I confessed I was a bit surprised that Emily, Lady Rankin, had found the energy to conduct liaisons outdoors at Hampstead Heath and Holland Park. She’d been a frail thing, barely able to lift her hand to eat her meals. This was the image she’d cultivated, at least. I knew Lady Rankin had been more robust by the actions she’d taken, but even so, antics with a man in various parks seemed out of character.
I wondered very much who that man was.
These thoughts stayed with me as Tess and I assembled meals for the remainder of the day. Underlying my musings was profound worry for Daniel beginning what I called His Last Ordeal, and pondering whether Hannah would successfully find employment in the house and then how she would report to me.
I roused myself from fretting to teach Tess how to shape the cinnamon bread. After the dough rose, I showed her how to divide it into quarters and then roll each of those quarters into a perfect circle. Much flour cascaded over our aprons, hands, and faces, and onto the floor before Tess accomplished it.
I’d mixed some cinnamon, cardamom, and a bit of brown sugar with melted butter in a bowl. We painted this over each circle before stacking the next one on top of it. The final circle was left bare.
“Now for the prettiness,” I said.
With the dull side of a knife, I carefully marked the stack of circles into sixteen equal wedges, then sliced these all the way through, making certain the wedges remained joined in the center.
“We take two pieces.” I gently picked them up in my fingers and bade Tess take two on the opposite site. “And twist them away from each other a couple of times. Now we seal the ends together.”
Tess copied my movements, awkwardly at first, then she caught on how to manipulate the pieces of dough. Between us we quickly twisted and sealed the pieces all the way around.
We had to let the bread rest and rise again while we finished the clear soup and side dishes of vegetables for the evening meal.
“A dusting of finishing sugar on the top, and then the bread goes into the oven,” I said once the dough was puffy enough. I carried it there myself, on a paper-lined tray. If Tess dropped it, there would go an entire afternoon’s work.
Tess was smiling when I turned from sliding the bread safely into the oven. “Can we do more like that?”
“Let us see how this one turns out first.” I hadn’t mentioned that I’d never attempted such a pastry as this before. “Now for our portion.”
We’d had to cut away some of the dough to make the circles exact. These bits I rolled out again, brushed with the butter and spices, and then curved into pinwheels. I let these rise while we took out the roast—the carrots had caramelized nicely and would lend a mellow flavor to the meat.
Once we sent up the meal on the dumbwaiter to the dining room, I removed the star-shaped bread from the oven, sent it up on its own, and popped our portion into the oven to bake.
Not long later, Tess and I sat down to our meal of leftover salt pork from the day’s lunch, boiled potatoes, and our cinnamon bread.
“None better.” Tess closed her eyes as she chewed the pinwheel, a drop of butter trickling down her chin.
“Just a simple bit of dough,” I said with pretend modesty. “Nothing a high-placed chef would applaud.”
In spite of my words, I was quite pleased with how the bread had turned out—a perfect star shape streaked with cinnamon. I longed to show it to Daniel and share some with him. I swallowed on heartache.
“More fool your stuck-up chef.” Tess stuffed a large portion of roll into her mouth, her cheeks puffing out as she chewed.
I drew a breath to warn her against gluttony but closed it again as Lady Cynthia, clad in a man’s frock coat and trousers, skimmed into the kitchen. Cynthia hesitated and glanced at Tess, the only one in the kitchen with me, clearly impatient to tell me something.
I set aside my fork and rose. “Will you excuse us, Tess? Shall we go to the housekeeper’s parlor, Lady Cynthia?”
Cynthia shook her head and continued her charge to the table. “Don’t disturb your supper, Mrs.H. I don’t mind if Tess knows. Judith received one of those horrid letters as well. She told me so this afternoon. Same envelope, same writing, same foul accusations. What do you make of that?”
4
As I regarded Cynthia, and Tess gaped at her, I was gripped by dire foreboding. ““A strange occurrence indeed,” I managed to say.
Cynthia dragged out a chair and plopped breathlessly into it. “A damned strange one, I’d say.”
Miss Judith Townsend was a young lady from a very wealthy family, an artist, and she lived without chaperonage with her friend Lady Roberta in a large town house in Upper Brook Street. I could well imagine a threatening letter coming to her because of her scandalous lifestyle, but one hard on the heels of what Mrs.Bywater had received could hardly be a coincidence.
“Did Miss Townsend show the letter to you?” I asked, resuming my seat. My supper tried to entice me, but I was no longer hungry.
“She did. I confided in Judith about the letter Auntie received. She expressed surprise, then rummaged in her deskand produced her own letter, which she said had come yesterday. She’d had a laugh over it with Bobby and then forgot about it.”
“Did the letter demand money for silence?”
