The Marquess of Cake (3 page)

“Lady Redcake,” she heard her mother whisper under her breath.

Yes, this altered her mother’s status greatly. What would happen to the rest of the family? Alys liked things as they were. Comforts, yes, and useful work too. But this knighthood changed everything.

Whether she wanted it or not, her family’s new status would redraw her entire life.

Michael watched from one side of the ballroom as his man of business’s name was called. John Smythe received an actual smile from the reserved queen, who knew one of those closest to the throne would now be buried in a chapel in Scotland if not for his quick actions a few months previous.

He hoped the knighthood wouldn’t change Smythe too much. The man was reliable, dependable, quicksilver smart. He’d been well trained for five years by the now-deceased solicitor who had handled the Hatbrook business affairs previously. But he knew he’d soon lose the man to a duke, or even to the royal family. Or to government. That wouldn’t surprise him at all. Sir John might be a member of parliament in a few years.

Michael would have to find a new man of business and quickly, before his affairs again sank into disarray. Why hadn’t he encouraged Smythe to take on an apprentice?

His hand trembled and, suddenly starving and nauseous, he wished refreshments were being served. But he’d looked, and no sign of the Scotch trifle or any other treat was to be found. Nor were any of the younger set of royals at the investiture, someone he might have leaned on for afternoon tea.

When the ceremony was over, the group of honorees was ushered into the Inner Quadrangle and reunited with their guests.

“Congratulations,” Michael said heartily, as Sir John joined him with a broad smile. He would kill for a scone right now.

Sir John rubbed his hands together. “What an auspicious occasion, your lordship.”

“Indeed,” Michael said, his vision seeming to narrow as his hunger increased. “I must take my leave now, but all congratulations due, my good man.”

Sir John’s gaze shifted to a point beyond Michael’s shoulder. “Oh, but first, your lordship, if I might beg your indulgence. May I introduce you to my fiancée’s father, Mr. Thomas Cooper?”

A heavyset man with long, graying mustaches lumbered toward them, followed by a lady of equal girth and a pale slip of a girl dressed in a white gown with a disturbing number of flounces. She had a fox’s shrewd eyes however, belying her silly clothing and demure appearance. Some men might think this girl pliant, but Michael could see she’d be in command of her home.

“Of course,” Michael said, tightening his hands to fists to control the slight shaking.

After introductions Sir John said, “The Marquess came specifically to support me, sir. I am overjoyed to have such a friend in him.”

Michael had only come because he knew to decline would have cost him an excellent man of business almost instantaneously. Sir John, to be sure, had a hint of the toady about him, which would make him even more desirable to a royal.

Cooper bowed. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, your lordship. I’m in the cotton textile trade, you know.”

Michael nodded. “I’ve never ventured into the cotton side of things. I do have cattle and sheep, of course, in Sussex.” Recent purchases, that had yet to make profit.

“Excellent, your lordship. I believe I’ve drunk Hatbrook wine?”

“Yes, I have a winery too. And Sir John helps me manage a tileworks, my fishing boats, and an inn or two in Eastbourne.” Even a pot of stew at his Seaport Inn sounded scrumptious at the moment.

Mrs. Cooper clasped her hands together and sighed with ecstasy.

“You must regard him highly,” Cooper remarked.

“Indeed. You are lucky to have him joining your family,” Michael said honestly.

Sir John grinned at Miss Cooper. The smile took years off his face. Her expression remained serene. The lady already knew she’d chosen well.

“Smart as a whip,” Cooper said. “And not least because he offered for my daughter as soon as word of his investiture was made known.

He’ll run my business one day, since I have no sons, you know.”

As Cooper was not young and quite corpulent, Michael feared that day would come soon. “I’m sure he will do your legacy proud.”

“Indeed, sir, indeed.”

“Well, my man, you are certainly coming up in the world, taking a wife and all that. You’ll need to gather in a good apprentice too, the sooner the better, I’d say.”

Sir John coughed.

“My wife has a few cousins in London. Meant to look them up, you know. Maybe one of them will do,” Cooper said.

“Yes, sir,” Sir John said.

“On that note,” Michael said, “I shall take my leave. Please interview these young cousins as soon as is prudent, Sir John. A pleasure to meet you all.” Before anyone could speak again, he strode toward the doors. A footman stopped him to hand him a note. The queen probably wanted a word.

Matilda’s squeal broke Alys’s reverie. She’d been watching men shake hands with her father, all the titans of industry and politics who’d been knighted or received other awards alongside him.

Rose squealed too and Alys turned to both of them. “Whatever is going on?”

“Do you think now that Father is a knight we might be courted by someone like that?”

Thankfully, neither Matilda nor Rose pointed their fingers, but Matilda lifted her chin toward a tall, austere gentleman in a perfectly tailored black frock coat, moving toward the doors and a waiting usher who held out a note.

As he walked, an elderly lady with tall plumes in her hair jostled him. When he turned to steady her, his beaver top hat slid off his head and hit the floor.

Alys caught a glint of sun-streaked hair, an off-kilter lift of the upper lip, the broad half circle of manly chin. Hatbrook! Her heart skipped a beat.

His handsome head turned and his glance seemed to catch hers.

Did he recognize her from the tea shop, despite her finery? Had she said his name aloud?

“That’s a marquess,” she hissed at her sisters without looking away. “You two must be mad.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a marquess before,” Rose breathed.

“How handsome he is.”

His gaze moved on. He said something to the elderly lady and she grinned at him like a schoolgirl. Had she looked at him like that at Redcake’s, with those same mooncalf eyes?

“How do you know? Have you met him?” Matilda demanded.

Hatbrook looked their way again, raising an eyebrow. Alys turned away this time, blushing furiously because he’d caught her staring.

She put her hands to her cheeks. “I served him at Redcake’s last month. Another customer knocked me over but he caught me before I could fall.”

“It’s a pity he met you under such lowering circumstances, Alys.

There’s no hope of greeting him as an equal now, even if you have been introduced.”

“Really,” Alys muttered, taking a quick peek in his direction again. “How would someone like me have ever even met a marquess unless I was serving him?”

Hatbrook bowed to the lady as two middle-aged women came to rescue her, then picked up his hat. After he spoke to one of the women, a footman handed him the note that had fallen to the floor and opened a door. Hatbrook glanced in Alys’s direction again briefly, narrowing his eyes as if trying to recall her name, then opened the note. When he had perused the contents, he left without another glance at anyone.

“We’re terribly rich now,” Rose said. “Any number of titled gentlemen might find us appealing. We’re pretty and wealthy.”

“Gentlemen with empty pockets are not appealing,” Alys said. Although she could see how someone as handsome as Hatbrook would entice even if his fortune were squandered. He was quite the most attractive man she’d ever laid eyes on. “They are likely to love money more than you. How would you ever know their true motivation? Besides, you haven’t any money of your own. It’s all Father’s.”

“I’ll know when someone loves me, and I’m not going to be a cakie for pocket money,” Rose said. “I’d ruin my hands and probably my complexion too. Father gives me all the money I need.”

Alys smiled. “I make a real salary and I could rent a little cottage and hire one of you to be my companion if I wanted. I mostly supervise our wedding cakes and do the decorating. I haven’t been a fulltime cakie in over a year.”

“It must be shocking to find yourself twenty-six. You had so many years without prospects that you are quite spinsterish, and I understand why you must work,” Matilda said. “But since Father’s fortunes have improved so nicely, we have opportunities you did not.”

Alys found herself open-mouthed at her sister’s effrontery. Had the five years between them made such different people? Perhaps, but she suspected her work experience had made the larger difference.

That and other things she didn’t care to remember.

“Beauty fades. Just remember love, respect, and companionship are more important than a title.”

“The queen married a prince and he was lovely from all reports,”

Matilda said. “I am sure there are wonderful titled people, and I can fall in love with one of them just as easily as I could fall in love with a baker.”

“The queen married her cousin,” Alys said tartly. “And besides, she could have had anyone. She had the pick of the world’s most eligible men, so why wouldn’t she have found a good one?”

“I want to live in a mansion,” Rose said dreamily. “With all the latest furnishings, and fine paintings and a carriage of my own.”

“We live in a mansion now,” Alys said.

“I don’t care to live in something less now that I know how lovely it is to have a mansion,” Rose said.

“What will the two of you do with yourselves all day once these great marriages have been found for you?”

“Pay calls, throw parties,” Matilda said.

“Babies,” Rose said, “who will have the best of everything.”

Although Alys loved Redcake’s, she felt a pang at the thought of babies. But, she had decided at fifteen that marriage and family were not for her.

“May I introduce my daughters, your lordship,” Alys’s father said, walking over to them with none other than the unfortunately bearded Earl of Lathom.

Alys saw Rose covering her mouth with her hand, clearly hiding a giggle, as her mother curtsied.

She and her sisters followed suit as her father presented them to the Lord Chamberlain. Her brother and cousin bowed.

“My girls will never want for anything,” her father boasted. “Next we need to find them husbands, eh, Lady Redcake?”

He grinned at his wife while the earl nodded stoically.

“I’ve bought an estate down in Sussex. Good place to find a husband who isn’t aware of my elder children’s lack of fine finishing, eh?”

All the heat drained from Alys’s face and she swayed where she stood. Gawain caught her by the shoulder, steadying her, and she forced herself to be strong, because she knew her brother couldn’t hold much of her weight due to his bad leg.

The earl raised a bushy eyebrow.

“Yes, it’s unfortunately true that my eldest children started working in my factory up north at the age of eight. You won’t find that kind of past in the aristocracy, but it made Gawain and Alys strong.

Good sturdy blood, they have, and with Alys’s dowry, we ought to be able to find her someone.”

Alys noticed her father didn’t mention her oldest brother, Arthur, who hadn’t been so sturdy, and had died. She held herself still as the earl blandly named off a couple of widowers with minor titles and large debts. She had learned a lot from reading the assortment of papers customers left behind in the tea shop each day. Matilda and Rose’s eyes grew wide with the notion that they might be fit wives for these titled men, but it just made Alys feel ill. Was she not her father’s able assistant? Did she have no value other than to be a potential wife who would raise her father’s status?

“As long as she finds a good husband, that is what matters,” Redcake said. “Otherwise I’ve failed her.”

Alys opened her mouth to speak, but her mother clamped her hand to Alys’s free arm. “Look, there is Lady, er, Calves-foot. Come Alys, we must thank her for her kindness.”

Gawain released her other arm and Alys allowed herself to be towed away while giving her father the evil eye. It was better to glare than cry. She was a woman of dignity and wouldn’t lower herself so.

“Do not even think to show disrespect for your father in front of

others,” her mother whispered when they had come to a stop out of the eyesight of the earl.

“What about me?” Alys said. “How can Father think he’s failed me unless I marry? I don’t want to marry. I’m happy as I am.”

“A woman’s role is to marry and have children,” her mother said.

“It is too large a sacrifice,” Alys argued. “I don’t wish to give up my position.”

“What position?”

“Mother!” She was outraged. Did her mother think she played at Redcake’s all day? “I’ve worked very hard. Our wedding business would be nothing without me.”

“It is kind of him to humor you,” her mother said with a wave of her hand. “It’s obvious you are overheated. I’ll call someone to bring our carriage so you can leave.”

Alys turned, but her mother stopped her with a touch. “Do not move an inch until I return for you, young miss.”

She wanted to scream, but her respect for her mother stilled both her voice and her feet. How humiliating to know how competent one was, yet still be a child to one’s parents. Or at least someone of no more value than Matilda, or heaven forbid, Rose. She had bigger dreams than they did, but her parents couldn’t see that. They only saw failure.

Michael strode through the gates at Redcake’s the next day, intent upon finally procuring a large portion of Scotch trifle. Surely the Palace would have let some slip from its iron grasp, since the queen should have returned to Windsor by now. He hadn’t seen any on the tea tray in the private rooms of the palace the day before. The queen had been kind enough to invite him by note after the investiture. If Scotch trifle was unavailable today, he’d order a bowl to be delivered to Hatbrook House in Belgravia and eat the entire thing himself since his mother didn’t like sweets with liquor in them.