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

Chapter 28

At eleven o’clock, St. George’s Church on Hanover Square was full to the doors.

Lords and ladies in silk and velvet. Feathers and jewels and white roses everywhere — banks of them, climbing the pillars, filling the air with their heavy sweetness until it was almost suffocating. The organ was playing softly. The guests were fanning themselves and whispering behind their programmes and craning their necks to see who had come.

At the altar, Lady Cordelia Vain stood in a gown of ivory satin with her father beside her, smiling like a man who had just won everything in the world.

The groom was late.

Five minutes. Ten.

The whispers began. A lady near the aisle said something to her neighbor behind her fan, and the neighbor’s eyebrows went up, and the whisper traveled backward through the pews like a ripple on a pond.

Cordelia’s smile did not waver. But her hands, clasped in front of her, had gone white at the knuckles.

Then the great doors at the back of the church swung open.

Every head turned.

The Duke of Ravenshollow walked down the aisle — and he was not in his wedding coat. He was in a muddy riding coat, with his hair wild and his boots covered in dirt from the streets of London, and there was a scratch on his cheek from a low branch on the road, and he was breathing hard.

Behind him came his valet, an old man with red eyes.

Behind the valet came a frightened young maid in a servant’s cloak.

Behind her came Lady Cordelia’s own maid, Jenkins, twisting her hands.

And behind them all, two officers of the Bow Street magistrates, in their dark blue coats.

The organ stopped.

The silence was so deep that you could hear the candles burning.

“Edmund,” said Cordelia. Her smile was stiff on her face, like something pinned there. “Darling. What is this?”

The Duke stopped in front of her.

“Before I say any vows,” he said — loud enough for every person in the church to hear, loud enough to reach the back rows and the gallery — “I want my bride to do two things for me.”

He looked at her.

“First. Sing me one line of the song she sang to me in the fire. Just one line.”

Cordelia’s face drained of color.

“Edmund, please. Everyone is watching.”

“Just one line.”

She opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

“Then the second thing,” said the Duke. “Take off your glove.”

“I will not.”

“The girl who pulled me out of that fire,” said the Duke, and his voice carried to every corner of the church, “carried a grown man down a burning staircase with her bare hands. Her arm was on fire. That kind of burn never heals, Cordelia. It stays for life.”

He held out his hand.

“Take off your glove.”

Cordelia did not move.

She did not have to. Everyone in that church had seen her hands a hundred times — at dinners, at balls, at card tables, pouring tea and turning the pages of music. Smooth, and white, and perfect.

The whispers began again, louder now, and this time they did not stop.

“This is madness,” Lord Vain said loudly, stepping forward. “The boy has lost his mind over some servant girl. Have him removed—”

“Hobbs,” said the Duke. “Tell them.”

And Elias Hobbs — with his voice shaking, but clear, and loud enough to reach the rafters — told the whole church everything.

The ale house. The stable loft. The lamp that Lord Vain had knocked over with his own hand. The lie he had sworn in court, and the purse that had bought it.

When he finished, there was not a sound in the building.

Then Molly Green stepped forward, trembling, her face blotched with tears, and told them about Jenkins coming down from the attic on the day the pearls went missing — and every eye in the church turned to Jenkins.

The poor woman burst into tears.

“My lady told me to do it,” she sobbed. “She said she would turn me out on the street if I didn’t. I put the pearls in the girl’s apron. God forgive me, I did it. I did it, and she was innocent, and I have not slept since—”

The church erupted.

Lord Alaric Vain turned and began to walk quickly toward the side door.

The two Bow Street officers stepped in front of him.

“Lord Vain,” said one of them. “You’ll come with us, sir. There are questions about a fire, and a false oath, and a man who nearly hanged this morning.”

“Do you know who I am?” Lord Vain shouted.

“Yes, sir,” said the officer. “Everyone in this church knows exactly who you are now.”

They took him out through the side door, and his protests echoed back through the stone for a moment, and then the door closed and they were gone.

Cordelia stood alone at the altar in her ivory gown.

Her face was twisted with fury. All the sweetness was gone from it, and what was underneath was not beautiful at all.

“She’s a servant,” she hissed at the Duke. “A nobody. An innkeeper’s daughter. You would throw all of this away — me, my name, everything — for a girl who scrubs floors?”

The Duke looked at her for the last time.

“You chose this date, Cordelia,” he said quietly. “The fourteenth of January. So that we would always remember it.”

He turned away.

“You were right. London will never forget it. And neither will you.”

He walked down the aisle, past the silent rows of guests and the white roses and the bishop with his mouth open, and at the back of the church the Dowager Duchess stood very straight, with her face as white as the flowers.

As her son passed, she caught his arm.

For a moment, he thought she would stop him.

“The ship,” she said. Her voice was not steady. “What time does it sail?”

“Half past eleven.”

His mother let go of his arm.

“Then why are you still standing here?” she said. “Go. Go and bring her back.”