Without waiting for Cordelia to reply, she had gone to the counter to settle the account. Cordelia turned toward the nearest display, pretending to examine a dainty lace-trimmed parasol in robin’s egg blue. That was when she heard the voice.
“Ah. So, this is where you’ve been hiding.”
Cordelia froze. The parasol slipped through her fingers and landed with a dull thud on the carpeted floor.
Stepping out from behind a row of pale muslin umbrellas with the same grace and menace as a ghost at a séance was none other than her own mother.
“Do forgive me,” the Marchioness of Forth said, her tone brittle and sweet as overripe fruit. “I would have written, but I assumed my letters would be as unwelcome as my presence.”
Cordelia could not find her voice. Her tongue had curled back on itself, her throat grown tight. And yet her mother went on, as if rehearsed.
“Quite clever of you, really, to run off and find yourself anewmother. One with a title even grander than mine. A duchess, no less.”
“Please,” Cordelia finally whispered. “Please don’t do this.”
“Oh, but I must.” Her mother leaned in, her eyes sharp and her smile deceptively soft. “What else have I now, Cordelia, but my words? You’ve taken everything else.”
Cordelia swallowed the thick knot in her throat. “I didn’t take anything.”
“You left me without notice, without thanks. And now, I’m to be replaced by that woman parading you through London, dressing you in her kindness while I am left to be spoken of in past tense like some discarded lady’s maid.”
“That isn’t true,” Cordelia said though the tremble in her voice betrayed her.
Her mother tilted her head. “Isn’t it? And what, pray, are your plans after this grand charade is done? Once you’ve received your precious inheritance, will you come back to me then?” Her gaze narrowed. “Or is it only useful while it ensures you remain tolerable to others?”
Cordelia blinked. “What?”
Her mother smiled. “You always needed to feel useful, didn’t you? Needed to serve some purpose. And I told you often enough, once a woman’s youth fades, her usefulness must lie elsewhere. But perhaps you never had much of either to begin with.”
It was not shouted, not cruelly hissed. That was her mother’s talent: each word delivered in silk, the blade hidden in the fold.
“I did not abandon you,” she said finally. “I… I was trying to survive.”
“Oh, darling. You don’t survive me by running to strangers. You survive me by growing up.”
And with that, her mother adjusted the lace of her glove and stepped lightly past her, leaving behind the scent of gardenia like poison. Cordelia couldn’t move. The soft clink of coins at the counter was the only sound that returned her to the world. The Dowager Duchess, smiling gently, approached her with the shopgirl trailing behind, holding the boxed parasol.
“My dear, are you?—?”
“I’m fine,” Cordelia said too quickly.
She took the parasol then she thanked the girl. She smiled as one does at funerals or particularly awkward card parties, but inside, she was splintering. Because shedidwant to stay and not just for the month. Because for the first time in her life, someone saw her not as ornamental or expendable or merely useful. And she was terrified that if she didn’t prove herself every moment of every day… she would lose it all.
Chapter Nine
Cordelia had never intended to trespass into the Duke’s woods. Well, not seriously.
She had thought about it often, as one might dream of fleeing to Constantinople in a hot-air balloon, but idle fancies were hardly crimes. However, it was a very different matter when the cook’s two daughters, Eliza and Ruthie, whom she had befriended within the first forty-eight hours of her arrival, had come to her in great distress.
“Miss Brookes, Miss Brookes! Poppy’s gone!”
Cordelia had leapt up from her embroidery, which was a rather ill-executed rendering of a thistle, as though her own house had caught fire.
“Gone? But where can a rabbit go in a country estate? Is she clever or silly?”
“She’s very silly, miss,” Ruthie sobbed. “She saw a robin and bolted.”
“Birds are terribly distracting,” Cordelia murmured gravely, already reaching for her boots. “Fetch my shawl. No, my green one, the one with the fringe. If we’re to break the unofficial law of this house, we ought at least to do so in style.”
