Page 8 of Cora
Titi merely whined and gazed forlornly in the direction of Lysander’s study.
Few people would consider moving into a duke’s mansion to be a hardship. Cora was not most people. She was being coddled to death. Unlike at home, where she was perfectly content with a single maid, there was literally nothing for her to do here except read, sew, shop, or nap.
All were things she enjoyed, but they could only occupy so much time. Cora rattled around at loose ends, constantly in the way of obsequious servants, bumping into Lysander’s Important Visitors (she always thought this in capital letters), who scorned her as a too-tall, too-old, disgraced spinster. They weren’t outright rude, but they made it clear she did not belong here.
She took up space, both physically and in conversations where she refused to either simper or fall silent, and she was therefore a perpetual embarrassment to the titled men and pompous politicians who regularly called upon the duke.
The way they flattered and fawned over Lysander only inflated his already gigantic head. Someday, someone was going to put a pin in his excessive self-regard and finally bring him down to size.
Until that day arrived, the seventh Duke of Gryphon was a beast to live with.
Cora hoped Eryx would find a solution to his bank’s problems soon. Ideallyverysoon. But even if he did, she would still be stranded here with her half-brother until construction was finished on the house.
“Where are you going?” Lysander demanded when he stepped out of his study and found her dressed for the outdoors. His lip curled in disdain at the sight of Titi’s knitted sweater.
“Out. Like you wanted us to. We’re going to visit Miss Caldwell.”
“See if she’ll keep that rat you call a pet.”
Cora didn’t dignify his comment with a response. Instead, she swallowed her loneliness and frustration and set out into the bracing winter to Mayfair with Miss Marnie for a companion. Honey ignored Cora in favor of the dog, patting her knees until Titi jumped into her lap.
“I’ve heard such horrid gossip about your brother.” Honora Caldwell was a woman of no artifice whatsoever. Every thought that entered her head came out of her mouth seconds later, no matter how daft or inappropriate. Cora loved her for it. Few others did.
“Which one?” Cora asked wryly.
“Not the duke this time,” she said, offering Titi a bit of cheese from her sandwich. “The banker.”
“The rumors are terrible, Honey, yet most of them are true.”
Her friend’s eyes widened. “Tell me everything.”
Anything she said to Honey would be all over thetonwithin hours.
Cora described the disappointing start to her year, as much as she dared to share. She took pains to insist that all would be well if people simply stopped withdrawing their deposits out of fear that they wouldn’t get their money back. Perhaps, if Honey spread that message around theton, the run would stop and the bank could recover.
But talk of business matters soon glazed her friend’s eyes with disinterest, so Cora switched to complaining about Lysander and his aversion to Titania. This, Honey could relate to.
“Poor Titi,” Honey sighed, stroking the dog’s soft ears. “In love with a hard-hearted man. We have all been there, have we not?”
“No.”
“Not even with Mr. Markham?”
Cora shook her head somberly. There was only one man she had ever fancied herself in love with, for a few weeks, before he viciously ruined her reputation.
A few years after her disgrace, once it became clear that no one was going to forgive her for accidentally playing a bawdy-house tune at a formal event, never mind her illegitimate birth, she had taken to answering ads men placed in the newspaper in search of romantic prospects. By that point, she had long since written off the fantasy that Gideon Wentworth would fall on his knees and apologize, beg her forgiveness, beg her to become his wife. Which was a strange notion to entertain, considering all that had transpired.
Meeting men began as a simple amusement to pass the time. She was not lonely. She was perfectly content with her own company. But at one point, she’d decided she wanted to be married, even if it was to a working man. She always met them in public places, like museums or tea houses. Her penny-farthing bicycle had been an easy way to get around town without the risk of a footman reporting back to one of her overly protective brothers.
She had never told any of the men she’d met about her dowry. She sought someone who was interested in her, not her money. Although she found this modern arrangement infinitely better than the antiquated courting methods of theton,she encountered no small number of cads, scoundrels, and outright villains. Still, she persisted in her letter-writing attempts, for once one decided to be free from convention, a world of possibilities opened up like an endless feast.
A feast consisting mostly of mediocre pudding.
She soon grew sick of flowery, insincere compliments and having the same conversations over and over again. Once she agreed to meet a man publicly, he was usually put off by her height or her straightforwardness or both. Cora eventually concluded that few men were interesting enough to warrant romantic pursuit, and those who were, weren’t interested in a woman like her.
Yet there had been glimmers of hope.
Mr. Markham had been the most serious of her affairs. For him, she would have considered matrimony.
