She drove herself and everyone else hard, so much so that she was annoyed to realize that it was a half day again, the day before the dinner. It was on the tip of her tongue to inform the girls that they would remain and work. But as she looked about her, she realized that most of what could be done at this point had already been done, that her girls waited with bated breaths for luncheon to finish and their short-lived freedom to begin.
She let them go. Alone in the kitchen, she made her paté, a mixture of goose breast and pork ground very fine, which must cook for three hours and be stirred nonstop. Normally, the stirring was split between several people, in half-hour shifts. She was forcefully reminded soon after she began why that was the case, but by then she had no choice except to go on.
At the end of the three hours, her arms felt only marginally attached to the rest of her. But the paté had turned out quite well, so she could not be entirely unhappy. She set the paté aside to cool and checked her watch: a minute past five o’clock. She would shape the batch of sugar paste she’d made the day before with the molds that had arrived from Fairleigh Park that morning.
She did not look up at the sound of horse hooves. But she did when a hack came to a stop in front of 26 Cambury Lane. A man’s black city pumps, his striped day trousers, and his walking stick emerged from the hack. The vehicle departed. The man disappeared from her view. And then she heard the opening and closing of the front door on the floor above.
Mr. Somerset had come home.
The bath was dark and empty.
Stuart had been saved from himself, or so it would seem. He’d expected her to be in his tub, waiting, veils of steam writhing about her.
He’d warned himself most severely that he was likely to do something he’d regret should he return home when no one else was there except her. He’d carried a photograph of Lizzy with him all day as a reminder. And he’d left his office at two o’clock in the afternoon and visited both the bathing pool and the gymnasium, in an attempt to replace concupiscence with exhaustion.
All for naught. He’d come home at this most dangerous hour and headed straight for the bath—only to stare into an empty tub that gleamed a cold white in the light of the gas lamp, a lamp that he’d turned on because the darkness and the lack of steam in the bath hadn’t been enough to convince him of her absence.
He had ascribed his hunger and his covetousness to her. Had imagined that she’d be in the tub because he wanted her to be in it. Had berated himself entirely for show—his self-reproach as ritualistic and useless as the search for Guy Fawkes before the State Opening of Parliament.
And now he was exposed for the fraud that he was. Because he wasn’t relieved by her absence. Not at all. In fact, he couldn’t remember being so disappointed since the first anniversary of that night, when he’d stayed up ’til dawn, convinced that Cinderella would return.
He didn’t know why—perhaps because he couldn’t stand the emptiness of the tub—he reached out and turned on the faucets. The pipes moaned and trembled. Water came, first a trickle, then a gush that shook the plumbing even harder. He plugged the tub and watched it fill. He should be using cold water—wasn’t that the traditional prescription for overamorous men? But steam undulated from the rising water. He dipped his fingertips in the water and it was hot, as hot as he imagined she must be, in places he longed to touch.
He remembered the kitchen light he’d seen from the street. She was home—close at hand and accessible. He wanted to see her. He needed to see her.
He would see her.
Verity slapped sugar paste into the mold, thankful for the mindless work, for she certainly could not concentrate on any subtle, delicate cooking now, not with the pipes groaning and the boiler in the room down the corridor rasping and rattling.
The plumbing had made just such noises last week, when she’d filled the tub for her use.
She closed the mold for the centerpiece, turned around, and saw that the little window on the dumbwaiter showed red: It was needed upstairs. What did he want with the dumbwaiter?
She dispatched the dumbwaiter upward and it came down with a note.
Madame, your bath awaits.
She flushed. Underneath the note was a piece of black cloth. When she picked it up, the cloth resolved itself to be a soft mask that would cover her from her brows to just above her upper lip.
This was unlike him. He was as reckless as she had been the other night, when she’d kissed him under his jaw and got herself tossed across the corridor for her trouble.
It was wrong—and they both knew it. To happen upon each other by chance was one thing, to intentionally orchestrate a tryst quite another. And for him to run a bath for her, and for her to accept—they might as well meet unclothed in his bedchamber instead.
But try as she did, she could not find dishonor enough in his invitation to refuse. Because she would agree to meet unclothed in his bedchamber too. Because there was nothing he wanted that she didn’t also want.
She felt for the stubby pencil she always carried in her pocket, wrote her reply on the note, and sent it to him.