THREE DAYS UNTIL THE Donor Dinner, and if Jack hadn’t come to London to help, Marianne knew she’d be tearing her hair out.

Not that he’d come to London specifically to help her. But still, it had all worked out for the best. He was a part of her life again and more essential every day.

April had crashed into May with a wave of heat, making meal preparations an ordeal of perspiration and hurry. The stolen hours of rest were slow and cool and sweet in comparison.

Jack was with Marianne now, sitting at the long worktable in the slow hours of early afternoon when luncheon was complete and the final preparations for dinner still ahead. It was the last moment of leisure they’d take, probably, until the grand dinner was past.

He’d asked about her favorite things to cook, and she pleased herself by giving him a thorough answer. Settling them each with a great mug of tea laced with honey—she’d made use of that honeycomb after all—she paged through her book of handwritten recipes and notes to show him some of her favorites.

“This was the first dinner I ever prepared as cook, head of the kitchen, after Mrs. Patchett retired.” She pushed back her cap to scratch at her hairline, remembering the heat and panic of that day. “Underdone lamb and a jumble of over-roasted vegetables. You see how many notes I made about the ovens? Each has a personality of its own. If I ever move on to a new kitchen, I’ll have to learn the ovens all over again.”

Jack sipped from his mug, brows arching quizzically. “Overdone and underdone, and that was one of your favorite things to cook?”

“Hardly a triumph, you mean?” She smiled. “At the time, it was horrid, but in hindsight, I’m quite proud of it. The young ladies probably didn’t enjoy eating it, but it fed them all the same. By making that meal, I realized I could do the job here of cook, even if I wasn’t doing it as well as I wanted to.”

Jack drew the book toward him and looked over the notes. “There’s no question you can do the job now. I’ve never eaten so well as I have this past week and a half.”

“Flatterer.”

He grinned. “Sometimes I am, but not at the moment.” He drank more tea, turned a page. “Chocolate cream tarts? Big masculine creature that I am, I shall swoon at the sight of this recipe. Why do you not make those every day?”

A surprise for Mrs. Brodie’s birthday two years before. Those had been fun to make—and to sample. “Any pleasure can get wearisome, even chocolate cream. But it’s been too long since I made them. Maybe I can include a tower of them in the dessert course at the Donor Dinner.” Her fingers flexed for a pencil and her foolscap sheets of planned-out courses.

A warm hand overlaid her own. “No. Please. I didn’t mean for you to add more work to your endless list. I was merely envying those past people who were able to taste your tarts.”

“That sounds like a smutty joke.”

“Good. It was meant to.” He leaned closer, speaking into her ear. “And grateful I am that I’ve been able to taste your—”

“Stop,” she hissed, looking around the kitchen. Sally was stocking supplies, moving about from larder to pantry to worktable, and might overhear anything, anytime.

He arranged his expression into one of great sobriety. “Stopping now. Perfectly proper. Didn’t mean anything smutty.”

Marianne drank from her own mug of tea to cover a smile.

“Changing the subject to one of which you might approve.” Jack nodded toward the cook’s assistant, just entering the kitchen from the meat safe. “I see Sally carries a book of her own in her apron pocket. Hullo, Sally.”

The younger woman was carrying in the head of a hog on a great platter. As she set it at the end of the table, she replied, “Mrs. Redfern told me what a good practice it was to have a pocket book and pencil at all times. A cook might need to write any sort of note about a recipe or an ingredient, and it saves time never having to hunt up paper and pen.”

“Exactly right.” Marianne beamed at her. Even the hog’s head seemed to smile from its dish, as if pleased that it had finished brining.

“Mrs. Redfern, I’ll get the stockpot ready for the head,” replied Sally. This sentence likely made little sense to Jack, but Marianne understood it to mean that her assistant would collect the needed vegetables and seasonings and bring them to a boil.

“Remember to add trotters, or the brawn won’t thicken,” Marianne instructed. “A half dozen should do. And remove and quarter the ears before you put the head in.”

Sally bobbed her head, understanding, and retrieved a shining pot from its place. She passed into the scullery to fill it with water.

“You’re a fine teacher,” Jack said. “Did you ever think of offering lessons in the evening, like Miss Carpenter does?”

“Oh. I don’t know.” Marianne glanced at the hog’s head. It still appeared pleased. “I do like teaching, but I’ve never thought of working with someone outside of my own kitchen.”

“Surely cookery is as useful a skill as what you’ve learned from Miss Carpenter.” He rubbed at his shoulder with a persecuted expression.

“Cooking’s different.” She wrinkled her nose. “It doesn’t have the excitement of throwing an assailant to the ground.”

Jack raised his eyes to the plaster ceiling. “There is a hog’s head staring at me from the end of the table, and she says cooking isn’t exciting.”

She laughed. “That’s for making brawn, and it’s only here for another minute. Though if you don’t know the reason, I suppose it does lend the kitchen an air of mystery.”

“Or grisliness.”

“Or that,” she granted. “Maybe Miss Carpenter’s fighting is the same as teaching lessons myself. If I’d never tried it, I’d think I could never do it.”

“Which means you’re all prepared to become a wonderful teacher as soon as you try it out.”

“But if I were to teach...” She looked at the hog’s head. The book of handwritten notes. Neither offered her insight. “I’d have less time for cooking.” Or being with you.

She wasn’t sorry when Sally swooped by, picked up the head, and strode back to the stockpot with it.

“When we gain something,” Jack said, more serious than he’d seemed yet today, “something else is lost. I believe this completely.”

Marianne considered. “I suppose that’s true. As I gained cooking knowledge, I lost my satisfaction with the way I grew up. It’s no longer enough for me to embroider and watercolor and smile. Those skills did me no good, and all the while I was building them, I didn’t know how helpless I was becoming.”

“That is not such a bad thing to lose, then.”

“It’s not.” She added more quietly, “I’ve lost more too. I’ve lost my faith that the way things have been is the way they have to be.”

He nodded at her prized book. “You are talking about more than the method of spicing a joint of meat, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.”

Though it wasn’t spices that had got her thinking of what we’ve always done versus what could be. It was the pages of sauces.

Ever since she had begun learning cookery, Marianne had loved sauces. They were like clothing for food, turning the plain into the special. The bland into the savory.

Mrs. Patchett had been fond of traditional English fare, and certainly Marianne preferred good fresh ingredients that didn’t need to be hidden by vinegar and salt. But a sauce! Oh! It turned a good saddle of mutton into a roast that popped with the flavors of heavy meat, floral herbs, pungent garlic. It awoke the nose as well as the mouth. It not only fed people, it made them smile.

She’d spent some of her wages on books of recipes from France, then translated them with her schoolroom French and the help of Mademoiselle Gagne, the French instructor. Many of those notes had made their way into the book, now open and vulnerable before Jack. She’d made that book without him, when she’d never expected to see him again. When she had accepted that.

She’d been all right on her own because she’d had to be. Now, though she’d gained Jack, she’d lost that feeling of solid independence.

“I’d best get back to work,” she said. “Dinner will need its sauces.” She drained her tea, then pushed back her chair. As she stood, she tucked her book back into her apron pocket.

Jack stood too, catching her hand before she could step away. “You’re talking about more than food, you said. Are you talking about us? Is the way we are now the way we always have to be?”

“Kitchenmaid and cook?” she joked, though she knew that was not what he meant. On her hands, tough with old nicks and burns and scars, his fingers were warm and strong.

“That’s not only up to me,” she dodged, remembering their first night together in her tiny chamber. So much about them had never been up to only them.

“It’s not,” he agreed. Bending his head toward hers, he spoke low into her ear. “But I’ve already decided what I want. It’s you, Marianne, and I would lo—”

“Mrs. Redfern,” piped up Evans, the errand boy, as he darted into the room. “The new kitchenmaids are here. Where do you want them?”

Marianne shook her hand free of Jack’s grasp, tipped her ear away from his voice. She had hardly taken in what he’d said, and now Evans wasn’t making any sense. “New kitchenmaids? I didn’t—”

“Show them in,” Jack interrupted. When she looked at him quizzically, he didn’t return her gaze.

Four kitchenmaids, straight from an agency, filed into the room and stood in a line along the end of the table. They were all wide-eyed, a stair-step of tidy young women not the slightest bit like Jack Grahame.

And Marianne didn’t know her own kitchen anymore. With the arrival of the kitchenmaids, something had indeed been lost. The space, the sense of familiarity. The notion that she was in charge of decisions made here.

She turned to Jack, and she didn’t quite know him either. He’d lost his humor and become square-shouldered and stern, hands folded behind his back.

“You seem to know what’s happening here,” she said. “Why is that? And why is it that I don’t?”

He still didn’t look at her. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to speak.

So Marianne spoke again, annoyance warring with puzzlement. “You’ve already decided what you want, you said. What have you decided, Mr. Grahame?”

***

IT WAS BAD TIMING, the kitchenmaids arriving just as Jack was attempting to tell Marianne how he felt—preparatory, he hoped, to convincing her his next choice was the right one. But maybe there was no timing that would have been good enough for that.

“Miss White,” Jack raised his voice, recalling Sally from the stove where she’d just stirred the contents of the stockpot. “Take charge for a few minutes, please.”

“Mrs. Redfern,” he addressed Marianne, then tugged her away from the new arrivals and into her chamber, lit the lamp, shut the door. Instead of cozy, the room felt cramped and close. The scent of laundry soap and lamp oil was strong.

“Let me explain,” he began.

“Please do,” she said. “Because you just ordered me about in my own kitchen, and in front of four new maids that I certainly did not hire.”

Her voice was firm and dignified, tinged with hurt, and he felt like a villain.

Which was ridiculous, because she ought to see him as a hero. “I hired them myself from a reputable agency, because you need more hands for the Donor Dinner.” He really had to say it all. “Because I can’t stay as kitchenmaid any longer. My mother wrote me that she’s ill. I’ve already got my carriage ready. I only waited to leave until the maids arrived from the agency.”

And postponed telling her of his departure in favor of tea and fantasies of chocolate tarts. Because he knew she wouldn’t like it that he was leaving; he didn’t like it either.

“So you’ve known all day that you are leaving.” She folded her arms—not in defiance, but as if she were holding herself together.

“My mother is ill,” he said again. “That is the more important part of what I just said.”

Her green eyes caught his. “Gravely ill?”

“I don’t know. If she were, she wouldn’t tell me. I just don’t know.” How powerless he felt, his loved ones scattered like sand. He wished he could gather them all up and keep them close to his heart. Be well, stay by me.

She pressed at her temples, a gesture he recognized as her sorting-out-a-plan maneuver. For an instant, he took hope that she was thinking up a way to come along, to lend comfort to a woman she’d always been fond of.

“I hope she will be well,” Marianne said. “Of course you must go, and give her all my best. But, Jack—”

“You could come along,” he blurted. “That is, you could come after the Donor Dinner. Visit your mother.”

She looked around at her room. “Oh. No, I—no. I don’t want to go back.”

Which was different from, I can’t go back. He wasn’t sure which was better.

“Are you certain of that?” he pressed. “Two years you’ve been in this room as cook, and there’s not a drawing or book or trinket to show it’s yours. This looks like the room of someone who’s ready to leave, Marianne.”

She lifted her brows, looking piqued. “It’s not. It’s the room of someone who expects to be left and who will get away before she has to bear the humiliation of it.”

He understood what she meant. It all went back to eight years ago, when they’d been split apart. He tried pacing, gave up at the small width of the room, and stood before her. “Eight years ago, did you truly want to come to London? Or did you just want to get away from me?”

Her mouth opened. Not a single word came out.

“I see,” he said. “You can’t give me an answer, which tells me right enough what it is.”

“Jack, all that was so long ago.” She stretched out a hand, the one he’d held just a few minutes ago.

“It was, and yet it seems we’re not done with it.” He’d never considered before whether he blamed her for leaving Lincolnshire so abruptly, leaving him to deal with the sad families left behind.

It seemed he did. He didn’t take her hand. As she let it fall to her side again, he spoke on.

“When the banns were called for Helena and me, you could have stayed in your father’s home, but you were too proud and determined to do that, and you left for London. I think you don’t do anything you don’t want to, and you never will. I just wonder what you’ll want next.”

“Not to be left behind again,” she mumbled.

He set his jaw. “Your family was left behind, not you. And you’re not the only one who had losses.

“Your mother wanted me to go after you,” he added. “Did you know that? She thought you’d be murdered on your way to London.”

“Obviously, I didn’t know that. And just as obviously, I wasn’t murdered, and you didn’t come after me.”

“I did. It just took me a few years, until I could be proper about the matter.”

“Proper.” She laughed dryly. “Nothing we’ve done in this room has been proper.”

“And how we’ve enjoyed it.” He returned her smile, feeling it as a reprieve. “As you might guess, your father argued your mother out of her plans. You were almost of age, he said, and he knew you’d had your life shaken up. He told her he’d have friends of his in London check on you.”

“Which friends?”

“Ah—I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“I—no, not really. But I did go away, and I can’t ask him now. I can’t ask him anything ever again.” She sank onto the bed, as if weighted by the years that had passed.

He crouched before her. “I couldn’t have given up love, our love, for any reason but love. Not money, not greed, not security—nothing for myself, because with you I had enough. But for love of my family, I could. I had to.”

“You made the sensible choice,” she said. “I know that. We’ve discussed that.” She looked at him with eyes like emeralds. Like spring lettuces, costing too dear. Like leaves on the trees he was missing. Like a mossy stone, perfect for skipping, on the banks of a pond near his home. “I haven’t seen the sea in eight years either. At home, I would be able to go to the sea and put my feet in the sand.”

Home. He pounced on this, thinking of what would appeal to a cook. “And collect mussels and catch fresh fish.”

She rolled her eyes. “I would leave the catching to the fishermen, cold as the North Sea is. But you’ve a good thought. Cookery in different parts of England is—or could be—much different.”

That hadn’t been his thought at all, but he let her credit him for the insight. “Then you’ll come with me?” He let himself hope.

“I was only musing. No, I won’t be going back.” She shook her head. “Will you be returning to me?”

God, this room was hot. How would she get any sleep in here tonight? “As soon as I’m able. Though I can’t know when that would be, because of my mother’s health. You must see that.”

She laid a hand on his chest—to feel his heartbeat, he thought, but no, she was only pushing him back a small distance so she could rise from the bed. Jack stood, knees and ankles popping as he rose from his crouch. Yet another way the years had left their mark.

Her fingers became busy, tucking strands of hair beneath her cap. “What you’ve said ought to sound like a promise. But instead, I’m left wondering—when were you going to tell me you are leaving? All I have is my kitchen, Jack, and you made me look a fool in it.” Her hands dropped, her voice lowered. “You made me feel foolish.”

“I don’t like telling you things you won’t like.” He knew this was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth.

“Don’t you? You don’t like telling me you’ll be leaving me for a perfectly understandable reason, or that you’ve hired a generous number of servants to replace you and make my job easier?”

“Well.” When she put it that way, his thinking was stupid. “I was afraid that when I left early, it would remind you of eight years ago. And so I wanted to—”

“To make certain of it?” She rounded on him, filling the small room with her anger. “To make certain you caught me unawares, left me unprepared and gaping in the place I ought to feel safest? Hearing another’s name called in the banns in church with yours. Having servants file into my kitchen expecting to be put to work. Jack.”

She was shaking now. He reached out a hand to her, but she batted it away. “Jack,” she said again, her voice cracking on the syllable. He hardly recognized the sound from lips that had spoken his name so many times. “Jack. Is this your way? Solve your problems at my expense? Buy your way out of a promise? Never tell me a truth you think I won’t like, until it can’t be ignored and it shatters my life?”

Clearly, they weren’t talking only about the kitchenmaids anymore.

He shouldn’t feel as if he were in the wrong, should he, for leaving to visit his mother? Yet he did, because his departure was so much...more. There was always more, always another layer of emotion old and new.

Damn love, damn devotion. It was ridiculously complicated, and with all he had learned in life, he’d never mastered how to talk about it.

“You don’t trust me,” she said. “You don’t trust me to understand. You don’t trust me with the truth of your life. All we have is make-believe and strawberries.”

Stung, he replied, “That’s terribly unfair. We have cabbages too—all right, this isn’t the time for a joke. But, Marianne, I’ve done what I thought best. My parents never loved each other, which is why my father was so adamant that I make a marriage for gain. My best friend ran off to London eight years ago and wrote to everyone but me. Those things are real, as real as this room. And if I hid the truth, it was because I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

“But you knew you would then. Wedding someone else has that effect.” Her tone was dust-dry. “So really, yes, you didn’t trust me to understand that you might have obligations to others besides me.”

She moved past him to put a hand on the door’s handle. “That was a large matter. This is a small one—at least, I hope it is, and your mother will recover. But if you don’t trust me in matters large or small, then we haven’t any foundation for being together. So you needn’t return after all.”

She sounded so cold. All business, as she might with a new kitchenmaid she wasn’t sure she had any use for. And he realized, “You haven’t really forgiven me, have you?”

She let her arm fall to her side. “You told me from the moment of your arrival that you aren’t sorry for any choice you’ve made. If you’re not apologizing, then what is there to forgive? There’s no wrongdoing on either side. There’s only what had to be then and what can’t be now.”

“What do you mean, it can’t be?”

“I belong here. You belong there, three days’ travel north, with your uncomfortable truths hidden in your pockets until they don’t fit anymore. So it’s clear that we don’t belong together.”

No. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be it. “You’re ending it? After all this time waiting?”

“You haven’t been waiting for me. The person who leaves isn’t the one who waits, and you left me the moment you agreed to marry someone else.” She smiled, but it was nothing like an expression of joy. “I left for London years ago. Now it’s your turn to walk away. Odd how I am the one left behind, whether I depart or show you the door.”

How was she so calm? He was a roiling mess of feelings that he couldn’t put a name to. “You say that as if I mean nothing to you. When the kitchenmaids arrived”—damn those kitchenmaids—“I was trying to tell you how I feel about you. That you’re my choice, and I love you.”

“You are certainly free to do that. I can’t change your feelings. Nor can I make you trust me, or think of the power you have when you hold someone’s heart and dignity in your hands.” She turned her back to him, tracing the line in the door where two boards were joined.

“I hold your heart? But you never said—”

“Forget what I said or didn’t say. What I’m saying now is what counts. I won’t let you ruin another place for me. I won’t place my trust where it isn’t returned.” She was turning the handle now. “I have a life here, one that I created myself, and I don’t have to rely on you. I shouldn’t have let myself do it at all.”

“But I want you to. You can.” He knew she would hear the words as hollow.

Indeed, she shook her head. “The only thing I ask of you is to leave if you’ve a mind to. And don’t plan to come back again.”

She opened the door of her chamber; the air of the kitchens was comparatively cool on his face. She pushed past him and, with skill and speed, took charge of the four new maids.

She didn’t trust him anymore, and it was his own doing. If his heart was cracking into bits, that was his own doing too.

He drew himself up. Retrieved his hat and coat. And then, because he’d never been able to deny Marianne anything but his hand in marriage, he obeyed her wishes and left.