She wokehalf convinced that she was still in a dream.
The sun had not risen. It was still pitch-dark. In the distance were still the whoops and rumbles of late-night revelry. In the air was the most delectable scent, like butter and dough and something heady and sweet.
It drew her from her exhausted slumber just as effectively as a shaking hand to her shoulder would have done, pulling her upto sitting in her bed like she’d been awakened from a wicked enchantment.
Whatwasthat delicious smell?
She pushed her hair from her face. She had fallen asleep before it could be braided or tied into rag curls. It was tangled, loose down her back and weaving around her elbows as she felt around for a dressing gown, her body demanding she follow the scent in the air.
Almonds, she thought. Vanilla? And fruit, something red and thick.
It took her a moment to remember that she was not in her room back at Crooked Nook. The dressing gown she’d used after her bath was still sodden, hanging over the back of a wicker chair near the vanity.
She could almost taste the sugar on her tongue, warm and dissolving.
The staff were all supposed to be in their own cottages until morning, when they would attend the preparations for descending down to the games. She gave one last glance at her wet dressing gown and decided it did not matter. If one of the kitchen girls was preparing breakfast here, they would not balk at their lady coming to investigate.
She did not even bother with slippers, padding barefoot instead from her room and into the sparsely lit hall, following the glow of candlelight from the kitchen.
She could hear humming as she drew closer. Worse, she recognized the voice, and still did not stop.
Why should Freddy have some of tonight’s surprise confection and not Claire? He could very well share if it awoke him too.
His voice was still as honeyed as it ever was, she thought in the faint recesses of her mind. He still had a beautiful lilt. She recognized the tune but could not place the lyrics. She supposed the lyrics did not matter anyway, when a song was only hummed.
She softened her step. She drew lighter breaths. She touched the arch that led to the kitchen before letting herself ease around it, wanting to observe the den she was about to enter before making herself known.
She felt her grip tighten on the wooden beam under her fingers.
He was alone.
His back was to her, but the kitchen was alight with activity. A pile of pits sat on the wooden table behind him, next to a bowl of halved cherries. There was a pot on the stove, bubbling delicately like a percussive accompaniment to his song. Freddy himself was standing over a smear of flour, his sleeves rolled to the elbow as he worked a pile of dough with his fingers, pressing and fluffing and folding it in ritualistic turns.
Every now and then he gave it a light slap, as if testing its willingness to accept the abuse or otherwise spring back into shape.
She wasn’t breathing anymore.
He turned to the side, streaks of flour and dough on his forearms and a bit dusting his jaw as he reached for another handful, sprinkling it over the dough and then reaching over to a white-crusted wooden spoon to stir the delicious thing bubbling in the pot.
He smiled to himself, as though what he found there pleased him, and transitioned to the coda in the song he was humming. He moved the pot to the side and doused the fire with a practiced flourish of the dampener, sending the whole affair into nothing but a puff of smoke.
When he spun around to walk toward the table, Claire was wholly unprepared to be discovered.
Mercifully, he appeared equally unprepared, and froze in place, his voice falling off into silence, eyes widening.
For a second, they just stared at one another, Claire in her disarray and Freddy caked in confection.
“Claire?” he finally managed, shaking his head like he was casting off whatever net had captured him in place. “What are you doing?”
“I smelled …” She trailed off, looking around the room again, some of the dreaminess of the scene, some of its otherworldly abstraction, falling away in favor of a sharper focus. “Whatever it is you are doing in here. Freddy, are you … are you baking?”
“No, I’m just having a bath,” he replied sharply. “Of course I’m baking. I couldn’t sleep.”
“You’re baking,” she repeated, still not quite believing it. “Why can you bake? What are you … what is this?!”
“It’s cherry sauce,” he replied, his voice soft as his eyes skimmed over her, taking in her state of disarray, lingering over the thin material of her nightgown. “For Oliver. I made too much, so I am putting the rest in a crust.”
“A crust,” she repeated again, dumb as a mockingbird. “You are … you are making …”
