Delicious (36 page)

Marjorie was not in the kitchen, nor was she in the servants’ hall, or any other place in the basement. Verity’s heart sank, until she remembered to check the service door. It was bolted from the inside—thank goodness.

There was still the possibility that Marjorie had let herself out through the front door. Verity went up to the ground floor, but she stopped long before she was in sight of the front door.

Michael’s voice came from the morning parlor. He was singing. Or rather, crooning. “They walked ’til they reached his cottage and there they settled down, Young Willie of the royal blue and the lass of Swansea town.”

The song was slightly off tune, but sweet and tender.

“Do you remember? You always liked that one,” said Michael. “You are smiling. You do.”

Verity stormed into the morning parlor. Michael, in his nightshirt and dressing gown, sat on a sofa. On that sofa with him, in nothing but her nightgown, her hair a loose braid falling over one shoulder, was Marjorie Flotty, her head resting against Michael’s shoulder, one of her hands in his.

“What do you think you are doing?” Verity demanded.

Michael looked up, not at all surprised to see her—he must have heard her come up the steps and across the main hall. He placed a finger over his lips. “She’s asleep.”

Verity lowered her voice, but not the vehemence of her tone. “That is no excuse for you to lay so much as a finger on her. Or to keep her with you in an indecent state. You should have called either myself or the housekeeper when you realized she was up and about. Now remove your hands from her person. I’m taking her back to her room.”

Michael did nothing. If anything, his grip on Marjorie’s hand tightened. “I’ve seen her like this many times.”

Verity’s jaw clenched. “What do you mean?”

“I found her one night, wandering in the woods behind the cottage. I took her back to the manor. Ever since then she’s come to see me from time to time, when I’m on holiday from school. We are friends.”

“Friends.” There was a note of horror in her voice. Michael had just told her that he had been with Marjorie alone at night,
repeatedly.

“It’s not what you think,” Michael said pointedly. “I care for her like a sister. There has never been anything inappropriate between us.”

“I would not characterize your current intimacy as appropriate.”

“And you would be an authority on proper conduct, Madame?” Michael said tightly.

Verity was speechless. As if to further incense her, Michael raised Marjorie’s hand and rubbed her knuckles against his cheek. To Verity’s astonishment, Marjorie smiled. In her waking hours, the girl’s expression was invariably as blank as an unpainted wall, her eyes without even the sometimes intelligent look of a cow.

But now, with that smile on her face, with her eyes lowered, her lashes so long that they cast shadows on her cheeks, there was something almost wondrous about the sight of Marjorie, as if she’d been kissed by an angel, her whole person aglow in grace.

Michael gazed at her. “She is so beautiful when she smiles,” he said wistfully.

Verity could scarcely conceive of it, her gorgeous, talented, eloquent Michael loving—even if it was only a brotherly love—Marjorie Flotty, the thick-witted scullery maid born and raised in the parish workhouse.

The same workhouse to which she used to take stews and buns from Fairleigh Park, Michael in tow. And wasn’t it Michael who had first asked if she needed another scullery maid in her kitchen? The next day the workhouse had sent her Marjorie, and she hadn’t had the heart to send the poor girl back.

Marjorie’s smile suddenly vanished, like a candle flame blown out by the draft. The light on her face dimmed, and Verity was once again looking at the dull, uncomprehending serf from her kitchen.

“They told me she wasn’t born this way. Something happened to her in that workhouse and wrecked her. And she had a stillborn baby when she was thirteen—they never found out who did it to her,” Michael said. “She is my age. If my parents hadn’t adopted me, they might have adopted her instead. And then none of these things would have happened to her.”

Verity bit her lip, hard. “You mustn’t think like this. You are not responsible for what happened to her.”

“I know,” he said. “But I can’t help it.”

Verity sighed. He was breaking her heart and she didn’t know if her heart could take any more breaking. “We’d better get her back to her room,” she said. “It’s awfully late and if she doesn’t return soon, Becky might get up and start looking.”

Michael touched Marjorie’s hand to his cheek again, but this time she did not smile. “Come, Marjorie,” he said gently. “You must go to your room now.”

He pulled Marjorie to her feet and relinquished her hand to Verity, but he preceded them up the service stairs and waited in the corridor as Verity tucked an unresisting Marjorie into her cot.

Verity closed the door behind her and stood there, turning the handle of her lantern in her fingers. Shadow-faceted orange light churned across the walls.

“You want some tea?” she asked.

“I’d better go back to bed now,” he said at the same time.

The silence was long and uneasy.

“Well,” she said, “good night, then.”

“Thank you for the madeleines you sent,” he said. Then he turned and left.

“You do Rugby great credit,” said Stuart.

They stood on the platform of Euston Station, a few yards back from the track, where Michael’s train already awaited, intermittently bellowing steam. Earlier in the day they’d attended church together, then dined at the Savoy Hotel, and Michael had impressed Stuart with his extraordinary grasp of the finer points of etiquette.

“Thank you, sir,” said Michael, his satchel in hand. “I do hope that the good people to whom you introduced me will not resent you for it later, when they find out who I am.”

Stuart had introduced Michael as the son of a very fine family from the vicinity of Fairleigh Park, on leave from Rugby to visit Stuart. At the worthy name of Rugby, the other worshippers simply assumed that “fine” meant old and established.

“I’m sure you noticed that I presented you only to those who asked that you be presented to them,” he said.

Even so, there might be repercussions somewhere down the road. But that Michael did not need to know.

Michael shook his head slightly. “I did not notice that.”

“Our situations are somewhat analogous in that I, too, must be careful of how I conduct myself,” said Stuart.

The waiting train whistled, its long hiss forcing a pause in the conversation.

“Your mother has done well in her instruction of you,” said Stuart, when the train had quieted to a more even rumble. “You will have no difficulties moving in Society.”

“My mother has indeed done very well by me. But deportment I learned from Madame Durant,” said Michael.

Each syllable of that name was a twist of pain. It took Stuart a little while to grasp what Michael had actually said.

“You learned how to present yourself in English Society from a French cook?”

Even as he spoke he saw that the only thing particularly French about her was her accent, an accent the authenticity of which he, a non-native speaker who had spent very little time south of Paris, could ill judge.

“Perhaps she is French—she’s never admitted otherwise,” said Michael. “But given that I learned to speak the Queen’s English from her, I don’t believe so.”

“Madame Durant speaks the Queen’s English,” Stuart said slowly, almost dumbly.

“Better than—” Michael paused. “Better than I.”

He’d meant to say “Better than you or I.”

For some strange reason, Stuart thought of his Cinderella of that long-lost night, her syllables as polished as the facets of a diamond.

Haven’t got any lizards in my kitchen.

Cinderella, too, had worked in a kitchen.

No, impossible. He would have known. He would have known her anywhere, under any conditions.

Would he really? From one night’s acquaintance, after a span of more than ten years, in the dark, while they spoke in a different language?

“What else did you learn from Madame Durant, besides the Queen’s English?” he asked, his tone suitably casual, even as his fingers clenched over his walking stick.

“Continental languages. And how to behave myself in every imaginable scenario involving a member of the peerage, his wife, and his daughters.” Michael chortled. “I believe she once taught me how to give the direct cut. I used to call her the Duchess of Fairleigh Park.”

She had splendid vowels, pure sounds that sang of family trees with roots going as far back as the Battle of Hastings.

No, he was fashioning similarities from thin air. Their bodies were entirely different. The colors of their hair were dissimilar.

Bodies changed. So did hair color. Bertie’s hair had bleached lighter in the summer months and turned more brown than blond over winter.

She always said you were a good example for me.

That comment had always struck Stuart as odd. Now it was surpassing strange, in light of what she herself had said.
He usually spoke of you as if you were a horseman of the Apocalypse.
How had she managed to form such an elevated opinion of him in the face of
that
?

“Cinderella.”

“Beg your pardon, sir?”

Stuart had no idea he’d spoken the name aloud. “Cinderella,” he said. “A highborn young woman who ends up in the kitchen, subjected to menial tasks.”

“I think I know that story,” said Michael. “I imagine Mr. Bertram wasn’t quite the prince she’d hoped for.”

Tell me, what’s Cinderella doing in town, without her coach, her footmen, or her ball gown?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? Something went terribly awry at the ball.

Ten years ago, according to the Dowager Duchess of Arlington, Bertie had come close to marrying Madame Durant, but never did. Ten years ago, his Cinderella materialized outside his town house, with a story of a prince turned to toad.

“Have you never asked her for her true identity?”

“More times than I can count. But she wouldn’t tell me anything. And she never speaks of her life before she was seventeen.”

When I was seventeen, I was at the end of my ropes. I had no money, no prospects, and no family, except a baby I loved desperately.

A loud gong went off in Stuart’s head.

What happened to your baby?

He was adopted by wonderful people.

Stuart stared at the young man beside him. The resemblance was not great. But that meant little. He himself had not resembled his mother at all. “Before you left for Rugby, did you see Madame Durant on a regular basis?”

“Yes, sir. Almost every day.”

He was adopted by wonderful people, but I still see him every day.

His heart slowed to a dull thud. What little blood reached his brain pulsed heavy and sluggish in his ears.

“If you don’t mind, Robbins, may I ask you where were you born?”

Michael looked perturbed. Stuart realized that he’d thrown aside all pretense of casualness. He now treated Michael as if the boy were a key witness in the trial of the century.

“In London, sir, I was told.”

“And how old were you when you were adopted?”

“When I was about six months old.”

“You once told me that you remember fragments of your infancy. Do you perhaps recall a trip to the zoological garden?”

Michael jerked visibly. “No. But my mother keeps a box of mementos from when I was a baby. There is an admission ticket to the London Zoo in that box—and neither of my parents has ever visited London.”

Stuart didn’t know whether he was hot or cold. He seemed to have lost all sensation in his extremities. The train whistled, snapping him out of his paralysis. “That is a call for you to board,” he said to Michael.

But Michael now stared at him as if he were the Ghost of Christmas Future. “Sir, could you tell me how you know about the zoo?”