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

Chapter 17

“What?” Cora asked.

“The man who swore against me at the trial. The one they called the stable boy.”

Cora nodded. “I remember. I never saw him. I was in bed with a fever for a week after the fire, with my hand. Mother wouldn’t let anyone near me.”

“He wasn’t our stable boy,” said her father.

Cora stared at him.

“I never had a stable boy in my life. I did all that work myself, from the barrels to the horses. But the magistrate wrote it down that way, and nobody cared to check.”

“Then who was he?”

“He was the young gentleman’s servant. The one who traveled with him.”

Her father set the empty cup on the floor and looked into the stove.

“He was meant to be sleeping in the room next to his master that night. But he’d gone down to the village ale house instead, and got so drunk he fell asleep in our stable loft. When the fire started, he didn’t wake up until it was all over.”

His voice grew hard.

“His master nearly burned to death while he lay snoring in the hay. If anyone had found out, he’d have lost his place. He’d have been turned off without a character and never worked again, not in this country, not anywhere.”

Cora’s heart began to pound.

“Lord Vain found him in the stable the next morning,” her father went on. “I saw them talking by the horses — heads together, low voices, a purse changing hands. And the next day, that servant stood up in court and swore on the Bible that he saw me drunk, that he saw me knock over the lamp with my own hand.”

He looked at her.

“Lord Vain kept his secret, and he kept Lord Vain’s lie. That’s how it worked. That’s how it always works.”

Cora could hardly breathe.

“Papa. Do you remember his name?”

“I’ll never forget it as long as I live. The magistrate called it out twice.” Thomas Bell looked straight into his daughter’s eyes. “Hobbs.”

The room seemed to turn over.

“Hobbs,” Cora whispered.

“Yes.”

“Hobbs.”

Elias Hobbs. The Duke’s valet. The man who had dropped the brandy tray on the stairs when she said the word fire. The man who had waited for her in the dark by the servants’ door and pressed three silver coins into her hand, and said, I’m sorry, girl. I’m sorry for all of it.

“He’s still there,” Cora whispered. “Papa, he’s still there. He’s been at the Duke’s side all these years. He’s the Duke’s own valet.”

Her father stared at her.

Then, for the first time in six years, something that looked like hope came into his tired old face.

“He’s still there,” he repeated slowly. “And he gave you money.”

“He said he was sorry.”

“Then he has been carrying it,” said Thomas Bell. “Every day. For six years.”

Outside the vestry window, the fog rolled off the river and swallowed the street lamps one by one, and somewhere out in the dark water a ship’s bell rang twice.