Delicious (35 page)

Her lips curved in pleasure. She became bolder. “And the dinner tonight, sir, did it go well also?”

She heard a low chuckle. “Yes, it went very well. My guests were speechless with wonder. In fact, Miss Bessler requests that they not be made quite so speechless in the future. She likes a bit of intelligent conversation to go with her dinner.”

Her smile died. Frightful how easy it was for her to forget that he was pledged to another. When they were alone, the world seemed to begin and end with the two of them.

“I will see what I can do,” she said carefully.

“Thank you,” he said.

There was a byzantine pause, then he took a deep breath. “I asked you to come tonight because I wanted you to know that I’ve invited Michael Robbins to London. I expect him to arrive Saturday in time for dinner. We’ll dine at home.”

“Michael?” she blinked. “Michael will be here?”

“For a day or so, yes.”

“I didn’t know you knew him.”

“We met while we were both at Fairleigh Park for Bertie’s funeral.”

“I see,” she said. Michael had said nothing of it.

“There was a photograph of him in your room. I hope you’ll be pleased to see him.”

“You invited him…for me?”

“In my letter to him I told him that I’m considering assuming my late brother’s role as his sponsor and would like to know him better,” he said. “But yes, it was for you.”

“Thank you,” she said, half-stunned. “It’s been a long time since anyone has taken so much trouble on my behalf.”

“I want to do more for you. I want to lay the world at your feet.”

Her heart pounded.
Turn around,
she wanted to say.
Turn around.
Instead, she was the one who couldn’t bear the intensity of her emotions. She turned her back to him, afraid she would do something irredeemably stupid.

On the shelves before her was the frame that had held the photograph of the Somerset brothers. But
that
photograph was no longer there. It had been replaced by another, also an old photograph, of two young boys gazing solemnly at the camera. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the boys’ clasped hands, a gesture of such trust and solidarity that the passage of time had only amplified, not lessened, its power and intensity. And so it took her a long moment to realize that the boys in the frame were none other than the Somerset brothers.

An almost intolerable joy pierced her. If ever she sought a sign of forgiveness and renewal—it was here, right before her eyes. There was hope for them. There was.

“Why don’t you, then?” she said. “Lay the world at my feet, that is.”

It had started to rain, wet threads that glinted a dull, ephemeral ocher in the light of a distant street lamp. A clarence rolled past, the coachman hunched under his coat. Rain streaked over the day’s deposit of soot on the windowpanes, a watery distortion of Stuart’s view.

The force of her hope was a knife in his chest. After all that had happened with Bertie, how could she still be so naïve, so unabashedly, heedlessly optimistic? And yet he wanted to hold on to her hope and carry it next to his heart. He wanted to do as she asked, and offer her everything that he’d waited so long to give.

“Michael departs Sunday afternoon. You will leave London no later than Monday morning,” he said. “You may take what time you need to collect and transfer your belongings from Fairleigh Park. But I expect you to have vacated your post before the end of the year.”

The dead silence burned. He stared empty-eyed at the rain.
Remember this.
This was what happened when he chose to indulge himself at her expense. It was she who lost her position, her home, and her hard-won proximity to her son.

He forced himself to continue. “I understand you have been asked to contribute the wedding breakfast and the wedding cake. I will make your excuses to Miss Bessler.”

“You are disgusted with me,” she said, her voice pale, disembodied.

He shook his head. “No, I am in love with you. And it is wrong.”

“It is not.”

“It is. And you know it is. Were you Miss Bessler, would you tolerate it?”

“Were I Miss Bessler, I’d prefer a husband who isn’t in love with someone else.”

He sighed, his heart bound and shackled. “Miss Bessler and I have made a commitment to each other, a commitment that I cannot break without severe repercussions. But beyond that, we are also friends of long standing. And I will not hurt her to please myself.”

She said nothing.

“I’m sorry.” He had no defense against the accusations of his own conscience. “I will assume responsibility for Michael’s education. I will provide opportunities for advancement when he is finished with university. I will—”

“No, thank you,” she said quietly. “That will not be necessary.”

“Let me help, please.”

“You don’t owe me anything. There were two of us in this delusion. You did nothing to me without my eager consent. I’m only sorry that—” She took a long breath. “No, I’m not sorry for anything. Such is love. And such is what happens to a cook who wants too much.”

He turned around. But she had her back to him, her fingers clutched tight around the photograph of himself and Bertie. She seemed very small, her head bent, her shoulders heavy, her neck so vulnerable he could barely stop himself from taking her in his arms.

“I’m sorry, Verity.”

“As am I,” she said. She let go of the photograph and wiped her hand across her face. “Good-bye, Stuart.”

Chapter Eighteen

O
n Saturday evening, after she finished cooking dinner, Verity carried a kettle of water up to the attic. She already had a tea service set out on her desk, and a tiered cake stand that she’d borrowed from Mrs. Abercromby. She stoked the fire and set the kettle to heat. Then she lifted the cloth she’d draped over the cake stand, to fuss some more with the display.

On the bottom tier were rectangles of mille-feuilles and rounds of bite-sized walnut tartlets. The next tier held chocolate-robed macaroons and small cream puffs. And at the very top, instead of the usual madeleines, she had a miniature quartet of boat-shaped coffee tarts.

It was a very pretty array, if she said so herself. She wondered if Michael would perceive it as a transparent effort on her part to cook her way into his heart again. On any other day he would have been right. But not today. Today she’d made one thing after another to keep herself in the kitchen—because when she was in the kitchen, she could clear her head and focus only on the task before her.

It was a dangerous panacea. To forget for a while her ruined heart was to shatter it anew each time she remembered. And each time she remembered, the pain was such that she scrambled for a way to get back into the kitchen, to cook something, anything, to forget it again, even if only for a few minutes, a quarter of an hour.

The water boiled. She made a cup of tea for herself. She hoped Michael came soon, or he would find her crying into her tea towel.

Such is love. And such is what happens to a cook who wants too much.
Brave, serene, wise words, when she was anything but. She alternated between a longing to do Stuart bodily harm and an equally fierce desire to kidnap him and run off to some unknown country where they would never be found.

Her things she’d already packed. It was, she supposed, the best way to break the news to Michael. She wished she knew how he would react—he was unpredictable these days. She hoped for warmth and closeness, but she would settle for anything that wasn’t undiluted apathy.

Footsteps in the corridor. She was at the door before she could tell herself to remain calm and wait inside. But it was only Mrs. Abercromby, a tallow in hand, yawning.

“Mrs. Abercromby, you are retiring for the night?” she said, as she was already standing outside her room.

“Yes, Madame.”

“Mr. Somerset and the young man have retired too?”

“No, they have gone out—the young man said he wished to see London at night. Mr. Somerset told me and Mr. Durbin not to wait for them.”

Gone out. Michael had
gone out.
But she’d made all his favorites. And he must know that she’d made all his favorites and would wait for him.

She bid good night to Mrs. Abercromby, returned to her room, and closed the door behind her. She supposed she should have known better. He was sixteen, not six, and petits fours and her company were no match against what London’s nightlife had to offer.

She sat down and stared at the cake stand. Now she’d have to eat everything by herself. The first streaks of inevitable tears tumbled down her face. She reached for a coffee tart.

Sometime in the middle of the night she opened her eyes. She’d heard a noise. But she closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep.

She didn’t know how much more time passed before she bolted upright in her bed. She stuffed her feet into her house slippers and grabbed the robe she always kept by her side. In the dark she fumbled for a match to light her lantern.

The door to the room shared by Becky and Marjorie was wide open. Becky Porter was curled tight, cold from the draft despite her layers of blankets. She mumbled and shielded her eyes against the intrusion of light. The other cot in the room was empty.

“Is it morning, Madame?” Becky asked sleepily.

“Go back to sleep,” said Verity. There was no need for both of them to look for Marjorie; at least, not until she was sure Marjorie had left the house.

At irregular intervals—sometimes days in a row, sometimes not for weeks or even months—the maids who shared Marjorie’s room at Fairleigh Park would find mud or grass stains on the hem of Marjorie’s nightgown. As Marjorie rarely injured herself, and seemed no worse for wear the next day, no one paid her sleepwalking much attention.

But in London Marjorie could disappear and never find her way back. It had been a worry at the back of Verity’s mind. But she had refrained from locking Marjorie’s door from the outside at night, for fear that the girl, thwarted, might open the window and leave that way instead.

She’d been told that sleepwalkers tended to do the same thing in their sleep as they did during the day. She quite doubted the accuracy of that—Marjorie’s days at Fairleigh Park did not allow for leisurely strolls through the grounds, which seemed to be all she ever did in her night episodes—but in this instance, she hoped Dr. Sergeant was right.