The Promise by Kate Worth

look.
    “I might have left out the part about the actresses,” she teased.
    “That was boorish,” he conceded with an unrepentant grin.
    “And boastful, truth be told,” she smiled.
    “Now I’m mortified. Clean slate?”
    “Squeaky clean.”
    “Excellent. May I have a tour?”
    “A tour?”
    “Yes. I’d like to see where and how Pip was raised. It may help me understand her better. We have a lot of time to make up.”
    Jane hesitated. Keeping a big, bulky counter between her and Lord Wallace seemed like a good idea. Besides, the kitchen was her private domain; customers never ventured behind the counter, even tradesmen left bags of flour and sugar in the pantry by the hall.
    Interpreting her silence as a refusal, Finn said pleasantly, “Would I be breaking a rule? Forget I asked.”
    Jane relented. “It’s all right. Please come back,” she lifted a hinged section of countertop and gestured for him to step through. “It will be a very short tour, however. There isn’t much to see.”
    Finn stepped into a large room with terracotta floors and white walls beneath a pressed tin ceiling painted green and gold. There were four ovens and an equal number of utility tables. Shelves were stacked high with every size and shape of baking pan. Canisters held utensils, some of which Finn recognized, but most he did not.
    “The tools of my trade,” she picked up a cookie cutter in the shape of a star.
    In the far corner a large desk sat next to a bookcase full of cookbooks and ledgers. Beside it was a child-sized table with paper and a box of wax crayons. Pip’s drawings were tacked up on the wall. Finn was seized by intense guilt.
    High transom windows vented heat from the kitchen, but the room was still too warm for Finn’s comfort. “It must be unbearable for you in August.”
    “I’m used to it,” Jane said. “On the bright side, it’s toasty all winter.”
    “You’re an optimist.”
    “Always.”
    “Is this Pip’s corner?” he asked.
    “Yes. When she was a baby Mrs. East allowed me to keep a crib down here. When Pip started walking, we enclosed a small area where she could play safely. Although I miss her, I’m glad her horizons have expanded. Eventually she would have grown very bored,” Jane said, hiding her melancholy under a veil of pragmatism.
    “Do you prepare everything yourself?” he said, surprised that he was really interested and not just asking to be polite. “You sell so many different things, it seems like too much work for one person.”
    “Mrs. East works alongside when the counter is slow. There’s a lot of down time after the morning rush. It picks back up for an hour or two midday, then again when the shops let out and factory workers stop by on the way home,” Jane explained, leading him through the kitchen to the pantry where large tins of dried fruit and nuts were lined up neatly on steel racks next to canvas bags of dry goods.
    He stepped in behind her. The air was fragrant with sweet things and spices, a mélange of scents he thought of as Jane’s perfume. He wondered if she would taste as good as she smelled. He resisted an urge to slip his arm around her waist and pull her against him so he could find out. He wasn’t used to denying urges where women were concerned. The audacious women he preferred always welcomed his advances. He never had to try too hard.
    Would the virtuous Miss Gray welcome him as well?
    Oblivious to the direction his thoughts had taken, Jane opened a canister and offered the contents to Finn. “Macadamia nuts. They’re the newest import from Australia. I’m experimenting with different recipes.”
    Finn took one and popped it in his mouth. “Delicious.”
    His eyes had that rascally look she was already becoming familiar with. He was standing a bit too close, so she tried to skirt around him. Finn casually shifted his weight from one foot to the other, preventing her from sliding by.
    “Close quarters,” he observed, his deep voice