Mrs. Brodie’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies Read online

  He couldn’t say the same. Which was part of why Marianne wanted to flay him alive.

  “Miss White,” Marianne said in a crisp, formal tone. “Permit me to introduce an old acquaintance of mine. Mr. Grahame.”

  “Grahame?” The girl perked up. “That’s a Lincolnshire name, isn’t it? Are you related to Lord Irving?”

  “I’m his poor relation,” Jack admitted. “Or so his lordship thinks of my branch of the family. We’ve got land, but no title. His bunch of the Grahames have both, which as you know, makes them better.”

  The kitchenmaid, he presumed she was, giggled at this.

  “Are you indeed still poor? I thought you’d taken steps to remedy that.” Again, that crisp voice from Marianne. She had plunged her hands into a giant bowl of…he had no idea what it was. It looked like flour and butter, but the way she was squishing it to bits, he couldn’t imagine what it would become.

  “No, I’m not poor anymore,” he said, feeling almost reluctant to say so. He reminded himself of the words he’d rehearsed so carefully: I am not here to apologize. He couldn’t, for if he did, it would make the last eight years of his life nothing but a wrong decision, a wrong path traveled.

  A boy in livery ran in just then. “Any of the ovens needin’ coal, mum?” he tossed over a shoulder as he lay hands on a full scuttle.

  “They’re all right, Evans,” Marianne replied, “but check again in a half hour, please.” When the boy bobbed his head, then tore from the kitchen as swiftly as he’d entered, she turned to Jack with a faint smile. “Oh, for the energy of the young. Now I see that if you’ve something to say to me, there will be other ears about.”

  “Can you walk out with me?” As if he were twenty-two again, and she twenty, and he were calling on the neighboring landowner with an eye to the eldest daughter.

  “I can’t get away for a minute until luncheon is tidied away. However…” She eyed the mountain range of apricots. “How are you at cutting fruit?”

  “I’ve used a knife before, if that’s what you’re asking, and I can tell stone from flesh. Why?”

  “That’ll do.” Her faint smile turned wicked. “Sally, I’ll need you to see to the young ladies’ luncheon today. You’ll find everything you need in the larder and the meat safe.”

  “Oh, mum!” The young woman—surely she could be no more than twenty?—popped up from her seat, eyes wide and eager. “Do you mean it? Cut it and plate it and everything?”

  “The footmen can help you with the plating, and they’ll take the dishes upstairs to the refectory. But they’ll be yours to command.” Marianne added as if an afterthought, “I’ll just need you to prepare everything in the servants’ hall.”

  “Oh. Not in here?” The girl’s light brows knit. “But shouldn’t I finish with the apricots?”

  “You can’t do that and arrange luncheon.” Again, that wicked smile. “Mr. Grahame wishes to visit a kitchen? He can become a kitchenmaid for a while.”

  Miss White—Christian name Sally, Jack now gathered—looked as if she found this highly entertaining. Shaking out her skirts, she practically danced from the long kitchen. Off to put together a luncheon for a school full of, as the academy’s name told Jack, Exceptional Young Ladies.

  “If her enthusiasm is anything to go by, she’s a good assistant to you,” Jack observed once they were alone.

  “She is, and better every day.” Marianne rubbed the doughy mass in the bowl between her hands. “We’ve a little less than half an hour before the boy returns, and you’ve all those apricots to cut up. If there’s something you want to say, say it now. While you work the knife.”

  “I like a woman who knows her own mind,” Jack decided, settling himself in the chair vacated by Sally. “I’m not intimidated by things like apricots, you know. They’re little and cute. Not frightening enough to scare a fellow away.”

  “I’m not trying to scare you away.” Wiping her hands, Marianne scattered flour over a few square feet of her giant worktable, then heaved the mass of dough onto it. “I’m trying to get on with my work. And I sincerely hope your ‘little and cute’ comment was only referring to apricots.”

  “What else could I have possibly been referring to?” he said blandly. “I don’t see anything else little and cute in this kitchen.”

  No, Marianne had never been cute, nor was she exactly little. She was of medium height, and he thought her striking, a woman of frank eyes and a straight nose and a full mouth and a stubborn chin.

  Now she used that full mouth to frown at him. “First you don’t intend to apologize. Then you say I’m not little and cute. You could have kept all that to yourself. You could have stayed in Lincolnshire.”

  “Probably.”

  “Then why the devil are you here, Jack? Are you trying to win me over again?”

  He hadn’t prepared this answer; he spoke on instinct. “I’m not apologizing because I can’t say I’m sorry for the life that brought us to this moment. And I didn’t say you’re little and cute, because you’re so much more than any word I could apply to you.”

  For a moment, she only stared. Then she sighed, her shoulders relaxing. “So glib. As always.”

  “It was rather good, wasn’t it? And it’s even true.”

  “Cut the apricots,” was all she said, though to his ear, it sounded like, Fine, you’ve won a bit more of a reprieve before I boot you out.

  Instead of cutting an apricot, he reached for a strawberry from the basket. They’d been ungodly expensive, probably forced in a hothouse, but he’d never forgotten Marianne’s yearly delight when strawberries appeared for a scant few weeks in the kitchen gardens.

  Taking the large knife up in his other hand, he carefully cut the little green leaves from the top of the fruit.

  Marianne was watching him, lips parted. “What are you do—”

  He held out the strawberry to her. She looked down at her hands, covered in flour and what he realized now was pastry dough, then returned her gaze to Jack. He kept holding out the strawberry to her.

  Maybe, he realized, he had come to apologize after all. But not in words. In strawberries.

  At last, she relented, opening her mouth so he could pop the berry between her lips. The gesture was familiar, friendly, intimate—yet strange. They’d done this so many times in the past—first as childhood friends feeding each other berries and later as lovers sharing the sensual fruit. Now they were strangers.

  But some things remained the same, such as the bliss on Marianne Redfern’s face as the taste of a strawberry spread across her tongue.

  She allowed herself that moment of pleasure, then snapped back to work. It happened so suddenly Jack was caught by surprise. One second, her eyes were heavy-lidded and her lips berry-wet. The next, she was taking a rolling pin to the pastry dough before her.

  He set down the knife, leaning forward. “Marianne, don’t you—”

  “Cut the apricots.” Under her rolling pin, the dough became an even, flat sheet. “And did you know you’re still wearing your hat?”

  He cursed, then tossed it onto a chair beside him and raked his fingers through his hair. “How do I look? Handsome?”

  “Wash your hands,” was all she said as she turned to a shelf and took down a stack of tart cases.

  He grumbled his way to the pump in the scullery, then back. Seating himself again, he took up the knife and applied it to the first apricot. “You used to think I was funny.”

  “I did. You used to think I was a lot of things.” Roll, roll, cut, cut, press, press. A tart shell took form in one of the cases, then was set aside as Marianne took up the next round of dough.

  How could he explain what she’d meant to him? She’d been more than a first love. She had been his companion for as long as he could remember. He’d wanted to marry her. When he was twenty-two and she twenty, he’d asked her, and she had agreed as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  But Helena Wilcox had had money, and the Redferns hadn’t, and
if the Grahames hadn’t got money at once, they would have been ruined. Tenants lost, lands fallow, dowries drained. All Jack had needed to do was wed the merchant’s daughter, and he’d spare everyone.

  Everyone but himself and Marianne.

  In the end, the marriage had lasted only six years before illness took Helena. Marianne knew she died, because she sent a proper letter of condolence—not to Jack, but to his mother and his eldest sister, Viola. She’d done the same when Jack’s father had died a year later. Only recently had Jack put off mourning clothes for them both.

  “I thought you were everything,” he said slowly. The knife cut the pale flesh of the apricot, revealing the stone. If it weren’t for the stone, the fruit could go right into the tart. But there was always a stone.

  He cut another, and another, a whole pile of them as tart cases stacked up under Marianne’s quick hands. Finally, she replied. “I loved who I thought you were. I’ve missed that man.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. “I miss that man too. Do you know, you’re the only person who ever loved me without thinking of how I could serve, or who else I could become?”

  She stared at him. “Surely not.”

  Which was not a denial. Her disbelief warmed him, that not only did she grant she’d loved him just as he was, but she thought someone else must have too.

  “Not that I’m aware. Anyway. That’s why I wanted to find you. Not because I want anything from you now, but to remind myself that once, it was enough for me to be Jack Grahame.”

  “You said you wanted my forgiveness.”

  He cut more apricots, wanting to finish this small thing she’d asked of him. “True. I do want that of you. I couldn’t have acted differently eight years ago unless I were…not me. If that makes sense?”

  “Yes, it makes sense.” She slid the bowl of cut fruit toward herself, eyed the quantity, then added a few fistfuls of flour. “If I had to marry to save my family from ruin, I’d probably have done it too.”

  His heart skipped upward, lightened. He tossed the last few apricot halves into the large bowl. “Then you don’t blame me?”

  She added sugar to the fruit. “Who else am I to blame, Jack?”

  When she put it like that… “If you’ve the need in your heart to blame, then no one. There’s no one to blame but me.” A sapskull with a pile of stones before him, his hands covered in juice.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and he drank in every flicker of emotion that crossed her features. “I hold you responsible for your actions. For the way you dropped me so quickly. But do I think it was the wrong choice? No, I don’t suppose I do.”

  “Then you forgive me?” He was holding his breath.

  “There’s a distance between don’t blame and forgive. I’m not ready to step across it yet.” She took a breath. “But if you’ve two weeks to give, I could use a kitchenmaid.”

  He laughed.

  She raised a brow.

  “Oh. You’re serious? A kitchenmaid?”

  “I’m serious,” she said, worry creeping into her tone. “I can’t take any more time like this, to talk with you and eat strawberries. I’m behindhand with today’s custards and sauces, and there’s a great dinner to prepare in two weeks’ time for all sorts of people who help fund the academy, and we’re short on staff since Katie left, and—”

  He popped another strawberry in her mouth. “Don’t eat the leaves.”

  She bit the red fruit from the top, still in mid-word, and questioned him with her big green eyes.

  And because he’d never been able to deny her anything but his hand in marriage, he agreed.

  Chapter Two

  BEFORE SUNRISE THE next morning, Marianne was up and dressed and ready to work. She lit lamps in the kitchen, greeted the maids as they bustled through the servants’ hall, then entered the larder to retrieve the dough Sally had placed in the cool room the day before. The buns and loaves had risen slowly and were now beautifully puffed, ready to pop into the ovens and feed a hungry academy.

  Still adjusting her cap and apron, Sally joined her a moment later and helped to carry the dough from the larder into the kitchen. Marianne then peered into the adjoining rooms to look for Jack, but in vain.

  She hadn’t spotted him upstairs in the servants’ attic quarters, either. Though, of course, he hadn’t moved into the academy upon accepting the temporary post as her kitchenmaid. Instead, he had the nicest lodging of any maid in England, keeping his room at an elegant hotel.

  Maybe he was still there. Sleeping away the day, never planning to roll up his shirtsleeves and help with today’s meals.

  Yet if he didn’t intend to return, why would he have come so far to see her? And bring her strawberries?

  She couldn’t fathom. But she also couldn’t wait any longer. She had to leave now or risk missing the pick of today’s offerings at the butcher, the greengrocer, and the fishmonger. Just as she was setting aside her cap and cramming her everyday hat onto her head, Jack entered the kitchen with a small parcel in hand.

  “Morning, Mrs. Redfern,” he said with a wink, and with entirely too much good cheer for a man who was going to peel vegetables all day.

  “Good morning,” she grumbled back, wishing for a cup of tea from the kettle she hadn’t yet heated. These mornings when she went for supplies were always a scramble. “What’s the parcel? You’ve been shopping at this hour?”

  “No, I went shopping before this hour. You told me we’d have to rise early. Here, look what I got for you.”

  He handed over the little package, pulling loose the twine as he did. When Marianne took it in her hands, the paper fell open to reveal a palm-sized section of honeycomb. Sunlight-gold honey dewed the intricate little hexagons. Each was a reservoir for the sweet liquid, each itself of pleasant-scented wax.

  The sight and smell of it tugged powerfully at her memory. When she brought the honeycomb to her nose to breathe in the scent, suddenly she was twenty years old again—back in Lincolnshire, wearing thick, long gloves and a hat with netting to protect her face. And she was laughing, telling the bees in her father’s hives that Jack Grahame had asked her to marry him. This was an old tradition, really more of a superstition. One had to tell the bees of any weddings to come, or they’d grieve at being left out of the celebration and might stop making honey.

  But that marriage never happened. Instead, Jack’s father arranged his son’s wedding with the well-dowered daughter of a wealthy merchant.

  When the banns were called for Jack and Helena Wilcox, Marianne hadn’t bothered to tell the bees. Let them continue on, happy in their ignorance.

  They hadn’t stopped making honey, as far as she knew, but she hadn’t been around long enough to collect it. She’d thought she was protecting herself by leaving before the banns were called a second time. She had protected herself.

  But she’d hurt herself too. There was so much she had missed by fleeing her home.

  “Where did you get this honeycomb?” she asked.

  Jack doffed his hat, looking pleased. “I persuaded a confectioner to open early.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to bring you some, because I was remembering the bees your father used to keep.”

  So. He recalled those days too. “Why?”

  Now he looked annoyed. “I don’t know, Marianne. Maybe because seeing you reminds me of the way we grew up, helping the beekeeper collect honey and wax, and it was a nice memory, and I wanted to share it with you.”

  Yet all of that belonged firmly in the past. The Redfern land now belonged to the Grahames, sold by Marianne’s mother upon being widowed five years before. Jack’s father had been living then, and he’d snapped it up using the Wilcox money that had passed into his hands.

  There was no room for Marianne and Jack in that memory anymore, certainly not together.

  “That’s not what I’m asking, really.” She bit her lip, wishing for a taste of sweetness. “Why…any of this? You came to London. You brought me strawber
ries.”

  “And honeycomb,” he pointed out.

  “I don’t understand why you’re here, Jack. I have a good post, and you have your life in Lincolnshire. If you just wanted to share a memory, why didn’t you send a letter?”

  Seeming to think over his answer, he flipped his hat end over end. Fidget, fidget. “Because,” he decided, “I haven’t seen you for eight years, but for all the years before that, I saw you every day.”

  The kitchen clock chimed the hour, reminding her of time rushing past. “After eight years without seeing me, it seems as if you could go on in the same way.”

  “I probably could have, but I didn’t want to.” His gray eyes were merry. Why did he always look as if things were going his way? “Now that I’m here, maybe I’ll begin to pine for you. Be a devoted suitor and shower you with gifts. Would you be interested?”

  The fiend. Did he know that was all she’d once wanted?

  Did she know what she wanted from him now?

  With one fingertip, she touched the delicate comb—then, in a rush, she folded over the heavy brown paper and set the parcel down on the worktable. “Don’t buy me any more presents.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not right.”

  He set his hat on the table beside the parcel, then stripped off his gloves. “You don’t like them?”

  “I don’t know if I like them or not. It’s too confusing.”

  His smile was crooked, not exactly happy. “I don’t mind confusing you, Marianne. That’s a step up from angering you, and isn’t that where we started?”

  “I don’t know,” she blurted. “You’re confusing me.”

  He poked through the paper and touched the discarded honeycomb with a gentle forefinger. Then he folded the brown paper over it, packing it away. Done, Marianne thought. He’d listen, and he’d stop now.

  Instead, he said, “Then I’ll keep right on.” Stepping closer, he cradled her face in his hands—and he kissed her.