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His gaze swept the hothouse—and located the door. No, please, not this way, not discovered because he wanted to see the slutty cook.

He stared at her again. What could he see of her? The hem of her dress? The frill of her apron? The tip of her fingers hooked over the trellis to keep herself steady? And why, for God’s sake, did he want anything of Bertie’s cook?

His hand lifted. He took a hard drag of the cigarette. When he expelled the smoke, it was from between his teeth. He threw down what remained of the cigarette and ground his heel over it, a gesture that was almost as agitated as the beat of her heart.

His eyes remained on the ground for a few seconds. When he lifted his head again, the glance that came her way was shuttered, like shop windows after a riot. And then he was gone.

Why had she hidden herself from him?

He could think of a variety of reasons, none of which made any sense, except perhaps she really was as ugly as the bottom of her favorite sauté pan and skittish about strangers. But it really didn’t matter why she’d acted the way she had. Why had
he
come all this way in the hope of seeing her?

He had not meandered into the vicinity of the hothouse by accident. She’d been on his mind ever since the end of the funeral, when he’d realized with a lurch, outside the church, that the weeping female servant he’d passed on his way out—even with the handkerchief pressed to her face he’d seen the sheen of tears on her cheek—had been none other than Madame Durant herself.

She’d worn a white cap and a black dress, a uniform nearly identical to those of the other servants. Yet there had been something different about her: in the placement of her shoulders, the gloves she’d worn.

He’d have gone into the hothouse. As they’d faced each other on two sides of the cucumber trellis, he’d felt an overwhelming stirring of excitement. It was only what he’d wanted that had stopped him cold.

He’d wanted to touch her. To pin her against the trellis with his body, the smell of crushed green leaves in his nostrils. To hold her face and examine her features, to see what had seduced his brother, and what, sight unseen, had disturbed his thoughts and his hours of repose.

There in the humid warmth of the hothouse, shielded from prying eyes by climbing cucumbers and ripening tomatoes, he would have run his fingers along her jaw, over her lips. He would have wanted to insert his thumb into her mouth, to see if the inside of it was as succulent as the scallops she’d served the night before.

And then he would have wanted to taste her. Would she taste warm and sweet like the crème anglaise in which she’d floated isles of
blanc et neige
? Cool and subtle like the champagne jelly he’d had for luncheon? Or would she taste like chocolate, to someone who’d never known the mystery and guile of the aphrodisiac of the Aztecs?

He’d overlooked his desire for Madame Durant the first time, because she’d been a mere proxy, a vehicle for him to think of
her.
This time he had no such excuse. He had not been thinking of Cinderella, but only of the woman behind the trellis, the one whose food had unleashed beastly things in him, the toe of whose lavishly polished black boot fascinated him because it had been an unexpectedly soigné touch in an otherwise humble ensemble.

He reminded himself that such lust had no place in his life. He was to be married in two months. And even if he had no fiancée, and no plans for marriage at all, fraternization with the cook would still have broken every principle he had for himself. He had not forgotten where he’d come from, or the harshness of life that had befallen his mother because his father had felt free to indulge himself with a social inferior.

He’d nearly reached the house when Lizzy came out, already in her traveling dress.

She smiled. “Oh, good, you are here. Now we can finally have our tea.”

Tea came almost as soon as he’d sat down in the drawing room. And with tea came plates of small, golden tea cakes in the shape of shells. Even from across the drawing room, Stuart smelled them—the same smell from Bertie’s handkerchief, he realized instantly, but in full force, as if he’d been hearing a faint strain of music in his mind, only to suddenly encounter it in all its symphonic splendor.

The odor went straight to his head, resurrecting more long-dead memories—sun, warmth, laughter that rang clear under blue skies, he and Bertie swimming in the trout stream, Bertie sketching under a tree while he sat up in the tree, reading the latest copy of Bertie’s
Boy’s World
magazine.

“Ah, madeleines,” said Marsden. “My favorite.”

“Were they also my brother’s favorite?” Stuart asked the second footman.

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. I’ve been here eight years and this is the first time I’ve served these.”

“Hmm,” Marsden sighed. “My compliments to Mrs. Boyce, all the same.”

“These didn’t come from the stillroom, sir,” said the footman. “They came from the kitchen.”

Stuart already knew. Only Madame Durant’s cooking had such power. And they
had
been Bertie’s favorite, and had meant for him something beyond a combination of common kitchen ingredients. Had evoked a lost era, a better time.

Stuart thought of the boys in the photograph, their hands held tight. Seven years later they would despise each other. For the next twenty years they would communicate only through intermediaries, sustaining the hostilities as if the bonds of brotherhood had never meant a thing.

And now Bertie was dead. Too late for weddings, births of children, or sheer old age to bring them together, the overheated spite of yesteryear forgotten in the bright joy of the occasion, or simply because too many years had passed and they could no longer remember their trespasses against each other.

He wanted to tell someone about them, about the boys in a garden that no longer existed, the brothers who had discussed death and life on an old stone bridge, the sibling who was going to name a rose after him—and he could only think of one person who might understand the intensity and ambivalence of his sentiments.

He’d wondered why she’d wept at Bertie’s funeral. Bertie had made no provisions for her in his will. He hadn’t even ever set her up properly as a mistress—she’d worked for him all throughout their affair. Perhaps they too had ended their association on a bitter note. And only now could she recall him without lingering resentment distorting her memories.

He needed that, needed the past she and Bertie had shared, their long, complicated history an echo of his own twisted chronicle with Bertie.

But he’d just walked away from her, the soles of his feet tingling as if he’d stepped back from the edge of a precipice.

He left his seat and went to the window that overlooked the gravel drive leading away from the house. It came down to a question of potency. What did he want more, to put Bertie’s ghost to rest or to avoid Madame Durant?

It seemed almost a rhetorical question. Of course Bertie was more important. Yet he hesitated for another full minute. He would need to conduct himself with excruciating care. And watch every thought and impulse. And not let his guard down.

And never trust himself.

Verity watched the carriages depart, the brougham carrying the master of the house, his guests, and his secretary, the wagonette with the one maid and two valets that had accompanied them on their visit. Her gaze followed the brougham until it was entirely obscured by the trees that grew most thoughtlessly along the drive.

And they did not live happily ever after.

The end.

It was all expected, all run-to-course, all predetermined even. And yet it was a furious pain unfurling, its dark tentacles strangling her heart.

The end.

She closed her eyes.

The knocks on her door she ignored. The kitchen could do without her for a few minutes. She didn’t know how much time passed before she turned around and saw the note that had been slipped under her door.

Dear Madame,

 

I require your presence in London.

Your servant,
Stuart Somerset

She read the brief message three times before she understood it. Then the words burned.

Why did he want her in London? To gratify those curtailed desires that had been writ plain on his face? To have her someplace private so that he wouldn’t be deterred by the fear of exposure should he want to explore his improper curiosity again?

It went against everything she knew of him. But what other reason could there be for the summons to come so abruptly, almost immediately after their near-encounter in the greenhouse, when it had been decided well in advance that no servant from Fairleigh Park was to follow him to London until after the New Year?

Well, she wouldn’t go. She was a servant, not a slave. She was free to leave his employ at any time.

She sat down at her desk and began her resignation letter.

Chapter Nine

July 1882

S
tuart could not believe what he was doing, nor the vehemence with which he did it. He all but ravaged her mouth, unable to stop himself for fear that she would stop him first.