Page 46

“Any other specifications?” Juliet asked, her eyes twinkling with the same mirth that was currently dancing in the corridors of her throat.

Eloise studied the display. “That one beside it. The one with currants.” She turned and looked up. “I want that one as well.”

“Then we shall have both.”

The baker’s wife—a stout woman with flour along her collar—wrapped each in paper and added two almond biscuits without being asked. Juliet handed over the coins and said nothing about the extras.

Eloise ate the iced bun on the lane outside in approximately four minutes, walking as she went. Her free hand held the remaining parcel against her chest.

“Is the biscuit for later?” Juliet asked.

“I am saving it,” Eloise said, smiling toothily. “In case I become hungry.”

“And the currant bun?” Juliet prodded further.

Eloise looked at it. “That one is also for now.”

Juliet bit her cheek to keep her laughter in, and they walked on.

The village lane ran a quarter-mile between low stone buildings, and Eloise knew the baker’s and the apothecary by name and nothing else. She stopped at the milliner’s bow window and looked at the display of chip straw bonnets with the close attention she gave things she had not been allowed to examine directly.

“I have never been inside,” she said.

“Would you like to?”

“I would.” A pause. “Yes, please.”

They went in. The milliner showed Eloise a straw bonnet with wide yellow ribbons, which Eloise tried on at the mirror and declared excellent. Juliet bought it without debate. Eloise carried it by the brim, walking with the care of someone transporting something fragile.

“I shall wear it in the garden tomorrow.”

“You will look very well in it.”

The market at the lower end of the lane had perhaps a dozen stalls: vegetables, a candle-seller, a woman with preserves, a man with a barrow of odds and ends. Eloise stopped at the barrow. The man handed her a small wooden spinning top without being asked, and she examined it at all angles.

“Is it for sale?” Juliet asked.

“A penny, my lady,” he replied, eager to sell his wares.

Eloise looked up. “I have not brought any money.” She handed the top back, without argument, with the matter-of-fact resignation of a child who has learned to accept this.

Juliet gave the man his penny and put the top back in Eloise’s hands. Eloise looked at it, then at her.

“I shall pay you back,” she said solemnly, and Juliet wanted to laugh.

“And why would you? There is no debt between family, is there?” she asked, tapping the young girl on the nose.

“Then I shall do something kind for you.” She dropped the top into her pocket, entirely resolved, and Juliet conceded, realizing that they would get nothing done if she didn’t give in to the child, at least in this.

At the vegetable seller, Eloise stopped, picked up a lemon from the pile, and smelled it; her eyes went wide, then she set it down with great care.

“You have had lemon before,” Juliet said.

“In tarts, yes.” Eloise looked at it. “But the last time I came to the village—it was two years ago—there was a man selling them, and he let me hold one. I had not seen the whole thing before. In Uncle Daniel’s books there was only a drawing.” She turned the memory over. “The lemon in a tart is a very small thing.”

“The whole fruit is considerably larger,” Juliet agreed.

Eloise looked at her. “Has London got lemon trees?”