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

Chapter 14

Then Lord Vain laughed.

It was a great, booming, easy laugh, and it filled the whole dining room, and it was so warm and so confident that two of the footmen along the wall smiled without meaning to.

“Front door, kitchen door. Good heavens, Ravenshollow.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “The whole place was on fire. Who can remember which door? The girl was half out of her mind with fear. We all were.”

“Of course,” said the Duke quietly. “Of course.”

Cordelia reached across the table and touched his hand.

“Darling, why are we talking about this?” Her voice was soft and reproachful, and her fingers were warm. “It was so long ago. It hurts me to remember it.”

“Does it?”

“Of course it does.”

“Then tell me just one thing and I will never ask again.” The Duke looked at her, and his face was perfectly calm, and his voice was perfectly kind. “The song you sang to me that night, to keep me awake. Sing me one line of it.”

Cordelia’s face went white.

Not pale. White — the white of the tablecloth, the white of the snow outside the window.

“I told you, Edmund,” she said. “I don’t remember singing. I was far too frightened.”

“You don’t remember even the tune?”

“No.”

She pulled her hand back and laid it in her lap.

“No, I don’t. Please. Why are you doing this to me?”

The Dowager Duchess set down her glass with a sharp little click.

“Edmund,” she said. “You are upsetting your fiancée. That is quite enough.”

The Duke stood up.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I am very tired. Good night.”

He bowed slightly to the table and left the room, and the door closed behind him, and for a long moment the four of them sat in silence around the ruins of the dessert.

When he had gone, Lord Alaric Vain stopped smiling.

Later that night, in the library, he stood by the fire with his daughter.

He spoke very softly, so that no servant in the world could hear through the door.

“He heard the girl singing, didn’t he?”

Cordelia nodded. Her hands were twisting her handkerchief into knots, and her eyes were red.

“In the cellar,” she whispered. “I came down the stairs and he was standing there with her. Father, you should have seen his face. He knows. Or he’s starting to.”

“He knows nothing,” said Lord Vain.

He stared into the flames with his hands clasped behind his back, and the firelight moved over his heavy face.

“To suspect is a very different thing from to know. Suspicions cannot be sworn to, and they cannot be read aloud in a courtroom, and they fade. Given enough time, they always fade.”

He turned.

“Where is the girl now?”

“My man says she took the London coach.”

“Good.” Lord Vain smiled, and there was no warmth in it at all. “London is a hungry city. Hungrier than any winter. Let it swallow her.”

He put a heavy hand on his daughter’s shoulder.

“And if it doesn’t, I will make sure it does. Now listen to me. The wedding is in three weeks. Keep him close. Keep him happy. Cry a little, if you must — men will forgive anything when a pretty woman cries.”

He squeezed her shoulder hard enough to hurt.

“Once you are the Duchess of Ravenshollow, my dear, nothing that girl says will ever matter again.”

In the corridor outside the library, someone had stopped in the shadows.

It was Hobbs, carrying the Duke’s clean shirts for the morning. He had not meant to listen. He had been walking past with his eyes on the floor, the way a good servant walks, and he had heard every word.

He stood there for a long time with the shirts pressed against his chest and his eyes closed, like a man in terrible pain.

Then he walked away very quietly, and went to bed, and did not sleep.