Delicious (4 page)

“That is not what I am, therefore I am deeply offended.” Her voice rose, as brittle and bitter as burnt caramel. “And I fail to understand why
you
would still want anything to do with me, as apparently I’m such repellent dross!”

At last their eyes met, but the only emotion she discerned in his was a profound irritation. “Fine. Enjoy your umbrage. But refrain from impugning my character. It was never the beauty of your soul that interested me and you know it.”

Sometimes, when I savor your dinners, it’s more than food. I luxuriate in the beauty of your soul, the sweet mystery and refulgence of it, like an antechamber of Heaven.

Lies. All lies. And she’d believed them.

She forced her tears to remain where they were, welled in her eyes, and bobbed a curtsy—after their first night together, he’d told her she need not curtsy to him anymore. “Good night, Mr. Somerset.”

She would never call him Bertie again as long as he lived.

Chapter Four

November 1892

T
he day was fading. The carriage, chiming softly, pulled into view. Bumbry, the coachman, had spent the past three days polishing tack, button, and handle. In the wash of lamplight and candlelight through windows freshly scrubbed with ammonia and spirit of wine, the brougham shone as if it were made of jet and onyx.

Verity watched from the solarium. Her father had had a carriage like that, a gorgeous brute the size of an omnibus. By the time she arrived at Fairleigh Park, she’d had quite enough of poverty and backbreaking work. She’d wanted to ride in a fancy carriage again, wear beautiful clothes, and sleep on a stack of feather mattresses higher than she was tall.

At times she wondered how much she’d loved Bertie for himself, and how much because he represented everything she’d lost. But it was not a question that troubled her exceedingly. Would the story of Elizabeth Bennet be half so triumphant and beloved had Mr. Darcy been a mere yeoman farmer? She thought not.

Bertie, like Mr. Darcy, had had ten thousand pounds a year. The Somersets had been a distinguished family since the Hundred Years War—the estate had been granted to an ancestor by royal decree in 1398 for valor in battle. Since then, though no Somerset descendant had as of yet been raised to the peerage, numerous sons had been knighted for service to the crown in war and in peace, the latest being Sir Francis, Bertie’s father.

The manor at Fairleigh Park, rebuilt early in the previous century, was one of the finest Robert Adam houses in the land. The gardens, nestled in a crook of the river Ure and nurtured by generations of horticulture enthusiasts, were forty acres of color and idyll, beautiful in every season.

Bumbry reined the team of four to a full stop. Geoffrey and Dickie leapt off their perches at the back of the carriage. Her hand tightened on the curtain that concealed her.

Except for Mrs. Boyce and Mr. Prior, who awaited the new master outside, on the lowest of the wide steps leading up to the front door, most of the other servants had assembled in the entrance hall, under the high blue-and-white ceiling that had always reminded her of exquisite jasperware.

Verity would not join them.

It was not a decision she’d made lightly. She’d thought of little else for days. What did it mean that their lives should intersect again, so long removed from the one night that had set her sky aflame like a rare comet? That he should arrive here one day—the lord of the manor, the prince of the castle—was Fate trying to tell her something? That perhaps it wasn’t yet too late, that it was still possible for their broken fairy tale to be made whole?

But fairy tales concerned only virtuous, blameless girls, girls as pure in body and soul as they were beautiful. There were no fairy tales for willful women of impaired judgment who’d brought about their own disgrace and heartache.

The footman pulled down the steps and opened the carriage door. Her heart seized. He’d had eyes dark as the hours before dawn, beautiful cheekbones, and a surprisingly, almost shockingly intimate smile. And he’d wanted her with the force of cyclones and maelstroms—God, how he’d destroyed her resistance.

He alit from the carriage now, all hat and dark, flying cape. She held her breath. He lifted his gaze to encompass the manor that was now his.

She stumbled back from the window, leaned against the nearest wall, and pressed a hand over her chest. Something was wrong. She was supposed to look upon him with no more than a bittersweet wistfulness. Not this shortness of breath or this frantic rush of blood in her ears, like a swollen spring river that had finally broken through the winter ice.

Not when she’d already made up her mind to leave, very soon, perhaps as soon as Bertie’s funeral.

She only wanted time enough to give him a gift, a gift that had been in the making—she realized just now—since the hour she first left him, her battered valise in hand, a piece of the cake he’d brought her in her pocket.

Stuart had made only one request to the staff, that they leave Bertie’s apartment and belongings undisturbed. For all his otherwise indifference, he found himself somewhat curious for a glimpse into Bertie’s final days.

The master’s bedchamber, like most of the rest of the house, reflected the vibrancy and sensuality of a different era. The walls were a mellow gold, the ceiling an aged champagne on which had been painted a mural of bucolic charm reminiscent of Watteau’s
fêtes galantes.

Stuart opened a wardrobe. Bertie’s clothes. Dozens of shirts, waistcoats and under-waistcoats, drawers full of neck clothes and handkerchiefs—everything in its place.

He pulled out a day coat. It was not for a heavyset man: Bertie had not thickened excessively despite his love of good food.

Mrs. Boyce hovered in the doorway to the bedchamber. Stuart realized the housekeeper was waiting to be addressed. “Yes, Mrs. Boyce?”

“Should we make room in the wardrobe for your clothes, sir?”

“No need.” He would stay only three days on this trip and had brought very few things. “You may see to it before my next visit.”

“And that would be, sir…”

“In January,” said Stuart. He would have planned for a house party had he known he’d have Fairleigh Park before Christmas. But as such, he’d already accepted a yuletide invitation to Lyndhurst Hall.

And his life and his career were in London. After the wedding he’d let Lizzy manage Fairleigh Park and make use of it as she saw fit: She was good at such things. “You may return to your duties, Mrs. Boyce. I’m quite settled.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Boyce, a largish woman with the features of a farmer’s wife but the pale, un-lined skin of someone who’d spent her entire life indoors. “Dinner is at half past seven, sir. We keep country hours here.”

“Half past seven?” Before they’d come up to Bertie’s apartment, Mrs. Boyce had offered Stuart tea, and he, thirsty and somewhat hungry, had accepted. There’d been scones and biscuits from the housekeeper’s still room and he’d eaten his fill. “No. Have it served at nine.”

Mrs. Boyce blinked. “But, sir, if you started only at nine, you would be at the table ’til eleven.”

“No, I assure you I’ll have finished in half an hour, if not less.”

Mrs. Boyce blinked again. “You’ll finish twelve courses in half an hour, sir?”

Twelve courses? What in the world? “Did my brother have twelve-course dinners every day?”

“No, only eight, sir. But we thought, since this is your first dinner at Fairleigh Park—”

“Three courses will quite suffice.” Bertie might have been mad for his dinners, but Stuart paid little mind to food, if at all.

“But the menu is already set, sir,” said Mrs. Boyce, with an air of desperation. “Perhaps you would like to see it?”

“No, I will not need to see it. Inform the cook: no more than three courses.”

For a moment, Mrs. Boyce looked as if he’d condemned her to wrestle crocodiles on the banks of the Nile. Then she acquiesced. “Very good, sir.”

After Mrs. Boyce left, Stuart closed the wardrobe door and went to the bed. On which side had Bertie slept? He tried the night table to the left of the bedstead. It held two books of philosophy—both by Epicurus, of course—and a few drams of laudanum.

Bertie had never kept a diary, as far as Stuart knew. So the books and the laudanum would be as intimate a look at Bertie’s private life as Stuart was allowed. But all the same, he circumnavigated the bed and pulled open the drawers of the other night table.

Those drawers yielded only a folded handkerchief identical to the score of others in the wardrobe. Not exactly a revealing personal item. Stuart shook the handkerchief open.

It wasn’t clean, nor was it soiled, but there were irregular translucent spots where the fabric had absorbed some sort of grease. Butter, by the faint smell of it. Stuart lifted the handkerchief to his nose.

Butter and a trace of the pungency of lemon, mellowed by the sweetness of sugar. He examined the handkerchief again. Good, white linen, Bertie’s initials in one corner. Bertie had used it to wrap around a piece of cake or pastry. Afterward, he’d folded the handkerchief into a precise square and placed it in the farthest corner of the nightstand, its edges exactly flush with those of the drawer.

Had Bertie kept it for the smell? Stuart sniffed the handkerchief again. An ordinary enough smell. What had it been? A slice of lemon pound cake? He could think of nothing interesting, memorable, or important about the smell of lemon pound cake.

He inhaled deeply, trying to extract some hidden essence from the smell. It remained faint. Yet with every breath he took, the scent grew subtler and lovelier. And suddenly it was the sparkling odor of warm southern climes where lemon trees flourished under cobalt skies.

Stuart lowered the handkerchief, amazed almost as much by the intricacy of the scent as by his imaginative reaction. It was only pound cake, and he didn’t even care for pound cake. Yet as he put the fabric to his nose again and closed his eyes, he could very well believe himself in the gardens of a Mediterranean villa, surrounded by potted lemon trees laden with fruit the color of sunshine.

Had Bertie been still alive, he’d be able to tell Stuart why he’d kept the handkerchief, and what it had been that had left behind the alluring, evocative odor.

But Bertie was dead.

Stuart dropped the handkerchief back and closed the drawer.