Epilogue What Cinnamon Chose
Georgiana
Ten Months Later - Netherfield Park
Georgiana had a spring in her step as she came down Netherfield’s grand staircase. Happiness was in the air, and she could not resist twirling, catching the banister, and spinning off the bottom step. Today was the day her brother would meet the man she wished to marry.
He did not know this yet. Fitzwilliam believed he was travelling from Pemberley to Netherfield for Jane’s Michaelmas dinner, an annual neighborhood gathering that she had instituted as mistress of Netherfield and that Elizabeth had used as a pretext to bring her husband south before her confinement.
Elizabeth wished to relive a Hertfordshire autumn, and Fitzwilliam, ever devoted, wanted nothing more than to see his wife happy.
But Georgiana had her own agenda. She wanted Thomas Clark to be in the kitchen when her brother walked through the door.
She’d met Mr. Clark in the Prince Regent’s kitchen when Lady Matlock had wanted Georgiana to view the royal plate collection. Instead, she had wandered into the bustling kitchen and found a young man constructing an elaborate pastry tower while singing folk songs.
He had offered her a biscuit—ginger, as it happened—and she had accepted it without hesitation, propriety forgotten.
Standing there in a palace kitchen with flour on her gloves and the spicy sweetness on her tongue, she had known, with a certainty that bypassed every defense her brother had built around her, that this man was safe.
Georgiana entered the Netherfield kitchen, already in a full state of battlefield prep.
Mrs. Bennet—or Mama Bennet, as she insisted on being called—commanded the central table with her rolling pin.
But Georgiana’s attention flew to her beloved Thomas, who stood at the far end of the table, forearms exposed, kneading dough in a manner that made her heart skip.
He had flour on his face. He always had flour on his face, the way some men had ink on their fingers, and to her, that and the sugar on his chin were his most endearing qualities.
“Good morning,” Georgiana said from the doorway, pleased that her voice came out steadier than her pulse. She hadn’t told Thomas of Darcy’s impending visit. She didn’t know how.
Thomas’s face brightened at her appearance, his eyes crinkling at the corners in that special way reserved only for her, but he kept his hands moving in the dough.
Mama Bennet’s rolling pin stilled as she looked up. “Georgiana, dear, tell your young man to stop frowning at the dough. He is making it nervous.”
“I am not frowning,” Thomas’s brow furrowed. “I am concentrating.”
“You are frowning. Dough can tell. My grandmother Clark always said that pastry absorbs the mood of the baker, which is why my Shrewsbury cakes are magnificent and why your brioche, while technically proficient, occasionally tastes anxious.”
“My brioche does not taste anxious.”
“It did on Thursday. I said nothing at the time because you looked rather pleased with it.”
Thomas caught Georgiana’s eye and graced her with a smile—the one reserved for her, warm and intimate—before returning to the dough.
He was the head baker at Carlton House, the Prince Regent’s showpiece, and he did not need to justify himself to anyone.
But Mama Bennet’s kitchen operated under its own authority, and Thomas had learned, as Fitzwilliam had before him, that the authority was absolute.
Cinnamon perched on the windowsill, watching the kitchen with the patient surveillance of an animal who had been conducting operations in this family for over a year and saw no reason to retire.
“The cat has been staring at the door since dawn,” Jane said, setting a tray of tea on the table. Her belly was beginning to show the first signs of joyful news, a gentle curve beneath her apron.
“She is always staring at something,” Georgiana replied, wondering if she was as ready for motherhood as the Bennet sisters. “She simply hasn’t decided what yet.”
“She decided about you quickly enough,” Jane said. “Elizabeth was barely married before Cinnamon attached herself to you like a barnacle with opinions.”
“Cinnamon goes where she is needed,” Mama Bennet said. “She chose Lizzy when Lizzy needed choosing, and then she chose you, Georgie, when you needed her. When you are settled, she will move on to the next one. That cat has more sense than the lot of you combined.”
Georgiana glanced at Thomas, who never gave his opinion about cats, other than that they didn’t belong in the kitchen. Cinnamon hadn’t favored him, and she wondered if this was an omen.
Jane, ever perceptive, read the worry in Georgiana’s face. “Fitzwilliam will love him. He will see what we all see.”
“What if he doesn’t? He will see flour and forearms and a man without a title.”
“Then Elizabeth will explain it to him,” Jane said. “Elizabeth is very good at explaining things to your brother.”
“Elizabeth is very good at explaining things to everyone,” Mama Bennet corrected. “She takes after me.”
Georgiana smiled into her teacup. “But Mama Bennet, I thought you said I’m the one who takes after you—or was that only when I burned the Shrewsbury cakes?”
“You are practically ours at this point,” Jane said. “Elizabeth lends you to Netherfield, and I lend you to Longbourn, and between the three households you have not spent a full fortnight at Pemberley since Easter.”
“A pity that Lizzy spends so much time there. Derbyshire is so far north.” Mama Bennet’s attention turned toward Thomas. “More butter, young man. The Bakewell requires generosity.”
“Mrs. Bennet, the ratio is precise.”
“My grandfather baked for King George, and King George was not known for his restraint. More butter.”
“Your grandfather was my great-grandfather, and his notes are precise concerning the ratio.” Thomas’s tone was respectful but firm, and Georgiana bit back a laugh.
He held his opinions and owned his choices. Having the same spirited wit as Elizabeth, he enjoyed trading barbs with Mama Bennet.
The Bakewell pudding was Elizabeth’s idea, and a brilliant one—Derbyshire’s own pastry, the pride of Pemberley’s county, being constructed in a Hertfordshire kitchen by a man whose great-grandfather had baked for the Crown.
If anything could speak to Fitzwilliam in a language he understood, it was this: the food of his childhood, made by hands that had inherited the craft, offered without pretension or strategy in a kitchen where the only programme was feeding the people one loved.
The sound of carriage wheels reached them through the open window, and Cinnamon’s ears swiveled toward the door.
“They’re here!” Lydia’s voice carried from the front hall. “Lizzy is enormous! Mr. Darcy is helping her down from the carriage, and she is swatting his hand away!”
Thomas threw her a wink, knowing the special place Elizabeth had in her heart, and that Lydia would race to the entrance and win, throwing her arms around her sister before Georgiana could so much as put on her gloves. She set down her tea, delicately lest the thin cup should crack.
She should go to the entrance hall and greet them properly.
She should have a speech prepared, a careful introduction, and the right framing for a moment she had been rehearsing for weeks.
But she hesitated, not because Thomas was not worthy or that she did not value him—only that she needed her brother to see him the way she did.
So she waited, picking cat hair from her skirt.
Thomas did not perform. He was in his natural element, bantering with Mama Bennet, winking at her, and teasing her sisters while up to his elbows in pastry and dough.
He was creating a Bakewell pudding, and he would be caught in the act of being himself—the man she loved.
Elizabeth appeared first in the kitchen doorway. Her rounded belly had grown in the three months since Georgiana had last been to Pemberley.
“Mama,” Elizabeth said, kissing Mrs. Bennet’s cheek. “The biscuits smell extraordinary.”
“They are extraordinary, as are all Clark family creations.” Mrs. Bennet adjusted her apron. “Bring your husband in. The tea is getting cold.”
Elizabeth glanced at Georgiana, and the glance said: Ready?
Georgiana’s nod was braver than she felt.
“Darling,” Elizabeth called over her shoulder, light, casual, and miraculous, because eight months ago the notion that Elizabeth Bennet would call Fitzwilliam Darcy darling in a kitchen doorway would have struck Georgiana as likely as Cinnamon learning to fetch.
“Come and see the biscuits, the baker, and the cat.”
Fitzwilliam Darcy walked into the Netherfield kitchen.
He had to duck slightly under the doorframe because Netherfield’s kitchen had been built for servants and not for the master of Pemberley, which made him less formidable and more approachable.
He greeted Mama Bennet first, then Jane, and only after the formal niceties did he turn to Georgiana with a smile reserved for her. “Sister, you look well. Hertfordshire agrees with you.”
“Very much, Brother.” She took his arm. “There is someone I’d like you to meet.”
She saw the confusion as Darcy looked at Mrs. Jolliffe first, and then the kitchen maids, Cinnamon, and then Jane, until his gaze traveled down the work table and stopped at the new baker.
Thomas stood still, lifting his dough-caked hands and unable to run them through his hair, which was a habit when he was discomfited.
To his credit, he met Darcy’s gaze firmly, his brown, steady eyes carrying no agenda beyond hard, honest work and a love for a woman who might have overestimated her brother’s capacity for change.
“Fitzwilliam,” Georgiana said, stepping forward, “this is Mr. Thomas Clark. He is the head baker at Carlton House for the Prince Regent.” Her voice was steady because this was her choice and the bravest thing she’d done since the stream crossing. “He is the man I wish to marry.”