I clear my throat."I mean, I like watching your arms when you're kneading bread or rolling out pastry."
"I didn't know that."
"It's a recent development," I murmur as I start putting the ingredients into the bowl and try to ignore the heat that's risen to my cheeks.
"I see."
"Do you?Because I don't."
He clears his throat."I think it was probably just you trying to make sense of the way your feelings were changing," he says.
"I don't think they changed.I just realised what they were," I point out.
"All right, then I think it's you realising that."
"Maybe."
"But I don't think it matters," he promises."You can look at my arms as much as you want."He looks into the bowl and nods.
"Is it done?"I ask, partly because I don't know how I feel about this conversation.
"Almost.Want me to take a turn?"
"Are you just saying that because you've learned I like to watch you do things like this?"
He laughs."No.But it doesn't hurt."
I hand over the rotary whisk and the bowl to him, and despite trying to tell myself that I'm not going to, Idowatch his arms as he turns the handle, moving it much faster than I did and making his arms flex as he does.
I don't have the courage to ask him if he's doing it on purpose.
"All right, that's done," he says."I'm going to fill the pastry case, and then we can move on to your smaller tarts."
I let out a small sigh as he moves around the kitchen.I didn't really think through my confession, but I'm glad to discover that nothing else has changed between us, and baking with him is exactly the same.
Chapter4
Everything is too loud.
I should be focusing on what the Duchesse de Mountnoir is saying about the mountains in Gaullesse, but it's all I can do not to scream from how loud the rain is hitting the windows in the mountain solar, or the fact that everything is set up wrong.I'm supposed to be sitting on the right, like I always do, but this time I've been seated on the left.The view is different, the light falls in my eyes, and most of all, there's a stranger in the space that's supposed to be for me and my siblings.
To make matters worse, Veronica doesn't seem to be having any of the same issues and is chattering away as if this is something she adores.Which I suppose it is.She's always seemed to be more at ease around people than I am.
"That's a question for Evie," Veronica says.
"Hmm?"
She gives me a look that I think means that I'm supposed to have been paying attention, but I ignore her.She knows that these things are hard for me.
"The Duchesse would like to know what this is."She gestures to the centre of the table.
"It's a curd tart," I respond.
"I do not think that I know this," the Duchesse says in her lyrical Gaullessian accent.
"It's made with cheese curds," I respond."Sometimes they're made with the curds left over from cheese-making, but Na-Chef Matthews prepared these curds especially for the tart."
"Chef Matthews is our pastry chef," Veronica says."He studied in Gaullesse for several years."
