The Grantham family, it seemed, was fond of puddings.
This could be a bundle of Christmas recipes—any one of these dishes might well grace a Christmas table—but they were main dishes only. She neared the bottom of the pile without finding a single recipe for sweets or confections until only a few scattered papers remained. She took up the second to last page, but her heart was already sinking. Well, then, it seemed shedidwant to make the duke’s ginger biscuits, after all, fool that she was.
Gooseberry Fool. Wait. Gooseberry Fool? That was a sweet, surely?
She reached for the final paper, her hand shaking, and there, written across the top of the page, she found what she was looking for.
Max’s Ginger Nut Biscuits.She scanned the paper, breath held. Flour, sugar, butter, three ounces of bruised caraway seeds, four ounces of pounded ginger, and . . .
Three and a half pounds of treacle.
She stared down at the paper, her heart slamming against her ribs. Somehow, this tiny scrap of paper had survived three generations of Granthams, only for her to find it, against all odds, tucked into an old weather-beaten wooden box on a forgotten shelf in the stillroom.
It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
It must be a sign, surely? Surely, she wasmeantto find it?
She leaped up from the bed, the scrap of paper still clutched between her fingers, and rushed across her bedchamber, ready to dash down to the kitchen and begin pounding ginger at once, but she paused at the door.
No. Not yet.
After yesterday’s fanfare over the Christmas pudding, she’d have the attention of every servant who wandered through the kitchen door before she’d even laid her ingredients out, and soon enough they’d all be clamoring for ginger nut biscuits.
It wouldn’t do.
These were for the duke, and the duke alone. It even said so at the top of the recipe.
Max’s Ginger Nut Biscuits.
Perhaps it was silly of her, but some instinct inside her recognized that he wouldn’t wish for the others to know anything about this.
These weren’t just biscuits to him.
They were a memory, and memories were private.
So, she waited, sitting quite still at the edge of her bed. At some point, Abby bustled in and clucked disapprovingly at Rose’s damp hems, and helped her change into a dry gown before bustling off to fetch her a dinner tray.
It remained untouched on the table beside the bed.
The sun sank lower, the hard, bright blue of the afternoon sky giving way to a gold-streaked sunset, then a deep lavender twilight, and still she waited until the sound of voices and footsteps faded, and the household settled down to rest with a creak and a groan.
Only then did she creep out of her bedchamber and steal down the staircase into the entryway below. It was deserted. She peered down the hallway that led to the duke’s study, but all was dark and quiet.
Yes. This was what she wanted. Silence, and privacy.
Her skirts swished against the marble floors as she turned and made her way down the servants’ staircase to the kitchen below.
Mrs. Watson had banked the fire and placed the covers over the stove, but it was lovely and warm still, with every surface scrubbed clean. She lit several lanterns to work by, placing them on the long, wide table in the center of the kitchen, then dragging the heavy sacks of flour and sugar from the larder, and the butter and cream from the cook’s pantry.
The gentle lantern light cast a soft glow over the kitchen, and it wasn’t long before she’d lost herself in the scent of the spices, and the give of the dough between her fingers. She hummed under her breath as she worked—“The First Noel,” one of Ambrose’s favorites—and the biscuits took shape under her hand, as if by magic.
* * *
Max hadn’t bothered to light the lanterns.
He hadn’t, in fact, moved from the chair he’d thrown himself into when he’d retired to his study after he and Miss St. Claire had returned from Hammond Court.
Rose. The name suited her. One couldn’t look at her face, her lips, without thinking of rose petals.
