"Building what?"
"Disappointment?"
She laughed again, that bright, clear sound that did dangerous things to his composure. "You're impossible."
"So you've mentioned."
"No, I mean truly, genuinely impossible. How does someone reach your age without knowing basic kitchen skills?"
"By having servants," he said without thinking, then caught himself. "I mean, by focusing on other skills."
"Such as?"
"Estate management. Mathematics. Languages."
"Can you eat languages?"
"Not literally."
"Then they're less useful than baking."
"I could argue that point."
"Please don't. We don't have time for a philosophical debate about the relative merits of Latin versus leavening."
"Leavening would win anyway," Mrs. Whitby senior said. "You can't make bread rise with conjugations."
"You could try," Alaric suggested. "The yeast might respond to properly declined nouns."
"And that," Marianne said, "is the strangest thing anyone has ever said in this kitchen."
"Stranger than the time Mr. Martin insisted his bread was talking to him?"
"That was the brandy talking, not the bread."
"The bread might have been joining the conversation."
"Bread doesn't converse, Mother."
"You don't know that. You don't speak bread."
"Nobody speaks bread!"
"Mr. Fletcher might. He seems to have unusual ideas about baked goods."
"Mr. Fletcher has unusual ideas about everything," Marianne muttered, starting a new batch of dough. "Watch this time. Actually watch, don't just observe."
"There's a difference?"
"Watching implies learning. Observing implies judging."
"I wasn't judging."
"You were definitely judging."
"Maybe a little."
She showed him again, more slowly this time, explaining each step. "The butter needs to stay cold. That's what makes the pastry flaky. When it melts in the oven, it creates layers."
