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.