Far more modern and up-to-the-minute than her old-fashioned fireplace range at home, which belched smoke and soot to blacken the walls above it, the kitchens at Ashbourn House were a marvel to Bess. She’d been longing to try them out since she arrived, and now was the perfect opportunity.
After building up the fire in the belly of the oven, Bess found the sacks of flour and sugar fairly quickly. Though the sugar was softer and paler than she was accustomed to, it tasted almost the same. A bit less flavor, perhaps, but she could tell by rubbing it between her fingers that it would beat into the butter with wonderful ease, and so it proved.
The warmth of the repetitive motion spread up her arm to her shoulder, familiar and satisfying, and Bess kept the wooden spoon moving and scraping and blending until the mixture was a fluffy yellow the color of the first spring daffodils back home.
It took a bit of hunting to find the spices, but Monsieur Anatole was a master of organization. When Bess finally discovered the custom-built rack of small glass jars, the contents of each labeled on the outside of the jar in black wax pencil, she clapped her hands in glee.
She would’ve known the powdered ginger by sight, its light beige color and fine texture unmistakable—but if there’d been any doubt, the scent would have given it away at once. The spicy sweetness nearly knocked her back a step when she opened the jar, a waft so potent her nose itched with a sneeze.
She would need to be sparing with it, she decided, spooning out a little of the powder with reverence and mixing it into the flour along with a pinch of salt. It was much stronger than her powdered ginger at home.
Turning back to the worktable, her eye caught on a row of irregular shaped bottles and crocks lined up like little soldiers along the bottom of the spice rack. She knelt to trail her fingers over the unmarked glass, trying to guess what each one contained.
The brown spindles poking up through the dark liquid in the one on the end made her reach for the bottle with confidence. A single sniff of vanilla, dark and heady, told her she’d been correct. With a smile, she tipped a bit into the butter and sugar mixture, then replaced the bottle and accidentally knocked it against the crock beside it.
Her knuckle stuck to some liquid that had dribbled down the side, and when she absently lifted it to her mouth to lick it off, the sharp heat of ginger burst over her tongue. Curious, she pulled the cork from the wide mouth of the crock and dipped her spoon inside.
The spoon came up with a collection of small, diced cubes of translucent amber coated in golden syrup. The fragrance they wafted into the air made her close her eyes for a moment in bliss.
Stem ginger. The finest she’d ever seen.
Bess shuddered to think how much it must have cost. All of these ingredients, really—the white sugar, the powdery soft flour, the spices. She bit her lip.
Not for the first time, Bess’s stomach clenched with the realization of the width of the chasm that existed between her life and the life of the people who belonged in this house.
Ashbourn had so much. He could spare a little to bring some joy to a wounded boy.
Recklessly, defiantly, she scooped out more of the precious cubes and added them to the mixture, along with their syrup. It was the work of a moment to combine the dry ingredients with the wet and shape the biscuit dough into round balls on a flat baking sheet.
Into the oven they went, and Bess fell into a straight-backed wooden chair by the worktable and rested her head upon her folded arms. The cold marble that topped the worktable felt good on her overheated skin.
A clatter at the kitchen door jerked Bess upright, blinking in the candlelight. A dark, hulking form staggered through the doorway, tousled head hanging low and face shadowed.
Gasping, Bess stood up so quickly her chair skidded across the flagstones but before she could scream for help or run away or do anything but draw a deep breath, the man raised his head slowly while clutching at his left side.
It was the duke.
Tonight, Ashbourn’s eyes were dull, the smeared light grey of a London dawn, and they bore into Bess from across the empty cavern of the kitchen for a long, suspended moment before a spasm of pain tightened his aristocratic features and he crashed to the floor like a felled tree.
Nathaniel knew pain. He knew cold. He knew the aching weariness of dragging himself home from a fight to piece himself back together like a shattered bottle of whiskey, with no help from anyone.
That’s what he knew, it was what he expected, it was the way his life had always been.
So when he felt the feather brush of warm fingertips searching gently across his grimy, sweaty brow, he flinched away from the touch instinctively.
“Shhh,” soothed a soft voice that reached down to the very heart of him and calmed him. The voice of an angel. “You’re hurt. You need help.”
Nathaniel laughed, but somehow it emerged from his throat as a groan. “No one can help me.”
“Duke—Ashbourn…please, you must tell me what has happened.”
The voice sounded more upset now, almost frantic, and it made Nathaniel frown. He shifted slightly, his entire body one huge throbbing bruise, but it was the lightning strike of pain in his left side that made him grit his teeth around another groan.
“There?” The warm touch was back, smoothing down his chest and over his sides, gentle but implacable as the dawn. “You’re bleeding, Ashbourn.”
Ashbourn. It still didn’t sound like his name, though it was the name he’d waited impatiently his entire life to shoulder.
The more fool he, never realizing what a burden it would be to carry the name of the man who had cast him off, banished a grieving boy from the last place he’d known a mother’s love, and did his careless best to destroy his legacy so there would be nothing to inherit but shame.
