“I don’t want to keep you from your evening plans.” Rose pulled out a handwritten piece of paper. “So I’ll keep this concise. Regarding the flavors, for most of the layers we’d like—”
She began laying out the practical details, and Dominic opened his tablet to jot down notes. He inserted the occasional query and suggestion, but largely listened and let idea fragments coalesce in his mind.
“For structural reasons, I’d suggest the chocolate fudge rather than the chocolate mousse,” he said when Rose expressed a desire for two layers of chocolate—score two and another bottle of Riesling to Pet.
After a few minutes, the princess cleared her throat and looked at her mother. “That’s almost everything. If Johnny and I could have a moment, please, we’ll finalize the last details and leave Mr. De Vere be.”
Despite her tone, so polite and deferent that the ultimate effect was anything but, it was a dismissal with no room for refusal. And judging by the undulating muscle in the duchess’s jaw, Rose would hear about it later.
In front of her staff, there was nothing she could do but gather her regal dignity and leave.
Father Christmas, however, looked more like an angry little prune with every passing second and apparently couldn’t resist piping up. “With all due respect, Your Highness, it’s my responsibility to oversee—”
“And it’s our wedding, Edward.” Rose was sugar-sweet now. She checked her black leather watch. “Please do return here at five, but in the meantime, we would like ten minutes alone. Of course, you’ll be informed if anything of importance arises in that time.”
No doubt Lancier managed to keep himself informed on all manner of things that arose in this building.
When multiple bristling bodies had left the room, and the door had shut with a pointed click, Marchmont seemed to grow a good inch in stature. Dominic looked at him thoughtfully before he turned back to the bride. “Your Highness—”
“Rosie.” She cut him off, and again her demeanor brooked no opposition, although she softened the terse word with a follow-up, “Please.”
“Rosie.” Dominic flicked to a new screen on the tablet. “Go ahead.”
“With?” She was watching him closely, carefully, her fingers still stroking Marchmont’s wrist.
“The details that will make this cake personal and intimate for you despite its size and symbolism, and help to shrink a stateroom full of people you probably can’t stand down to a bubble of two.”
A moment of silence, in which a twinkle appeared in Rosie’s eyes.
“I told you he couldn’t be as much of a bastard as he seems,” Marchmont said with sudden, extravagant relief.
Apparently, when the incoming member of the royal family wasn’t too petrified to speak, he operated with complete open honesty.
A rare quality in any human being, and one unlikely to be prized by Lancier and his cohorts.
Rosie cleared her throat and took the wise course of ignoring the last ten seconds of her life. “We each have one additional request for the cake.”
“Although I’d like to speak to you about mine privately,” Marchmont added quickly.
“It’s to be a surprise to me on the wedding day, that Johnny would like to be kept separate on the proposal.” Rosie’s eyes cast a fond look at her fiancé, before shooting back to Dominic with an explicit silent addendum. Include only if appropriate. Noted. “For my part, I’d really love it if the top layer of the cake—our layer—is the flavor of Johnny’s favorite drink.”
As special requests went, that ranked high on the easy scale. “Which is?”
He was expecting an alcoholic flavoring, Baileys, Kahlúa, Bénédictine—
“Midnight Elixir.”
Spoke too soon.
The Captain’s Suite
5:20 p.m.
Meeting with Candidate: Ms. Sylvie Fairchild
“Midnight Elixir?” Sylvie repeated, lowering her tablet. Johnny Marchmont couldn’t just be a lemon drizzle bloke, could he? “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar . . .”
She had a sudden, horrifying hope that Midnight Elixir wasn’t on her own menu. It was a kitschy name for a beverage, flashy, over the top. Right up her street. And Jay had been adding new drinks right and left since he’d taken over the Dark Forest with unexpected aplomb. She was already too busy with Operation Cake commitments to keep up. Not a good look.
“It’s a hot drink they serve at the Starlight Circus in Holland Park.”
Oh, good. She hadn’t missed a trick.
It was just the plagiarizing competition.
The Starlight Circus, a coffee shop in a city with more pollution than stars, was owned by Darren Clyde, a colossal fuckwit with a habit of sending spies into Sugar Fair to buy their food, reproduce it poorly, and change the names. They’d first met in a class on advanced sugar craft, and he’d clearly been sent by Satan to test her.
“Johnny loves it,” Rosie went on. “His assistant buys him one every day.”
Sylvie was petty enough to be glad he wasn’t going in person. He was already enough of a public figure to give Darren a boost in sales. She was always glad to see good things happen for good people, even if they operated in her professional sphere, but outside of the bedroom, nobody liked a bigheaded dick.
She rested her stylus pen against her tablet, ready to fill in the details. “And what is the flavor profile of Midnight Elixir?”
“No idea,” Rosie said with all the cheerfulness of a woman who wasn’t now going to have to spend time and money at the fucking Starlight Circus. “Apparently, it’s a house secret. If it helps, I can definitely taste some sort of berry.”
“I think there’s spice in it,” Johnny piped up, and after a pause, Sylvie wrote down exactly that on her iPad.
Spice (?). Some sort of berry.
Well, she’d always enjoyed a mystery. All those nights listening to Agatha Christie audiobooks while she worked were about to pay off.
“I’m not sure how you knew about I, Slayer,” Rosie said suddenly. “But we adored the pitch cake. You’re so clever.”
“If it w-were up to us”—on the odd word, there was just a hint of a stutter in Johnny’s deep voice—“we’d keep the theme on the big day.”
“Obviously, that would be a step too far,” Rosie added drily. “Although I’d pay a good deal of money to serve a slice of Caractacus to the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
The duchess and her coterie had got to their feet a few minutes ago and abruptly departed, after a pointed remark shot in her daughter’s direction—“I believe this is the part of the proceedings where we vacate the room.” Otherwise, Sylvie wouldn’t bring up—
“I hope I didn’t invade your privacy in making that cake. You mentioned the video game one night when you were—”
“Falling down drunk in your business premises?” Rosie filled in the blank with a faint grin. “Amazingly, I do remember the night in question, although I have no recollection of boring a complete stranger with personal anecdotes. I belatedly apologize. I also belatedly thank you for never saying a word about it. It was my dearest friend’s birthday. And I wanted to . . . get out. Be out. In hindsight, it was appallingly reckless to ditch my PPOs.”