Chapter 24
“Ten more minutes should do it,” Cecily murmured to herself as she wiped the sweat from her forehead with the corner of her apron and consulted the large clock on the shelf behind her.
It was almost three o’clock in the morning on a warm summer night, and the stove in the kitchens had been burning for over an hour now, baking two fair-sized batches of bread which would be appreciated by the local orphanage and the poor of the parish.
It had been a long habit of Cecily’s to bake bread when she could not sleep.
Back in London, she had known all the local charities and had been able to deliver the bread by hand.
Mary had been forbidden to accompany her, likely for fear that contact with the poor and sick might somehow ruin her marriage prospects. Cecily had been a lost cause for years.
Despite begrudging all the money spent on them, their grandmother and uncle had never objected to Cecily’s charitable baking, basking instead in the glory of being known as a public-spirited family. Cecily thought it was a cheaper way of gaining esteem than actually donating money.
A sudden rumble of masculine laughter interrupted her thoughts and almost made her drop the last tray of loaves as she took it out of the oven.
“I knew I could smell fresh bread baking, but I had no idea that the baker was the Duchess of Greyhaven herself,” Nathaniel’s voice said with great amusement. “Are there no end to your surprises?”
Setting the tray down safely on the stovetop, Cecily composed herself and turned to him.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I would do something useful,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I had no idea that anyone else was still awake. I hope I didn’t disturb you.”
“I could not sleep either, although I often keep late hours. I was in my study, thinking, and then I smelled bread. It is always an irresistible smell, so I followed it.”
Cecily nodded, wishing that he had not mentioned his study and glad that she was already so pink from the heat that her blush would not be visible. She had tried to put their most recent encounter out of her mind, still unable to comprehend or classify what had happened between them.
“If you would like a piece of fresh bread, it will not matter if we cut one,” she offered. “There are still many more left.”
“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.
“Oh dear, I’m covering you with flour,” she mumbled, handing him a cloth as her heart began to flutter in her chest. “Now, the yeast is ready. I’m going to show you how to make bread, and in exchange, you’re going to read to Lilian tomorrow before bed.”
Surely, he could not make advances on her here in the kitchen? Any of the servants could walk in on them if they came down for a hot drink in the middle of the night. Hopefully, her words were sufficiently discouraging to put any such idea out of his mind.
When Nathaniel continued to gaze upon her with a knowing little smile, Cecily took the flour and began to measure it into the bowl, adding the water and a pinch of salt as she went.
“Then, you mix it all together like this, until the dough comes together into one mass.”
“With your hands?” he asked.
Cecily nodded, demonstrating.
“Once you have a smooth ball of dough, it’s time for the kneading,” she said, taking the dough from the bowl and beginning to work it on the floured wooden counter surface. “Like this. Here, why don’t you try?”
Her husband nodded and took the dough in one hand, but instead of standing beside her as she expected, he wrapped his other arm around her waist, holding her in his arms. The warm pressure of him at her back sent a jolt of heady longing through her body, and she let out a short squeak.
“Like this?” Nathaniel murmured, his breath hot against her ear as he kneaded the dough, his arms brushing against the sides of her breasts. “Am I doing it right?”
“Oh, yes, but…” Cecily sighed deeply as he began to nuzzle her neck. “We’re meant to be making bread.”
“Do you want me to stop?” he whispered teasingly, and she shook her head. “I did not think so, sweet Cecily.”
Cecily did not want him to stop. She wanted this moment to go on and on.
The closeness of Nathaniel’s strong body, the scent of his skin, and their current activity all made her feel secure, happy, and incredibly aroused.
Whatever she had been worrying about earlier had completely evaporated by the time she turned her head and met his kisses with her own.
Seconds later, they froze as a small but distinct voice sounded somewhere in the dark stillness of the house.
“Papa? Cecily? Anyone?”
“Lilian!” Nathaniel exclaimed, releasing his hold on Cecily and heading for the kitchen door. “She must be downstairs. What is she doing out of bed?”
Wiping her hands on her apron and catching her breath, Cecily hurried after him.
Lilian stood in the hallway in her nightdress, a candle in her hand and her eyes bleary with sleep.
“What are you doing down here, Lilian?” Cecily asked. “You should be fast asleep in bed where I left you. Didn’t Maisie tell you to go back to bed?”
The nursemaids were presently taking turns to sleep in the little dressing room beside Lilian’s bedroom, exactly in case of incidents like this.
“I woke up,” the little girl said. “Maisie was snoring, so I left her. Anyway, I didn’t want Maisie. I wanted you and couldn’t remember where your rooms were in the dark, so I came downstairs, but no one was here.”
“That’s because it’s nighttime, silly,” Cecily told her, kneeling beside her and dropping a kiss on her dark, silky hair. “Now, you must go back upstairs to bed with your father while I finish off in the kitchen.”
“But I want you to come too.” Lilian pouted, taking Nathaniel’s hand but refusing to move. “I want you both to put me to bed.”
“I have to bake the last of the bread and wrap the finished loaves,” Cecily answered, shaking her head and looking at Nathaniel. “I can’t leave it out like that.”
“I don’t want to go without Cecily!” Lilian protested, her voice rising rebelliously as Nathaniel scooped her wriggling little body into his arms. “No!”
Cecily sighed, preparing for a scene and hoping the entire household would not be roused.
“In that case, you must be very quiet, sit on my knee and not disturb your stepmother while she finishes her work,” Nathaniel announced, seeming immune to Lilian’s little fists.
“What?” the girl questioned, not quite understanding but going still as Nathaniel moved in the direction of the kitchens.
“Cecily is making bread for some poor children who have no fathers or mothers. You can sit with me down here for a little while until the bread is finished, but you must be good,” he explained further, glancing at Cecily.
It was not a bad plan, and she nodded her approval, following them down the corridor back to the overheated kitchen.
There, as Lilian sat wide-eyed on her father’s knee, Cecily put the last loaf into the oven, wrapped the others in cloths, and wiped the counter.
“Half an hour and the last loaf will be ready,” she announced cheerfully, coming over to stand beside them. “Maybe we’ll save that one for your breakfast, if you apologize to your father.”
They both frowned at her in puzzlement, and she sighed.
“Lilian, what did I tell you about hitting your father the other night?”
“You said I shouldn’t hit Papa because he’s good and he loves me and it might hurt him, even though it doesn’t,” the little girl summed up with some effort.
Blushing slightly at having her compliments repeated in front of their subject, Cecily nodded, keeping her eyes on the child rather than the darkly handsome man who was holding her.
“So, what should you say to your father now, Lilian?”
With a sound of impatience but no real protest, Lilian turned her head to Nathaniel. “I’m sorry I hit you, Papa.”
Nathaniel looked surprised, but then nodded gravely and kissed his daughter on the forehead.
“You are forgiven,” he told her, before raising amused eyes to Cecily’s.
Again, she nodded in approval of how he was handling his child.
For a long moment, they only gazed at each other, Cecily feeling some of the same warmth that had flowed between them when they had been kneading the dough.
“Do you love my father?” Lilian asked abruptly, completely shattering the spell.
Inhaling sharply, Cecily turned away and walked back to busy herself with shifting the bread bags. She knew that her face was flushed, and she did not trust herself to smooth her expression. Nor did she wish to see Nathaniel’s.
“I shall warm some milk for you, Lilian,” she said conversationally. “It will help you sleep.”
As she walked away down a side passage to fetch the milk from the cool stone shelf in the larder, she was conscious that Lilian’s question had stirred something within her, alongside the embarrassment of her own feelings and her wariness of Nathaniel’s reaction.
What did she feel for this strange man, who was her husband and whose touch so easily made her body sing to music she had never imagined? Was it love? She did not know with any certainty what love itself should be, but she did know that she had never felt these feelings for anyone else.
A new sadness clouded her thoughts. Whatever her feelings for Nathaniel, it seemed unlikely that he would or even could reciprocate.
“I cannot love him,” she told herself firmly, leaning against the pantry door. “I cannot!”
By the time she returned to the kitchen with the milk, her face was composed again, although the same could not be said for her disobedient heart.