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

Chapter 32

After the trial, Hobbs had come to the Duke with his hat in his hands and asked to be dismissed.

He said he did not deserve to serve him another day. He said he did not deserve anything at all. He said he would go to the docks and find work carrying crates, or he would go to the workhouse, and either would be better than standing in the Duke’s dressing room every morning pretending to be a decent man.

The Duke had not known what to say.

It was Cora who answered.

She had walked into the room and looked at the man who had sent her father to the other side of the world — and she had remembered three silver coins pressed into her cold hand on a snowy night, and a rough voice saying I’m sorry, girl. I’m sorry for all of it.

She said, “You told the truth when it could have cost you everything. That is worth something, Mr. Hobbs. It is worth a great deal.”

Hobbs had looked at her as though she had struck him.

“I sent your father away,” he said.

“Yes,” said Cora. “And then you spent six years carrying it, and you gave a girl you hardly knew every coin you had, and when the moment came you stood up in a church full of lords and told the truth about a man who could have ruined you.”

She held out her hand.

“My father needs a stableman,” she said. “He does not need a saint. He needs someone who will check the lamps.”

So Hobbs went north to the Crown and Anchor.

Thomas Bell looked at him for a long time on the first morning — a long, hard, steady look, with the new key in his hand and the smell of fresh timber still in the air.

Then he handed Hobbs a pitchfork and pointed at the stable.

Hobbs never touched a drop of drink again.

Every night before he went to sleep, he walked all the way around the inn with a lantern, checking every lamp and every candle and every fireplace — the taproom, the kitchen, the guest rooms, the hayloft, the scullery.

Every single night, for the rest of his life.

Nobody ever asked him why.

Everybody knew.

Molly Green did not go back to scrubbing floors.

Cora asked her to be her lady’s maid, and Molly cried so hard that she could not answer for ten minutes, and then said yes eleven times in a row.

By Christmas she was walking out with the second footman — a tall, red-haired young man named Peter, who went pink every time she looked at him and who had once, on a snowy night, given her his own scarf without being asked.

The wedding was set for the fourteenth of January.

When the Duke first said the date, Cora stared at him.

“The same day,” she said. “Edmund, that day has brought nothing but pain.”

“That is exactly why,” he said. “They stole it from us twice. First with a fire, then with a lie.”

He took her hand.

“I want it back. I want it to be ours. So that from now on, when anyone in England hears the fourteenth of January, they will not think of a fire, or a lie, or a hanging. They will think of you.”

Cora looked at him for a long time.

Then she nodded.

Two nights before the wedding, there was a knock on the door of Cora’s room at the Crown and Anchor.

It was the Dowager Duchess.

Cora stood up quickly. In all these months, the Duke’s mother had been polite to her — always polite — but cool and distant, like a winter morning. Cora had never been sure what the woman truly thought of her.

“May I come in?” said the Dowager Duchess.

“Of course, your grace.”

The older woman came in and sat down stiffly on the edge of a chair. For a while she said nothing at all. She only looked at the fire.

“I want to tell you something,” she said at last. “Something my son does not know. Something almost nobody alive knows.”

Cora waited.

“Before I married Edmund’s father,” said the Dowager Duchess, “I was a vicar’s daughter from a poor parish in Somerset. My father had eleven children and not enough money to feed half of them. I had two dresses, and I mended both of them myself, and I wore the same pair of gloves for four winters.”

Cora stared at her.

“When the old Duke married me, the whole of society laughed. For years, they called me the parson’s girl behind my back. Ladies would not sit beside me at dinner. One of them once poured wine down my gown at a ball and called it an accident.”

Her mouth tightened.

“So I made myself hard. I made myself cold. I made myself into the proudest, coldest duchess in England, so that nobody could ever look down on me again.”

She turned and looked at Cora directly.

“And then, when a girl in my own house had water thrown in her face in front of me, I sat there and drank my tea.”

Her voice shook, just a little.

“I did the very thing that was once done to me, and I called it proper. I have been ashamed of that every day since.”

“Your grace—”

The Dowager Duchess stood up.

Then, slowly, stiffly, the proudest woman in England lowered her head and dropped into a deep curtsy in front of an innkeeper’s daughter.

“I beg your pardon, Cora,” she said. “With all my heart.”

Cora could not speak. She took the older woman’s hands and raised her up, and for the first time, the two of them embraced.

Before she left, the Dowager Duchess took a small velvet box from her pocket and pressed it into Cora’s hands.

Inside was a string of pearls — old, and soft, and glowing like moonlight.

“They belonged to my mother,” said the Dowager Duchess. “They are not worth a fortune. They were bought with a vicar’s savings. But no one has ever lied for them, or stolen them, or used them to hurt anybody.”

She smiled a little.

“I think they will suit you.”