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“Thank you, Laurent,” she told the man as she quickly snatched the envelope to hide the trembling in her hands. She didn’t even have the strength to be ashamed of this display of emotion. What did it matter? Like her entire staff, he knew Mademoiselle Caceres Galvan’s absence was the cause of Cora’s week-long despondency. She’d been slowly undoing every thread that held up the life she’d built for herself since she met Manuela. An inglorious string of rash decisions and impulsive faux pas.
It had been the happiest time of her life.
Once Laurent quietly closed the door behind himself, Cora stared at the envelope in her hand scared to open it and read the words that would cement the truth of what she’d done. She could feel the weight of her aunt’s stare over her shoulder, but Tia Osiris didn’t rush her.
Cora brushed the back of her hand over her dried lips, revolted by her own cowardice.
She’d acted abominably. She knew it, but she could not bear the thought of Manuela married to that buffoon. If she was to be a villain, she’d be one for giving Manuela the freedom to leave. But Manuela hadn’t seen it as help. When Cora told her she’d be going back to London alone, her eyes filled with tears that spilled as she’d stared at her in disbelief. Without another word she’d turned on her heel and walked away from Cora. That was the last time she’d seen or heard from her until now.
She needed a drink. With shaky legs she went to the cart and with one hand poured herself a dram of whisky. The intense scent of peat made her stomach roil—it was barely half past nine in the morning after all, but before the glass reached her mouth Tia Osiris snatched it from her hand.
“Enough, Corazón,” her aunt rebuked, tossing the spirits into the fire, making the weakening flames roar back to life. “Ya basta,” she repeated, and though there was censure in her voice, her brown eyes were kind. “Pull yourself together, mija. This is not the time to fall apart.” Tia Osiris tugged the envelope from Cora’s hands and pulled out the small sheaf of papers. “You are strong enough to face this.” Her aunt spoke with the same steel that made Cora get off that ship in London after they were banished from Chile. The same steel that drove her to pick herself up after Benedict had died.
“All right,” Cora said, sitting down to read. She wasn’t surprised to see the deed on top. Now that Manuela’s parents knew of the offer, they’d likely force her to sell. Just one more way in which Cora had made a mess of things. She closed her eyes before unfolding the accompanying note, a feeling of dread crawling up her body as she did. Then she read it and the dread quickly transformed into horror.
If I am to be bought and sold, only I will dictate the terms.
M
“What is this?” She frowned at the message, frantically scanning the page, hoping to understand what Manuela meant. The terms were all the same, the amount they’d originally agreed to unchanged. Then she reached the signature page, where Manuela had left instructions to deliver the full payment to Cassandra and Pasquale, to be used for the collective. “This can’t be right,” she muttered. Cora had hoped that her parents’ greed would win and they’d let Manuela out of the engagement, but instead she was giving up the only thing that could buy her freedom. Instead of helping herself, she would help a group of women she barely knew.
She stood, her legs unable to stay still with her mind racing as it was. That was when she noticed a creamy white envelope by her feet. Something told her not to pick it up, not to touch it, but she would not be a coward again. Slowly, she placed the deed on the chair and bent down. She shook off the tremors in her hands and extracted the card inside—except it wasn’t a card. It was an invitation. She read it with her heart pounding loudly and sweat running down her back as a hole that could swallow her whole bloomed inside her.
Manuela was getting married in only a few hours.
Cora’s hand slipped, and the tray of decanters crashed to the carpet like fireworks. Not a second later, Tia Osiris was at her side and Alfie was bursting into the room.
“What’s wrong?” her son asked, but Cora was suffocating. She walked away from the cloying smell of spilled brandy and whisky, her mouth open, gasping, but air would not come. Alfie came to her, gripping her arms as he looked down at her, terrified. “Mother, what’s happened?”
“She sent me the deed,” she finally told him, her voice barely a whisper. “She’s giving the money away.” Her voice broke then and she crumbled to the ground. She brought her knees up, her head in her hands. She looked up at Alfie who was kneeling beside her, his face marred with worry.
“She’s going to marry him.” Cora felt far away, like she was speaking from the bottom of a well.
“Oh, Mama.” She flinched at the love in his voice. At the sympathy she didn’t deserve.
“Maybe, it’s better this way,” she lied, even as her heart was torn from her chest.
“She’s better off marrying a man she loathes?” Tia Osiris asked from somewhere in the room, but Cora could barely see. What was wrong with her eyes? “You’re better off knowing you let her go, to one-up those heels in the consortium?” her aunt asked, her tone a mixture of disbelief and exasperation. “To prove yourself to a group of men who can barely stand the sight of you? Corazón, what has all this been for if you are miserable in the end?” Cora knew her aunt was attempting to make her see the error of her ways, but Tia Osiris had never failed like Cora had. She’d never had to live with the knowledge that her actions had hurt someone she’d vowed to protect.
“I did what I did to make up for the damage I caused. I made a promise to Benedict,” she reminded her aunt, then turned to Alfie. “Your father trusted that I would shepherd you to your rightful place in London society and instead I disgraced your family’s name with my stupidity. My selfishness. I can’t destroy everything when we are so close,” she pleaded, needing him to see why she’d had to do it. Why she couldn’t be associated with Manuela’s broken engagement, with any of this. “I have finally been able to erase the stain I’ve left on your name.”
“Who cares about Blanchet? Who cares what the London peerage thinks? You got the land for them, isn’t that enough?” Alfred said, his voice so strong. “I know you don’t think so, but you kept your promise.”
“My promise was to make sure you assumed your place as the Duke of Sundridge.” She looked at him his face so much like his father’s. But where Benedict had been mercurial and fragile at times, Alfred was a man who could weather any storm. Knowing he would be a force of good, a man who could look to the future and face it with humanity and fairness, had been worth all the sacrifices. She would not allow for that path to be tarnished again. “You’ve had to live in forced exile because of me.”
“No, what you did was not leave me to the fate of tutors and a boarding school where I’d be bullied and neglected.” Alfie pulled her back on her feet. “Any of my other relatives would’ve been happy to take up in that house in Belgravia and ship me off to boarding school without a second thought.” She shook her head at that, as if she’d ever abandon him, or forsake him like her own father had done to her. She would’ve died before doing that to Alfie.
By some miracle Benedict had been at the very first dinner she’d been invited to in London. Bedeviled by the financial mire his father had made of the duchy and looking for a new mother for his five-year-old son. He’d told her his wife had been the love of his life and he had no interest in replacing her, but that if she helped him raise Alfred, he would give her protection—and he would be a friend. For five years he never, not once, faltered on that promise. All she was doing was trying to keep the one she’d made to him in return. Why couldn’t they see that?
“If I don’t follow through on this deal, I will lose my footing. My word is all I have with these men.”
Tia Osiris let out a cry of outrage, but Cora didn’t look in her direction, needing to make Alfie understand. That this was necessary. That she would sacrifice herself for him. That she would not let him down.
“Your word is not all you have, Cora.” Her given name coming from Alfie’s lips was a slap in the face. He hadn’t called her that since he was a boy. “You have family who loves you, friends who respect you. A fortune to spend living a life that makes you happy, doing good in the word, living the life you deserve.”
“No more, Corazón Aymara.” Tia Osiris tugged on her hand, her face stern when Cora looked up. “Everything isn’t your fault or your responsibility. It’s not your fault my sister died, mija.” Cora shut her eyes, shaking her head in denial, not wanting to hear those words. “It’s not your fault your father was too weak to love you when you needed him.”
“No, Tia,” she croaked, feeling the tears streaming down her face and the misery spewing out of her in sobs.
