His gut hungered but not for food. He wanted to stand and look at eternity from the tower. Did Miss Armijo enjoy the view? She couldn't feel the cold breeze anymore, not since he'd put a lock on the window. It felt wrong to deprive her, but so did awaking and finding her on that sill again.
Maybe something in his study could entertain him. Easing on his slippers, he started out of his room. In the dark, he managed his way, moving down the dark hall as if he were on a mission to retrieve documents. His fingertips touched dips and holes along what was once a wall dressed in beige colored paint and heavy white trim. Even though he couldn't see the destruction, only touching the holes through a leather glove, what he'd done hit him in the gut. As the leprosy progressed, he'd lose the ability to sense anything with his fingers and that frightened him more than the lesions.
Focusing his eyes, he picked up his pace and made it down the treads. As he spun toward the study, a glint of light caught his gaze. It came from the kitchen, a place that should be vacant given that Phipps and Armijo had retired already. Someone was in his house.
Fury fired inside and scorched up his innards. The Almeida Killer had come to him, invading his hiding place. If the killer expected an invalid to greet him, the fool had guessed wrong, dead wrong.
He balled his good fist and moved toward the light. Creeping to the kitchen proved daunting as the floorboards creaked beneath his shifting weight. He stopped and stole a quick breath. Who needed the element of surprise when you had power, unbelievable strength on your side? That hadn't been taken from Hugh, not yet.
He opened the door, pushed inside but found his face greeted by cold hard Wedgwood.
The dish smashed against his cheek. Shards dropped everywhere, but nothing could deter his momentum. He spun and caught a wrist, a tiny wrist.
It wasn't the Almeida Killer. Well, most likely not that killer, but a frightened chef.
Her small tanned faced had paled. She supported the fragments of the former dish in her palms.
He released her but stayed close, towering over the woman. "Miss Armijo?"
"I thought you were a robber. Vandals hold up in broken places like this."
He took a piece of porcelain from his robe's lapel. "Well, I guess I should be pleased that you are trying to defend the place."
She moved from him, dropped to her knees, and scooped up the broken bits in a sheet that she'd spun about her waist like an apron. "Well, this is done for. I suppose effort doesn't make up for results."
The bits were shiny blue against the tar black floor.
He knelt too to help, but she closed her hand about his. "No. The pieces are too sharp. I don't want you to get another cut. I hurt you enough with the Wedgwood."
It startled him that she'd tell him no and that she'd touch him without fear. Her voice sounded stern as if he were a naughty lad. He caught her unsmiling gaze and heeded, but he didn't move and watched her collect the pieces. "You don't frighten easily."
"I frighten," she said, but kept her head down toward the scatter of the broken platter. "But, I haven't the luxury of fear. No one's coming to save me. I've learned to save myself."
Her words sliced him to his core. He knew that sentiment. Without Henry, he had to learn to save himself too. But as a man, it had to be different than what the chef meant. "You're bold enough to look me in the eye now. You didn't do too much of that during the rest of dinner."
"Thought we already discussed you having an eyeful and you offering me one."
Chuckling, Hugh pulled to his feet and glanced about the kitchen. It had transformed again from a sea of cleanliness to a bakeshop. A good dusting of flour snowed the dark table along with mounds of dough and cut out flat disks. "Biscuits, Miss Armijo?"
She'd finished cleaning and began lowering the shards into a wastebasket. She didn't answer or wasn't paying attention to him as she moved to her wash water. After dunking her hands in the soapy bucket, she dried them then moved to the other side of the table.
"I asked if you are making biscuits?"
Her graceful fingers were pulling and pushing on the dough. "You can't live on meat pies alone."
"So many?"
"Your Phipps has a large appetite. You'd do better with more food, too."
"Very generous of you. You are very generous with food, not much with conversation. Were you this reticent at the abbey?"
Her hands stopped moving. She lifted her chin, maybe for the first time sense breaking the platter against his head. "I couldn't sleep. So, there will be plenty of biscuits."
Her eyes were large, swirls of honey and chestnuts and sadness. She lowered her chin and began to work again.
He was used to people telling him everything, even things he didn't want to hear — his stepmother's expectations, Betsy's inexplicable grief, or even Phipps saying none of these losses were Hugh's fault. The absence of complaints disoriented him. "I know I am large and some say given to tempers. Is that what keeps you from looking at me?"
Still refusing to look up, she punched at the dough.
"I asked a question, Miss Armijo."
She punched the dough very quickly, and it seemed to whimper. "Why does it matter? I'm a servant and a prisoner. Your only concern should be that the food is good."
Why did it matter? Male pride, perhaps. Her station hardly allowed for conversation. How many times had he been to Abbey Estate eating her food, not knowing she existed? He leaned over to take a hit to the dough but she blocked him. "If you help, you wash, then take the napkin and brush each biscuit with the beaten egg. It will help it brown, like me."
He did as she instructed and scrubbed the leather clean then returned. "That's what it takes to get a nice golden color? I like wonderfully healthy-colored biscuits."
The frown pressing her full lips rose to a line. Not quite a smile but far better than before. "You might want to use light airy, dancing gloves if you feel you must cover your hands. They can be laundered more frequently."
He wanted to say he did before he stopped caring. Instead, he began liberally wiping the biscuit tops with the bit of cloth she had used. "So why can't you sleep?"
The frown returned. "It only matters if you are going to help. Otherwise, it's just another sad tale. You don't need to hear it, if you can't sleep either."
"Isadel Armijo, who are you? I believe you are more than the angry pastry chef who stole a horse and wants to blow Moldona to bits. Is there no middle ground? If I don't know your story, how am I to decide if the man is guilty?"
She stopped attacking the dough and looked at him for a minute. He must look a sight with his burgundy robe dusted in flour.
"I can't help you with that." She turned to the stove and stirred a boiling pot. The heady scent of sugary apple and lemon filled the air. She stirred and hummed. The spoon moved in time with the notes.
At first, he thought she was being childish, ignoring him, but the count was too specific to the rhythm. Her music, it resonated in his soul. "What is that tune?"
She looked at him with a puzzled expression frowning her lips. "Something my mother used to sing. It helps with the whipping. I don't want the jam to overcook. You'll need something to go with the biscuits."
"Your mother was Negro?" It was an assumption on his part, but he wanted her to talk more, to trust him with a bit more of herself. It was a spy's job to build rapport. "Based on the name Armijo, I concluded your father to be Spanish."
"My father, he spent time abroad in the colony of Jamaica, helping with sugar plantations. One of the masters, who'd enslaved my mother, became ill with a disease. My mother's people came from Nigeria. The Kalaw tree is there. The oil of the nuts is cleansing. She told my father, and he got some of those seeds and healed the plantation owner right up."
"So how did you come into being?"
Her gaze seemed far away for a moment.
"The owner gave my mother to him as a present. They sailed back to Spain and he married her. Papa always said he loved a woman who could cook an
d one with a brain for herbs. He didn't realize his prescription was a recipe. Or did he?"
With a shake of her head, her frown returned, and she stirred the pot again.
"Did Moldona kill her too?"
"No. A fever. The fever did her in a couple of years ago. She went quickly. I think that is preferred."
Her tone flattened and Hugh almost wished he hadn't asked and that she still hummed her tune. But it wasn't his way to leave things alone. He started wiping the egg mix again but there wasn't enough. "What's the recipe for this wash? Tell me, I'll make more."
"Three tablespoons of cow's milk for each egg yolk. Make three portions, if you can be precise or wait for me to do it."
"Precision is my forte." He took warm eggs from a basket, cracked them, and glopped the yolks and the yolks alone in a bowl. With the same precision he measured black powder, he measured three level tablespoons for each of the three eggs.
When he looked up, she nodded with something that seemed like approval lighting her eyes. Maybe she liked his precision. It was something he was good at. Her short smile made his chest feel full. Feeling as if he'd found his footing with her, he dared to break it and asked, "Tell me what Moldona did to your father?"
The spoon in her hand clanged the side of the pot. "The fiend killed my father and my sister, everyone I had left in this world."
"What did he do specifically?"
She took a long breath. "Slit their throats with his sword, but not before humbling my sister and passing her to his men."
"Why weren't you harmed?"
"I hid in the root cellar, like Papa said. But Agueda, she wouldn't. She couldn't stand being in tight places. She was such a free spirit, then she was noticed by the soldiers." Armijo dropped the spoon and it rattled like a broken top. "Why didn't she listen? Why did she have to be noticed? They make assumptions about girls like us as if we're formed of an illicit union not of a proper marriage. She was no harlot, no man's mistress. Just carefree, flirtatious."
Hugh came near, picked up the spoon. He forced it into her fingers and clasped his good hand about hers. "What was that tune you hummed? We've worked hard on these biscuits. I think I like your idea of a tasty jam to go with them."
She didn't withdraw, but she didn't sing either. "Do you know what it sounds like to hear the begging, the hurting, then nothing? I should've come out of the dark. Maybe I could've done something. I am so guilty."
"Miss Armijo, if you had you would've been killed. Your papa wouldn't have wanted that."
She pushed away and stood out of his reach. "How do you know what he wanted? You didn't even believe he existed."
"You come to me wanting to kill one of the men I grew up with, one who served with me in combat. He married my dearest friend."
Back at the table, she cut circles out of the remaining lump of dough. "I heard his name. I heard their clear banter, their glee at hurting Agueda. Moldona can be all those things you said, Bannerman, friend, husband, and Agueda's and Papa's murderer."
While he never thought much of Moldona, he never thought him to be so brutal, but he knew in his gut, that Miss Armijo did not lie. She truly believed him guilty. He wrenched at his neck. "You are working too hard. You've made enough biscuits for an army. You should go to bed."
With a shake of her head she pulled the jam pot off the flame, humming, half ignoring him as she walked to the table. Soon, she was elbow deep in dough and formed the last biscuits.
"Miss Armijo, you should retire. I insist. Phipps will think I am too hard on you."
"I'll tell him you are not too cruel. I don't sleep much. It's not your problem. Once you allow me to return to the Abbey, I will no longer be your concern."
"It does matters."
"Why?"
A good spy would've seen that question coming. Hugh wasn't a good spy any more. He twisted the belt in his robe. "You have a right to your anger and your want of revenge, but black powder doesn't discriminate. It will kill the innocent along with the guilty. The master, his servants, and his enslaved—all die the same death when the powder explodes. You must know that and respect it."
Those pretty eyes bloomed. "You will teach me how to control it? The seeds have not come. I haven't proven I can cure you."
"I'm going to teach you to respect it, for the rest we will see. Without respect, there is no moving forward. I will trust that you have told me the truth and you will have to trust that I understand the injury to your family. I am simply not convinced that your fiend is Moldona."
"Trust is very hard. Other than Phipps and Lord Hartland, do you trust?"
With slow steps, he wandered back to the other side of the table. "I let you put onions on me." He tapped the floured dusted surface. "Big men don't just let anyone do that. I'm trying to trust you more. What about you?"
"Well as you said, I guess we'll have to see, but thank you for the lock on my window. I loathed the breeze."
He couldn't help but chuckle. "You are witty, but I know how things were in that tower. You might've jumped. Then, I didn't want you to. Now, I know I don't want you to die."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"No. One is a courtesy. The other is strong feeling for what is right."
She turned her face up to him. Her eyes weren't distant. They seemed to center on him, and he wished he wasn't on the other side of the table. He cleared his throat of the sugary lemony scent that could have easily been a perfume for Armijo, sweet and tart. "I need something from you, chef."
Her fingers flew to the revers of her jacket. "What? What do you want?"
"Saying Armijo, calling you like I would a man doesn't quite work."
"It's my name, a very proud name, my father's name."
"I'd like to call you Isadel, when it's just the two of us."
"This is your house. I am your prisoner. Call me what you like, Bannerman."
"I want your agreement, and when you say my name in return, I want it with your full accent, none of this pretending to sound English."
For a moment, she smiled and released the fabric she'd clutched. "You missed that biscuit. You must coat it well, Bann-er-man. Or it won't set up right."
It was music as he imagined it would be, very much like her humming. And he wanted her to say his name again.
For the next couple of minutes, Isadel kneaded and cut out more biscuits. Maybe it was sleep deprivation, but nothing seemed more interesting than watching her work the dough. Her fingers moved to her special rhythm. The tune would haunt him until he knew it.
She piled the latest biscuits into a stone container and covered it. With a shove, she pushed it into the hearth then pivoted and pulled a jar from a pot of water. "Ouch. This is still a little warm. I made you some cream, a little balm of lavender. Use this on your dry skin. This is not the seeds, but it will make you feel better."
The giddy hope made him reach over the table like a child in want of a present. He lowered his palms. It had to be the biscuits and the sweet fragrant food making him giddy.
Setting the jar on the table's edge, she slid it to him. "I created this to keep my skin from drying out. My work in the kitchen can be very taxing as much as I wash my hands."
It surely was a present. "Thank you, Isadel."
Her lashes, long dark wisps fluttered as she looked down. "So, what is your tale? Why have you put yourself in exile?"
Honesty could be a terrible thing, for one confession typically led to another. Weighing the should he's versus the should nots, he couldn't decide and defaulted to the truth. "Well, that temper I possess made it dangerous for others to be around me. My condition ensures that I am a danger or a disappointment to those I hold dear. I'd wish this on no one. Leprosy is lethal."
"What you have is not lethal. It can be treated. You can be saved."
"Says you, Physician Isadel. I've tried arsenic paste, corn pomades, and none have helped."
"None of those foolish things. Papa would tell you so." She sniffed and pivoted to her bisc
uits and pulled them from the hearth. They were deeply brown, not quite walnut. "You distracted me. This next batch will have to be perfect."
"I'm distracting? I have your full attention?"
Rolling her eyes, she put the next stack on the stone covered dish into the hearth. Then poked a few of the darkest ones. "I'll need to rotate the Dutch oven midway."
Wiping her hands on her makeshift apron, she gazed up at him. "Exile does not explain this. The ruined house, the thick ruddy beard. At the Abbey, you were neat as a pin, handsome and well groomed."
"Wait. You thought I was handsome?"
She lowered her head and seemed to smack the last bit of dough harder. "Oh, you know what I mean. Go to bed before you get hit again."
He finished mopping the last bit of rounds with egg mixture. "Not being able to change things. It can put you on a path of isolation. I think you know that road. If I could end it, stop the lesions, be whole again, then maybe I'd want things to be different."
With her small thin fingers, she pulled the tray to her side of the massive walnut table. "We'll give you a fresh bandage in the morning." She poked at the biscuits he'd slathered. "Good job."
"Week's end, you'll have your first lesson on black powder."
She lifted her face to him. The sight he beheld, a full broad smile, not half, a whole one, big and toothy, warmed him through. Then, she seemed to wince and it stole his joy. "But the seeds won't be here yet."
"They will in due time." He reached over to the almost burnt biscuits and scooped one and pressed it to his lips. "Hmm. It's a little tough on the outside, but it's also textured and buttery." He licked at the crumbs from his fingertips, "Yet, so tender and sweet on the inside. I wonder if the baker is like her art."
Her bronzed cheeks became darker. A blush? He hadn't made a girl do that in a while. "You're sleep deprived to think ruined biscuits fine. And no one has ever called me sweet."
No Hiding For The Guilty (The Heart of a Hero Book 5) Page 9