The Way to a Gentleman's Heart - Theresa Romain Page 0,8

down his arms from the damned basket. Why had she had to get every spice in the world, and the bigger the container, the better?

“You’ve been picking heavy things on purpose,” he grumbled to Marianne, blithely unburdened at his side.

Beneath the brim of her bonnet, her eyes squeezed with amusement. “Why, Jack, are you telling me that basket is too much for you?”

“No,” he lied, pride stung. “Only, I don’t understand why you couldn’t have these things sent to the academy along with the other food.”

“Because you’re here to carry them. And what a fine kitchenmaid you are.” Under straight dark brows, her eyes were large and full of humor.

“Ha,” he said flatly, settling the heavy affair of wicker more firmly in the crook of his elbow.

Any landowner worth the name had been up with the animals at some time, had got his hands dirty in every field at one time or another. But dawn on Jack’s rolling, quiet lands up north had left him wholly unprepared for an early morning in London’s bustling food markets. Every street was a jostling wall of people, the cries of hawkers mixing with the ding of shop bells and the babble of customers and food sellers. The sun was pale in a spring-morning sky, but already Jack was hot, and he was gritty-eyed from little sleep and wondering how the devil Marianne could move through these crowds all the time.

“You really do this every day?”

“Not every day.” She smiled. “Sometimes I make a list and send a footman. When I had an assistant and a proper kitchenmaid, I could send one of them.”

“You imply that I’m not a proper kitchenmaid.” He feigned distress. “So hurtful.”

“But accurate. If you knew your ingredients, you’d never have suggested that huge sugarloaf.”

“It’s a large academy. We need a lot of sugar.”

“Yes, but the larger loaves of sugar are from the later boilings. They don’t cook or bake nearly so nicely as the first or second.”

“Sugar...boils?” Surely she was speaking some sort of foreign language only cooks understood. “But it’s solid.”

She laughed. “Give me those two weeks, and you’ll learn right enough how sugar boils. And gets made.”

He eyed the basket into which several of the small, and apparently better, cone-shaped sugarloaves were nestled alongside expensive vanilla pods, fragrant cinnamon, and God only knew what else. “Fine, as long as I don’t have to shop with this cursed basket all the time.”

“Just this once, to give you the experience.” She slipped a hand onto his unladen arm. “Ah, here’s the greengrocer. Isn’t this nice? Getting out of the kitchen and into the city? Really, though it throws the day into a flurry, I enjoy the shopping. Picking out all the best for the young ladies and the teachers, keeping them fed and happy with the food I make. It’s part of their learning. Part of helping them become...whatever they’re going to become.”

He eyed her with some surprise. “What sort of academy is this, that you feed them so well and care so much?”

She looked embarrassed then, turning her gaze to the lettuces and becoming brisk. “Well. Everyone needs to eat, and it’s my job to feed them. Good morning, Mr. Haviland!” She greeted the greengrocer, a stocky, beetle-browed man with a pleasant smile and the cutthroat negotiating ability of a pirate. Jack had encountered this fellow the day before when he’d bought strawberries, little knowing he’d soon be back for more produce as an employee of the academy.

Informally. Voluntarily.

And, despite his present physical discomforts, not at all unhappily.

Marianne was engaging in a spirited and fluent battle of prices with Haviland, finally shaking her head. “No, the lettuce is simply too dear. We’ll make do with—what could I cook?” She ticked on her fingers, thinking. “I’ll have the cabbages.”

Ugh. Cabbages. No. “Allow me to make up the difference, Marianne,” Jack offered. “Look—I know this man. I bought strawberries from him yesterday.” Haviland was beaming, remembering, probably, what an easy mark Jack had been. He couldn’t deny it. He’d got used to having money and to using it to save trouble.

Marianne looked at Jack repressively.

Oh. His informality. “Mrs. Redfern,” he corrected. “Ma’am.”

Again, she shook her head. “No, don’t buy the lettuce at that price. It’s not that I can’t spend more of Mrs. Brodie’s money if I wish. The headmistress allows me free rein. But if I spend too much, I don’t enjoy working with the ingredients. If the cost is too dear, all the joy is gone.”

She turned back