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

Chapter 9

The old wine cellar lay deep under the house, below the kitchens, below the beer cellars, at the bottom of a flight of stairs so narrow that the footmen had to turn sideways to bring her down.

It was cold. Not the honest cold of the outdoors, but a damp, mineral cold that came up through the stone and settled in the joints. The floor was uneven and wet in patches. The walls sweated. There was one tiny barred window high up at ground level, and through it came a little pale light and, later, the sound of snow beginning to fall.

The footmen left her a single candle and a thin blanket, and one of them — the younger one, a boy of nineteen who had once shared his bread with her in the servants’ hall — would not look at her face.

Then the heavy door slammed shut, and the key turned in the lock, and Cora Bell was alone.

She sat down on an old wooden crate and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders.

She knew the law. Everyone in England knew the law. Stealing goods worth more than five shillings was a hanging matter; stealing a string of pearls worth a fortune was not even a question. It had happened to others for far less. A boy had been hanged at the last assizes for stealing a sheep. A woman had been hanged for a length of lace.

She thought of her mother, alone in the little cottage, waiting for a letter and a few shillings that would never come.

She thought of her father somewhere on the other side of the world, in chains, in heat, in a place she could not imagine — if he was even still alive.

And she thought of Cordelia’s face, smiling, as she whispered that word.

Hang.

The candle guttered. Cora closed her eyes.

And very quietly — because it was the only thing that had ever brought her comfort in the dark — she began to hum.

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

Upstairs, the house had gone quiet.

The guests had been put to bed. The servants had been sent to their rooms. Cordelia had been given tea and a warm brick and her mother’s hand to hold, and she had cried prettily for an hour and then stopped, and now she was sitting up in her dressing gown with a book she was not reading.

And in his study, the Duke of Ravenshollow sat alone with a glass of brandy he had not touched.

Something was wrong.

He could feel it the way you feel a storm coming before the first drop of rain — in the pressure behind the eyes, in the small hairs on the arms. He had felt it at breakfast, when Cordelia could not remember a tune. He had felt it on the stairs, when a maid in a glove said a fire, your grace, and his valet dropped a silver tray.

Why would a maid who had worked quietly for three months suddenly steal the most famous pearls in the house?

Why would she hide them in her own apron, where anyone would look first?

And why — of all the rooms in Ravenshollow Hall, why did it have to be Cordelia’s?

He stood up, took a lantern from the hall table, and went down to the cellar.