At her father’s passing, the house would go to her eldest brother. Her father had never been a rich man. Her mother, certain that Lizzy would marry well, had distributed most of the money she’d brought to the marriage to Lizzy’s two brothers. Were Lizzy to end up a spinster, she would have to subsist on the harshest of economies, a thought she’d carelessly dismissed for years before suddenly cowering under the looming shadow of its increasing likelihood.
But she wasn’t about to admit any such thing to him.
“No, I’m afraid you are quite alone in your contemplation. Poverty is your lot, sir, not mine.”
He glanced at her and she was struck by the starkness of it.
“Ah, Miss Bessler,” he said lightly. “Your cruelty would break a heart less stalwart than mine.”
The scene was set in a manner identical to that of the previous evening: the big black brougham coming around the bend, its bell chiming softly in the evening air; the drive before the house awash in golden light that shimmered against the purple and crimson of dusk; the perfectly matched pair of footmen leaping off the carriage.
Except this time, Mr. Somerset was the one who greeted the arrivals, two gentlemen and a lady. The news that the lady was to be the next Mrs. Somerset had spread everywhere. The maids were excited by the thought of a grand wedding. Mrs. Boyce winced at the likelihood of unruly children in the near future.
From the solarium, Verity watched the young lady descend from the carriage. She was very tall, very beautiful, and very fashionably clad. Her coloring, like Mr. Somerset’s, was dark and dramatic.
Their mutual affection was evident. When they greeted each other, their clasped hands remained linked a moment too long, even for a betrothed couple. As they walked arm in arm toward the house, they made a handsome pair—a breathtaking pair—their heads bent toward each other, speaking softly, listening closely.
Verity stamped down an urgent need for a fag. It was only the merest coincidence that he hadn’t already married. He needed heirs. Fairleigh Park needed a mistress. He was doing everything he was supposed to do.
The master and his guests entered the manor; the servants carried in the luggage; the brougham drove off. She stared at the empty drive.
He had moved on. But she, she was a relic, a fossil, a fly caught in amber, unaware that eons had passed and the world had changed beyond recognition.
Now she had no choice but to leave.
Dinner was a struggle from beginning to end.
Stuart did not know why, but he was vulnerable to Madame Durant’s food in a way that defied all logic. While his guests reacted favorably to the courses—Marsden in particular was ecstatic—Stuart was in the middle of seismic shocks, a piece of himself coming undone with each mouthful.
But he could not walk away tonight as he had done the night before, nor could he refuse to be served while there were others at the table. He ate as little as he could, but a small serving of lightning was still lightning, and even the most modest of flames still burned.
Sometimes he didn’t even know what he was eating—what was the taste of falling off a cliff?—he only knew he was eating because the rest of him swung between shock and dismay, unwilling to submit to, yet unable to impede this violent reawakening from taking place.
The sensuality of her cooking did strange things to him. He couldn’t stop thinking of the woman in the kitchen who wielded such power and magic. Did she possess the alchemy to distill brutal longing and infuse her food with it? Or did she serve forth undiluted desire, disguised as nothing more alarming than a dish of crème caramel?
“In Paris, they speak of her as a goddess,” said Marsden reverently.
No, not a goddess, a sorceress who exerted a dark enchantment. Who wooed him with decadent and impossible pleasures. Who made him forget that he was a most respectable middle-aged man about to become even more respectable with marriage and political ascent.
When he ate, there was only the food. And there was only the cook.
Chapter Seven
July 1882
Hunger made Verity panic. Her appetite had been feeble for weeks. She hadn’t eaten this whole day. But now, suddenly, she was starved.
With hunger came the stirring of old fears—dying in a gutter, languishing in a workhouse, becoming one of those women with rouged cheeks and hard eyes who blew kisses at passing men and took them upstairs.
She’d not had the foresight to purchase something on the way back to the inn. And she could expect no help from the innkeeper. He’d been quite put out with her for returning so late, after he’d already locked the front door—his was a respectable establishment, he’d grumbled, no comings and goings at all hours.
Her mind intervened, suppressing the grim dread of hunger, substituting in its place a different panic, one equally unnerving but lovely: the panic of Stuart Somerset.