Chapter 6
Peter opened the door quietly in case his father slept.
“…seven times over in the time you are taking. Make your move, young lady.” His father sounded amused rather than anxious. Peter’s shoulders relaxed. Thank the heavens for Miss Henton.
“My name is Margaret.” Not Miss Henton, then. “How can I move when your horse is ready to pounce? Your horse and your tower—”
“Knight and rook. But if they did, you’d lose a mere pawn.”
Peter peered through the partially opened door.
Miss Cooper gasped. “I have it.” A game piece swept across the board. “Bid your queen farewell.” Her partial profile showed delight.
He had never known Miss Cooper to display such a playful spirit, and her vibrancy captivated him.
“Not my queen!” Father clutched his chest and leaned back, gasping in mock pain. Then laughter drained from his face. “My queen is gone,” he rasped. “Where is Deborah?”
Miss Cooper leapt to her feet. “It’s time for tea.” Bending, she kissed Father on his head. He patted the hand she rested on his shoulder.
A queer wistfulness pricked Peter’s heart—strange for Miss Cooper’s seeming part to play in provoking it. He pushed the door open, hoping his presence would not disrupt the merry mood. “Father, I’ve returned.”
Father rose, thankfully recognizing him tonight. “Peter, this is Miss… er… Margaret, our neighbor. Margaret, my son Peter.”
He humored his father and cast a wry smile at his apprentice. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Margaret.”
“Peter.” Miss Cooper’s quick curtsy was a show of sarcasm, but he found himself studying her dress. The embroidery on her stomacher was simple but exquisite.
“Miss Margaret is fetching tea.” His father settled back into his chair, placid smile restored, the loss of his queen forgotten.
Something about her easy interaction with his father had Peter wishing they could forget about the shop, the apprenticeship, and the guild and simply enjoy one another’s company.
However, he could not impose upon Miss Cooper, especially at such a late hour.
“Father, I am sure Miss Margaret has somewhere to be.”
“She doesn’t,” Father insisted.
“I do not mind, Mr. Sloan.” Miss Cooper slipped past him, a clean scent lingering as she moved toward the kitchen.
He followed. “Where is Miss Henton?”
“She was needed in my kitchen.” Miss Cooper pulled his mother’s apron off a nail and tied it around herself.
The apron hadn’t been touched in three years.
He watched the pinafore glide around the room, fill a kettle, set it over the trivet.
The kitchen came alive around a woman who was not his mother, and Peter didn’t know what to do with his hands.
When she found bread and began slicing, he came to his senses.
“I can do that.” He opened his hand for the knife.
She glanced at him. Her eyes were flecked gold, the same color that sparked from the auburn hair spiraling from her cap. “Go sit with your father.”
The boundaries of his worlds were colliding, pushing him off-balance. If he could get out of his mother’s kitchen, he might take a moment to compose himself, but he couldn’t leave.
Peter placed three cups, butter, and cutlery on a tray and reached for the bread.
“You may not see me as an adept seamstress, but I am competent with a bread knife.” She waggled the blade at him. “A skill I may need, since my master is slow to teach me.”
He knew she owned every ability of a seamstress.
That was not the problem. Here, outside the strictures of their habitual dealings, she was not simply his controversial apprentice.
He saw her anew as a vivacious young woman with the compassion to care for a demanding old man.
And she was trying to serve him tea in his own home. “Allow me.” He reached for the knife.
She slammed it on the counter. “Mrs. Shaw was in for a fitting today, and you did not invite my assistance. Miss Jenkins came with a bolt of linen; I saw you trimming it over her. We agreed you would involve me more in your projects. There is plenty of work for us both.”
His father began chanting, “ ‘If wishes were horses…’ ”
He had certainly not agreed, but he had led her to believe so. Guilt pricked at him.
She turned to the bread, her arm moving with enough force to fell a tree.
“Besides, you need my help. Your customers were impatient and angry and are steadily becoming satisfied. Your accounts were dismal but are growing more solid. I’ve done nothing but bring order and efficiency to your shop.
How stunned are you that Mrs. Gainsworth’s order is almost complete? ”
Peter didn’t wish to speak of the shop, his curiosity regarding Miss Cooper piqued.
But he could not deny that she seemed to speak the truth.
Customers seemed happier, the apprentices worked harder, and Mrs. Gainsworth’s livery might actually be finished in time…
That pattern embroidered on her stomacher—peonies or roses?
She stopped talking. “What are you looking at?”
“Your stomacher. I would be pleased to hire a needlewoman of that skill.”
She made an elaborate bow. “You already have her. And she paid you for the privilege.”
He thought back to over a year before, when Miss Cooper and Lord Halverton had hounded his shop for weeks to beg his taking her on as an apprentice.
Although he’d surely blushed each time he’d seen her, she’d quickly proved her stubborn character, and it had vexed him to explain again and again how the guild would never allow such an unprecedented arrangement.
Yet they had, and all because of her persistence.
What had motivated her so passionately to seek his patronage all those months ago?
“Miss Cooper, why are you in Stroud when London holds any number of female mantua makers from whom you could learn?”
She glared and pointedly removed the third teacup from the platter. Chin held high, she marched past with his mother’s tea tray.
A cheerful “Here we are, Mr. Sloan” floated in from the parlor.
Peter remained in the kitchen, considering.
He wondered how the livery was nearly done.
At the end of each day, instead of partially finished breeches and jackets, fully completed garments appeared like magic on every vacant hook and clotheshorse.
He had not known how the apprentices came up with the idea to work in tandem. He was indebted to Miss Cooper.
A peace offering was in order, something that communicated he did not wish for an enemy. Something that might make her into a friend.
He stepped into his mother’s still room and closed the door, shutting out the conversation filtering from the parlor.
Dust floated across a stream of light. He inhaled the scent of herbs and fruit, bitter and sweet.
The shelves lay nearly bare, with a few bottles of apricot ratafia and sage-rosemary wine.
On a ledge, once replete with sweetmeats, sat a glass jar, sparkling crimson.
He dusted the parchment seal and ran his thumb over his mother’s faded scrip: “Sour Cherry Preserves.” His favorite, always accompanied by echoes of her song, Cherries are ripe, Cherries are ripe, The robin said one day.
He collected butter biscuits from the kitchen, grabbed another teacup, and entered the parlor. With some ceremony, he removed the seal from the cherry preserves and glanced at Miss Cooper. He wanted her to understand the significance of the gift, meant for her.
“I brought a treat.” He slathered jam on two slices of bread, gave one to Father, sat beside Miss Cooper, and offered her the second.
She took it and muttered, “Bread and jam do not make up for your failing your duty.”
Peter winced. Miss Cooper did not understand the weight of what he offered, but his father licked a cherry from his thumb, a dribble of joy straight from the hand of his beloved Deborah. It was foolish to have imagined anyone but Father could have appreciated the gesture.
“Thank you, Miss Cooper,” he said, “for your hard work these past weeks. Please accept my apologies for failing to acknowledge your efforts previously.” He presented her a biscuit.
She rolled her eyes but took it.
There—now might they have a chance of some camaraderie? He tried to introduce a fresh topic but couldn’t find his voice.
“My Deborah makes the finest preserves in the county,” Father said. “First place at the fair every year.”
Miss Cooper shot a look at Peter and bit her lip.
She took the cup he’d set on the table and filled it halfway with tea, added milk to the brim, and handed it to him.
The way he liked it. It seemed she’d grasped his gesture and had been prepared to extend friendship.
While he had taken sparse notice of Miss Cooper beyond her position as an outsider and intruder, she had clearly taken time to observe his quirks and preferences.
He nudged the jar toward her. “The preserves are simply delicious on biscuits.” The offering settled over him, quieting the idea that the woman who wiped jam off his father’s cheek was somehow his enemy.
Despite Peter’s efforts, the warmth Miss Cooper showered over his father did not extend to the son.
The role of observer offered the best solution to stilted conversation and cool looks.
Peter watched as his apprentice brought laughter to his father’s lips, a blush to his cheek, and tears under her kind questions regarding Mrs. Sloan.
This was not the woman he saw in his shop each day.
Until that moment, generous, attentive, and considerate had not been words he associated with detached and resolute Miss Cooper.
Something shifted inside Peter, a small, grudging adjustment.
He’d taken her measure, but the pattern he’d constructed for her was all wrong.