The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin Read Free Book Online Page B

she wore so that the tendrils covered the misshapen lump of flesh that had been her left ear. As she felt the waxy smoothness of the scarring, she flinched. The doctors had told her that she had been fortunate that her skin had healed so quickly, but she hated touching its smooth deadness, which she minded even more than the shooting pains she still felt. She straightened up and began to dust her face with powder.
    There was a knock at the door and the butler came in with a letter on a silver salver.
    ‘This has just arrived for you, ma’am. From Lulworth.’
    Mrs Cash had not heard of Lulworth but judging from the little pause the butler made before he pronounced the name, she guessed that it was a place of some significance. She took up the letter and recognised, to her surprise, her daughter’s loopy scrawl.
    ‘But this is from Cora. Why is she writing to me? I thought she was hunting?’
    The butler bowed his head. Mrs Cash’s question was rhetorical, although as the letter was unsealed, every servant in the house could have given her an answer.
    To the butler’s surprise Mrs Cash did not gasp or reach for the sal volatile when reading her daughter’s letter. Indeed, if the butler had been on Mrs Cash’s right, he might have seen the beginnings of a smile.

    In the servants’ hall, Bertha was mending a lace nightgown that Cora had torn because she was too impatient to undo the buttons before pulling it over her head. It had been one of those nights when Cora had come upstairs from dinner noisy and truculent after an evening spent listening docilely to Lord Bridport’s views on crop rotation. Bertha hadn’t unlaced her fast enough and Cora, snatching the nightgown from her, had pulled it over her head, ripping the two-hundred-year-old Brussels lace that covered the bodice as she did so. Cora hadn’t even noticed the tear but Bertha, who looked forward to the day when the nightgown and the lace would be passed on to her, had felt the ripping cloth as a laceration. The lace had been made by nuns, the work so fine and exquisite that it was almost an act of worship. It was taking all her concentration to sew the jagged cobweb edges together seamlessly. She had been so absorbed in joining one filigree flower to its mate, marvelling at the intricacy of the net showing white against her brown fingers, that she had missed the entrance of the groom from Lulworth with the letter for Mrs Cash, but now she caught Cora’s name in the conversation between the housekeeper and the cook and she looked up from her sewing.
    ‘Miss Cash was lucky that she didn’t break her neck like the poor Duke that was. It was the new Duke that found her. Lucky he was in the woods, otherwise she might have been out there all night,’ the housekeeper said.
    ‘I don’t think it was luck that put the Duke in that wood. Remember what day it is.’ The cook looked at Mrs Lawrence the housekeeper with meaning. The housekeeper gave a gasp of remembrance and bowed her head.
    ‘Is it the anniversary today? I’d almost forgotten. That poor young man and so soon after the old Duke’s death too.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them she saw Bertha looking at her.
    ‘Looks like you’ll be going over to Lulworth, Miss Cash.’ Bertha started at the name. Mrs Lawrence had told her when she arrived that all the visiting servants were known by the name of their employer, but still it felt strange.
    The housekeeper continued, ‘Your lady had a fall out hunting and she’s been put to bed over at Lulworth. The groom came over with a letter for your young lady’s mother. Mr Druitt is up there now waiting for a reply.’ At the sight of Bertha’s face, the housekeeper softened her tone. ‘She’ll be all right. If there was anything wrong, the Duke would have come himself.’
    The cook chuckled. ‘I expect he didn’t want to leave Miss Cash’s side. There’s an awful lot of holes in the roof.’
    ‘The Duke’s not married