Mrs. Brodie’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies

by Galen, Shana

  Mrs. Brodie jotted notes on a slip of foolscap that she slid across the desk to her. Certain wines to be served before dinner, along with the first of the exhibitions. This would require an adjustment to the wines served during dinner, which would in turn require a different order of dishes in the courses. Marianne nodded, understanding, already imagining the switch and slide of roasts and sides in her plan for the first course.

  This office was another place she belonged, and her employer’s trust in her was proof. And because of that, she’d do anything in her power—and maybe a little beyond—to make this dinner a success.

  She’d been hired eight years before not because she was right for the post, but because she was desperate and admitted it. Upon leaving Lincolnshire, she had tried to find work elsewhere in London, only to realize she had no useful skills. She had stopped at Mrs. Brodie’s Academy because of the gilded plate on the front of the building denoting the name of the place. Run by a woman, she’d thought. More likely to be safe; less likely to have leering eyes and pinching hands.

  Carrying a valise and dressed in her last clean gown, her last pair of clean gloves, and her best hat, she’d rung the front bell, bold as anything. “I have an appointment with the headmistress.”

  The butler looked at her doubtfully. “Your name?”

  Her mind reeled. Should she make something up? She could think of no falsity that would make her more likely to gain an appointment. Mrs. Brodie would never believe she was Princess Charlotte.

  “Miss Redfern,” she said crisply and honestly. And when she was ushered into the headmistress’s office, to her surprise, delight, and simultaneous terror, the honesty continued.

  Behind the big desk sat the small woman, a little less gray then, but no less forceful or beautiful. With a dark and steady stare, Mrs. Brodie asked, “Why have you said you have an appointment with me?”

  “I need a job,” Marianne blurted. “And I hoped… I would rather not be pinched and violated. I thought perhaps with a woman in charge…”

  “Very reasonable,” the older woman said in a crisp voice tinged with the accent of Wales. She regarded Marianne for a long moment, up and down. Marianne made herself as still as a statue, imagining herself at a dance waiting for someone to invite her to the floor. At last, the headmistress gave a little nod. “What skills have you?”

  “The usual useless ones. Needlework and watercolor. But I will do any honest thing,” she added quickly.

  “Why limit yourself?” Marianne must have gaped, for the headmistress lifted a hand and said, “Very well, we will try you in the kitchen. If you sew and paint, you must be good with your hands, and Cook will welcome a new assistant. If you are eager to learn, you will do well. And if you are not…” Mrs. Brodie shrugged. “If you only want a safe place to live and honest work to do, the academy will take you on as a maid or find a similar post for you.”

  Now that the different options were dangled before her, Marianne found that any honest thing had lost its appeal. Being a housemaid when one could be a cook’s assistant? The latter was clearly more exciting. It was hardly the dream she’d once had for her life, but those dreams had relied upon others. Those dreams were done and gone.

  “I would like to assist the cook,” Marianne told Mrs. Brodie. “I will do my best to learn from her.”

  “I believe you will.” Mrs. Brodie named a wage that sounded a pittance compared to her former pin money. But it was generous compared to the maid’s wages she’d been offered at other places—and with no pinching or harassment. “If you accept, you can have your things sent and begin tomorrow.”

  “I have no other things,” said Marianne.

  Mrs. Brodie lifted her brows. “Then we’d best get you a uniform. And you can start work at once. My girls and staff eat well here. One cannot learn or do one’s best work if one is hungry.”

  A footman guided her through the academy, giving her a bit of a tour on their way to the kitchens. Marianne regarded the students closely as she got the opportunity, wondering what an exceptional young lady looked like. To her eye, they looked like every other girl and young woman of her acquaintance. Some were quite pretty, some plain. Some had dark skin, some light. Some looked at the world as if it were a celebration. Some passed through the corridors in dreamy silence.

  She wished she knew what to say to them. How to warn them against hoping for too much. But the words caught in her throat; it wasn’t her place to say anything to these girls, whose fees ran the school and paid her own salary.

  Her place was not what it had once been.

  But after eight years at the academy, she had made the place her own, and she was proud to have done so.

  “And how is the new kitchenmaid working out?” Mrs. Brodie asked now, her voice tinged with humor. “Mr. Grahame, is that right?”

  Mrs. Brodie always had names right. “We’ll still need a new kitchenmaid in the long term,” Marianne answered. “But Mr. Grahame’s help means I won’t have to hire someone while we’re preparing for the dinner.”

  “Very good. I’ll leave the hiring up to Mrs. Hobbes,” said Mrs. Brodie of the housekeeper, “and will instruct her to get your approval on all kitchen staff. And I will trust that Mr. Grahame will know his place.”

  The words reflected Marianne’s own thoughts, making her smile. “I’ll see to it that he does.” For he was at her side each day, at last, and that night, she would have him in her bed again.

  Perhaps she could even persuade him to stay.

  Chapter Six

  THREE DAYS UNTIL THE Donor Dinner, and if Jack hadn’t come to London to help, Marianne knew she’d be tearing her hair out.

  Not that he’d come to London specifically to help her. But still, it had all worked out for the best. He was a part of her life again and more essential every day.

  April had crashed into May with a wave of heat, making meal preparations an ordeal of perspiration and hurry. The stolen hours of rest were slow and cool and sweet in comparison.

  Jack was with Marianne now, sitting at the long worktable in the slow hours of early afternoon when luncheon was complete and the final preparations for dinner still ahead. It was the last moment of leisure they’d take, probably, until the grand dinner was past.

  He’d asked about her favorite things to cook, and she pleased herself by giving him a thorough answer. Settling them each with a great mug of tea laced with honey—she’d made use of that honeycomb after all—she paged through her book of handwritten recipes and notes to show him some of her favorites.

  “This was the first dinner I ever prepared as cook, head of the kitchen, after Mrs. Patchett retired.” She pushed back her cap to scratch at her hairline, remembering the heat and panic of that day. “Underdone lamb and a jumble of over-roasted vegetables. You see how many notes I made about the ovens? Each has a personality of its own. If I ever move on to a new kitchen, I’ll have to learn the ovens all over again.”

  Jack sipped from his mug, brows arching quizzically. “Overdone and underdone, and that was one of your favorite things to cook?”

  “Hardly a triumph, you mean?” She smiled. “At the time, it was horrid, but in hindsight, I’m quite proud of it. The young ladies probably didn’t enjoy eating it, but it fed them all the same. By making that meal, I realized I could do the job here of cook, even if I wasn’t doing it as well as I wanted to.”

  Jack drew the book toward him and looked over the notes. “There’s no question you can do the job now. I’ve never eaten so well as I have this past week and a half.”

  “Flatterer.”

  He grinned. “Sometimes I am, but not at the moment.” He drank more tea, turned a page. “Chocolate cream tarts? Big masculine creature that I am, I shall swoon at the sight of this recipe. Why do you not make those every day?”

  A surprise for Mrs. Brodie’s birthday two years before. Those had been fun to make—and to sample. “Any pleasure can get wearisome, even chocolate cream. But it’s been too long since I m
ade them. Maybe I can include a tower of them in the dessert course at the Donor Dinner.” Her fingers flexed for a pencil and her foolscap sheets of planned-out courses.

  A warm hand overlaid her own. “No. Please. I didn’t mean for you to add more work to your endless list. I was merely envying those past people who were able to taste your tarts.”

  “That sounds like a smutty joke.”

  “Good. It was meant to.” He leaned closer, speaking into her ear. “And grateful I am that I’ve been able to taste your—”

  “Stop,” she hissed, looking around the kitchen. Sally was stocking supplies, moving about from larder to pantry to worktable, and might overhear anything, anytime.

  He arranged his expression into one of great sobriety. “Stopping now. Perfectly proper. Didn’t mean anything smutty.”

  Marianne drank from her own mug of tea to cover a smile.

  “Changing the subject to one of which you might approve.” Jack nodded toward the cook’s assistant, just entering the kitchen from the meat safe. “I see Sally carries a book of her own in her apron pocket. Hullo, Sally.”

  The younger woman was carrying in the head of a hog on a great platter. As she set it at the end of the table, she replied, “Mrs. Redfern told me what a good practice it was to have a pocket book and pencil at all times. A cook might need to write any sort of note about a recipe or an ingredient, and it saves time never having to hunt up paper and pen.”

  “Exactly right.” Marianne beamed at her. Even the hog’s head seemed to smile from its dish, as if pleased that it had finished brining.

  “Mrs. Redfern, I’ll get the stockpot ready for the head,” replied Sally. This sentence likely made little sense to Jack, but Marianne understood it to mean that her assistant would collect the needed vegetables and seasonings and bring them to a boil.

  “Remember to add trotters, or the brawn won’t thicken,” Marianne instructed. “A half dozen should do. And remove and quarter the ears before you put the head in.”

  Sally bobbed her head, understanding, and retrieved a shining pot from its place. She passed into the scullery to fill it with water.

  “You’re a fine teacher,” Jack said. “Did you ever think of offering lessons in the evening, like Miss Carpenter does?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.” Marianne glanced at the hog’s head. It still appeared pleased. “I do like teaching, but I’ve never thought of working with someone outside of my own kitchen.”

  “Surely cookery is as useful a skill as what you’ve learned from Miss Carpenter.” He rubbed at his shoulder with a persecuted expression.

  “Cooking’s different.” She wrinkled her nose. “It doesn’t have the excitement of throwing an assailant to the ground.”

  Jack raised his eyes to the plaster ceiling. “There is a hog’s head staring at me from the end of the table, and she says cooking isn’t exciting.”

  She laughed. “That’s for making brawn, and it’s only here for another minute. Though if you don’t know the reason, I suppose it does lend the kitchen an air of mystery.”

  “Or grisliness.”

  “Or that,” she granted. “Maybe Miss Carpenter’s fighting is the same as teaching lessons myself. If I’d never tried it, I’d think I could never do it.”

  “Which means you’re all prepared to become a wonderful teacher as soon as you try it out.”

  “But if I were to teach…” She looked at the hog’s head. The book of handwritten notes. Neither offered her insight. “I’d have less time for cooking.” Or being with you.

  She wasn’t sorry when Sally swooped by, picked up the head, and strode back to the stockpot with it.

  “When we gain something,” Jack said, more serious than he’d seemed yet today, “something else is lost. I believe this completely.”

  Marianne considered. “I suppose that’s true. As I gained cooking knowledge, I lost my satisfaction with the way I grew up. It’s no longer enough for me to embroider and watercolor and smile. Those skills did me no good, and all the while I was building them, I didn’t know how helpless I was becoming.”

  “That is not such a bad thing to lose, then.”

  “It’s not.” She added more quietly, “I’ve lost more too. I’ve lost my faith that the way things have been is the way they have to be.”

  He nodded at her prized book. “You are talking about more than the method of spicing a joint of meat, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am.”

  Though it wasn’t spices that had got her thinking of what we’ve always done versus what could be. It was the pages of sauces.

  Ever since she had begun learning cookery, Marianne had loved sauces. They were like clothing for food, turning the plain into the special. The bland into the savory.

  Mrs. Patchett had been fond of traditional English fare, and certainly Marianne preferred good fresh ingredients that didn’t need to be hidden by vinegar and salt. But a sauce! Oh! It turned a good saddle of mutton into a roast that popped with the flavors of heavy meat, floral herbs, pungent garlic. It awoke the nose as well as the mouth. It not only fed people, it made them smile.

  She’d spent some of her wages on books of recipes from France, then translated them with her schoolroom French and the help of Mademoiselle Gagne, the French instructor. Many of those notes had made their way into the book, now open and vulnerable before Jack. She’d made that book without him, when she’d never expected to see him again. When she had accepted that.

  She’d been all right on her own because she’d had to be. Now, though she’d gained Jack, she’d lost that feeling of solid independence.

  “I’d best get back to work,” she said. “Dinner will need its sauces.” She drained her tea, then pushed back her chair. As she stood, she tucked her book back into her apron pocket.

  Jack stood too, catching her hand before she could step away. “You’re talking about more than food, you said. Are you talking about us? Is the way we are now the way we always have to be?”

  “Kitchenmaid and cook?” she joked, though she knew that was not what he meant. On her hands, tough with old nicks and burns and scars, his fingers were warm and strong.

  “That’s not only up to me,” she dodged, remembering their first night together in her tiny chamber. So much about them had never been up to only them.

  “It’s not,” he agreed. Bending his head toward hers, he spoke low into her ear. “But I’ve already decided what I want. It’s you, Marianne, and I would lo—”

  “Mrs. Redfern,” piped up Evans, the errand boy, as he darted into the room. “The new kitchenmaids are here. Where do you want them?”

  Marianne shook her hand free of Jack’s grasp, tipped her ear away from his voice. She had hardly taken in what he’d said, and now Evans wasn’t making any sense. “New kitchenmaids? I didn’t—”

  “Show them in,” Jack interrupted. When she looked at him quizzically, he didn’t return her gaze.

  Four kitchenmaids, straight from an agency, filed into the room and stood in a line along the end of the table. They were all wide-eyed, a stair-step of tidy young women not the slightest bit like Jack Grahame.

  And Marianne didn’t know her own kitchen anymore. With the arrival of the kitchenmaids, something had indeed been lost. The space, the sense of familiarity. The notion that she was in charge of decisions made here.

  She turned to Jack, and she didn’t quite know him either. He’d lost his humor and become square-shouldered and stern, hands folded behind his back.

  “You seem to know what’s happening here,” she said. “Why is that? And why is it that I don’t?”

  He still didn’t look at her. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to speak.

  So Marianne spoke again, annoyance warring with puzzlement. “You’ve already decided what you want, you said. What have you decided, Mr. Grahame?”

  IT WAS BAD TIMING, the kitchenmaids arriving just as Jack was attempting to tell Marianne how he felt—preparatory, he hoped, to co
nvincing her his next choice was the right one. But maybe there was no timing that would have been good enough for that.

  “Miss White,” Jack raised his voice, recalling Sally from the stove where she’d just stirred the contents of the stockpot. “Take charge for a few minutes, please.”

  “Mrs. Redfern,” he addressed Marianne, then tugged her away from the new arrivals and into her chamber, lit the lamp, shut the door. Instead of cozy, the room felt cramped and close. The scent of laundry soap and lamp oil was strong.

  “Let me explain,” he began.

  “Please do,” she said. “Because you just ordered me about in my own kitchen, and in front of four new maids that I certainly did not hire.”

  Her voice was firm and dignified, tinged with hurt, and he felt like a villain.

  Which was ridiculous, because she ought to see him as a hero. “I hired them myself from a reputable agency, because you need more hands for the Donor Dinner.” He really had to say it all. “Because I can’t stay as kitchenmaid any longer. My mother wrote me that she’s ill. I’ve already got my carriage ready. I only waited to leave until the maids arrived from the agency.”

  And postponed telling her of his departure in favor of tea and fantasies of chocolate tarts. Because he knew she wouldn’t like it that he was leaving; he didn’t like it either.

  “So you’ve known all day that you are leaving.” She folded her arms—not in defiance, but as if she were holding herself together.

  “My mother is ill,” he said again. “That is the more important part of what I just said.”

  Her green eyes caught his. “Gravely ill?”

  “I don’t know. If she were, she wouldn’t tell me. I just don’t know.” How powerless he felt, his loved ones scattered like sand. He wished he could gather them all up and keep them close to his heart. Be well, stay by me.