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

Chapter 26

At six o’clock in the morning on the fourteenth of January, the Duke of Ravenshollow stood at his writing desk in his shirtsleeves.

The wedding coat hung ready on the door. The shoes were polished. Outside, the sky was still black, and the first carts were already rattling along the street, and somewhere a bell was ringing for early service.

He unlocked the drawer and took out the confession.

He did not know why. Perhaps he only wanted to see her handwriting again, one last time, before he let her go forever.

He read the lies, every one of them, in the gray light of the single candle — the false name, the stolen pearls, the invented fire, the begging for forgiveness.

Then his eyes moved down to the bottom of the page.

To her signature. Cora Bell.

And below it, in small, neat letters, the date.

He had not looked at it before.

Nobody had.

The Duke stopped breathing.

She had not written the date she signed it. She had not written the twelfth of January, which was the day Lord Vain had come to her in the carriage.

She had written: The fourteenth of January, 1811.

Six years ago to the day.

The night of the fire.

The Duke stood frozen with the paper shaking in his hand, and suddenly — in one great rush, like water breaking through a dam — he understood.

It was not a confession at all.

It was a message, written for only one person in the world to read.

Cora had signed their lie and dated it with the day it began. This paper is as false, she was telling him, as the story they told you on the fourteenth of January, 1811.

You will remember this day.

She had not been threatening Cordelia. She had been telling her the truth. That day — the day of the fire, the day the lie was born — would come back. It would always come back.

And she had known, from the moment she heard that Cordelia had chosen the fourteenth of January for the wedding, that one day the whole world would remember it.

The clock on the mantel began to strike.

Seven o’clock.

Thomas Bell would hang in one hour.

And somewhere on the river, a ship was waiting to carry Cora Bell away forever.

The door opened behind him.

Hobbs came in carrying the Duke’s polished wedding shoes, just as he had done every morning for twelve years.

“Good morning, your grace,” he said quietly. “A fine day for a wedding.”

The Duke turned around slowly.

He held up the paper.

“Close the door, Hobbs,” he said. “Sit down.”

Hobbs went pale — the particular gray-white of a man who has been waiting, for six years, for exactly this moment.

“Your grace—”

“You were with me at the Crown and Anchor,” said the Duke. His voice was very calm, and very cold. “You were supposed to be sleeping in the room next to mine. Where were you, Hobbs, when the fire started? And what did you swear to the magistrate the next day?”

The wedding shoes fell from Hobbs’s hands and hit the floor.

He did not sit down. His legs simply gave way, and he dropped onto the chair by the door like a man who had been shot.

For a long time he could not speak at all.

Then he covered his face with his hands.

“I was drunk, your grace,” he whispered. “God forgive me. I went down to the ale house in the village and I drank until I couldn’t stand, and I fell asleep in the stable loft. And when I woke up, the inn was burning, and you were lying on the grass, and a girl with her arm on fire was screaming for her father.”

He lifted his face. It was wet with tears, and he did not try to hide it.

“Lord Vain found me in the stable the next morning. He said if I told the truth, he would make sure you knew I had left you to burn. I would lose my place. I would never work again, not in this country — and I had a wife then, your grace, and a child, and no other trade in the world.”

His voice cracked.

“So I swore what he told me to swear. That the innkeeper was drunk. That the innkeeper knocked over the lamp.”

He took a shuddering breath.

“It was Lord Vain, your grace. I saw him do it through the window before I went out to the stable. He knocked the lamp off the table with his own hand. And I sent an innocent man to the other side of the world for it.”

The Duke stood very still.

“And Lady Cordelia?”

“She never went near the fire. Not one step.” Hobbs shook his head slowly. “She sat in the carriage the whole time. It was the innkeeper’s girl who pulled you out. I saw her with my own eyes, your grace — I was coming out of the stable when she dragged you through the door.”

He began to cry in earnest.

“I’ve carried it every day for six years. Every single day. And when she walked into Ravenshollow Hall three months ago, I knew her at once. I nearly died of shame. I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you a hundred times, and every time I opened my mouth I saw the rope—”

The clock on the mantel ticked.

Seven minutes past seven.

The Duke grabbed his coat. Not the wedding coat — his old riding coat, hanging on the back of the chair, still muddy at the hem.

“Get up, Hobbs,” he said.

“Your grace—”

“You are going to say every word of that again, under oath, and you are going to say it now.”