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

Chapter 2

The carpet in the blue drawing room was old and very fine, and Cora noticed — with the strange clarity of a person in danger — that her wet footprints would ruin it.

“This girl,” said Cordelia, “was loitering outside the Duke’s study, singing like a common tavern girl trying to catch a gentleman’s ear.”

A murmur went around the room like wind through wheat. One of the maids put a hand over her mouth. Mrs. Pratt’s face went the color of raw meat, and her pencil snapped between her fingers.

“I was dusting, my lady,” Cora said calmly. “Mrs. Pratt sent me there.”

“Did I ask you to speak?”

Cora lowered her eyes.

Cordelia stepped closer. Close enough that only Cora could see the quick shallow flutter of her breath, the tiny pulse beating in her throat, the fine sheen of sweat above her lip that no amount of powder had quite hidden.

The room watched. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the kitchen, a pot lid rattled, and the ordinary sound of it made everything else worse.

“That song,” Cordelia said. “Where did you learn it?”

Cora looked up.

“From my mother, my lady.”

The silence stretched. Lady Vain glanced at her daughter — a sharp, questioning glance, the look of a woman who has suddenly realized she is not in control of the horse she is riding. The Dowager Duchess did not move at all. She sat with her spine like a ruler and her rings glinting, and she watched the housemaid with an expression that could have been carved from wax.

Then Cordelia turned.

She turned to the little table beside the Dowager Duchess’s chair, where a glass of water sat on a silver tray, poured fresh an hour ago, cold from the well. She picked it up. She turned back.

She threw it straight into Cora Bell’s face.

The water was ice cold. It hit her brow and her eyes and ran off her chin, into her collar, down between her shoulder blades, and dripped from her hem onto the carpet in a dark spreading ring. It knocked her cap askew. It plastered a strand of brown hair to her cheek.

Nobody moved.

Nobody said a word.

Cordelia set the glass down on the table with a small precise click, and smiled — the way a cat smiles at a mouse it has already caught and has decided, for now, to keep.

“Perhaps that will cool you down,” she said sweetly. “Next time you feel like singing in this house, remember who is going to be its mistress.”

One of the footmen looked at the floor. A young maid by the door — Molly Green, sixteen years old, with a red nose and a soft heart — had tears standing in her eyes. The Dowager Duchess raised one eyebrow and lifted her teacup and sipped it as if nothing whatsoever had happened, because in her world, nothing had.

Eleven people.

Not one of them spoke for Cora Bell.

And Cora stood perfectly still.

She did not cry. That was the first thing. The water was still running off her jaw and her eyes were stinging and her chest was tight with a rage so old and so hot that it felt almost like calm — and she did not cry.

Slowly, she lifted her sleeve and wiped her face. She did not hurry. She did not tremble. She wiped each cheek, and then her chin, and then her throat, in the manner of a woman with all the time in the world.

Then she raised her chin, and looked Lady Cordelia Vain straight in the eye.

“You will remember this day,” she said.

Five quiet words.

You could have heard a pin drop on the carpet. Lady Vain gasped. Mrs. Pratt nearly dropped what remained of her list. Molly Green’s mouth came open. Even the footman who had been studying his boots looked up.

“How dare you?” said the Dowager Duchess.

She set her cup down, and the click of it was the loudest sound in the room.

“Mrs. Pratt, take this girl out of my sight. She will have no supper tonight, and if she ever speaks to Lady Cordelia in that manner again, she will leave this house without a reference.”

“Yes, your grace. At once, your grace.”

Mrs. Pratt crossed the room and took Cora by the elbow, and her grip, Cora noticed, was gentler than it needed to be.

Everyone watched them go. Everyone shook their heads. The poor thing had clearly lost her mind.

But nobody was looking at Lady Cordelia Vain.

If they had been, they would have seen that her face had gone as white as the sheet on a hanging man. They would have seen that her hand, resting on the back of the chair, was shaking so hard that the little gilt chair knocked against the wainscot with a sound like teeth chattering.

And if they had been listening — truly listening, the way you listen for a footstep in an empty house — they would have heard her whisper one word, very softly, into the fire.

No.