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

Chapter 18

Back at Ravenshollow Hall, the Duke had not slept properly in four nights.

He could not stop thinking about the kitchen door and the front door. About the song Cordelia could not remember. About a pair of perfect, unmarked hands. About a housemaid in a gray glove who had said a fire, your grace, a long time ago, in a voice like a door closing.

On the fifth morning, as Hobbs was helping him into his coat, the Duke spoke without turning around.

“The maid. Cora Bell. Where did she go?”

Hobbs’s hands stopped on the coat.

“Your grace?”

“You were at the servants’ door the night she left. Molly Green saw you.” The Duke turned. “What did you say to her?”

Hobbs was silent for a long moment.

When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.

“I gave her a little money, your grace. It was a cold night.”

The Duke looked at his valet.

Hobbs had served him for twelve years. In twelve years he had never once seen the man look frightened, not when the Duke’s father died, not when a horse threw the Duke and broke his collarbone, not when the house caught fire in the west wing and half the staff panicked in the yard. Hobbs was the calmest man he had ever known.

He was frightened now.

“Where did she go, Hobbs?”

“London, your grace. She took the London coach.”

The Duke picked up his gloves.

“Have my horse saddled,” he said. “And tell my mother I have gone to town on business.”

“Your grace, the wedding is in two weeks. Lady Cordelia will ask.”

“Then tell Lady Cordelia the same thing.”

He was at the door when Hobbs spoke again, quickly, almost against his will.

“Your grace—”

The Duke stopped.

Hobbs’s mouth worked. His hands were twisting the coat. For a moment it looked as though he would say something enormous.

Then he let out a breath and shook his head.

“Take a warm coat, your grace,” he said. “It’s cold on the road.”

London was enormous.

Finding one girl in it was like looking for a single snowflake in a storm. The Duke spent two days going from one registry office to another, describing her — twenty-two years old, brown hair, quiet voice, a gray glove on her right hand — and most of the clerks shook their heads before he had finished.

But on the afternoon of the second day, in a dusty little office near Cheapside, an old clerk took off his spectacles and nodded.

“The glove, yes. I remember her. Came in four days ago. No reference, so I had to send her away.” He scratched his chin. “Poor thing looked half starved. I told her to try St. Mary’s down by the docks. The vicar there gives out bread in the evenings.”

It was nearly dark when the Duke found the little church by the river.

The bread line was over. The street was empty and cold, and fog was rolling in off the water, and the gas lamps had halos around them.

He tried the front door. It was locked.

He was about to knock when he heard it — very faint, from somewhere inside.

A girl’s voice, soft and low, singing.

Guide me home when the dark is deep. Guide me home by the light you keep.

The Duke’s hand fell away from the door.

He stood there in the fog and suddenly he was not in London at all. He was lying on wet grass under a burning sky with smoke in his lungs and a hand on his collar and a voice in his ear keeping him alive — and for the first time in six years, he understood that the voice had been real. Not a dream. Not a dying man’s fancy. Real, and human, and standing ten feet away on the other side of a church door.

He walked around the side of the building until he found a small door.

It was not locked.

He pushed it open quietly.