BEFORE SUNRISE THE next morning, Marianne was up and dressed and ready to work. She lit lamps in the kitchen, greeted the maids as they bustled through the servants’ hall, then entered the larder to retrieve the dough Sally had placed in the cool room the day before. The buns and loaves had risen slowly and were now beautifully puffed, ready to pop into the ovens and feed a hungry academy.

Still adjusting her cap and apron, Sally joined her a moment later and helped to carry the dough from the larder into the kitchen. Marianne then peered into the adjoining rooms to look for Jack, but in vain.

She hadn’t spotted him upstairs in the servants’ attic quarters, either. Though, of course, he hadn’t moved into the academy upon accepting the temporary post as her kitchenmaid. Instead, he had the nicest lodging of any maid in England, keeping his room at an elegant hotel.

Maybe he was still there. Sleeping away the day, never planning to roll up his shirtsleeves and help with today’s meals.

Yet if he didn’t intend to return, why would he have come so far to see her? And bring her strawberries?

She couldn’t fathom. But she also couldn’t wait any longer. She had to leave now or risk missing the pick of today’s offerings at the butcher, the greengrocer, and the fishmonger. Just as she was setting aside her cap and cramming her everyday hat onto her head, Jack entered the kitchen with a small parcel in hand.

“Morning, Mrs. Redfern,” he said with a wink, and with entirely too much good cheer for a man who was going to peel vegetables all day.

“Good morning,” she grumbled back, wishing for a cup of tea from the kettle she hadn’t yet heated. These mornings when she went for supplies were always a scramble. “What’s the parcel? You’ve been shopping at this hour?”

“No, I went shopping before this hour. You told me we’d have to rise early. Here, look what I got for you.”

He handed over the little package, pulling loose the twine as he did. When Marianne took it in her hands, the paper fell open to reveal a palm-sized section of honeycomb. Sunlight-gold honey dewed the intricate little hexagons. Each was a reservoir for the sweet liquid, each itself of pleasant-scented wax.

The sight and smell of it tugged powerfully at her memory. When she brought the honeycomb to her nose to breathe in the scent, suddenly she was twenty years old again—back in Lincolnshire, wearing thick, long gloves and a hat with netting to protect her face. And she was laughing, telling the bees in her father’s hives that Jack Grahame had asked her to marry him. This was an old tradition, really more of a superstition. One had to tell the bees of any weddings to come, or they’d grieve at being left out of the celebration and might stop making honey.

But that marriage never happened. Instead, Jack’s father arranged his son’s wedding with the well-dowered daughter of a wealthy merchant.

When the banns were called for Jack and Helena Wilcox, Marianne hadn’t bothered to tell the bees. Let them continue on, happy in their ignorance.

They hadn’t stopped making honey, as far as she knew, but she hadn’t been around long enough to collect it. She’d thought she was protecting herself by leaving before the banns were called a second time. She had protected herself.

But she’d hurt herself too. There was so much she had missed by fleeing her home.

“Where did you get this honeycomb?” she asked.

Jack doffed his hat, looking pleased. “I persuaded a confectioner to open early.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to bring you some, because I was remembering the bees your father used to keep.”

So. He recalled those days too. “Why?”

Now he looked annoyed. “I don’t know, Marianne. Maybe because seeing you reminds me of the way we grew up, helping the beekeeper collect honey and wax, and it was a nice memory, and I wanted to share it with you.”

Yet all of that belonged firmly in the past. The Redfern land now belonged to the Grahames, sold by Marianne’s mother upon being widowed five years before. Jack’s father had been living then, and he’d snapped it up using the Wilcox money that had passed into his hands.

There was no room for Marianne and Jack in that memory anymore, certainly not together.

“That’s not what I’m asking, really.” She bit her lip, wishing for a taste of sweetness. “Why...any of this? You came to London. You brought me strawberries.”

“And honeycomb,” he pointed out.

“I don’t understand why you’re here, Jack. I have a good post, and you have your life in Lincolnshire. If you just wanted to share a memory, why didn’t you send a letter?”

Seeming to think over his answer, he flipped his hat end over end. Fidget, fidget. “Because,” he decided, “I haven’t seen you for eight years, but for all the years before that, I saw you every day.”

The kitchen clock chimed the hour, reminding her of time rushing past. “After eight years without seeing me, it seems as if you could go on in the same way.”

“I probably could have, but I didn’t want to.” His gray eyes were merry. Why did he always look as if things were going his way? “Now that I’m here, maybe I’ll begin to pine for you. Be a devoted suitor and shower you with gifts. Would you be interested?”

The fiend. Did he know that was all she’d once wanted?

Did she know what she wanted from him now?

With one fingertip, she touched the delicate comb—then, in a rush, she folded over the heavy brown paper and set the parcel down on the worktable. “Don’t buy me any more presents.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not right.”

He set his hat on the table beside the parcel, then stripped off his gloves. “You don’t like them?”

“I don’t know if I like them or not. It’s too confusing.”

His smile was crooked, not exactly happy. “I don’t mind confusing you, Marianne. That’s a step up from angering you, and isn’t that where we started?”

“I don’t know,” she blurted. “You’re confusing me.”

He poked through the paper and touched the discarded honeycomb with a gentle forefinger. Then he folded the brown paper over it, packing it away. Done, Marianne thought. He’d listen, and he’d stop now.

Instead, he said, “Then I’ll keep right on.” Stepping closer, he cradled her face in his hands—and he kissed her.

Oh! She hadn’t been kissed for so long. At first, the sensation startled her. Her mouth was meant for tasting recipes, for hectoring grocers, for explaining her work to assistants. It had been so long since she’d used it for anything else, for pure pleasure unconnected with work, that she was clumsy. The touch of his lips was too intimate; it was impossible to resist. She moved forward, crushing into Jack, and pressed her mouth against his. As if eager for her, his lips parted, taking her deeper.

She remembered this feeling now, this taste. The sweetness of a loved one face-to-face. The velvet touch of a tongue and the heat of lips. His strong fingers holding her face as if he couldn’t bear for her to escape him again—

But she had. Had to. Did. Must.

She was at work, and anyone could happen in and see them, and—and she was a cook now, and she had meat and vegetables to buy.

Her thoughts in a tumble, she drew back, catching her heel on the hem of her work dress and staggering. Hands outstretched, palms facing him, she recovered her balance and asked again, “Why?”

Blinking as if dazed, he asked, “Why not?”

She set her hat straight. Drove a pin through the brim into her thick coil of hair. “That’s the difference between us. I can’t afford to ask why not.”

He rubbed a hand over his chin, his mouth. “It’s just a kiss, Marianne.”

“Is it?” She swallowed.

Those gray eyes weren’t merry now. “No. It wasn’t just a kiss. But I thought if I said that, you might stop stumbling around and looking so worried and hurt.”

“I’m not hurt,” she said.

“And worried?”

She spoke slowly, as if reading out an unfamiliar recipe. “The only thing I’m worried about is missing all the choice grocery goods.”

“Really? That’s what’s bothering you?” He lifted a brow.

“What else?” she said loftily, tying the strings of her bonnet, fighting the urge to lift her hand to her lips to see whether they felt as different without as they did within.

“If you say so, Mrs. Redfern.” He popped his fashionable hat back atop his head, then pulled on the kid gloves entirely unsuited to a kitchenmaid’s errands. “Lead on, and I’ll serve you as you like.”

***

HE’D INTENDED IT IN a teasing way, but he soon learned that Marianne took his offer of assistance all too literally. She’d given him an enormous basket to carry, and after visiting a dry-goods grocer, it groaned and clinked with jars and tins. The march from there to the greengrocer’s seemed miles long as the basket dug into his arm and butted him in the leg.

Hitching it onto a different part of his forearm, he set his teeth. He’d have bruises all up and down his arms from the damned basket. Why had she had to get every spice in the world, and the bigger the container, the better?

“You’ve been picking heavy things on purpose,” he grumbled to Marianne, blithely unburdened at his side.

Beneath the brim of her bonnet, her eyes squeezed with amusement. “Why, Jack, are you telling me that basket is too much for you?”

“No,” he lied, pride stung. “Only, I don’t understand why you couldn’t have these things sent to the academy along with the other food.”

“Because you’re here to carry them. And what a fine kitchenmaid you are.” Under straight dark brows, her eyes were large and full of humor.

“Ha,” he said flatly, settling the heavy affair of wicker more firmly in the crook of his elbow.

Any landowner worth the name had been up with the animals at some time, had got his hands dirty in every field at one time or another. But dawn on Jack’s rolling, quiet lands up north had left him wholly unprepared for an early morning in London’s bustling food markets. Every street was a jostling wall of people, the cries of hawkers mixing with the ding of shop bells and the babble of customers and food sellers. The sun was pale in a spring-morning sky, but already Jack was hot, and he was gritty-eyed from little sleep and wondering how the devil Marianne could move through these crowds all the time.

“You really do this every day?”

“Not every day.” She smiled. “Sometimes I make a list and send a footman. When I had an assistant and a proper kitchenmaid, I could send one of them.”

“You imply that I’m not a proper kitchenmaid.” He feigned distress. “So hurtful.”

“But accurate. If you knew your ingredients, you’d never have suggested that huge sugarloaf.”

“It’s a large academy. We need a lot of sugar.”

“Yes, but the larger loaves of sugar are from the later boilings. They don’t cook or bake nearly so nicely as the first or second.”

“Sugar...boils?” Surely she was speaking some sort of foreign language only cooks understood. “But it’s solid.”

She laughed. “Give me those two weeks, and you’ll learn right enough how sugar boils. And gets made.”

He eyed the basket into which several of the small, and apparently better, cone-shaped sugarloaves were nestled alongside expensive vanilla pods, fragrant cinnamon, and God only knew what else. “Fine, as long as I don’t have to shop with this cursed basket all the time.”

“Just this once, to give you the experience.” She slipped a hand onto his unladen arm. “Ah, here’s the greengrocer. Isn’t this nice? Getting out of the kitchen and into the city? Really, though it throws the day into a flurry, I enjoy the shopping. Picking out all the best for the young ladies and the teachers, keeping them fed and happy with the food I make. It’s part of their learning. Part of helping them become...whatever they’re going to become.”

He eyed her with some surprise. “What sort of academy is this, that you feed them so well and care so much?”

She looked embarrassed then, turning her gaze to the lettuces and becoming brisk. “Well. Everyone needs to eat, and it’s my job to feed them. Good morning, Mr. Haviland!” She greeted the greengrocer, a stocky, beetle-browed man with a pleasant smile and the cutthroat negotiating ability of a pirate. Jack had encountered this fellow the day before when he’d bought strawberries, little knowing he’d soon be back for more produce as an employee of the academy.

Informally. Voluntarily.

And, despite his present physical discomforts, not at all unhappily.

Marianne was engaging in a spirited and fluent battle of prices with Haviland, finally shaking her head. “No, the lettuce is simply too dear. We’ll make do with—what could I cook?” She ticked on her fingers, thinking. “I’ll have the cabbages.”

Ugh. Cabbages. No. “Allow me to make up the difference, Marianne,” Jack offered. “Look—I know this man. I bought strawberries from him yesterday.” Haviland was beaming, remembering, probably, what an easy mark Jack had been. He couldn’t deny it. He’d got used to having money and to using it to save trouble.

Marianne looked at Jack repressively.

Oh. His informality. “Mrs. Redfern,” he corrected. “Ma’am.”

Again, she shook her head. “No, don’t buy the lettuce at that price. It’s not that I can’t spend more of Mrs. Brodie’s money if I wish. The headmistress allows me free rein. But if I spend too much, I don’t enjoy working with the ingredients. If the cost is too dear, all the joy is gone.”

She turned back to the greengrocer, her cheeks pink with the pleasure of arguing. And Jack, holding her basket, reeled on his feet.

Not because of lettuce, or even cabbage. But because she was right: When the cost was too dear, there was no way to find joy. He and Helena had sold themselves, she for status and he for money. He’d loved someone else, and she had too.

The cost had been too dear. And when Lincolnshire had seen loss upon loss—Marianne’s father, the Redfern lands, Helena, his own father—Jack stopped counting the months to the end of mourning and began instead counting the months until he could get away. To Marianne, with whom he’d last been happy in that golden, glowing, honeycomb way.

“Forget the lettuce,” she concluded with a sniff. “Mr. Haviland, I’ll take the cabbages instead. Jack, by the time I’m done with them, you’ll swear they were tender spring greens.”

She tapped her chin with a fingertip. “How many do you suppose we could fit into that basket? I’ll need twenty-three for the academy meal, and for the servants’ dinner...hmm.”

“Wait. You make a whole separate dinner for the servants?”

Her brows drew together. “Of course I do. You don’t think the kitchenmaids dine on roasted lambs and new peas with shallots, do you?”

He resettled the basket, growing heavy again on his arm. “I rather hoped this kitchenmaid would.”

She elbowed him, grinning. “The meal will be as good as you help me make it. We’ll have colcannon, and you see if Mrs. Lavery doesn’t come into the kitchens for a serving of it.”

“Mrs. Lavery?” Jack didn’t recognize the name as one of the servants he’d met the day before.

“She’s the—” Biting her lip, she shot a glance at the greengrocer. “The art teacher, among other things. Family’s from Ireland. She made sure I’ve got the recipe just right.”

To the order of cabbages, she added onions as well, selecting them carefully as a wealthy lady might pick over the stones at Rundell and Bridge. After arranging to have the vegetables delivered to the academy, she rejected the leeks the greengrocer offered. “Good in colcannon, but not if they look dry as that. Nice try, Mr. Haviland.”

The man threw up his hands in seeming dismay, then bade a farewell so cheerful that it was clear he’d enjoyed the dickering as much as Marianne had. As they left the stands of fruit and vegetables, Jack was simply relieved not to have dozens of cabbages piled onto the clinking weight of the exotic ingredients in the basket.

“We’ll go to the butcher’s next,” Marianne said, pushing back into the thick of the crowd of shoppers. “And find a bit of bacon to go into the servants’ dinner, plus joints of beef for the young ladies.”

“One moment,” Jack said. “I’ve got to switch arms, since you’re using me instead of a farm wagon.” He shifted the basket, drawing it from his aching left forearm to the right and immediately felt pinioned.

It was then that he noticed the dip. If it had been subtle, he probably wouldn’t have, but this was a jostle against his side, a hand in his coat.

He struggled to turn, fighting the press of several people moving past him at once. Who had done it? A boy? No, a grown man! That wiry balding fellow, just there. Jack saw the purse just before someone moved between them, blocking both his sight and path to the man.

“Stop! Thief!” Jack thrust the huge basket into Marianne’s arms, then gave chase. “Stop that bald man!” he called. “Thief!” Damn these crowds! Why was everyone in his way? Hadn’t they heard him? Seen the man running away with his purse?

Shoving and pushing, he finally got close enough to dive for his quarry. With a leap and a curse, he caught the man about the shoulders and tackled him down.

“Lemme go! I didn’t do anything!” The wiry man struggled, caught Jack in the bruised forearm, and slipped from his grasp as Jack hissed in pain.

A neat booted foot stuck out—to trip the man, Jack thought with a flicker of hope, but no, it caught another fellow and sent him sprawling. The balding man darted away, looking over his shoulder furtively, as Jack turned to lambaste his would-be helper.

It was no well-meaning stranger who regarded him with grave green eyes.

“Marianne!” How had she run after him so quickly? He shook that off. “That’s not the thief!” The man she had tripped was larger and quite prosperous looking. Already, he was heaving himself upright, indignant and blustering.

Marianne moved closer to the man, saying something Jack couldn’t hear, and held out her hand. In a flash, it all changed. The proper gentleman’s face contorted, and he caught her about the throat and pulled her against his body with an arm like a vise. Jack’s heart, already hammering from the chase, skipped and stuttered. “No!” He lunged forward, ready to attack.

Then Marianne sank in a faint, poor thing, her knees buckling. Jack twisted to catch her—but no, she wasn’t collapsing as he’d thought. She’d got the man to loosen his hold, and she bent abruptly at the waist, flipping the much larger man over her body. Jack could only gape as the large man was somersaulted over Marianne, landing flat on his back on the pavement. With a single stride, Marianne went to the groaning man’s side and planted her foot gently on his throat.

“Stay down,” she said coolly, “and don’t cause any more mischief. And give my kitchenmaid back what your accomplice stole from him.”

“Accomplice...?” Jack had no idea what was going on. How had Marianne flung a grown man over her head like that? And where was the man who had stolen Jack’s money?

A constable arrived on the scene and took charge of the prone man from Marianne. A search of his pockets revealed not only Jack’s purse, but several others—more than enough to haul him off, despite his protests that he’d never stolen a thing.

“He’ll be giving up his accomplice within five minutes.” Marianne dusted her hands on her skirts, then straightened her hat. All perfectly untroubled, seeming heedless of the curious crowd about. “All right, then, Jack? I have to go back and get my basket from Mr. Haviland. We’d best count all the jars to make sure he hasn’t helped himself.”

“How...” Jack shook his head. “I don’t understand. How did you know who had my purse? That wasn’t the man who stole it.”

“The dip was so clumsy. He couldn’t expect to get away with it unless he handed off the goods to someone else, and I saw him do it. If you’d caught the first fellow, he wouldn’t have so much as a stolen farthing on him.” Jack must have been staring, for she added, “It’s not so uncommon a scheme here in London. Especially on a busy street.”

Jack kept a hand to his purse—impressed, intrigued, and not a little intimidated. “And you deal with this every day.” As they retraced their steps to the greengrocer’s, he asked the more pressing question. “Where did you learn to flip a grown man over your head?”

“Well, it wasn’t over my head. But I learned it from Miss Carpenter. She teaches geometry and mathematics at the academy.”

He remembered her pause when she was describing the job of Mrs. Lavery, who apparently liked eating colcannon. “She teaches something else too, I’ll warrant.”

“Oh—perhaps. You did all right for someone who hasn’t had her instruction. You almost had that first fellow.”

Retrieving the basket from the bemused Mr. Haviland, Jack resettled it on his arm. For the second time, he asked, “What sort of academy is this?”

Marianne grinned at him. “Maybe this evening, you’d like to find out.”