Chapter Eight #2
It was not naivety that made her misread him.
She had grown up in a bakery that survived on its reputation and a lease that could be revoked, and she had learned how short the distance ran between a compliment and an obligation.
She could not afford to believe a duke was courting a baker’s daughter, because if she believed it and was wrong she lost everything, the apprenticeship and the connection and the stability her family was building toward the spring when the Garricks would decide their future.
So she translated every warmer sign into a safer one, into patronage and inspection and professional concern, explanations that asked nothing of her.
Lottie could see what Thomas was doing, and Margaret could see it, because they had nothing at stake, while Jane had everything at stake, and that had made her blind.
“He is asking because he has taken a liking to you,” Lottie said, on a Thursday evening, sitting cross-legged on Jane’s bed while Jane brushed flour from her hair. “He asks questions simply because of his feelings for you.”
“He asks like a magistrate, Lottie.”
“Perhaps dukes flirt by deposition.”
“That is not a real thing.”
“It is when the duke has not spoken voluntarily in four years and is trying to teach himself how conversations work by practising on the one person who makes him want to try.”
“You make it sound as though I am a language tutor.”
“You are. You are teaching him the language of being a person again, and he is a very willing student.”
“And what does it mean, according to you?”
“It means what I said to you just seconds ago, that he has taken a liking to you.”
“If I am wrong about this, Lottie, I stand to lose everything.”
“And if you are right?”
Jane did not answer that, because the answer was too large for the room.
“What exactly would it cost?” Lottie pulled her knees up. “What if you were to allow yourself to pay heed to what he is doing? What if you allowed one answer to be honest? What is the worst consequence we must anticipate?”
“He realises I have misunderstood and the apprenticeship becomes unbearable.”
“And the best?”
“The best is impossible, Lottie. The best is a thing that does not happen to people like us.”
“People like us,” Lottie said, and her voice lost its teasing edge. “You mean people who work for what they have, as though that were a reason to be cherished less rather than more.”
“I mean people who cannot afford to lose what they have by wanting more.”
The room fell silent. Lottie looked at her with an expression older than her nineteen years, and Jane looked at the hairbrush in her hand, and neither of them spoke for a moment because the dread she harbored was no mere fancy, but a terrible certainty.
Lottie understood it, even if she disagreed with its conclusions.
She had grown up in the same bakery, under the same lease, with the same understanding that stability was not a gift.
It was a thing you held with both hands, and wanting something that required you to let go with one of them was a risk that could not be calculated in advance.
“I am not telling you to be reckless,” Lottie said, more quietly.
“I am telling you that the man asking you questions about cold stores and lemon slices is not asking because he wants a better cold store. He is asking because he wants to know you, and you are refusing to be known because being known by a duke is more terrifying than being invisible to everyone else.”
“That is unfair.”
“Yes. The truth often is.”
Margaret, who had been reading in the chair by the window, turned a page and said, “Lottie is quite right.”
“Thank you, Margaret.”
“You are still a most foolish creature.”
“Thank you, Margaret.”
“Also, the lease renewal is not your responsibility. Father and I will manage the Garricks. You have carried that weight long enough, and it is making you see threats in every corner, including corners that contain eligible dukes.”
“He has not asked me about rosemary.”
“Give him time.”
Jane threw a hairpin at her sister. Margaret caught it without looking up.
***
She lay awake that night and replayed the questions without the armour of self-protection.
“Do you prefer pastry to sugar work” sounded different this time.
It sounded like a man who wanted to know what pleased her.
A man who noticed she worked at a pastry station and wanted to know whether she had chosen to be there or been placed there.
The distinction mattered to him because she mattered to him.
She turned the thought over and put it back and picked it up again.
Then she thought about the cold store and the ankle and the squinting and the recipe book, and she reinterpreted each one without the translation she had been applying.
Without the translation, they were not inspections.
They were the tentative, clumsy attempts of a man who had forgotten how to talk to people and was trying to remember.
Slumber did not come easily to her that night.
***
The next morning, Mrs. Croft found Jane in the kitchen before the others arrived.
“Miss Rennet, a moment.”
Jane set down the proving cloth. Mrs. Croft stood in the doorway with her hands folded and her expression holding the particular configuration that meant she was about to say something that sat outside her duties and inside her conscience.
“His Grace asked me yesterday whether you were comfortable in your position.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him you were performing excellently and that Mrs. Vale had no complaints. He asked again, with different emphasis. He wanted to know whether you were comfortable, not whether your work was satisfactory.”
Jane was quiet. The distinction Mrs. Croft was drawing was the same distinction she had been refusing to see for weeks.