he said. "All the better. It's Crown grain."

"Read the letters under the mark."

He squinted.

"Q. M. G. P."

"Quartermaster, Gallow Pass," I said. "That stamp goes on grain bought for the army. These sacks were bought with the King's money and sent north to feed my husband's men."

The yard was very still.

"That's impossible," he said. "That grain went to the Pass."

I took my father's ledger out from under my cloak.

I'd brought it out of the Larder that morning, in case.

I opened it to the page with the ribbon in it and held it up so he could see. So everyone could see.

"Forty wagons dispatched to the Gallow Pass," I read. "Grain, barley and oats. Signed by Count Leopold Penhallow, Royal Quartermaster."

I turned the page.

"And here. Three hundred sacks, same stamp, held at Penhallow House for sale in the lean months."

"Where did you get that?"

"From my father's strongroom. I kept this book for him for eight years. That's my handwriting." I closed it. "The wagons that reached the Pass were full of sand. The men in those walls starved to death waiting for this grain. And now you've come to carry it back to the capital, so my father can sell it at famine prices."

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