Dolores patted his own arm fondly. “I’ll look into the items you’ve flagged.” Her gaze softened on Sylvie. “Have a good evening. Bring her again.”
When they opened the door to walk back outside, the icy wind was a frigid blast, rocketing down Sylvie’s spine. She drew her coat tighter across her chest, and couldn’t help noticing that he stepped to the left, apparently unconsciously taking the brunt of the wind.
Dominic stood looking down at her. His query was abrupt. “Are you all right?”
“I am,” she said slowly. She looked back at the stone walls of Abbey Hall. All things considered, and in a comparatively short amount of time, she felt as if she’d stepped into that building with one path on the horizon, and suddenly someone had opened up a dozen different avenues of possibility.
Her gaze returned to dust over the taut line of his stubbled jaw, the sprinkling of pale freckles above his collar, the unreadable expression in his eyes.
Evenly, he commented, “Not quite what I expected to find in there.”
No.
Nor her.
Chapter Nine
De Vere’s
Mission: Midnight Elixir, the Cake
Attempt 8
9
10
11
“Yes, I did think we were going to be there all night.”
—Liam Boateng, highly paid, highly annoyed sous-chef, De Vere’s
The cake was perfectly golden, rich, with a good crumb. And it tasted like nothing on Earth.
Liam lowered his napkin from his mouth. His shoulders were still wracked with small shudders. “Literally the first time I’ve ever had to spit something out in this kitchen.”
Dominic leaned both fists on the countertop. If he could develop telekinesis powers through sheer will, that platter would fly into the bin on its own and save him the trouble.
“Reduce the vanilla,” he said over his shoulder to the assistant currently mixing the next batch. “The boysenberry is giving a note far too sour. Need to counterbalance with the white chocolate. And the absinthe—”
“Has to go.” Liam was physically scrubbing his tongue with the napkin.
“It’s an important component of the flavor profile, but it’s overwhelming. And cut the theatrics. I’ve had enough on set.” He reached for a piece of paper and started scrawling with a pen. “Maybe if we introduce that note in the second icing layer. Could use a spray . . .”
“May I make a suggestion?”
He scribbled a diagram, added a ratio of liquid to dry ingredients. “Yes.”
Liam smacked a massive tablet of dark Belgian chocolate on the counter next to the hell cake. “Stick with chocolate.”
Sugar Fair
Sylvie leaned on the counter, darkly eyeing the array of cakes. Two looked great, one would be acceptable if it’d been pulled off a supermarket bargain shelf, the other two would net a failing grade as a school project.
Gingerly, she poked one of the decent-looking examples with her fork, brought another small mouthful to her lips.
Which puckered as soon as the renewed taste of that cake hit her senses.
She dropped the fork and looked up at Jay and Mabel, both lingering for the verdict.
“They’re all disgusting. And pace yourself with those,” she added warningly to Mabel, who was slurping at another of the Midnight Elixir takeaway cups Sylvie had asked Penny to purchase. Partly because they needed the drink for comparative purposes. Partly to keep the intern occupied and not dissolving into tears for the third time that week. “It’s all fun and games until it throws a punch like Mike Tyson and you start complimenting people on their fleshly assets.”
“Sorry?” Jay finished hiding his cake sample in the bin and shot her an amused glance.
“Mabs, how many of those have you had?” Sylvie asked, and her assistant lowered the cup.
“Four. Neither my brain nor my stomach is weak.” Mabel finished the remaining Elixir in the cup, extended an elegant hand and tapped the bottle of absinthe. “And this isn’t going to work in the mix. You need a more subtle delivery agent for the flavor note.”
She sailed out in a perfectly straight line, steady as a rock.
“I’m aggrieved,” Sylvie remarked, and Jay rested his hand on her head.
“Welcome to my world.”
De Vere’s
“It’s not purple.” Pet sounded personally offended.
Dominic looked up from the Midnight Elixir cake. Version #WhoTheFuckKnows. “Why would it be purple?”
“Because the drink is purple.” She took another sip from the takeaway cup. “It’s good, too.” He didn’t need her pointed look at the cake to fill in the unspoken: Unlike that.
“I thought it was black,” Liam murmured.
“Isn’t it brown?” A cluster of assistants gathered around to peer into the cups.
Dominic pressed his thumb and forefinger against his browbone and speculated on the sensation of an imploding brain.
Sugar Fair
“It’s better,” Jay said, chewing thoughtfully. His jaw shifted as he turned the cake over on his tongue, weighing the flavors. “Much better than the last one.”
Sylvie took another bite. The cake was packed with flavor, not in the least dry, and it looked pretty, since she’d added a tiny sprinkling of gold glitter dust. “It is much better,” she agreed slowly, and took another bite. Chewed. Thought. Flung down the fork. “It’s still horrible.”
“Foul.” Jay shoved his own plate away and reached for a bottle of water. He cracked the top and drank a third in one shot. “How goes the second part of the mission?”
Sticking a piece of plain white chocolate in her mouth to melt on her tongue, Sylvie opened her bag and took out her phone. She handed it to Jay, and he flicked through the photos she’d taken of the envelope, the photograph of Patrick and Jessica at Primrose Cottage, and the little glass globe. She’d resisted a latent Bonnie-and-Clyde impulse and not put the latter in her pocket.
Jay zoomed in to read the little handwritten words on the envelope, before he turned to the snapshot of the couple, studying it closely. “Is this relevant to the cake design?”
She propped her hip against the bench. “I don’t know. My instinct says yes.”
Also, she had literally no other ideas right now.
He leaned forward to rest his arms on the wooden surface, running the fingers of one hand through the fall of hair over his forehead. “He was a bachelor prince of the British realm. He must have had lovers by the barrel-load.”
“That’s not a given. But there did appear to be a number of short-term flings, analyzed by the tabloids in tedious, painstaking detail.” She nodded at her phone. “Until he was about thirty-eight. Approximately the age he must have been in that photograph. I can’t find a single press mention of Jessica Maple-Moore. From a research point of view, she’s invisible. A handsome prince, constantly in the public eye, hounded by the press—and not a peep of that affair leaked to the public.”
Reaching out, she flipped back to the drawings. “Teasing. Intimate. Clearly the best of friends.” She returned to the photograph, that moment frozen in time on the steps of Primrose Cottage. “His eyes,” she said. “Look at his eyes. He loved her.” And obviously, Jessie had loved him. A flick of the screen, and she traced the tip of her finger over the inscription on the base of the globe. “All the world and still only you.”