He stood over a loaf of bread, a knife in hand. On the chopping board there lay three, now four, rather beautifully sliced pieces of bread, each a precise quarter-inch in thickness. A kettle hissed, shrill and loud in the still air. He wrapped his hand in a towel, disappeared from her view for a moment, brought back the kettle, and poured the boiling water into a teapot that she also couldn’t see.
The upper-crust gentlemen of this country were valiant in battle, decent to their inferiors, and passably competent in bed, but they were, almost without exception, helpless before the simplest of domestic tasks—and proud of it, taking it as a badge of their true gentility.
But he had been the illegitimate son of an impecunious woman. Had never stepped outside the slums of Ancoats before coming to Fairleigh Park. And had not forgotten how to take care of himself.
She’d come, teeth still gritted, to see to his sandwich, because it would have been a gross dereliction of duty otherwise: He had no obligation to appreciate her food; she, however, did have an obligation to feed him. But now she could no longer quite remember why she’d been so angry with him. She only wanted to gorge herself on the sight of him, the slash of shadow in the hollow of his cheek, the deep indentation of his philtrum, the slight part of his lips in concentration.
Mine, some utterly barmy part of her howled. Mine. Mine. Mine.
She remembered the marble-hard smoothness of his back. The way his hair had curled at his nape, the surprising softness of it against the inside of her wrist. The feel of his arm, wondrously heavy upon her as he slept, keeping her securely within the circle of his protection.
Suddenly he looked up, his eyes searching the crack of the door through which she spied on him. “Who’s there?”
Between the mad urge to step forward into the light and the panic that would have her break into a run, she did nothing. He set the butter knife down on the rim of the butter crock. “Madame Durant, is that you?”
It’s me. I’m here. Do you still love me?
She turned and walked away.
Stuart lost his mind somewhere around the stroke of midnight.
Shortly after his nonencounter with Madame Durant, he’d discovered, set aside in a special holding cabinet in the warming kitchen, a silver dome-covered dish. Under the silver dome had been a small ramekin. He’d known instantly what it was, the dessert course that he had not allowed Prior to serve, despite—or was it because of—the latter’s distressed protests that the chocolate custard was unique, sensational, and intolerably wonderful.
He’d had enough wherewithal then to cover the dish again and close the door of the holding cabinet. But now the chocolate custard was with him, alone, deep in the privacy of the master’s apartment.
He didn’t even have the excuse of hunger anymore. The bread and butter had been wholesome and filling. But he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the custard, its dark allure, its heady aroma that had made him want to stick his tongue inside then and there.
The chocolate custard sat on a small table, glossy, serene, entirely indifferent to his laughable internal struggle. He dug in the tip of a spoon, destroying its smooth surface—and released a coil of rich, dusky odor.
Chocolate. He’d never had chocolate before he came to live at Fairleigh Park, but when he was seven someone had given him a shred of paper that had once been wrapped around a piece of imported chocolate. He’d pressed the wrapper to his nose and inhaled as deeply as his lungs allowed, dreaming of chocolate enough to bury him.
Her custard smelled like that, a good smell made mythical by fervid imagination and true hunger. Suddenly he was famished again. He wolfed down the whole content of the ramekin in seconds, barely tasting anything as he ate.
Only as he slumped back into his chair did the residual flavors ambush his senses. For a moment the inside of his mouth tingled and luxuriated, a burst of glory. But the sensation faded just as quickly, leaving in its wake only the same obstinate, inexplicable craving.
A craving that was not limited to chocolate custard. He saw himself invading Madame Durant’s kitchen and trapping her in a dark corner of her domain. He imagined her wordless consent, the urgency of her ungentle grip on his arms.
She would be thin and frail, with the heartbreaking strength of those too long accustomed to hard work. He’d cup her face between his hands and kiss her. She’d taste of whiskey freshly consumed, hot and pure. And all about them would billow the scent of high summer, strawberries ripened to the seduction of juicy red lips—
He came out of his chair. He was thinking of her again, when he’d already decided, most firmly, not to think of her anymore. A man could not set his life by the eclipses of the sun.
At least, try as he had, he could not.
His bedchamber was dark and silent. A fire burned low in the grate, casting just enough of a glow for him to see his way to the window. He parted the curtains. The sky had largely disappeared. Between mounds of clouds flickered a few small, distant stars.