“Why have you baked so many loaves?” Nathaniel asked curiously, coming over to inspect her handiwork. “Could you not have had the servants make bread for you if you wanted it?”
“This bread is for the local orphanage and the families on the vicar’s poor list,” she explained. “I spoke to Mrs. Barnes, and she knows of my plans, but I am not going to rope the servants into personal charitable efforts. Your cook has enough on her hands already. Anyway, I hope you do not mind.”
“Mind? Why would I mind?” Nathaniel chuckled. “Do you think I would ever begrudge children food?”
“No,” Cecily acknowledged and smiled back, with the pleasure that this certainty gave her. “I do not believe you would.”
“How do you even make bread?” Nathaniel asked. “I have never given it any thought. Just like the local orphanage, I suppose. The estate sends them money regularly, but I have never been there.”
“You need flour, yeast, a little salt, and sugar to feed the yeast, or honey will do. There are other things you could add for different types of bread. Milk, perhaps. Seeds, dried fruit, or spices for flavor.”
“Will you show me?” he requested, coming closer to peer at the mixing bowls, bags, and boxes of ingredients she had used.
Now with his jacket discarded somewhere, his stock half-unwound, and his hair falling onto his forehead, Nathaniel looked more like his usual self than he had earlier. His proximity both pleased and disturbed Cecily, and she wondered if he was conscious of it.
“Are you sure?” she asked him, smiling. “I have never heard of a duke baking bread before.”
“Doubtless it would be the scandal of the century if it got out,” Nathaniel returned with a grin. “I suppose that either I trust you with my secrets, or I couldn’t care less about being known as the Baking Duke. If you’re not tired, perhaps we can make a few more loaves, and then your gift to the orphanage will be from both of us.”
“I’m not tired at all,” Cecily confessed, though she did not mention what had been keeping her from sleep. “Now, we start with the yeast…”
A few minutes later, Nathaniel was peering over the small bowl of frothing yeast. “That’s what makes the bread rise, you say?”
“Yes. In a few more minutes, we’ll mix it with the flour, salt, and more water. Then we’ll knead it. I’ll have to show you what that means, but you might as well wash your hands now if you want to try.”
Still entertained, Nathaniel did as he was bidden.
“Where did you learn all of this, Cecily? I am sure it is not part of the general education of a young lady, or at least none that I have met.”
“My mother taught me when I was very young,” Cecily explained with a fond smile. “She said that if a young lady did not know how to make good bread, she could not be trusted to recognize and hire a good cook when she married and ran her own household.”
“How very unconventional,” he marveled. “Did Mary learn this, too?”
“No, she was only a baby when my parents died,” Cecily sighed. “I was the only one who had music lessons, read poetry with my father, and cooked with my mother. My uncle’s only aim for poor Mary was that she should marry well, and he thought a pretty face would be enough to guarantee that.”
“Lord Holt begrudged her an education?”
“Lord Holt begrudged us everything,” Cecily stated grimly. “Our existence was a burden. I did my best for Mary. I tried to teach her what I could and protect her from…” she trailed off, not really wanting to go down that dark road tonight.
Nathaniel already knew what kind of man her uncle was. There was no need to go over the same ground.
“You deserved better, and you did well with Mary,” he remarked thoughtfully.
Cecily laughed ruefully. “Do you really think so, after she tried to elope with your brother? I did my best, and my father told me that’s all any of us can ever do.”
“You were close to your father?”
Her husband seemed to have so very many questions tonight, but at least this was an easy and pleasant one to answer.
“Yes, very much. I was close to both of my parents. The shock of losing them was dreadful, of course, but I’m grateful that I knew them, unlike Mary. I remember playing with my father, reading with him, being comforted by him when I fell over in the garden…” She smiled to herself at the pleasant memories and turned to check the yeast once again.
“I wish that I were a better father sometimes,” Nathaniel said after a long pause, his voice strange. “I wish I knew how to be like your father. I should like Lilian to remember me as you remember him.”
When Cecily looked at him, she saw a vulnerability in his eyes that she had not seen before, and it touched something inside her.
Before she realized what she was doing, she reached out and grazed his jaw with her hand. How warm and alive that slightly rough skin felt beneath her fingertips!
At her touch, desire blazed again in his midnight blue eyes, and she dropped her gaze.
