Free The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin

assessment of Lulworth’s plumbing.
    But even Mrs Cash could not fault the magnificent matching pair of footmen who handed her out of her carriage. The Lulworth livery of green and gold was certainly elegant, she had never seen shoulder tassels of such splendour. She would have smiled with appreciation, if it hadn’t been so painful. She had to husband her smiles for more important occasions. Perhaps the Duke might give her the name of his livery maker.
    A voice murmured in her ear, ‘Welcome to Lulworth, Madam. His Grace has asked me to take you to see Miss Cash and then he hopes you will join him for lunch.’ She followed the butler up the stone steps through the great arched door into a vaulted hall with a carved stone chimney piece at one end. The blackened oak of the roof timbers was not to Mrs Cash’s taste, she preferred her wood gilded, but she felt its weight.
    ‘If you would like to come this way, Madam.’
    Mrs Cash followed the servant up a wide wooden staircase lit by a glass lantern roof. There were fantastical beasts on the newel posts: gryphons, salamanders and lions. Mrs Cash admired the carvings but noticed that they had not been carefully dusted. At length they reached a wide gallery and the servant turned left and proceeded until he reached a door about halfway down.
    Cora was lying in an immense wooden bed hung with green damask with carved angels at each corner. She looked pale and, to Mrs Cash’s irritation, rather plain. Much of Cora’s charm lay in the vividness of her colouring: the bright chestnut curls, mossy green eyes and rosy skin. Lying there with dark circles under her eyes and with her hair limp and unkempt against the snowy mounds of linen, she did not look at all like the belle of Newport. Mrs Cash, for the first time since her daughter’s accident, began to worry about the extent of her injuries. She hoped that her daughter had not been, in some way, damaged.
    ‘Hello, Mother.’ Cora smiled.
    ‘Cora, I am so relieved to see you.’ Mrs Cash bent over to kiss her daughter’s cheek and stayed there for a moment before sitting down on the bed, making sure that her daughter had her right side and saying, ‘What an unbecoming nightgown, it makes you look quite sallow.’
    Cora’s smile vanished. ‘It belongs to the Duke’s mother.’ She started to play with one of her limp ringlets. ‘Mother, did you bring Bertha with you?’
    ‘You would think that a duchess, a duchess twice over, would be ashamed to wear something so shabby. The cheapest kind of cotton and not a scrap of lace. I wouldn’t even give this to my maid.’ Mrs Cash pinched the cuff of fabric round her daughter’s wrist. Cora pulled her hand away.
    ‘Mother, did you bring Bertha?’
    Mrs Cash was looking at the canopy above the bed. She lowered her head slowly and met her daughter’s gaze. ‘Bertha is following in the Bridport governess cart. You surely didn’t expect her to travel with me.’
    Cora sighed, and lay back against her pillows. She had found it difficult to sleep last night in this strange house that creaked and shivered in the dark, prey to fears she could not give shape or name to. The doctor had said she might feel some light-headedness for a few days, but had said nothing about hallucinations. But the irritation and annoyance that pecked at her the moment her mother began to talk was reassuring. Her mother was real enough. This part of her mind, at least, was unharmed.
    Mrs Cash was wandering through the room on a tour of inspection. She turned to Cora. ‘These English houses are so haphazard. There is no planning, nothing matches. I could do so much with this house.’ Mrs Cash paused and narrowed her eyes a little as if mentally remodelling their surroundings. Those casement windows with leaded frames – so antiquated and dismal. The English had lived in their houses so long that they no longer noticed them. It took a New World eye like hers to see them as they really were. The