Page 35
“Ready?” He was waiting for her by the door.
“I’m a little surprised a place like this has a kitchen,” she said, as he led her through a meandering connection of rooms.
Goods, their full splendor dampened by shadow, lined every available surface—walls, tables, shelves, windowsills—in an explosion of texture and color. She’d heard plenty about the wealth associated with the Balfour name, but precious little about the capital-generating monstrosity that was the store itself.
“There’s a small tearoom that’s a part of the store.” He took one step down the dark stairwell before twisting back toward her, sharing the light of his lamp. “Mind these steps. They’re narrow.”
She frowned at him. “I think I can manage a simple flight of stairs, thank you.”
“I’m pleased to know the faculty has been restored, then.” A glimmer of mischief lit his eyes and she swatted him onward.
She had been properly foxed then. She wanted to know just what turn of events made her appear so desperate as to need his rescue, and how she’d ended up here instead of thrown out on the doorstep of No. 34 to languish alone. She wished those were the parts of her memory that remained, not the events that had played out in his office. Those were conveniently branded onto her brain. She had said things to him she’d never said to anyone—not even herself.
The kitchen was like any other of its kind, a rectangular room scrubbed clean and abandoned for the night, which still wafted with the scent of warm, rising yeast and woodsmoke. Mr. Balfour set his lamp down in the center of a long, oak table. “Have you ever had switchel?”
Sophie was running the pad of her forefinger over the table’s wood grain, tripping over the valleys made by years of knife cuts. She looked up. “Had what?”
His mouth tipped up on one side, and he ran a hand through his hair. God help her, she thought about how those hands had been braced against her back and shoulder, and her skin tingled in disbelief.
“Just have a seat.”
She obeyed without question, quick to divert her eyes. “What do they make here?” she asked, tracing the table’s textures with her fingernail now. “It smells sweet.”
“Pastries, mostly.” His voice was muffled from across the room. “Would you like a raspberry tart?”
The thought of adding more acid to her delicate stomach made her gulp. “No. Thank you.”
Her eyes drifted right, right, right, until she could see his form bent over the hearth, breathing life back into the ashes and putting a kettle of water to heat. Signs of the pastry chef’s occupation were dotted sparsely around the room in cones of sugar, a flour sifter, a cast iron oven, and little heart-shaped cake tins. What an operation the store must be, to indulge in such specialties.
“Do you like it here?”
He rose and gave her a quick glance on his way across the kitchen. “The store, you mean?”
“Yes.”
He disappeared into a small adjoining room, and returned a moment later with slices of dried ginger root and a mortar and pestle. He placed both down across from her and started his task. “I hate this bloody store.”
Her head jerked back, and the action intensified the pulsing in her temples. “But you told me yourself you’re here all the time. Surely, given its success, your work must be by choice.”
The hand holding the pestle slowed its movement. “Yes, well, there’s nothing I want more than to be done with it one day soon. Or at least feel I’ve a choice in the matter.”
Her brow worked into a deep furrow. The stone shredding the spice’s skin filled the silence. It would do her no good to be curious. There was nothing polite in pressing, either.
“What is it that you’re after, then?”
His hands stilled and he raised his eyes to her. A dark, inscrutable look, but even still, she was imagining the halos of soft green she knew to be there. “A house of my own.” He breathed out. “It probably sounds silly, but just … Choices. To be able to do as I please, and if it ceases to please me, do something else whenever I like. I’m sick of being tied to this place.”
She tilted her chin to one side. “That doesn’t tell me anything at all.”
He started his work again. “Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
He stepped away, taking the spice to the now-glowing hearth. Sophie turned in her chair to face his back. “If you wish to live so unattached, then why are you pursuing Miss Penney?”
He didn’t answer, but she saw his movements stutter as he dusted the ginger into the kettle.
“What I mean to say is, well, it seems to me marriage would quite stifle your goals, if those really are your goals. And surely the only thing Miss Penney has to offer you is status, and you—”
