Delicious (22 page)

“I’ve thought about it,” he said.

“And?”

He looked at her for the first time since they sat down. “And I’ve produced some sketches.”

She raised a brow. “Indeed?”

He dug into the document case he’d brought with him, pulled out a portfolio, and handed it to her with no more care than he’d have passed along a week-old newspaper. “They were a pleasant diversion,” he said.

Inside the portfolio were a dozen or so drawings, mostly done in pencil, a few in watercolor. The first was of the front steps of a church. Small topiary trees trimmed to perfect spheres graced the ends of each step; the ribbons tied to their slender trunks fluttering prettily in the breeze. The next drawing depicted pews of a church, as viewed from the nave. A gauzy fabric—tulle or organza—had been gathered into a long garland that draped from pew to pew, pinned with bouquets of cool white gardenias.

The church took up two more drawings. Then came several sheets of smaller images, three or four to a sheet—details on a wreath that would hang over the church door, engraving on a silver cake knife, a boutonniere of lily of the valley blossoms laid against a feathery leaf of fern. Then two views of the bridal carriage and, to finish off the collection, an arch of flowers set behind the head table at the wedding breakfast.

The drawings were exquisite. She blinked and shuffled through them again. No, alas, her eyes had not played a trick on her. “They are—they are beautiful,” she was forced to admit.

She thought she sensed an easing of tension in him—but was that her imagination? Had he been tense at all? Was it even possible that he of all people would wait with bated breath to see whether she approved of his efforts?

“Keep them if you’d like,” he said, nothing but politeness in his voice. “The wedding is yours.”

“Thank you,” she said. Then, with more reluctance, “You’ve gone quite above and beyond the call of duty.”

He rose. “It was a tremendous honor for Mr. Somerset to entrust the planning of his wedding to me. I’ve every intention of making it one that will be remembered for years to come.”

There was something strange to his expression. A random thought flicked through her mind and quite stupefied her. Could Mr. Marsden be in love with Stuart? Could that be the reason behind his dislike of her?

She’d been waiting for their consultation to finish before bringing up the matter of Mr. Marsden’s past scandal. But now she was too astonished to do anything but rise and shake his hand as he took his leave of her.

When Mr. Marsden was gone, she sat down and reexamined the drawings. She wasn’t always in agreement with his choices of colors and flowers, but she was continually charmed by his use of familiar elements to conjure something fresh and original.

The designs would have taken hours, many hours. It had been only a few days ago that Stuart had officially assigned Mr. Marsden to help her. He would have had to work deep into the night to draft, alter, then finalize the details. Had he done it for the love of his employer?

It would have been a greater love than she’d ever known.

She dismissed the thought. She was already too fortunate; she did not deserve to want more. The solid affection she shared with Stuart would only deepen with the passage of time. Their marriage would be the envy of many.

The drawing of the wedding breakfast still remained in her hand. She set it down. Something caught her eye. Her thumb had covered an orange-blossom wreath placed at an odd angle. For a moment she thought it a whimsy, floating tilted above the wedding party’s table. Then she saw that, no, it didn’t float, but rested atop a filmy heap of bridal veil.

She went to the window for better light. The veil was translucent against the more opaque white of the tablecloth. And unlike other parts of the drawing, it had no faint pencil outline underneath, as if Mr. Marsden had painted it on impulse. And yet, near-invisible as the veil was, he’d done it in exquisite detail. There were diaphanous lumps and creases in the carelessly crumpled veil. Two orange blossoms had been caught underneath a sheer fold. And one corner of the veil had fallen over the edge of the table, casting a transparent shadow against the tablecloth.

It was a piece of art in and of itself, this trifle of an unnecessary detail. She shook her head. Why had he bothered? Why had he taken the better part of a day—a night—to produce something so delicately beautiful and so easily overlooked?

And it certainly did not seem to be what one’d paint when one’s heart was breaking for the want of the groom. No, she’d have said that it had been painted out of an intense longing for the bride.

For her, Lizzy, who didn’t know what to think anymore.

Verity had been puzzled by the small size of the staff at 26 Cambury Lane. She’d thought it was because there was no mistress—no need to finish all the work by noon to impress the house’s orderliness and cleanliness upon the callers who began arriving soon after luncheon. Then Mrs. Abercromby explained to her the significance of the boiler room: central heating.

Except for the attic and the basement, the house was heated by a system of hot-water radiators. No climbing up and down the staircase with heavy baskets of coal all day long to replenish the coal shuttles in the abovestairs rooms. No sweeping out a dozen fireplaces and relighting as many fires every morning. No coal dust and cinders getting everywhere despite one’s best efforts otherwise.

Furthermore, as Mavis informed a fascinated Becky, the boiler also served as a conduit of hot water to Mr. Somerset’s plumbed bath.

“No haulin’ water up or down—they rigged some-fink fancy when they done the heat. The water’s fast up there. I tell you, Becky, it’s the grandest tub in London. You can make tea for an army in it.”

Becky sighed. “I’d like to soak in a tub like that once in me life.”

“I think ’bout it every time I clean it. But I know the missus will catch me at it,” said Mavis, referring to the housekeeper. She lowered her voice. “Or worse, the master!”

Mavis and Becky both giggled. Marjorie, elbow deep in dishes, remained oblivious to the human interaction around her. Verity permitted no chatter when she was in the middle of cooking. But times like this—cleaning up after luncheon—she did not strictly ban silly talk between the maids, knowing how lonely a life in service often was for young women far away from family and not allowed followers.

Mavis lowered her voice even more. “Might be fun, though, if the master did catch me.”

“Mademoiselle Dunn,” Verity said coldly.

“Beg yer pardon, mum,” said Mavis hastily. Then she and Becky took a look at each other and burst into fresh giggles.

They were in high spirits—it was half day for the servants. Mavis was eager to go out dancing and she’d invited Becky. Becky was tempted, but turned down the invitation, as she’d already promised her aunt she’d come round for a visit, Marjorie in tow.

Listening to young women scarcely half her age planning their diversion made Verity feel old. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d visited a dancing pub—her feet and knees would quite kill her in the morning. She no longer had any desire to flirt with men she didn’t already know. And her idea of an evening of fun was trouncing Mrs. Boyce at Russian whist.

But she did go out, in the end: She visited a conveyer of specialty foods to secure a supply of truffles and took a short stroll on Regent Street.

When she’d joined Monsieur David’s kitchen sixteen years ago, she’d wept from fatigue every night, too tired to even think of Michael. In those days she used to take herself on her half days to Regent Street, to look into the windows of all the fashionable dressmakers. It was no doubt a reflection of her shallowness—that in her moments of despair she turned not to the church or to improving books, but to frivolities of satin and brocade in a modiste’s shopfront. But turned to them she had, religiously.

Later, she’d understood that it hadn’t been so much the dresses themselves that had sustained her through those long days and dark nights, but the shining hopes that they’d embodied, hopes of not only the day when she’d be able to own a piece of gorgeous frippery again, but of the day when she’d be together with Michael, when she could afford a decent future for him too.

Hope. Hope had brought her to London, when Sense would have had her depart for Paris. Hope that burned in her like an altar lamp, a flame of a prayer for him, for them, for a miracle.

She sighed. All this, even after she’d written his secretary and accepted the honor and responsibility for his wedding breakfast and his wedding cake. When would she ever learn?

When Verity returned to 26 Cambury Lane at half past four, night had already fallen. She was the only one in the house: Mr. Durbin had plans to meet friends at a pub and then attend a music hall show; Ellen and Mavis, she had the feeling, would try to stay out as late as possible without sending Mrs. Abercromby into a rage; Mrs. Abercromby had said she’d be back at eight, the same time Verity had told Becky and Marjorie to return, to make a favorable impression upon the housekeeper.

In the kitchen she filled a kettle, intending to boil water to carry to her attic room for a sponge bath. Then she remembered what Mavis had said earlier about the lovely plumbed tub in Mr. Somerset’s bath.

She hadn’t known such a luxury in years, not since she stopped sharing Bertie’s bed. The thought of lowering herself neck-deep into hot water was almost too delicious to contemplate. She glanced at the man’s pocketwatch she always carried—those made for women kept shoddy time. Quarter ’til five. If she was in the tub by quarter past, she would have finished her soak, dressed, and wiped down the tub by six, two hours before anyone returned.

What a mad idea.

Oh, why the hell not? He would have wanted Cinderella to have a proper bath at his house, wouldn’t he?

The hot water brought back memories, first of Bertie, of the time when he’d accused her, smilingly, of loving him only for his tub. And then it dredged up far older memories—of the baths she’d suffered through as a child, the dozens of dresses she’d had at her disposal when she emerged from those baths, and the lovely woods and streams she could see from her vanity as her maid untangled her wet hair. Except in those days, she never looked
at
the woods and streams of her ancestral estate, she’d always looked
beyond
them, intent only on the world outside.

The world outside would turn out to be thrilling, heartbreaking, and difficult at every step—it had certainly taught her to jump at the chance of a hot bath, however illicit and risky.