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

Chapter 7

A few weeks later, a man in a black coat came to the little cottage where Cora and her mother now lived.

He was polite. He was so terribly polite. He sat in the best chair and turned his hat over in his hands and explained that Lord Vain had bought the debt on their cottage — bought it out of the goodness of his heart — and that Lord Vain was a generous man, and would let them stay.

As long as the girl keeps her mouth shut.

One word, the man said. One word to anyone, and your mother is on the road by nightfall. Do you understand me, girl? One word.

Cora’s mother was already sick by then. Her chest had been bad for two winters, and the cottage was cold, and the medicine cost money they did not have.

Cora kept her mouth shut.

She kept it shut for six years.

She did not come to Ravenshollow Hall to make trouble. She came because the wages were good, and her mother needed medicine, and she had answered a notice at a servants’ registry in the city without ever asking the name of the house.

She had not known, until the day she arrived and saw the great gates and the crest on the gateposts, whose house it was.

She had stood in the road for a full minute with her bag in her hand, and she had thought about turning around. Walking back. Finding somewhere else.

Then she had thought about her mother’s medicine, and gone in.

Her heart had pounded for three days. On the very first morning she had carried coal up the back stairs and the Duke had walked past her in the hall, close enough to touch, and she had known him at once — the young gentleman from the fire — and she had nearly dropped the scuttle on the flags.

He had not even looked at her.

And why would he? He had no idea she existed.

She decided that day that she would never tell him. What good would it do? He was going to marry the woman he believed had saved him. A maid’s word against a lady’s. She knew exactly how that story ended. She had seen it end once already, with her father in chains and a magistrate laughing.

So she kept working. She kept her head down, and she kept the glove on, and she sent three shillings home every month, and she waited.

And then, yesterday, she had been careless.

She had hummed her mother’s song outside his door. And Cordelia Vain had heard it.

Cora pulled the glove back on, slowly, finger by finger. Then she turned her face to the wall.

She knew Cordelia would not let this rest. She had seen the fear in the woman’s eyes — raw and animal, the fear of a person standing on a floor that has begun to move. And a frightened woman with power, Cora thought, is the most dangerous thing in the world.

She was right.

Two days later, just before dinner, a scream rang through the east wing.