Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,9
again fell in step behind her, but this time he was free to admire the twitch of her skirts. If she wasn’t the housekeeper, she was likely a personal companion to the lady of the house. She had that much self-possession, and no woman her age would have been left unchaperoned by her family were she a member of the actual household.
“Have a seat,” she said, nodding at a plant table in the middle of the big kitchen. “I’ll put us together a tea tray, and you can tell me what Kit will eat.”
She was bustling around the kitchen with the particular one-handed efficiency parents of a very small child developed. The boy would be attached to her hip in a few days, or her back…
“Give me the baby.” He held up his arms and saw she was tempted to argue. “If you’re working around boiling water and hot stoves, he’s safer with me.”
She relented, handing him the baby then tucking the shawl more closely around the child. She hovered for a moment near Vim and the baby now cradled in his arms, then straightened. “If you’ll hold him, I can put together a bit more than a cup of tea.”
She took an apron down from a hook and tied it around her waist in practiced moves, which made for another piece of the puzzle of Sophie Windham: a lady’s maid would never condescend to kitchen work, though in the absence of the cook, a housekeeper might.
“Has the family closed the house up for the holidays then?” He rubbed Kit’s back, not for the child’s comfort—the little shoat was fast asleep—but for his own.
“They went down to Kent early this year and gave most of the staff leave. Higgins and Merriweather will bide over the carriage house to keep an eye on the stock, and they’ll bring up more coal from the cellar if I ask it of them. Would you like an omelet? There’s a fine cheddar in the pantry, and the spice rack is freshly stocked.”
He needed to be going, true, but negotiating the weather on an empty stomach would be foolish. “An omelet sounds wonderful, but don’t go to any trouble.”
She smiled at him as she bustled into the pantry. “I like to cook, though this is a closely guarded secret. What should I be feeding Kit?”
“Bland foods, of course. Porridge with a bit of butter and a dash of sugar, though my nurse always said honey wasn’t good for babies. Mashed potatoes with a touch of butter. Boiled vegetables, plain oatmeal.”
“What about meat?”
He cast back over more than two decades of memory. “Not yet, and not much fruit, either. Strawberries gave my youngest sister hives when she was a baby, so I wouldn’t advise them. Pudding was always very popular in the nursery.”
“If the weather weren’t so foul, I’d send one of the grooms over to fetch Nanny Fran from Westhaven’s townhouse. Do you like onions in your omelet?”
“A few.”
The kitchen was soon full of the scent of good, simple cooking. He watched as Miss Windham cut slices from a fresh loaf of bread then slipped them onto a tray for toasting. She moved with a competence that spoke of time served in the kitchen, and yet she could not possibly be the cook: if the entire household had been given leave, there was no point in the cook remaining for just two grooms.
“Where do you hail from, Mr. Charpentier?”
“Here and there. The family seat is in Kent, though I was raised at my stepfather’s holding in Cumbria. I’m a merchant by profession, trading mostly with the Americans and the Scandinavians these days.”
“I’ve never seen Cumbria, though I’m told it’s lovely.” She spoke as she worked, the epitome of domestic tranquility.
“Cumbria’s lovely in summer. Winter can be another matter altogether.”
“Will you be with family for the holidays?”
He was distracted momentarily from answering by the picture she made standing at the stove, watching the omelet cook as she occasionally peeked at the toast and also assembled the accoutrements of a tea tray.
Why wasn’t she with family? He barely knew the woman, but seeing her here, cooking for him, making him feel welcome with small talk and chatter while the snow came down in torrents outside, he felt a stab of something… poignant, sentimental.
Something lonely?
“I’ll be with my uncle and his family. I have half siblings, but my sisters have seen fit to get married recently, and one doesn’t want to impose on the newlyweds.”