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

Chapter 13

Cora did not sleep that night.

She walked through the snow for what felt like hours, and by the time she reached the little town of Ashby, three miles from the gates of Ravenshollow, her feet were soaked through and her fingers had gone numb inside her gloves.

She knocked on the back door of the only inn in town, and the landlady took one look at her white face and her thin shawl and let her sleep beside the kitchen fire for one of Hobbs’s silver coins.

In the morning, Cora went looking for work.

She tried the baker, who needed a girl to mind the ovens. She tried the draper’s shop, where the owner’s wife was looking for someone to mind the counter. She tried the big house of a wealthy wool merchant at the edge of town, where they had advertised for a scullery maid in the window of the post office.

At every door it was the same.

People looked at her. People whispered. Then the door closed.

At the wool merchant’s house, the cook came out to the step herself — a round, red-faced woman with flour on her apron, not unkind — and told her the truth.

“A man came through here at dawn,” she said. “Black coat, riding a black horse. He stopped at every house and every shop in Ashby. He said a thieving maid from Ravenshollow Hall would come looking for work today, and that anyone who hired her would be answering to Lord Vain.”

The cook shook her head.

“I’m sorry, love. Nobody here is going to cross a lord. Not for a scullery maid. Not for anybody.”

Cora stood in the snowy street with her small bag in her hand.

She understood now.

Lord Vain did not need to hang her. He only needed to make sure that nobody in England would ever give her a roof or a piece of bread again, and then the winter would do the rest. It was cheaper than a rope, and it left no marks, and no magistrate would ever hear a word about it.

She looked down at the two silver coins left in her palm.

That afternoon, she spent one of them on a seat on the outside of the London stagecoach.

In London, nobody would know her face. In London there were a thousand houses and a thousand kitchens and a thousand people who did not care what had happened three miles outside a town they had never heard of.

Surely, one of them would take her.

She climbed up onto the roof of the coach and sat in the freezing wind for nine hours with her bag between her knees, and by the time she climbed down in the gray London dusk she could barely feel her legs at all.

Behind her, back at Ravenshollow Hall, dinner that evening was very grand indeed.

Lord Alaric Vain had arrived the night before, and the Dowager Duchess was delighted to have him. He was a big red-faced man with a loud laugh and heavy gold rings on his fingers, and he praised the wine, and he praised the roast, and he praised the Dowager Duchess’s beautiful house until she glowed with pleasure.

The Duke said very little.

He was watching Lord Vain, and he was watching Cordelia, who laughed a little too brightly at everything her father said.

“Tell me, Lord Vain,” the Duke said, when the dessert had been served. “I have been thinking about the night of the fire.”

The table went quiet.

Cordelia’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.

“What a dreadful subject for dinner,” said Lady Vain brightly.

“Forgive me,” said the Duke. “But I realize I have never heard you tell the story yourself. You were there, after all.”

Lord Vain smiled broadly

“Of course, of course. Terrible night. I remember it as if it were yesterday.” He took a long drink of wine. “I was waiting in the carriage with Cordelia, and we saw the smoke. Before I could stop her, my brave girl jumped out and ran round the back and went in through the kitchen door. Came out five minutes later dragging you by the collar. Bravest thing I ever saw.”

The Duke nodded slowly.

“The kitchen door,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“How strange,” said the Duke. “Because when Cordelia told me the story six years ago, she said she ran in through the front door.”

He set down his glass.

“She said it very clearly. I remember, because I asked her twice.”

For a moment, nobody at that table breathed.