FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL days, Marianne put Jack to work in earnest as a kitchenmaid, helping Sally with tasks for the day’s meals while Marianne worked ahead for the Donor Dinner. The whole academy staff thought of it in capital letters now, this looming feast for wealthy patrons that included an exhibition of student talents. There was little over a week to go and so much to prepare and plan.

The orders were placed for peas and mushrooms on the day of the dinner; the peas would be made into a soup, the mushrooms into a fricassee with meat of crab. Mushrooms would also serve as the side to a dish of salmon, served whole save for the head. The fishmonger was on alert, as was the dairymaid who provided cream and butter. Two days ahead, fresh-killed pheasant would be hung and singed, and the hares were already hanging in the meat safe, all the better for a bit of aging before they were jugged in wine. Oh! The wines... Marianne would have to ask Hobbes to decide the wines for each course and remove. The old butler had enough knowledge to fill a vineyard, as well as the poker-stiff bearing that impressed the beau monde even more than being served the proper wine at the proper time.

So little could be done ahead compared to what must be done the day before or day of. But the more Marianne planned, the easier the day’s tasks would be. And the more she planned, the less she felt she’d be caught unawares; the less she worried about being left, startled, inadequate.

Of being unable to balance the scales. Of not being the right choice for the task.

If Jack knew she still worried about that, he didn’t let on. He was cheerful with every day’s work, as if he’d never wanted to be anywhere else, and never would, but this hot and hectic kitchen. From his seat at the end of the worktable, he peeled new carrots and trimmed asparagus, chopped new potatoes and grated the woody last of the year’s parsnips. He listened as Marianne instructed Sally about the day’s recipes: which seasonings work together, how to use less-than-perfect ingredients—such as those woody parsnips, which had come cheap and could be saved by boiling them, then frying them into crispy thin cakes.

“A cook has to improvise and substitute all the time,” Marianne told Sally, remembering the apricot tarts of the day Jack had arrived—not only an improvised recipe, but an improvised kitchenmaid. “Sometimes it works out far better than the original plan.”

She looked over at the end of the table. As if feeling her gaze, Jack looked up and winked, then returned to peeling and chopping onions. His short-cropped hair was uncovered, and though he’d taken off his coat, he was still unsuitably fine for kitchen tasks. But he rolled up his shirtsleeves with the confidence of a man who knew his arms looked well—and that he could simply buy other clothing if these were stained or damaged.

Marianne looked ruefully at her work dress, faded from blue to gray. Cut loose and comfortable, the fabric worn soft and thin from many washings. It was just right for what she had to do, yet it felt like not enough. And that feeling came from within herself, she knew, so she tried to quash it. To Jack, she was enough. He had come here; he had told her so; he had taken her in his arms. Several nights now, he’d come to her, though after the first, he had left after their lovemaking to return to his hotel. He couldn’t be seen in the same clothing for days on end, he’d pointed out, which was sensible.

She knew that, yet she ached when he left her. She ached a bit now, looking at him across the room. Still not quite believing that he was content to clean vegetables all day just to be near her, and not able to cease wondering, For how long?

Somehow, working with onions never made him teary or sniffling; he looked as if he were tackling another of those accomplishments with which he’d filled his life before coming to London. Learn to fence. Master another language. Don an apron and become indispensable as kitchenmaid in a rather exceptional academy.

Don anything or strip off everything and become indispensable to Marianne. Full stop.

She cleared her throat, then turned back to Sally. “Another issue to consider: You might not always cook at the academy. Here, we feed a huge number, but we do it as we see fit. In an elegant household, the master or mistress could give you a menu, no matter how unreasonable, and you have to make it happen. If the mistress asks for parsnips in July, how can you make her happy with both you and the food you serve?”

Sally groaned. “As if parsnips aren’t bad enough in May. Whatever was left in July would be all string and rot.”

“So use a little—a very little—of what you can find, to obey your mistress. And make up the bulk of the recipe with...?” Marianne prompted, even as her mind whirled to answer the question. It would be a pleasant challenge. Parsley root was sometimes available in summer and would have a similar appearance. With a bit of treacle, it would work, maybe, though the root’s flavor would be strong. Or a combination of—

“Apple and potato,” Sally decided. “To get the creaminess and sweetness. If the lady wanted them in a mash. If she wanted them buttered and whole, I might as well resign my post.”

Marianne laughed. “Very good! Not the plan to resign, but the alternative to parsnips. That would do quite well. You’ve come far, Sally—even if you are much too kind to the kitchenmaid.”

Both Jack and Sally chuckled, then returned to their work. Sally was arranging sliced potatoes in an attractive pattern in the bottom of a giant pan, to then be covered with sliced onion from Jack. More potatoes, then a sauce Marianne would whisk together of egg and milk and butter and cheddar, and the lot would bake for the academy dinner along with the loins of pork already roasting.

As the other two worked, Marianne spread the plan of the table for the Donor Dinner before her. It grew in size and elegance each year, a testimony to the success of the academy. Now she would need to feed dozens of the elite, wanting only the best. Two courses, the first with a remove for soup, and a dessert. Each course must be arranged in a particular way, with center and side dishes in a harmony for appearance and taste...

She sketched an arrangement lightly with a pencil, considered, and added a few notes to her plan.

Then Jack started humming.

“Stop humming,” Marianne said without looking up. “Just chop.”

“It’s too quiet.”

Now she did look up, a protest on her lips. Too quiet? With the servants talking in their dining hall? With Evans rattling the coal scuttle? With Sally sliding metal pans over the table and pots rattling on their shelves when someone walked by?

She remembered this about him, how he liked always to be at the center of attention. Not to draw it to himself, but to soak in it.

“Fine,” she said. “Talk if you must. But no humming.”

“’Scuse me, mum, but I’ll get the cheese and butter for the sauce,” Sally said. “We’ll be needing it soon.”

The sauce. Today’s meal. Right. Marianne tossed down the pencil and rubbed at her temples, drawing herself back to today’s plans. “Cheese and butter,” she said. “Thank you. Milk too, and fresh eggs, and the flour.” Sometimes a sauce needed thickening, and adding flour was one of the simplest ways to correct the texture.

Sally bustled off, and Jack spoke up. “I’d rather listen than talk, if you’re in the mood.”

Marianne’s eyes popped open. “Words every woman longs to hear, unless she’s got a meal to prepare.”

“You don’t have anything to do until Sally gets back.” Those merry gray eyes, those wicked gray eyes.

“All right, Mr. Grahame.” She stressed the surname, then rested her weight on the corner of the table at his side. “For perhaps four minutes, I am at my leisure.”

He popped to his feet, pressed a quick kiss to her lips, then sat again and resumed peeling the papery skin off an onion. All before she had even finished gasping her surprise.

“Why did you never come back to Lincolnshire?” he asked.

She picked up an onion skin, folding and crumpling it between her fingertips. “Too proud,” she admitted. “Unless I could return in triumph, I planned never to go back at all.”

He nodded at the scattered makings on the worktable—the plan for the Donor Dinner, the pan of sliced potatoes. “Look at what you bring together every day. Isn’t that a triumph?”

She smiled. “That’s not a...” Then she paused. “It is, isn’t it? It’s not the sort of triumph I was thinking of, but yes. It’s a triumph.”

Jack sliced a bad spot out of an onion. “You were thinking of the sort of triumph one reads about in novels, weren’t you? With a husband who adores you and gems all over?”

“Right,” she agreed. Though hadn’t she always liked strawberries more than gems? “Right,” she reassured herself. Because if she’d had enough all this time, and she could have gone home to her remaining family whenever she missed them...

She blinked, her eyes teary. “Onions are getting to me.” As she moved away from Jack, she added, “My life is in London.”

Jack shrugged. “Sure it is, part of it.”

“All of it,” she said firmly, though she felt as wobbly as an underdone blancmange.

“You know, when your father died and your mother sold the Redfern lands to my father, all that money went to set up an income for your mother and dowries for her daughters.”

“I know.” Marianne’s two younger sisters were three and six years her junior. They had both married as they wished, thanks to the freedom of money. Money, money, money.

She was still holding the onion skin. She crumpled it and threw it to the floor.

“All three daughters,” Jack said. “Not only your sisters.”

“I know,” she said again, though she’d hardly thought of it since receiving the news five years before. “But I can’t make use of a dowry.”

He nodded as if this made perfect sense, to turn away from thousands of pounds—though he’d never done it himself. “Your mother has it now. She lives in the dower house on my property with my mother. They were always friends, you recall.”

This was the strangest bit of the conversation of all—him speaking of her mother and his in eternal tête-à-tête. How much had passed between the old friends since Marianne had left Lincolnshire? Was her mother’s hair still graying brown, or had it gone white? Did she still refrain from taking the sugar in her tea that she loved but had declined while Marianne’s father, kind but ascetic, was alive?

Marianne’s thoughts always came back to food now. Surely that was a sign she was where she ought to be.

When Sally returned, arms full of the ingredients for the cheese sauce, Marianne was not sorry to turn to the stove. To the work she knew and understood as she did nothing else.

***

OCCASIONALLY, SHE PEEKED into the refectory as the young ladies took their dinner. She did so today, reminding herself that she was where she belonged: in the kitchen, as a cook.

She could have existed always apart from the upstairs, never seeing the young ladies or knowing whether they enjoyed the work of the kitchens. But she liked seeing them, liked knowing most of them bolted their food with healthy young appetites and took second helpings. The understandable hunger that a girl in her teens developed after racking her brain all day overlaid even the lessons in deportment and manners.

Before taking their food, the girls always said their prayers, then a chant, sort of a school motto, though Marianne had never seen it anywhere official.

I am an exceptional young lady. I deserve the best and am prepared for the worst. Whatever comes my way, I am equal to the task. I know that I am never alone, because my teachers and sisters will always watch out for me as I watch out for them.

They all wore the same outfit, a pretty if simple gown of a medium blue color that was almost universally flattering, but they were hardly birds of a feather. The young ladies were any age from eight to twenty, magpies and peacocks and sparrows and ravens. Some sang, some imitated, some flaunted. Some eyed their surroundings, biding.

All eating, though, and with relish.

And Marianne felt lonely as she watched them dine. She’d never gone away to school. But once, thus, she had sat with her sisters, and they had been so different, but all belonged together.

It had been too long since she’d written to them. Both well-dowered due to the sale of the family lands, they’d married—she assumed happily—and had some children. She’d never met them, but the news was good. It was good enough.

She hadn’t noticed the empty seat at the head of the table until a woman’s voice sounded at her side. “Mrs. Redfern. Come and speak with me in my office.”

Faintly Welsh-accented and not to be gainsaid, this was the unmistakable tone of the headmistress.

Unworried but puzzled, Marianne eased shut the servants’ door and followed her employer up the back stairs, then out into a wide and bright corridor along which Mrs. Brodie’s office was located. As the older woman eased behind her desk, covered with tidy stacks of correspondence and other administrative papers, Marianne stood with hands folded neatly behind her back.

A small woman in her middle forties giving an impression of great strength, the headmistress was dressed all in black. Her hair, black too, though shot with gray, was severely pinned back from a face that would never not be beautiful.

When she settled a few papers, she looked up at Marianne. “Sit, sit. If you wish. I need to discuss a few items related to the...” She smiled. “Donor Dinner, I believe the staff are calling it?”

Marianne returned the headmistress’s smile as she sat in the indicated chair. “Quickest way of reminding ourselves what we’re all working for.”

There was much more to the event than the food, though that was Marianne’s only concern. But she knew that the older students would be exhibiting their more conventional talents, with needlework and artwork on display, with recitations in French and English, with sentences parsed and history recited. The food was the backdrop; the girls were the performers. And all of it was to convince well-meaning, deep-pocketed sorts that Mrs. Brodie’s Academy was worth funding.

Mrs. Brodie jotted notes on a slip of foolscap that she slid across the desk to her. Certain wines to be served before dinner, along with the first of the exhibitions. This would require an adjustment to the wines served during dinner, which would in turn require a different order of dishes in the courses. Marianne nodded, understanding, already imagining the switch and slide of roasts and sides in her plan for the first course.

This office was another place she belonged, and her employer’s trust in her was proof. And because of that, she’d do anything in her power—and maybe a little beyond—to make this dinner a success.

She’d been hired eight years before not because she was right for the post, but because she was desperate and admitted it. Upon leaving Lincolnshire, she had tried to find work elsewhere in London, only to realize she had no useful skills. She had stopped at Mrs. Brodie’s Academy because of the gilded plate on the front of the building denoting the name of the place. Run by a woman, she’d thought. More likely to be safe; less likely to have leering eyes and pinching hands.

Carrying a valise and dressed in her last clean gown, her last pair of clean gloves, and her best hat, she’d rung the front bell, bold as anything. “I have an appointment with the headmistress.”

The butler looked at her doubtfully. “Your name?”

Her mind reeled. Should she make something up? She could think of no falsity that would make her more likely to gain an appointment. Mrs. Brodie would never believe she was Princess Charlotte.

“Miss Redfern,” she said crisply and honestly. And when she was ushered into the headmistress’s office, to her surprise, delight, and simultaneous terror, the honesty continued.

Behind the big desk sat the small woman, a little less gray then, but no less forceful or beautiful. With a dark and steady stare, Mrs. Brodie asked, “Why have you said you have an appointment with me?”

“I need a job,” Marianne blurted. “And I hoped... I would rather not be pinched and violated. I thought perhaps with a woman in charge...”

“Very reasonable,” the older woman said in a crisp voice tinged with the accent of Wales. She regarded Marianne for a long moment, up and down. Marianne made herself as still as a statue, imagining herself at a dance waiting for someone to invite her to the floor. At last, the headmistress gave a little nod. “What skills have you?”

“The usual useless ones. Needlework and watercolor. But I will do any honest thing,” she added quickly.

“Why limit yourself?” Marianne must have gaped, for the headmistress lifted a hand and said, “Very well, we will try you in the kitchen. If you sew and paint, you must be good with your hands, and Cook will welcome a new assistant. If you are eager to learn, you will do well. And if you are not...” Mrs. Brodie shrugged. “If you only want a safe place to live and honest work to do, the academy will take you on as a maid or find a similar post for you.”

Now that the different options were dangled before her, Marianne found that any honest thing had lost its appeal. Being a housemaid when one could be a cook’s assistant? The latter was clearly more exciting. It was hardly the dream she’d once had for her life, but those dreams had relied upon others. Those dreams were done and gone.

“I would like to assist the cook,” Marianne told Mrs. Brodie. “I will do my best to learn from her.”

“I believe you will.” Mrs. Brodie named a wage that sounded a pittance compared to her former pin money. But it was generous compared to the maid’s wages she’d been offered at other places—and with no pinching or harassment. “If you accept, you can have your things sent and begin tomorrow.”

“I have no other things,” said Marianne.

Mrs. Brodie lifted her brows. “Then we’d best get you a uniform. And you can start work at once. My girls and staff eat well here. One cannot learn or do one’s best work if one is hungry.”

A footman guided her through the academy, giving her a bit of a tour on their way to the kitchens. Marianne regarded the students closely as she got the opportunity, wondering what an exceptional young lady looked like. To her eye, they looked like every other girl and young woman of her acquaintance. Some were quite pretty, some plain. Some had dark skin, some light. Some looked at the world as if it were a celebration. Some passed through the corridors in dreamy silence.

She wished she knew what to say to them. How to warn them against hoping for too much. But the words caught in her throat; it wasn’t her place to say anything to these girls, whose fees ran the school and paid her own salary.

Her place was not what it had once been.

But after eight years at the academy, she had made the place her own, and she was proud to have done so.

“And how is the new kitchenmaid working out?” Mrs. Brodie asked now, her voice tinged with humor. “Mr. Grahame, is that right?”

Mrs. Brodie always had names right. “We’ll still need a new kitchenmaid in the long term,” Marianne answered. “But Mr. Grahame’s help means I won’t have to hire someone while we’re preparing for the dinner.”

“Very good. I’ll leave the hiring up to Mrs. Hobbes,” said Mrs. Brodie of the housekeeper, “and will instruct her to get your approval on all kitchen staff. And I will trust that Mr. Grahame will know his place.”

The words reflected Marianne’s own thoughts, making her smile. “I’ll see to it that he does.” For he was at her side each day, at last, and that night, she would have him in her bed again.

Perhaps she could even persuade him to stay.