Opening a sack of cocoa nibs, Esmée inhaled their familiar scent much as she did coffee. The roast was exactly right. Too long over the fire turned the cocoa bitter. Too little heat robbed it of flavor. Those Philadelphia roasters knew what they were about. The nibs had been winnowed free of chaff and were ready for refining.
She poured the entire sack into a large marble mortar while the chocolate stone heated at the hearth. Raising a pestle, she let loose all her angst and began pounding the nibs to dust. An airy brown powder rose and tickled her nose, sending her sneezing into her sleeve.
By the time the shop opened, a sheen of velvety chocolate covered the stone. A lick of her finger left grit on Esmée’s tongue. Switching to a different roller, she continued crushing and adding sugar, even a bit of orange essence, Eliza’s favorite. She stopped only when Anna came into the kitchen with a package in her arms.
“Miss Shaw, look at what was left on the front step.” She held it out to Esmée, who stopped her rolling. “Your name is on the outside.”
Esmée wiped her hands on her apron, took the package, and untied the string binding the wrapping paper. The Complete Confectioner.
Wonder bloomed. Bound in leather, the long-coveted book held a whiff of new ink. Or was it her imagination? Tentative, she opened it and marveled at the pristine pages unmarred by grease or chocolate. “You saw no one?”
“None, Miss Shaw. ’Twas just sitting by the door alongside a stray cat.” Anna sniffed. “I’m surprised it wasn’t thieved with all the riffraff on Water Street.”
Clutching the book to her bodice, Esmée returned to the shop and perused the chocolate pots and accessories, excited to try a new recipe.
Who might the gift giver be?
CHAPTER
eight
Henri hadn’t reckoned on old houses having so many ghosts.
The keys from his father’s solicitor hung heavy in his pocket as he unlocked the front door of the Norfolk townhouse on Prince Street. Dust overlaid the once busy entrance hall, running up the elaborately carved balustrade and coating every nick and scratch in a sandy powder, even dimming the crystal brilliance of the chandelier and windows. He shut the door and it echoed. A dismal sound.
Shrugging off the melancholy that had dogged him since coming into the city by coach, he strode across the foyer to the parlor, opening doors and traversing rooms with an eye for change. Paint—the rooms were overdue for it. The carpet was threadbare and nearly colorless with age. Dustcloths hid the furnishings except for an occasional chair leg or table end. But the paintings on the walls, seascapes and oils depicting his ancestors, seemed unchanged. ’Twas a well-built house. A handsome house. A place of many memories, most of them happy.
He climbed the stairs and entered the bedchambers, including his own before he’d gone away to sea. The narrow cot with its plain indigo counterpane . . . had he really lain there? Beneath a window was his writing table, old and scarred in the harsh light piercing the grime of the windowpane. There by the fireplace were knifed notches that marked his growth. He’d gone from a sickly baby to a man full grown at a towering six feet two inches and fourteen stone.
After breathing past the musty smell of unused rooms, he opened a door to the three-tiered portico. Here on the shaded second floor, a scattering of lightweight Windsor chairs and a small game table sat forlorn. He peered over the portico’s railing into the walled garden below.
Roses were still abloom, a clash of pinks and oranges and yellows amid the drooping perennials and weeds. Nothing too amiss here that a sennight’s work wouldn’t mend. The sundial and dry fountain at the garden’s heart eased him. Intact. He’d played many an hour around them as a lad. Some things, at least those cast in stone, didn’t change.
The servants’ quarters in the attic had him bending low not to scrape his head. Even with cocked hat beneath one arm, he still touched the low ceiling. Back down the winding stair he went to the foyer, then exited out a back door to sit on a bench and catch the sun’s last rays as they brightened a battered arbor.
He stared at a twisted quince, once a favorite climbing tree. Age made one reflect, he guessed. At five and thirty, what would be said about him that truly mattered if he were to die tomorrow? That he sailed the high seas and was rarely at home.
Better ponder the pasts of those he loved. Memory took him down a hazy path, heart-tuggingly indistinct but painful as a cat-o’-nine-tails nonetheless. His mother had been most at home in the garden. She’d sewn dried lavender into the hems of her petticoats and linens, even concocted lavender lemon water. And Hermione . . . His sister had arranged for a pianoforte on small wheels to be pushed onto the portico in good weather. There were garden parties. Guests. Towering trays of marzipan and endless bowls of punch. His father had presided over all with characteristic good humor. Until that dark day at the docks.
What bitter irony that he’d once teased his father he’d someday go to sea in the very vessels his father constructed. He’d been jesting. Though he’d long been enamored of shipbuilding, not once had he entertained the notion of sailing.
“By Jove, Son! Will you torment me in my old age with such far-flung notions?” His father had stared at him, his Scots temper roaring. “Am I to see you gone from here for months—years on end? The sea is a fickle mistress. She’ll abuse you like Jonah and coerce some behemoth to swallow you and spit you out, only you might never return to us.”
His mother bore his playfulness with a smile, her usual French effusiveness undimmed. “You’ll be the handsomest jack to ever sail the high seas. ‘Captain Lennox’ sounds magnifique!”
“A privateer you’ll be? ’Tis but a rude disguise,” his sister teased. “Henri Lennox, buccaneer à la corsair! Will you share your prizes with us poor relations who’ll be pining for you at home?”
Then, just shy of his sixteenth birthday, he’d been working late in his father’s dockyard when a press-gang overtook him, the certificate of exemption he carried in his pocket of no consequence. Though the lad with him had gotten away, the gang pummeled him into a corner, tore up his paper, then took him aboard the HMS Victory.
Fueled by fury as well as ambition, he’d worked his way up from cabin boy to midshipman to officer till he’d used the Royal Navy to gain his own vessel and his own captaincy. And then, much like a courtship, as wooing as a siren’s song, the sea had finally won him over. As commander, he’d been freed of rebellious shipmates and overbearing admirals. Freed to chart his course, choose his crew, and sail where he willed. This was what he’d been designed to do, though the Almighty had used an unjust impressment and the Royal Navy to accomplish it.
But now that he was back in Norfolk where it all began, his impressment seemed especially bittersweet. He’d missed much being at sea, not only the sorrows but the joys. If he’d been closer to home, might his parents’ and sister’s lives have been better? Easier? Might they still live? Their voices echoed in his head and heart, so bruising his eyes stung. It caused a man to reconsider. Who did he have? And who would come after him?
A bird trilled. A few colorful leaves drifted down, reddening his black coat and boots. Near at hand was an unkempt climbing rose. It bespoke . . . Esmée. He hadn’t wanted her to intrude. Not even the thought of her. But she’d once been in this garden, making a mighty fuss over this very rose and especially the trellis-in-the-round at the garden’s heart. In midsummer it resembled an overflowing flower basket.