“It won’t be lost on me.” Ann soon had toasted cheese sandwiches cut into triangles. She served that fare with a plate of peach slices and tankards of summer ale. Peaches were still a rarity in most households and not a fruit Ann had worked with in a professional sense.
Perhaps… but no. If an idea originated anywhere but in Monsieur’s handsome head, the idea was not worth pursuing.
“Best eaten hot,” Ann said, taking a seat at the worn table near the hearth. To her surprise, the colonel held her chair. “Thank you.”
He took the place across from her and bowed his head. “For what we are about to receive, we are pathetically grateful, and that includes gratitude for the company as well. Amen.”
They ate with their hands, the colonel exhibiting the sort of focused enthusiasm for the food that would gratify any cook. He left not a crumb on the plate, but partook only sparingly of the peaches.
“Finish the fruit,” he said. “You enjoy it.”
“I do,” Ann said, picking up another succulent slice. “The peach would go well with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, perhaps a dash of vanilla, though the fruit flavor is subtle, and thus the spices must be understated as well. This is a fruit that would make excellent dessert sauces, and a peach compote has possibilities as well.”
He took a considering sip of his ale. “You are passionate about cooking.”
The colonel offered a mere observation, but Ann’s guard went up from long habit. “Every creature must eat, and preparation of safe and nutritious fare ought to be of central importance to any society.”
He regarded her in the flickering light cast by the hearth fire. “The kitchen is more than that for you. It’s a calling. You put up with the tyrant in the Coventry’s kitchen because you learn from him, though flattering his vanity grates on your soul.”
Ann took the last peach slice, wanting to savor it. “Has your soul been grated?”
“Like a hard cheese upon the reality of military life. I’ll walk you back to the Coventry when you’re finished eating.”
A mental portcullis had just been dropped. “I’ve no need of an escort, Colonel. I am not your sister, a fine lady who marries into titled families.”
He gave her an appraising look. If Ann had been one of his subordinates, that look would have inspired her to part with her innermost secrets and most desperate dreams. She’d cast them before him like a child emptying her pockets to exonerate her from a crime that had yet to be named.
The crime of independent dreams, in her case.
“Mrs. Dorning cannot be blamed for her first marriage,” the colonel said, rising. “Her second marriage was apparently a love match.”
“You don’t believe in marrying for love?”
He took the empty plate to the dry sink. “I don’t believe in marrying at all, for the present. What others do is no concern of mine, but if Dorning makes Jeanette miserable, he won’t live to regret it for long. What sort of supplies will Benny need?”
Ann explained the mechanics of sewing linen around a wad of sponge and affixing a string. She left the details of using the resulting profoundly intimate article to the colonel’s imagination, though he showed no embarrassment with the topic.
“What of bandages?” he asked. “As I recall, the ladies in camp requisitioned a portion of our old linen sheets and had special… They laundered them separately for reuse.”
“Have a word with your housekeeper,” Ann suggested. “She and her daughter regularly face the same inconvenience, and they will grasp the situation readily enough.”
“Not a conversation I look forward to.” He collected Ann’s cloak from the peg she’d hung it on. The garment was warm from the fire’s heat, and he did her the courtesy of holding it for her.
“We should tidy up,” Ann said, though, in truth, she simply wanted an excuse to tarry. The kitchen and pantries needed a thorough scrubbing if the spices weren’t to take on the scent of dust and the cheese the odor of coal.
“We should get you back to the Coventry. Dorning will note your absence, and I will be interrogated. Concocting a credible tale to offer him will take some delicacy.”
Ann donned her straw hat. “Why not tell your sister the truth?” And why not marry? The colonel was attractive in a severe way, he was fastidious, he cared for children, and he owned a profitable champagne vineyard, among other holdings.
An eye patch and a taciturn disposition were easily overlooked if a man was sober, solvent, and reasonable.
“Because,” the colonel said, bowing Ann through the back door, “to explain the situation to Jeanette, I’d have to call on her, and this I am loath to do. She has acquired nieces, nephews, and in-laws by the platoon, to say nothing of a shamelessly attentive spouse, and I am de trop.”
He offered Ann his arm, another courtesy she hadn’t anticipated. She took it, expecting to be half marched along the street, but the colonel’s pace was moderate and matched to hers.
“What bothers you most about Benny’s situation?” she asked, when it became apparent that the colonel had no conversational pleasantries to offer.
He was silent for some dozen yards. Around them, London was shifting into its nocturnal rhythms, with fancy coaches replacing mounted traffic and linkboys hustling off to await custom outside the larger gatherings. Near the theaters and in the parks, a different sort of commerce would be getting under way. Might the colonel detour on his route home to sample those wares?
Ann hoped not, for his sake. He was too grand a man to expire of the diseases that went with casual evening encounters on London’s streets.
“What bothers me about Benny’s situation,” he said, “once I get past the mortification of not having seen it for myself, is that we must let her go. She cannot remain in the boys’ dormitory, I have no lady of the house to provide proper supervision to her, and yet, Benny is one of ours. She belongs with us, and we must let her go.”
They approached the back entrance to the Coventry, which was illuminated with several lanterns. The sadness in the colonel’s voice was all the more apparent for being quietly offered. He passed Ann her basket, bowed, and would have marched off into the night without another parting word.
Through the Coventry’s open windows, Ann could smell roasted beef, baked potatoes, fresh bread, and sweat—the kitchen was hot and noisy, and for once, she would rather not join the culinary affray.
“Nobody fretted over letting me go,” she said. “I wasn’t much older than your Benny, and I promise you, Colonel, it will matter to her that you and the boys will miss her. I will call upon you later this week, and we can discuss Benny’s situation at greater length.”
She hugged him again, because he worried for a girl, because he kept his distance from a sister awash in wedded bliss, because he knew women should not be ordered about.
“I am in your debt,” he said, his arms closing around her tentatively. “You need not trouble yourself further on Benny’s behalf.”
Or his. The words went without saying. Ann stepped back after indulging in a good whiff of bracing lavender.
“I will call on you Wednesday nonetheless. Even undercooks have a half day.”
No emotion registered on his lean countenance, not relief, resentment, nothing. “Until Wednesday, then.” He bowed again, but waited at the foot of the back steps when Ann expected him to stalk away.