AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, Manuela,” Cora interrupted, and when their gazes locked she found a set of hollow bleak violet eyes staring back at her.
“You misunderstand my intentions.” Cora’s voice was hoarse, as if she was using the last vestiges of it to say the words. “This is only so you can be free of that man. It will give me great comfort to know that you were spared from an unhappy marriage when I return to London, alone.”
Twenty-Three
“Please stop acting likesomeone died,” Cora demanded of her aunt as she sat down to breakfast. Her hands shook from lack of sleep, her eyes were bleary and swollen, the skin around them tight from...no. Thinking about it would make it happen again. She needed something to do. “Where’s the newspaper?” she asked, bolting up from the chair.
“In your office, where they leave it every day, querida. And I would stop acting like someone died if you weren’t behaving like you’re in mourning.” She knew Tia Osiris was only concerned, but she was at the very end of her rope. She closed her eyes as that constriction in her breathing began again. It had been happening constantly over the last two days.
She’d be fine and suddenly a fist would tighten around her lungs, another would jam up her throat and all the air would leave her body. She couldn’t make a sound when it happened. She couldn’t swallow, either. She just sat there, unblinking, gasping for air, a searing pain like nothing she’d experienced radiating in her chest. As if everything inside her was turning to dust.
“Mija, please eat something.” She couldn’t stand this either, the pitying tone in her aunt’s voice. The petrified stares from the servants, as though she’d lost her mind.
“I’m not hungry,” she declared, even as she dropped into the chair across from her aunt again. She clumsily reached for a plate of coddled eggs and spooned some onto her plate. The thought of taking a bite made bile rise in her throat. “I have things to do this morning to prepare for the meeting with the railroad consortium tomorrow.”
Her aunt stared at her, a determined look on her face, and Cora held a hand up. “Don’t. Please, Tia. Don’t say her name,” she begged, choking through the tears that wouldn’t come. “Please.”
Her aunt shook her head, her face bleak. “I can’t stand seeing you like this, Corazón, please—” Osiris cut herself off at whatever she saw in Cora’s face. “Is Juliette off today?” her aunt asked instead, offering her a reprieve. Cora looked up from staring at her plate, the question forgotten already.
“Sorry, what did you ask?” Tia Osiris reached for one of her hands, but Cora slid them both onto her lap. She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone touching her. She didn’t want comfort and she didn’t deserve it. Not after what she’d done. Until she took her last breath, she’d be haunted by the memory of Manuela’s eyes when she realized what Cora had been there to do.
A strange sound came out of her, something like a groan. That painful tightness in her neck and chest robbing her of air again. She wanted to pace, to run out of this room, go out into the street and exhaust herself. She wanted to throw herself on the floor and weep. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t cry.
“I asked if your maid is off today?” Her aunt was looking at her shirt. Cora lowered her gaze and noticed she’d missed two buttons and that there was a stain on her tie.
“Yes, I gave her a few days off,” she said without looking up, dabbing her napkin in water and rubbing it over the crusty spot on her clothes. Since she’d come back from the Place des Vosges she had barely left her room. She’d slept in the gown she’d worn to the Charost Palais because it was the last thing Manuela had touched. When Juliette had come to clean her room in the morning, she’d sent her away, clutching an empty cup of tea Manuela had left by her side of the bed like a madwoman. “I don’t want people in my rooms.”
She couldn’t tolerate anyone touching any part of her body that Manuela had touched. She hadn’t bathed, avoiding washing her off. She hadn’t brushed her hair in days. Her clothes were wrinkled and she smelled terrible.
She’d gone into hysterics when they’d attempted to change the sheets on her bed, wrapped herself in them like a mummy and leafed through the lewd doodles Manuela left for her on napkins and scraps of paper. Stuffed her pockets full of them. She couldn’t let go of even the smallest shred of her. She was behaving irrationally. Madly, and she couldn’t stop herself.
Cora Kemp-Bristol, the unflappable Duchess of Sundridge, the woman who had challenged every convention and won, was coming apart at the seams. She thought she’d made herself harder. She thought in the last ten years she’d built defenses to see her through any test, any catastrophe. She thought losing Benedict, then what had happened with Sally, had prepared her for any loss. But how could anyone prepare to lose Manuela?
What she felt was beyond emptiness. Beyond heartbreak.
Strong, thin arms wrapped around her shoulders. “You’re shaking, querida.” Her aunt’s voice was low, steady as she sat there, her unseeing eyes dry.
“I’m fine,” Cora said, not quite managing to sound it.
“No me mientas, Corazón,” her aunt chided, embracing Cora tighter. “We’ve fought too many battles together for me not to see when you’re wounded.”
No one had done this to her. Cora only shook her head, biting her tongue enough to taste blood, keeping in the screams, the wretchedness she couldn’t allow to come out.
When she left Manuela’s house that night she’d told herself she’d walk away unscathed like she’d done with Sally. That she’d lament her moment of weakness, then dust herself off and carry on. But it had been days now and she was still in agony. Barely able to stand.
“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed, eliciting a sound of sympathy from her aunt.
They stayed like that for a long time, until a knock on the door shook Cora out of her stupor. Laurent entered, wearing the same petrified look everyone in the house seemed to have anytime they had to interact with her.
“What is it, Laurent?”
“There is some correspondence for you.” He spoke very carefully, clearly fearful of causing another fit.
“Leave it there.” She felt nothing but exhaustion at the thought of dealing with one more note from Blanchet arguing over every one of her recommendations on the bonds issue. The mere thought of discussing the railroad that now represented the mess she’d made of her life turned her stomach.
“Your Grace,” Laurent insisted. Cora whipped her head around with every intention to send him away, but before she could say a word, he thrust the envelope forward. “It is from Mademoiselle Caceres Galvan.” The words cut through her like a blade of fire, burning through her stupor, as she stared at the elegant penmanship of the woman she loved.
She did love Manuela. She at least would not turn away from that truth, even if it was a wound she carried for the rest of her life.
