Puddings were boiled and didn’t come out of the pot looking all that appetizing. This one was a lifeless beige and squelched when Enola tipped it over onto the platter and proudly placed it next to the delicate serving trays of oysters and clam fritters.
“Annie and I helped,” she said, “We found a cooking video on YouTube.”
“It’s a channel where the lady does period reenacting,” I said, chattering away, hoping that Cressida didn’t blow our cover.
I was willing to fall on the sword of my rabbit pudding if it kept Ethel from fighting Beck for his sisters.
“She lives in a hut in the woods that she built herself, only wears clothes she sews herself, and looks like a walking yeast infection.”
“My word,” Penny exclaimed, taking a long sip of her drink.
The butler came over with a knife and started sawing at the rabbit pudding.
“I had to boil that thing for three hours,” I said as the first slice was removed with a sucking noise.
The butler plated it and handed me the gray triangle along with a fork.
The rabbit pudding had rabbit, duh, along with mushrooms, suet, the leftover bacon from breakfast, white wine, and parsley.
Ethel pressed a napkin over her mouth, and Cressida glared daggers at me over her drink.
“I think,” I said, “if I had baked this, it might have come out a little nicer, but we’re trying to do things the historically accurate way, right?”
“Are you really going to eat that?” Beck asked me as I cut off a piece of the pudding. The dish was room temperature, and everything had congealed into one gray mass surrounded by the fleshy beige pastry.
“I can actually cook,” I assured everyone watching. “This was admittedly a bit of a misstep.”
I took a bite. In colonial America, you had salt to season your food if you were lucky; this historically accurate recipe was extremely bland.
“Not the worst thing I’ve ever had in my mouth,” I said, taking another bite because, hey, if you weren’t going to be enthusiastic about your food, how could you expect anyone else to be? “I once gave a guy a blow job at a Dream Street band reunion concert. Come to think of it, he looked a little bit like this pastry. I er… shit.”
This was why I didn’t do kids, because I had never matured past the age of fourteen. I looked down at the girls. Beck had his hands clapped over their ears.
“Is this really the type of influence you want for your granddaughters?” Bunny asked Ethel as the butler topped off everyone’s drinks.
“Honestly, when you told me that your granddaughters’ guardian and his girlfriend were going to be here, I assumed that you had found someone suitable. Not…” She gestured a limp hand at me. “That. How are the girls going to become future DAR members? Honestly, another few months with Tess, and the girls are going to follow in their mother’s footsteps.”
“Agreed,” Penny said with a sniff. “My Cressida would be a much better option for Mr. Svensson and his sisters.”
I hiked up my skirts. They did not wear underwear in the seventeenth century, and the loose britches were slipping. “For your information, I’m ensuring that the girls are making way better life choices than me,” I said. “In fact, they’re building their own companies. They even have their own office, and we still need to decorate, right, girls? Maybe Grandma wants to come help?”
Points for me, hopefully, because who doesn’t want to decorate their granddaughters’ corporate office?
But Ethel didn’t take the bait. In fact, she was quite upset.
“But what about school?”
“They were expelled,” Beck admitted.
“For no reason,” I added hotly. “They were just defending themselves. But it’s fine because now they’re doing a hybrid homeschool.”
“Homeschool? I think I’m going to faint.” Ethel looked pale. The butler helped Ethel to the love seat, and Penny fanned her face.
“Those girls need to be out amongst the well-heeled members of society,” Bunny said to Ethel, “not locked up in the same homeschooling situation they just escaped from.”
“This isn’t like the cult,” I said defensively. “Annie and Enola are learning computer coding, business management, and investing.”
“Finance and computers?” Ethel pressed a hand to her forehead.
