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

Chapter 25

That same night, Lord Vain went to the Duke’s house in Mayfair.

He did not give the confession to the Duke. He was far too clever for that — the Duke was already suspicious, already half-mad with questions, and a man in that condition might do anything. He might tear the paper up. He might look at the date.

No. He gave it to the Dowager Duchess.

She read it by the fire in her own sitting room with her reading glasses on, and her face grew colder with every line.

When she had finished, she folded it, and set it on the table, and sat looking at the flames for a full minute.

“Thank you, Lord Vain,” she said. “I am obliged to you.”

“Not at all, your grace. I only wish the news were happier.”

He bowed and left, and the Dowager Duchess sat for a while longer.

Then she stood up, and went upstairs, and knocked on her son’s door.

The Duke had not slept. He had not shaved. He had spent every hour of the last four days fighting for a man the whole of London believed was guilty, and he had lost every fight, and he had drunk nothing, and eaten almost nothing, and his eyes were red-rimmed and strange.

His mother held out the paper.

“Read it,” she said. “And then I hope you will come to your senses.”

The Duke read it once.

Then he read it again, more slowly, with his lips slightly parted.

I, Cora Bell, do confess…

He sat down very slowly on the edge of the bed.

“Her own hand,” said his mother. “Her own name. She lied to you, Edmund, from the very first day. She is exactly what Cordelia said she was — a thief, and worse, a clever little actress who saw a lonely man and played on his guilt.”

The Duke said nothing.

He stared at the signature. Cora Bell.

“Go to bed,” said his mother, more gently. “Now. In three days you will be married, and all of this will be forgotten, and you will thank me for it.”

When she had gone, the Duke sat alone for a very long time.

He did not want to believe it.

But there it was, in ink.

And he remembered her face in the street when he asked if the old man was her father. Yes. And You never told me. And No.

What else had she never told him?

He had been a fool. A romantic, lonely fool, chasing a song in the dark, ready to throw away his name and his house and his future for a girl who had lied to him from the beginning.

He locked the confession in the drawer of his writing desk, and turned the key, and did not take it out again.

The next two days passed like a dream.

The wedding flowers arrived — hundreds of white roses, in great banks and baskets, filling the whole house with their heavy sweetness. The wedding cake arrived, five tiers high, carried by four men. Guests began to arrive in London from every corner of England: cousins, barons, two earls, a bishop, and a great many people who had not spoken to the Duke in years but who would not miss this wedding for the world.

Cordelia was radiant.

She laughed. She kissed his cheek in front of the servants. She told everyone who would listen that the fourteenth of January was the most romantic date in the world.

“It was six years ago today,” she told the guests at dinner the night before the wedding, with her hand on the Duke’s sleeve and her eyes shining. “Six years ago, on the fourteenth of January, I pulled Edmund out of the fire. That is why I chose it. So that we will remember it together, every year, for the rest of our lives.”

The guests sighed.

The ladies dabbed their eyes.

The Duke smiled.

It did not reach his eyes.

Later that night, as he was going up to bed, a young maid was waiting for him at the top of the servants’ stairs.

She had come up from Ravenshollow with the Dowager Duchess’s luggage. She was sixteen years old, with a red nose and a soft heart, and she was shaking with fear.

“Your grace, forgive me. My name is Molly Green. I was Cora’s friend.”

The Duke stopped.

“I know it isn’t my place,” Molly whispered. “But I have to tell you. I’ve been trying for days, and they won’t let me near you, and tomorrow is the wedding, and I can’t—”

She took a breath.

“The pearls. On the day they were stolen, I saw Lady Cordelia’s own maid, Jenkins, coming down from the attic where we sleep. She had no reason to be up there. None at all. And Cora never left my side the whole afternoon. I swear it on my mother’s grave.”

The Duke stared at her.

“And one more thing, your grace.” Molly’s voice was barely a whisper now. “The day Lady Cordelia threw the water, Cora didn’t cry. She just looked at her and said, you will remember this day. And Lady Cordelia went white as a ghost. I’ve never seen a lady so frightened in my life.”

Before the Duke could say a word, Molly had curtsied and fled down the stairs.

He stood there on the landing for a long time in the dark.

Then he went into his room, and did not undress, and did not sleep.