The contents—olive, coconut, and almond—bubbled and thickened, releasing their subtle, nutty fragrance as they blended together. The lye had dissolved just as it should, but she wasn’t foolish enough to look away, not even for a moment. The fire had to stay at the perfect temperature, the mixture constantly moving, or the entire batch would be ruined.
And she couldn’t afford waste.
Every ounce had to be accounted for, each batch measured carefully to produce the maximum number of cakes. Necessity demanded it.
Because this wasn’t just about business.
It was about survival.
It was about raising her brother properly, about giving him a future better than the one she’d been handed. A future free from worry, from uncertainty, from the scraping and scrounging she had endured for the past decade.
Gritting her teeth, she tightened her grip on the paddle and kept stirring. The rhythmic motion was steady, familiar—but it did nothing to quiet her mind.
Because when her hands were busy, her thoughts wandered.
And today, they wandered back to those first desperate days in London.
She could still see it, as clearly as if she were living it again.
Three days after the exhausting move from Woodland Priory to her aunt’s cramped house on a noisy street just east of Covent Garden, Daisy’s mother had brought her brother into the world—a red, kicking, fussing boy full of life.
Two days later, she was gone.
The midwife had shaken her head, murmuring about too much blood lost. About how the strain of the journey, the upheaval, had likely been too much for her.
Grief had settled over their small household, thick and inescapable. But mourning would not put food on the table.
So Daisy had forced herself to keep moving.
Her Aunt Theodora certainly had.
There had been no time for wailing or collapsing under the weight of sorrow—not when there was work to be done, soaps to mix, customers to serve. Aunt Theo had simply kept going, her hands always busy, her focus unshaken, as if sheer determination alone could hold their fragile world together.
And so Daisy had followed her lead.
She buried her sorrow in work, finding solace in the quiet precision of blending oils, incorporating them into the soaps her aunt sold. If Theodora could press on, then so could she. Ifwork could keep her aunt standing, then surely it could do the same for Daisy.
And maybe, just maybe, if she kept moving forward, she wouldn’t drown in everything they had lost.
The steady rhythm of stirring, the delicate balance of scent and texture—it gave her something to cling to, something to control when everything else had been ripped away.
Her father… Well, at least at first, he had managed. He’d found work in a textile mill. But the city had little mercy for men who toiled with their hands, and misfortune struck again.
A little over a year after they arrived, he suffered a disabling injury.
That was when his optimism—his unshakable, infuriating optimism—finally faded.
A year later, her father had died a broken man.
And yes, it had been devastating, but Daisy considered herself lucky.
She had her shop—her own shop. And she had the best brother a girl could hope for, the only family she had left in the world.
Caring for Gilbert gave her life meaning. But blending her soaps? That was her passion.
Her salvation.
Her life.
