Chapter Nine
“Your position at Aldermere is somewhat out of the ordinary, Miss Rennet.”
Piers Garrick was standing outside the bakery when Jane arrived to collect the week’s bread samples.
He had positioned himself against the wall with the studied casualness of a man who wished to appear accidental and had been waiting.
His coat was too fine for Millcombe and his smile was too practiced for sincerity.
“Good morning, Mr. Garrick,” Jane said, because civility cost nothing and her mother was watching from the shop window. “I occupy the position of an apprentice, and I must say, Mrs. Vale proves herself a most excellent instructress.”
“Of course. An apprenticeship.” Piers pushed himself off the wall and fell into step beside her, which she had not invited. “Under the duke’s personal supervision, I understand.”
“Under Mrs. Vale’s supervision. The duke runs his household. I work in his kitchen.”
“And the duke visits his kitchen rather often for a man who runs a household.”
“I would not presume to comment on His Grace’s schedule.”
“No. I suppose you would not.” Piers adjusted his cuffs, a gesture that managed to be both idle and pointed.
“I ask only because the county has noticed. A baker’s daughter installed at a ducal house within a week of her first visit is astonishing enough.
Yet, to hear of the overly generous terms, and His Grace’s personal attentiveness regarding her accommodation, is quite beyond belief.
“The county’s interpretation is mistaken, Mr. Garrick.”
“I did not say it was the county’s interpretation.
I said the arrangement invites it.” He stopped walking.
Jane stopped, because continuing would have carried the conversation down the lane in full view of every window.
“Your family’s lease is due for renewal in spring.
My father is a reasonable man. But he does pay attention to how his tenants are spoken of. ”
“Is that a threat?”
“It is an observation. Threats require intention, and I intend nothing but goodwill.” The smile returned, growing yet wider, though utterly devoid of warmth. “Do give my regards to your mother. Her marmalade is exceptional.”
He walked away. Jane stood in the lane with bread samples in her basket and her hands shaking with a fury that was cold rather than hot.
The kind that settled into the bones because it had nowhere to go.
Piers had implied everything and committed to nothing, and the gap between implication and statement was where men like him operated.
The space was deniable. The damage was not.
She walked to Aldermere. The morning was bright and the gravel Thomas had laid crunched beneath her shoes. Two weeks ago the sound had been a comfort. Now it reminded her that every kindness the duke had shown her was visible. Visible kindness, to a man like Piers, was ammunition.
The kitchen was busy when she arrived. Mrs. Vale was preparing a luncheon with the organised ferocity she brought to any meal served to guests. Bess was chopping with focused aggression. Ruth was rolling pastry at the far station with untroubled competence.
Jane put on her apron, washed her hands twice, and began working in a silence she was using as armour.
Mrs. Vale assigned her the custard. “Smooth, Miss Rennet. If I find a single lump, I will take it as a personal affront.”
“Yes, Mrs. Vale.”
“And do not overcook it. An overcooked custard is an insult to the egg, the cow, and the person who must eat it while pretending to enjoy it.”
“I will endeavour to honour all three, Mrs. Vale.”
Mrs. Vale looked at her a moment longer than the custard required, with the expression that meant she had noticed something was amiss and had decided not to name it.
“See that you do. And Miss Rennet, whatever is sitting on you this morning, you will leave it on the far side of the table from my custard. A custard takes on the temper of the hands that make it, and I will not serve His Grace a bowl of someone else’s bad morning. ”
“I will keep my temper to myself, Mrs. Vale.”
“You will keep it in your pocket, where it belongs, and you will stir.”
Jane stirred. The custard wanted constant attention, which today was a mercy, since the stirring gave her a rhythm to follow that was not the rhythm of Piers Garrick’s implications.
She was quieter than usual, and the quietness sat on her like a weight she could not shift, because every time she set it down his smile rose behind her eyes and the weight came back.
Margaret would have told her to stop carrying other people’s malice, and her mother would have worried over her, and her father would have gone quiet in the way that meant he was angry.
None of them were here, and so she held herself together over a duke’s custard by the simple medium of dairy, while Mrs. Vale, who plainly noticed something was amiss, said nothing and granted her the space of her silence.
Whitlock noticed too, and Whitlock’s restraint lasted approximately forty minutes less than Mrs. Vale’s.
“You are stirring that custard with the enthusiasm of a woman contemplating murder,” Whitlock said, appearing at her elbow with tea.
“I am stirring it with appropriate force.”
“You are stirring it with vengeance. The custard has done nothing to deserve it.”
“The custard is perfectly well.”
“The custard is terrified.” Whitlock set the tea beside her and lowered his voice. “I will not ask what happened. But whoever put that expression on your face should be grateful they are not currently a bowl of custard.”
Jane almost smiled. The almost cracked the armour slightly, and the crack let in warmth she needed. “Thank you, Whitlock.”
“Always. I am a tireless advocate for custard safety.”
“Is that an official title?”
“It should be. I intend to petition Mrs. Croft.”
He disappeared before Mrs. Vale could comment on the length of his visit.
Jane turned back to her custard and found her eyes stinging.
She blinked until they stopped. She would not cry in this kitchen.
She had not cried when she set herself on fire and she had not cried when the tartlets collapsed and she would not cry now over a man whose weapons were smiles and implications.
***
Thomas found her in the herb garden after lunch.
She had taken the rosemary shears out partly for Mrs. Vale and partly for herself, because the work was repetitive and the repetition left no room for Piers Garrick’s smile, and she had been at it long enough that the basket was overfull and her temper nearly level again when the gravel gave Thomas away behind her.
“Who troubled you?”
Thomas’s voice came from behind her, quiet and unhurried. She did not jump. She was learning to expect him in the spaces she retreated to.
“No one, Your Grace.”
“That is rarely true when people say it.”
Jane turned. Thomas was standing at the end of the herb row with his hands at his sides.
His expression held something she had not seen before.
Not the careful neutrality of his inspection questions.
Not the diagnostic attention of previous weeks.
Something quieter. Something that looked like concern trying very hard not to become management.
“I had a difficult morning,” she said, and the admission surprised her.
“At the bakery?”
“On the lane.”
He waited. The waiting was different from what she was accustomed to. His silences usually felt expectant, holding space for the next question. This silence felt patient, holding space for whatever she chose to put in it.
“Someone spoke to me about my position here this morning,” Jane said. “In terms that were polite and implications that were not.”
“That would be Garrick.”
The name came out flat and certain. Jane looked at him with surprise. “How did you know?”
“Because Garrick is the kind of man who speaks in implications. And because you are the kind of woman who would not be troubled by someone who spoke plainly.” He paused. “What did he say?”
“Nothing I can repeat as a direct quotation, which is the entire point of how he says things.”
A fleeting glint crossed behind Thomas’s eyes that Jane recognised as anger, controlled and quiet, the anger of a man pressing against the limits of his own training.
“He mentioned the lease,” Jane said. The admission cost more than the first. “He mentioned reputation and interpretation. He committed to nothing and implied everything. I cannot fight an implication, Your Grace, because implications do not stand still long enough to be confronted.”
Thomas was quiet. In the old pattern, the one his sister had diagnosed, he would have offered a solution, and Jane could see the impulse cross his face, a powerful instinct compelled him to remedy whatever disorder lay directly in his path.
This time he allowed the impulse to pass without acting on it.
“I apologise,” he said. The words came out with the careful weight he gave to everything. They were not a solution or a plan. They were the simplest acknowledgement that something had hurt her.
Jane blinked. The Duke of Aldermere had heard her describe a problem and had not attempted to solve it. He had simply been sorry.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“You do not need to thank me for hearing what you said.”
“I have found that hearing is rarer than most people suppose.”
“Then your experience has been with the wrong people.”
The sentence was simple and carried no decoration. It landed with the force of a truth spoken without effort to be impressive. Jane did not know what to say to it, and the not-knowing was its own answer, because Jane Rennet always knew what to say.
“Thomas,” he said.
She had been expecting it. Since the herb garden the previous week, since the word ‘sometimes,’ the first name had been approaching.
But hearing him offer it now, after Piers’s morning and the custard and the rosemary and the quiet, careful apology, made the offering feel like more than a name. It felt like a door.
“I cannot call you Thomas,” Jane said.