The Duke’s Fiancée Threw Water at the Maid — She Wiped It Off and Said, “You Will Remember This Day”

Chapter 11

Upstairs in the drawing room, the family argued long past midnight.

“The constable must take her,” said the Dowager Duchess. “There is no question about it.”

“She will hang,” said the Duke.

“Then she will hang,” said Lady Vain.

“On the evidence of an apron pocket.” The Duke’s voice was hard as flint. “Anyone in this house could have put those pearls there. Any maid, any footman, any guest. I will not send a girl to the gallows three weeks before my own wedding on so little. I will not have that on my conscience.”

Cordelia watched him from the sofa with her hands folded in her lap, and Cora — if she could have seen it — would have recognized the stillness of a woman recalculating.

Because Cordelia Vain was not stupid. It was the great mistake everyone made about her.

She saw at once that she could not win this argument. So she changed direction as smoothly as a dancer turns.

“Edmund is right,” she said softly.

Everyone looked at her in surprise.

“I have my pearls back. I don’t want the girl to hang.” She lowered her eyes, and her voice was gentle, and there was even a shine of tears in it. “I only want her gone tonight. Without a reference, so that she can never do this to another family.”

She looked up. “Is that not merciful enough?”

The Dowager Duchess looked at her with something like approval.

“You have a generous heart, my dear.”

The Duke said nothing for a long moment. He stood at the window with his back to all of them, looking out at the snow coming down across the park, and what he was thinking about was a voice in a burning room and a hand on his collar and a song he could not forget.

“Very well,” he said at last.

At eleven o’clock that night, the cellar door opened again.

Mrs. Pratt stood there with Cora’s small bag in her hand. She would not meet Cora’s eyes.

“You are dismissed,” she said stiffly. “No wages, no reference. You are to leave the grounds tonight.”

“Tonight,” said Cora. “Mrs. Pratt, it’s snowing.”

“Those are her grace’s orders.”

Cora took the bag.

There was nothing else to say, and no one to say it to. She had learned long ago that arguing with the powerful is like arguing with weather. You may be right, and you will still be wet.

But as she took the bag, Mrs. Pratt’s fingers closed over hers for a quarter of a second — a quick, hard squeeze, almost angry — and then the housekeeper turned and walked back up the stairs without a word.

Cora pulled her thin shawl tighter around her shoulders and went out through the servants’ door.

The cold hit her like a wall.