A cloud of white exploded across his dark coat, his carefully tied cravat, and his hair. The bakery went abruptly silent. Every head turned. The Duke of Wexmere stood motionless beneath a snowfall of flour, looking for all the world like a very dignified ghost who’d wandered into the wrong afterlife.
Then Thomas's voice rang out: "FLOUR FIGHT!"
What followed was chaos. Not everyone participated, the adults maintained some dignity, but enough joined in that within minutes, the bakery looked like it had been hit by a localized blizzard. Marianne was laughing helplessly, using Alaric as a shield against Thomas's enthusiastic flour bombs, her hands gripping his jacket as she pressed against his back.
"This is your fault!" she gasped between giggles.
"You threw flour first!"
"You started it!"
"I threw a pinch! You threw an entire handful!"
"Go big or go home!"
"We're in your bakery!"
"Then go big or go to the inn!"
The vicar's voice cut through the chaos: "ENOUGH!"
Everyone froze, flour still hanging in the air like snow. The vicar stood in the doorway, trying to look stern but obviously fighting a smile.
"We are here to make gingerbread for New Year's luck, not to reenact the eruption of Vesuvius."
"Vesuvius spat lava, not flour," Thomas pointed out helpfully.
"The principle remains the same. Now, everyone clean up and finish your gingerbread. We have an hour until midnight."
The cleanup was almost as chaotic as the fight, everyone trying to brush flour off themselves and each other, laughing and comparing damage. Marianne and Alaric ended up outside, shaking flour from their clothes in the cold night air.
“We shall be finding flour in our boots, our hair, and possibly our tea for weeks to come,” Marianne said, shaking out her apron. A faint snow of white dust rose from her hair as she pulled out a handful of hairpins and sighed. “It will never leave the village. Every loaf of bread for the next month will carry the faint taste of our collective foolishness.”
Our, Alaric thought. He liked the sound of that.
“We?” he asked aloud, half jesting.
“The villagewe,” she said, far too quickly. “The grand, collective, entirely non-personalwe.”
“Ah.” He folded his arms, leaning a little closer. “And not the other kind ofwe?”
Her mouth twitched. “There is no other kind.”
“Are you certain?”
“Entirely.”
“I find that disappointing.”
“I find it sensible.”
“Yet you hesitate before saying it,” he said softly.
Marianne looked up sharply, and for a heartbeat the lamplight caught her face, flour on her lashes, a flush on her cheeks, the loosened curls tumbling down her neck, and Alaric found himself momentarily unable to speak.
“You are staring again,” she said finally.
“Occupational hazard,” he murmured. “Bakers should not be allowed to look like fallen angels.”
