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

Chapter 33

The fourteenth of January dawned cold and bright.

Snow had fallen in the night, and the whole village was white and shining, and the little stone church across the road from the Crown and Anchor had its bell ringing out over the fields, and the sound carried a long way in the still frosty air.

It was not St. George’s on Hanover Square. There were no lords in silk and feathers, no five-tier cake, no hothouse roses filling the air until you could not breathe.

But the church was full to the doors.

The farmers had come, in their best coats, with their wives and their children. The dock workers from London had come — the ones who had watched on the wet stones while the Duke knelt in a puddle — and they stood at the back in a solid row, and they had all washed, and they all looked faintly uncomfortable, and every one of them had come anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs had come from St. Mary’s, and the vicar had asked for the honor of marrying them.

The whole staff of Ravenshollow Hall had come, even Mrs. Pratt, who cried from the first hymn to the last. The old butler came. The two footmen who had dragged Cora to the cellar came, and stood at the very back with their hats in their hands and could not look at her.

And Elias Hobbs stood by the door in a clean new coat, with his hat pressed against his chest, and he did not sit down the whole time.

When the doors opened, every head turned.

Cora Bell walked down the aisle on her father’s arm.

She wore a simple white gown, and the Dowager Duchess’s soft old pearls, and her hair was pinned up with two little white roses that Molly had put there and then cried over.

And for the first time in seven years, in front of every person she knew, she was not wearing a glove.

Her right hand rested on her father’s arm, scarred and twisted and shining in the winter light, and she did not hide it.

She did not need to anymore.

A murmur went around the church when people saw it. Then it went quiet. Some of the women were crying. Some of the men were too, and pretending they were not.

Thomas Bell walked his daughter down the aisle with his back straight and his head high, like the proudest man in England. When they reached the altar, he placed her hand into the Duke’s hand.

His own hand was shaking.

“Take care of her,” he said roughly.

“With my life,” said the Duke. “She took care of mine first.”

They said their vows, and when the vicar asked for a hymn, the whole church stood and sang together.

Not the grand hymn that had been planned for St. George’s.

Their hymn.

Guide me home when the dark is deep. Guide me home by the light you keep.

The farmers sang it, and the dock workers sang it, and Mrs. Pratt sang it, and the Dowager Duchess sang it very softly with tears on her cheeks. Molly sang it with her red-haired footman beside her. And at the back of the church, Elias Hobbs sang it too, though his voice kept breaking and he had to stop twice.

Cora did not sing.

She could not.

She only held the Duke’s hand and listened, as the song that had once carried a dying man out of a fire filled the little church to the rafters.

That evening, the Crown and Anchor was full of music and laughter and warm light.

Thomas Bell poured ale for the whole village and would not take a single penny for it. Cora’s mother brought out pie after pie from the kitchen until the table could not hold any more. Molly danced with her red-haired footman until her cheeks were pink and her cap had come loose. The Dowager Duchess sat by the fire with Mrs. Dobbs, and the two of them laughed together like old friends.

And Hobbs, as always, walked slowly around the inn with his lantern, checking every lamp.

Late in the night, when the snow had begun to fall again, the Duke found his bride standing alone at the window, looking out at the dark fields.

She was looking at the spot on the grass just beyond the door — the place where, seven years ago, she had laid a stranger down in the wet and the cold and sung to him so that he would not die.

He came up behind her and did not say anything at first.

He only took her right hand — the scarred one — and turned it over gently in his own.

Seven years ago today, that hand had been on fire. That hand had pulled him out of the dark.

He lifted it to his lips and kissed it slowly, tenderly, the way a man kisses something he will treasure for the rest of his life.

Cora turned and looked up at him.

“Do you remember,” she said softly, “what I said to her that day? With the water on my face?”

“I remember,” said the Duke.

He smiled — and it was the smile that the whole world said the cold Duke of Ravenshollow did not have.

“You were right, Cora,” he said. “I will remember this day every year for the rest of my life.”