Rhapsody for Two - Theresa Romain Page 0,47

meats and cheeses, eaten between their lessons. She and Sally could assemble that in another hour, and the footmen would arrange platters for the young ladies in the refectory.

There was just enough time to begin a pastry for tarts before Marianne started the slow-simmering sauces. Tarts would be more special than a simple dessert of fruit and cream, and the young ladies deserved a treat now that they were nearly done with their spring term. The early apricots Marianne had bought that morning were fine and sweet; she could make do with them. It still smarted that she’d failed to win the first strawberries of the season from a greengrocer who’d wanted to charge the earth. Not that they’d have made tarts enough for all the students, but she had a weakness for strawberries.

“Sally,” she called. “I need you to work with the apricots once you’ve stowed the bread.”

When the answer yes’m came in reply through the open door of the larder, Marianne turned to her book of receipts and looked up her favorite ingredients for a tart pastry. How much flour ought she to remove, substituting almonds? One part ground almonds to ten parts flour might do the trick, enriching the delicate flavor of the apricots with melting sweetness.

She peered into the canister where she kept the nuts, pounded to powder and ready for use. Almost empty! She cursed. It was one of Sally’s tasks to keep a good supply of pounded almonds, but if Marianne didn’t direct her, the younger woman couldn’t be expected to remember every detail of their stocks. They needed another kitchen maid to fill Sally’s old role, and soon. Mrs. Brodie’s annual Donor Dinner—Marianne couldn’t help but think of it in capital letters—was in a fortnight, after the term ended, and there was no way a single cook and assistant could prepare two formal courses and assorted desserts for one hundred people.

Well. She’d recruit the scullery maids to chop and peel if she had to, and she’d jug and stone and jar and press as much ahead of time as she could. And for today’s tarts, butter alone it would be in the pastry, and that would keep the cost of today’s meals down too. Mrs. Brodie was never mean with her kitchen staff, allowing Marianne all the budget she liked. Even so, the gentleman’s daughter who’d once spent several pounds on a single bonnet now measured out ground almonds in cautious spoonfuls and haggled to the ha’penny over the price of lettuce or fish. When it wasn’t her own money she was spending, she was more responsible with it.

Again, the face of Jack Grahame came to mind, and she wondered fleetingly if he’d felt the same about his father’s money. The money that had been needed, and that she’d had none of, and that had split them apart.

Money. Money. Money. This time, there was no dough for her to punch.

So she turned her thoughts to the tasks before her, the ones she did every day. She checked the joints slowly roasting in the ovens, confirming that the coal held out. She pulled out the ingredients for the sauces she’d make for dinner; she sifted shelled peas in her hand and approved the amount. These could be cooked shortly before the dinner service. They’d boil in a flash and be finished with fresh cream and…something else. Something surprising and flavorful. Chopped shallots maybe, fried crisp in lard and scattered like beads over the top. Yes, that would do well.

Now back to the tarts. Sally had finished with the bread, and at the other end of the long worktable, she was settled with a great pile of apricots. Clean, cleave, discard the stone, set aside. The halved fruits went into a huge bowl, piling up quickly.

“You’ve a good rhythm for that work,” Marianne told the younger woman. “Thinking of Shakespeare? Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf?”

Sally blushed. “Little Boy Blue. It’s a nice old rhyme, that. My mum taught it to me and my sisters.”

Marianne smiled as she dug her hands into the flour and butter, now coming together smoothly. “I have sisters too. Haven’t seen them in a long while, but I remember learning those old rhymes with them.”

But where is the boy who looks after the sheep?

He’s back in Lincolnshire. Do not weep…

No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t right at all.

A knock sounded then on the door to the tradesmen’s entrance. The kitchen was a few rooms away, but the servants’ quarters were quiet at the moment. The footmen were likely upstairs, while Mrs. Hobbes, the housekeeper, would be making the rounds of the students’ chambers as the maids were cleaning them. She’d a keen eye and would come down hard on any maid who hadn’t done her work well. Her husband, the old butler, had grown hard of hearing in recent years. If he were polishing silver in his pantry with the door closed, he wouldn’t hear a Catherine wheel going off two feet away.

“Are we expecting another delivery, ma’am?” Sally asked with mild curiosity.

“Of kitchen goods? Not until I do tomorrow’s shopping.” Marianne eyed her butter-covered hands, then the pile of apricots her assistant had left to split and prepare. “I’ll answer that door. Back in a moment, Sally.”

She wiped her hands on her apron and wound her way past the servants’ stairs, their hall, and the housekeeper’s room. Unfastening the door to the area, she lifted her brows, prepared to scold a lost delivery boy for interrupting her work.

But it wasn’t a delivery boy at all.

Her startled brain took a moment to understand the sight before her. The thoughts went like this:

Oh! It’s a man.

A handsome man.

He looks familiar. Does he work for the fishmonger?

No, he’s not holding fish. Strawberries! He got those strawberries I wanted of the greengrocer. Look at him holding them, juicy and red, in that little basket. Does he work for the greengrocer?

Of course not. I’d have noticed him there.

No, he looks like…like…

And then she knit all the pieces together, and her jaw dropped.

“Jack,” she said faintly. “Jack Grahame. Why are you here?”

“Marianne. I brought you strawberries,” said the man she’d loved and hoped never to see again.

When he held out the little basket, she took it, bemused. She looked from the strawberries to the face of her first lover, her only lover, dressed as fine as ever and handsome enough to be in a painting. Then back at the basket. And then she remembered that her hands were greasy from butter, her apron had a bit of everything she’d cooked today upon it, and her hair—her long dark brown hair that he’d once run his fingers through, lovingly—was sloppily confined under a cook’s cap, and her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the ovens.

Ah, hell. If one’s long-ago love showed up unexpectedly at one’s door, it ought to be at a time when one looked one’s best. But Marianne was a cook now, and a cook was what she looked like.

She lifted her chin. Closed her hands around the basket of strawberries. Did he remember she liked them, after all this time? Bright as rubies, and she’d rather have them than gemstones.

“Well. Thank you,” she said with as much dignity as she could manage. “Is that all? As you’re here, you know I’m working as a cook. And since you were always a bright fellow, you must guess I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Since you asked, I’d like to come in and speak to you. Do the strawberries win me a little of your time?” His brows were puckish, his mobile mouth always at the edge of a grin.

So he did remember. “Time enough for you to say you’re sorry for keeping away so long.” She tried not to sound as soft as she felt, but her own words betrayed her.

The humor on his face melted. He looked at her with grave gray eyes and said, “I’m not here to apologize, Marianne. But I do want your forgiveness.”

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