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

Chapter 4

Late that night, when the whole house was asleep, one candle was still burning in the east wing.

Lady Cordelia Vain sat at her writing desk in her nightgown, with her hair down and her face bare and no one to perform for. She looked ten years older than she had that morning.

Her hand was still shaking. She had tried to write this letter three times and burned all three attempts.

Now she dipped the pen and wrote one line. One line only.

Father, come at once. She is here. The girl from the fire.

She folded the paper, sealed it with wax, and pressed her ring into the wax while it was still soft. Then she wrote the direction on the outside in a hand that was not quite her own: The Right Honourable Lord Alaric Vain, Grosvenor Square, London.

She would send it at first light with the fastest rider she could find. She would pay him double. She would pay him anything.

For a while she sat and looked at the letter on the desk.

Then she picked it up and held the corner of it over the candle flame — held it there, close enough that the paper began to brown and curl — and then, with a small sharp cry, she snatched it back and beat the ember out with her palm.

She could not do it. She needed her father. She had always needed her father. That was the whole architecture of her life: Cordelia smiled, and her father did the rest.

She put the letter in the drawer, locked it, and sat back. Outside, the wind moved along the roof, and in the corridor beyond her door a floorboard creaked, and she jumped so violently that her chair scraped the floor.

It is nothing, she told herself. It is an old house. Old houses creak.

But it was not the creaking that frightened her.

It was five quiet words, spoken by a girl with water on her face.