Page 21

Your Grace,

Today at the canal your rule walked on two legs: the clerk weighed fine flour for Lord Darley’s hotel and sweepings for M. Beaumont at the very same price. If “coin at noon” was meant to steady the trade, you should know it has merely taught the great houses to arrive early and the small to swallow dust. I begin to wonder whether Your Grace means to be Guardian of the Royal Table only when the table stands in St. James’s.

M. Beaumont

By late morning the carriage waited at the step. Chester folded the latest letter from M. Beaumont—the small-house correspondent who had helped the papers name him the Flour Duke—and slipped it into his pocket. Some men began the day with a hunt; he began his with being taken to task over bread. It did not promise a cheerful morning.

There was, however, one bright prospect: a turn along Harley Street to see whether the composed young woman at the French pâtisserie would be behind the counter again. After that, Brighton lay at the end of the road, and with it his mother’s quiet hope that he would emerge from the Assembly Rooms within sight of the Pavilion with a bride chosen and the future of the line politely secured.

He took his seat and tapped the roof once. The coach lurched forward into a London that was trying to be spring: wet sheen on stone, carts intent on their own business, trees with buds hesitant to emerge.

Talbots—Chester’s private secretary, a cool-headed veteran of docks and dinner lists—slid opposite with a leather folder and the calm of a man who knew which ink mended which quarrel.

“Two matters, Your Grace,” Mr. Talbots said. “The Board’s circular—ready for your final hand—and the Harley Street request.”

The Board: the small knot of merchants and lords who set flour policy and dock rules, and which he, unfortunately, chaired. Chester's gaze held on the second. “Begin with the bakery on Harley Street, the Pâtisserie de la Loire.” Tomorrow’s tasting. That’s where Pepper was.

“A runner brought a note,” Talbots said, offering a folded sheet. “It lists what they require for the tasting in Brighton. They asked that ice be clean and straw fresh, not stable-scented.”

Chester took the paper without ceremony and felt the faintest grain against his fingers—the kind of paper a careful house buys when it must write more than sums. The hand was neat, not apprentice-scrawl; confident strokes, the s never toppling, the t’s crossed with purpose.

For Saturday, four o’clock.

Lemons—thin-skinned.

Vanilla—whole bean, not extract.

Cream—rich; milk—fresh drawn.

Sugar—fine; a measure coarse for the brittle.

Eggs—four dozen, no cracks.

Violets; rosebuds—fresh.

Ice; straw.

A kettle that boils and keeps boiling.

Three copper pans, small.

Two dozen shallow ramekins for proofing.

—M. Beaumont

A breath of kitchen clung to the page—warm air and the faint, honest sweetness of sugar, not perfume. He did not bring the paper to his face; he did not need to. It announced itself and then behaved. Just like her, he thought, and the thought annoyed him for its truth and pleased him for the same reason. There were a hundred women in London his mother would approve of and never once had he wondered how they specified lemons. This one ordered the world like a kitchen—precise, unsentimental, entirely herself.

Enchanting.

He read the list twice. The word proofing sat like a challenge from someone who did not ask favors for the sake of asking. Not a girl who simpers, he told himself. A craftswoman who wrote what the work requires and expects men to meet it.

“Answer, Your Grace?” Talbots prompted.

“Everything she asked, in the quantities she asked,” Chester said, pleased that she’d specified the quality. What a woman she must be to see the difference in thick and thin-skinned lemons and the coarseness of sugar. It was the kind of attention to detail a man hoped for in a steward, a secretary… a partner. Dangerous word. He pushed it away and told himself he only wanted to know everything about her craft.

I want to know everything about a woman like that. “Ice from the good pit, not the cheap yard on Thames Street. Straw from the Piccadilly stable—new bale opened in front of the driver. A kettle from our own stores, the small copper with the tight pour. Have the steward reserve a quiet room near the kitchens for four o’clock, two tables laid, water kept at the boil, and ice to hand.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”