Page 12

She stared at the pieces. Her jaw was set and her eyes were bright and her knuckles were white around the broken halves, and he recognised the expression because he'd seen it every day since she arrived. He wondered whether this particular failure would be the one that finally made her weep.

She set the halves on the table. Eyes still dry. Stood with her hands flat on the wood and her head bowed and breathed.

He crossed to the shelf and took down the flour. She looked up.

"More flour," he said. "And yeast."

"Yeast?"

He opened the crock on the top shelf, the one she hadn't been able to reach, and held it where she could see. Inside, a pale, sour-smelling paste. Marian's sourdough starter, kept alive for years, fed weekly with flour and water. Marian's cook had maintained it, and after the cook left Kit had kept it going because throwing it away felt like burying another piece of her.

"This," he said. "A spoonful. It makes the bread rise."

He set the crock on the table and measured flour into the bowl by feel, his hand scooping and his eye gauging the level. Then he added water from the kettle, warm, tested against his wrist the way Lady Linton had taught him.

He kneaded until the dough changed under his hands to smooth and elastic, making it easier to shape it on the floured board. After setting it on the baking sheet, he covered it with a cloth.

Audrey had not moved. She stood beside him and watched his hands.

"Now you," he said.

She blinked. "Now?"

"Flour. Water. Warm, not hot. If it's too hot it kills the yeast. A spoonful from the crock. Then knead."

She measured the flour into a second bowl, using her hands the way he had. The pile was higher than his. He said nothing. She added water from the kettle, tested it against her wrist, and spooned the starter in.

The kneading was where it was difficult. She worked with her wrists, pressing down instead of forward, and the dough stuck to her fingers and the table and eventually her hair where she'd pushed a strand back. Her hip locked twice and she shifted her weight and winced and kept going.

"Your whole body," he said. "Not your wrists. Lean into it."

She leaned on her good leg. The pressure changed and the dough began to respond, pulling away from the board instead of clinging to it. She folded and pressed, folded and pressed, her rhythm uneven but improving, perspiration beading on her forehead. After five minutes the dough in her hands was smoother than it had been.

She shaped it and set it on the baking sheet beside his loaf and covered both with the cloth, and they stood on either side of the table and looked at the two shapes.

"How long?" she asked.

"An hour to rise. Then the range."

An hour. They could not stand at the table for an hour without speaking, and speaking was dangerous because speaking led to questions and questions led to answers he couldn't afford to give. He picked up the baking sheet and set it near the range where the warmth would help the dough rise and left through the side door without looking back.

He went out to the drainage ditch along the east wall, where a season of dead leaves and clay had blocked the channel and the rainwater pooled against the foundations instead of running clear. Ankle-deep in cold mud, digging with a spade, scraping wet leaves and silt from a stone channel laid by men who'd been dead two hundred years. Miserable work. Good. Misery was easier than whatever was happening in the kitchen.

When an hour had passed, he went back in.

Both loaves had risen. His had doubled, the surface stretched smooth. Hers had risen unevenly—higher on the right where the dough was thinner, barely at all on the dense left side—but it had risen. He put both loaves in the range.

She stood at the table and watched the range as if it was a cradle. He busied himself with the kettle because watching her watch the range with such wonder in her eyes was softening his resolve which he didn't need.

Twenty minutes. He pulled the sheet from the range and set it on the table.

His loaf was golden, even, the crust crackling as it cooled. He tore it and the inside was soft and white and steaming.

Hers was paler. Cracked along the top where the uneven rise had split the surface. But the crust was golden, and when she tore it open, it was cooked through, steam rising.

She held the two halves and stared at them. He was not ready for what he saw.

Her face opened with delight. Her eyes were bright, her flour-dusted face flushed, and she was smiling with her whole mouth, unguarded.