“No, you do,” Alexandra said, “you are glowing. That’s why I thought you still look seventeen when I first saw you—you’re happy.” She leaned a little closer. “I’m curious, what was it that made you think of me? To meet me again?”
Catriona nodded. “I owe you this.” She took the check from her reticule.
“Goodness?” Alexandra looked at the paper slip with a puzzled frown.
“I took what you left under your bed, back in Bern. I’m sorry.”
Her friend’s smile was polite and bemused. “How kind of you to think of it.” Clearly, she had forgotten all about her stash in her stocking as soon as she had left Switzerland. She made to hand it back to Catriona. “You should keep it.”
“Ah, no. I spent it all.”
Alexandra shook her head. “What did you spend it on? You never bought anything. I had to force every purchase upon you at the haberdasher.”
“I escaped shortly after you left and needed to pay my way.”
Alexandra’s fine lips formed a scandalized pink O. “You escaped—how?”
“The wagon that brought the milk bottles in the morning.”
Alexandra moved her eyes and shook her head as though she was greatly excited by this. “You, a naughty stowaway,” she said. “Meine Güte, what fun. I used to have such fun. I used to be fun, too; you know I was.”
“You were.”
“Now my husband’s position is all about protocol. Dreary. Except the parties.” A feline smirk curved Alexandra’s mouth. “Catriona, you haven’t known debauchery unless you have been at an ambassador’s ball at two in the morning. Oh, all right, it isn’t half as exciting.” She laughed softly. “Save me, my scandalous friend.”
“Actually,” Catriona said, her gaze sliding to the left and then to her right. “I wondered whether you could assist me with something.”
They parted a short while later and both women were smiling. The conclusion of their meeting hadn’t exactly been a renewal of their friendship but rather the proper closure of it, and they might meet again as the new people they now were. Both were excited by Alexandra’s agreement to assist with Catriona’s unusual request, which shouldn’t cost her much effort but would greatly hurry Catriona’s ambitions concerning the artifacts along. Catriona floated around among chocolates and jars of Fortnum & Mason’s delicacy section like an escaped balloon at first, free but without direction, adjusting to the sudden absence of a weight that must have dragged on her unconsciously.
Soon she became purposeful and descended the stairs to the Lower Ground Floor, which was effectively a high-end covered market. Voices echoed off the tiled walls here. Strong smells clashed: raw meat, seafood on ice, baked goods, flowers. Shallow breaths.
She approached one of the neatly dressed clerks. “Where may I find the cookbooks?”
“What type of cookbook would you be looking for, ma’am?”
“Levantine cuisine.”
“We’d have one on Indian cuisine, ma’am.”
Noticing her disappointment, the clerk directed her to the manager of the grocery section, who turned out to be a Frenchman.
“They sent you to me because I was a chef at the Midland Grand Hotel,” he said, sounding annoyed, flicking his hand. “Bon, I can share some recipes with you. Your cook will not have the spices for them, nor the required techniques, and we don’t have the bread on this island, mais, pas de problème, you find the spices here in the spice section.”
He rapidly dictated four recipes to his assistant, for a salad, a paste, a chicken dish, and a ground beef dish.
“That’s rather a lot of parsley,” Catriona said doubtfully, skimming the notes.
“Oui, parsley, third aisle. Go and assist the lady, Smith. Pas de problème.”
She had help for loading the bags and boxes into a cab, and she managed to unload everything on her own back at Cadogan Place. Elias wasn’t home, which suited her just fine. This could be a surprise for him; unlike her, he probably liked surprises. After moving the ingredients to the kitchen, she went upstairs and changed into a loose, old-fashioned morning wrapper. Back in the kitchen, she put on an apron.
“Right,” she said, her hands on her hips as she surveyed the pots, the knife block, the stove. She could follow simple, written instructions. She could figure out how to operate a stove.
An hour later, she had a huge, massive, grand problème. Her wrist hurt. Her eyes stung. Behind her, steam and smoke welled from the stove. The windows were running with condensation; sweat was running down her back. On the wooden cutting board, one big bushel of parsley after the next seemed to melt to a tiny heap of mush under her knife, but the instruction had underlined the finely of finely chopped, so she stuck to it. Her heart was pounding because any moment now, Elias would walk in and find her steeped in chaos; there were chicken innards in a bowl, scattered onion peels, a tomato on the floor, dirty spoons everywhere. Something crackled behind her back. The chicken. She dropped the knife and spun around. Slowly now. She put on the large, insulating mitten and carefully lifted the lid of the pot. Heat blasted her face. “Bloody hell,” she gasped.
“Hayeti,” came a low voice. “What is this?”
She yelped.
“You startled me,” she said.
Elias was a blurred, dark shape, leaning with one shoulder against the doorframe. She took off her foggy glasses and rubbed them on her apron; by the time they were back on her nose, he was next to her and lifted the hissing pot by its handles. He put it down on the cast-iron tray that was attached to the side of the stove.
“So that’s what this is for,” she muttered.
Elias straightened. The starburst pattern around his pupils gleamed golden, and for a beat, she couldn’t breathe. Something had grabbed her heart and squeezed.
“I’m sorry,” she said without thinking. “I meant for it all to be ready.”
She pointed at the mess on the cabinet counter and realized she was still wearing a gigantic mitt.
A popping sound came from the oven, causing her to flinch. Elias grabbed a tea towel, opened the oven flap, and reached into the smoke. The grate and its charred contents landed next to the pot. He flipped down the levers. He picked up the stray tomato, gave it a small toss before he put it on the counter, then turned off the faucet that had been dripping away in the background. He moved between the cabinet, the sink, the stove with ease, and within a minute, the kitchen had fallen silent. Only then, he ran a hand through his hair and glanced around as if to make sense of things. His gaze lingered on the parsley.
“I’m making tabbouleh,” she supplied. Parsley salad.
“Inshallah,” he murmured.
“All right, it might not turn into tabbouleh, it’s not coming together as I had hoped.”
His gaze became markedly intense. “You are making tabbouleh.”
“I certainly had the intention.”
He took in her frizzy hair, the wrapper, the apron. A tingling sensation danced over her skin. His expression was as intent and lustful as though she were spread out naked before him on the bed upstairs.