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Not even when she’d disgraced herself so thoroughly they’d had to leave London in the middle of the night mired in scandal.
The carriage jolting to a stop brought her attention back to her surroundings. She inhaled deeply, feeling the tight encasing around her torso and smiled at the constriction. A reminder that despite the many bindings placed around her, today she would win. It was a victory ten years in the making.
Despite not loving him in the way a wife should—and their almost twenty-year age difference—her marriage to Benedict had been a happy one. He’d been the first person to notice—and encourage—her affinity for business. With his blessing she’d begun investing the fortune her father had given Benedict as her dowry in trade floors and other ventures, all of which paid off handsomely. Within a couple of years, she’d garnered notoriety among London society for her sharpness in investments. Largely due to Benedict’s boasting of his duchess’s talents and the exorbitant gains in the family fortunes.
For a short time, life seemed ideal. And then Benedict’s illness took him. Cora almost lost herself. Grief-stricken at the loss of her best friend, she’d made terrible mistakes. Coped atrociously with the loss of a husband who had never been a lover, but who’d given her something she’d never had from anyone other than her aunt: unconditional love, friendship and respect.
Her behavior in the months after his death was appalling. She’d ignored the business interests she’d so carefully built, losing herself in a string of increasingly destructive affairs. The last one being particularly catastrophic. The entire episode left her embarrassed and plagued by the crushing shame of knowing she’d broken her promise to Benedict to be a good steward of his son’s future. After that, all she’d cared about was wiping clean the stains of those mistakes. She’d ruthlessly—and at times unscrupulously—rebuilt her position and carefully cultivated a reputation that became synonymous with business acumen and unyielding ambition.
She’d been meticulous and patient.
Without Benedict’s support she had to be more cautious. She’d quietly backed investments—incredibly risky ones in the beginning—that proved to be wildly lucrative. She made profitable alliances with common-born financiers hungry enough to do business with a peer that they were willing to overlook her gender.
When success came, she made sure her name was whispered in every well-heeled smoking room in Europe as the savviest of investors and a very good woman to know when one was looking to replenish their coffers. It took some doing and more than one door being slammed in her face, but eventually the rumors about her Midas touch landed in the right ears, and people—as they tended to do when money was in the mix—quickly forgot her past disgrace. She’d bet on the aristocracy’s greed being stronger than their principles, and she’d been right.
After years of her investments and advice yielding them fortunes, they’d had to grudgingly admit she was far better at making money than they were. She’d made herself implacable and indispensable among the peerage and now the same men who once had laughed at the idea of doing business with a woman sat at her table and waited...for her.
She wasn’t deluded enough to believe they respected her or that when she walked into a meeting they didn’t resent her very presence. It was avarice, but she could work with avarice. As long as they knew their place, and hers.
“Shall we go and make grown men cry, Maggie?”
Maggie’s slender back shot up like a soldier’s at the question. “Yes, Your Grace.” Tia Osiris smiled approvingly at the girl’s eager reply while Cora ran a hand over her narrow dark green tie which matched her slim skirts and bespoke jacket. All of it made by the most exclusive tailor in London. Cora loved a Worth gown and wore them occasionally, but she made sure to walk into these meetings in the same armor the men did.
“I do love that shade on you, dear,” Tia Osiris commented as Maggie handed Cora the papers she’d need to apprise her co-investors in South American Railways of her discoveries.
“Dark greenisa hunting color,” Cora retorted, eliciting a delighted laugh from her aunt.
Once she’d descended from the carriage, she looked up to find Osiris beaming down at her mischievously. “Hazlos sangrar, mi amor.”
Cora pushed herself up to receive a kiss on the forehead. “It will be a bloodbath, Tia.” Anyone walking by would witness the sweet older woman expressing her love to her niece and would never know Osiris Villanueva had just been instructing Cora to bleed the men she was about to meet dry.
“I’ll have tea ready when you return, querida.”
With a nod and a tap on the door of the carriage, Cora sent her aunt off and turned in the direction of her building’s door.
She strode in with purpose. Her feet falling on the ground in the steady, forceful gait she’d perfected for moments like this. She didn’t sway her hips femininely, she didn’t tilt her shoulders just so in order to display her attributes to admirers. She moved like the men she dealt with moved, forcing everything in their path out of the way.
For years she’d observed how the men she did business with walked. She examined their footfalls, the length of their stride. The way they favorably tilted their heads when they saw an ally, how they sneered when they crossed a foe. She’d learned to emulate that arrogance, to embody the ostentatious confidence. When the Duchess of Sundridge walked into a room, men stood up—not out of deference but out of fear, and that was exactly how she preferred it.
“We’re certain St. Michel’s information is accurate?” she asked Maggie one more time. St. Michel was a scoundrel, but he had never brought her the wrong information. If he had this time, she’d make sure to bestow upon him a very unpleasant lesson on what happened to people who lied to her.
“Yes, ma’am. Collier also heard the same.” After receiving the information from St. Michel, whose salary at the Ministry of Finance she supplemented in order to be apprised of any information she required, she’d deployed another of her less refined information gatherers who had his own ways of uncovering what she needed. “Le Tempswill run it in the evening,” Maggie confirmed just as they reached the door to the meeting room.
She handed the papers back to Maggie and gripped her walking cane in one hand. The other flew to the knot of her tie. She fingered it, slid an index finger between her neck and the suffocatingly tight starched collar of her shirt. Ran a hand over the bodice, fortified in the knowledge that there was nothing at all about her appearance they could sneer at. Her skin prickled with erratic anticipation, thinking of the ace she would carry in with her today. She made herself wait another minute, glancing down at her boots to check for any imperfections or smudges from the street. Unbidden, an image of the lush beauty haunting her thoughts appeared in her mind. God, the hungry looks she’d given Cora. Those sweet little puffs of air when she’d leaned down for a kiss. It was not the time or place for those musings, but she allowed herself a second to remember the way those plump lips had parted eagerly for her, then she snuffed it out like a candle. Those desires could never walk into this room with her.
She arched her spine and breathed in as she took hold of the doorknob, listening for any discernible words in the chatter of the men on the other side of the door. It would be a performance, as it always was.
“Gentlemen,” she said over the rustling of ten chairs sliding on her rugs at once. “No need to stand,” she offered, as she made her way to her place at the head of the oval table, aware it was a futile request. They’d all rather be shot than have her standing over them for more than a second.
She took them in as she passed by, accepting greetings and kisses on the top of her gloved hand. It was comical, the way in which they insisted on observing this gentlemanly gesture. It made her think of them as lions attempting to have tea with their would-be prey. Unfortunately for them, there were no gazelles in this room.
“Brenton.” She tipped her head in the direction of a stout man of about thirty-three who was sitting by the door. His beady gaze bitterly fixed on her tiepin. “How is your brother?” As expected, the man’s face twisted grotesquely at her inquiry. It was frivolous to provoke him, but she abhorred haughtiness and Brenton was an imperious little prick. The two brothers had inherited one of the biggest fortunes in Scotland and proceeded to squander a large portion of it in gambling hells. A few years ago they’d come to Cora with the last of if, begging her to help them make some investments to recover their losses. She’d been happy to, in exchange for their family’s traders’ box at the London Stock Exchange and Brenton’s ruby pin, which he’d loved to boast had been a gift to his family from Queen Elizabeth. Cora and Brenton loathed each other, but her counsel had restored the brothers’ fortune, and they’d proved themselves useful with their connections.
“Carroway, have you sorted that small issue I sent you a note about?” she asked, moving on to a decrepit baronet standing near the middle of the room. Thesmall issuewas granting a marriage annulment to the daughter of one of Tia Osiris’s friends. His son was a violent bastard who had terrorized the girl during their honeymoon. She’d fled the country house they’d been in at the first opportunity and had been in hiding ever since. It had taken nearly hostile convincing on Cora’s part and some very pointed reminders of how she’d helped him recover from near bankruptcy to keep them from hunting for the poor girl.
She watched the old man struggle to keep the fury from his face. When he finally spoke his tone was barely civil. “I’d prefer not discussing private family matters in public.”
“I can come to your home and discuss it with you,” she offered pleasantly. “But I become very peevish when I am forced to repeat myself.” His chin trembled at her much harsher tone. “You won’t like it if I lose my temper over this, and I promise neither will your son.” Threatening Carroway before a meeting where she’d likely need his vote later was a risk, but she had other ways to convince the old man than reminders of how she’d saved his hide with a few investments.
