Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Who had painted this? A servant?
I’d come back in the morning light, I decided, take photographs of the piece. The only light in the pantry was a naked bulb that, when I turned it on, cast a lackluster glow at best. What was with this house and the bad lighting? Cost cutting, if I had to guess. No point in having it high-spec when it was rarely used.
Closing the pantry door for now, I wandered over to grab the recipe book Ash had showed Aaron.
Two minutes later, the chai was done and I’d hitched myself up on a stool by the counter, ready to leaf through the recipes. On the flyleaf in a beautiful script were the words: To my dear daughter, Clara, on the occasion of your marriage. For you to fill with your and your family’s favorite recipes. May your table be ever bountiful and your hearth never cold. With all my love. Mama.
I lived as distant from my own mother as Clara had gone from hers, but it wasn’t the same. Clara had been marooned in place after she arrived, with no hope of a quick trip over the oceans to see her family, and nothing but letters eagerly awaited to receive word from home.
I turned the page to the first recipe . . . and rubbed a fist over my aching heart: Mama’s Winter Stew.
The handwriting was different from that in the flyleaf. Clara had written this; a cherished memory of her past life even as she began her new one.
What must it have been like to live in this alpine wilderness in the time of Blake Shepherd? If Clara had come from a well-off family, she would’ve been used to house parties and church gatherings at the least. Perhaps even dances or other larger engagements.
My knowledge of that part of English history came via the romances I read, and per them, even those in isolated country estates had enjoyed an active social circle. People had held elaborate dinners and hosted their friends for days or weeks at a time.
Even if none of that was correct, she’d had a full life with her family. Because below the title of the recipe was the note: Beloved of my six younger sisters and I.
It must’ve been a home bright with conversation and energy.
And then to come to this?
I looked around the kitchen again, so huge and hollow and cold. I wondered if she’d ever tried to set up one of her sisters with someone in the region—perhaps even one of her husband’s wealthy associates? I wouldn’t blame her if she had. At least then, she’d have had one person in the country who’d visit with her—and whom she could visit, leaving this remote heap behind.
The recipes were written in a lovely script, the kind that looks like water flowing across the page. No flourishes. Smooth and flawless, music without notes. I couldn’t imagine how she’d done this at a time when she would’ve been writing with ink and a fountain pen. Not only that, but the recipes were illustrated—and Clara had been no journeyman artist.
I ran my finger over the stark beauty of the first line drawing. She hadn’t tried to illustrate the dishes themselves, but rather one or two of the ingredients in each. This was a delicately rendered sketch of a head of cauliflower. A partially sliced onion illustrated the bottom right corner of the next page.
The sharp precision of the lines, the attention to minute detail . . . I glanced at the closed pantry door, thought of the spray of flour in the air.
Clara had painted the baker. In a place her husband would never see.
The realization made my skin chill.
After taking a big sip of my chai, I turned back to the warmth and skill evidenced in the pages of the recipe book, immersed at this glimpse into the life of a young woman who’d had to become mistress of a grand house while barely out of childhood herself.
I didn’t know what made me stop, frown at the large image that took up half of one page. It was of a groaning harvest table, not unlike an earlier spread which had featured spring greens bursting out of a large wicker basket.
Detailed work, but there was something . . .
Leaning closer, I stared, even as my vision flickered at the corners. I should’ve stopped, rested. But I couldn’t let go, not now.
I dug my cell phone out of the pocket of my pajama pants. I always had it with me, a habit formed after I first realized the photographs I could take with it. Phone cameras these days could do far more than most people realized, and for a photographer who had to pick up day jobs to pay her rent, it was a boon to have a device that allowed me to indulge my passion in stolen moments.