Gingerbread Bride

Chapter Four: Part 2

Mary smiled with satisfaction as she placed the last of the little gingerbread ladies into the box. In the four weeks she had been at Aunt Dorothy's, she had learned a number of recipes, and helped with all kinds of baking, but the gingerbread biscuits, which she had learned from the cook on the Olympus, became her specialty.

Making them took her back to the galley where Cook ruled with a rod of iron over various helpers, but always had time for a lonely little girl. She could still hear his deep, gravelly voice telling the story of the runaway gingerbread horse, or it might be a dog, or whatever cutter shape he had used at the time. She would be hovering over the tray of hot biscuits, waiting for them to cool enough to ice and eat.

"And he ran, and he ran," Cook would say, "with all the village behind him: the old lady, the fat squire, the pretty milkmaid, and the hungry sailor. But none of them could catch the gingerbread horse."

The story would continue, with the gingerbread horse escaping one would-be eater after another, and mocking them all, until Cook had iced the first biscuit. Mary would wait, patient and giggling, for the gingerbread horse to encounter the river, and the fox.

First, he'd put the horse over her back. Then, as the river water rose, on her head. And finally, she would tip her head back, and he would perch the biscuit on her nose, and say the words she had been waiting for: "And bite, crunch, swallow, that was the end of the gingerbread horse."

Aunt Dorothy had round and star cutters, and cutters in the shape of various animals. When the alderman's daughter asked for gingerbread ladies and gentlemen for her wedding breakfast, Mary had been delighted with the notion, and the cutters the tinker made to her pencil drawings worked very well.

The icing gave them clothes and features; a whole box of little gingerbread grooms, and a box of little gingerbread brides. The alderman's daughter would be very pleased with this trial run, Mary thought.

But as she folded tissue over the biscuits to keep them safe, she sighed. She should love it here with her aunts and her cousin. She enjoyed making delicious things to eat. Though Aunt Dorothy and Aunt Marjery thought it improper for her to help at the market, she did join them for meetings with people who were commissioning food for their entertainments, and they were encouraging her to take more and more of a lead in those meetings. For the first time since her father died, she felt she was doing something useful.

And she had company. Although she was currently alone in the small workroom off the kitchen, she could hear the kitchen staff busily working a few feet away. She and her aunts spent much of their time together, though her cousin Enid was often out visiting friends. Aunt Dorothy was as sweet as the confections she made, delighted to have Mary with her, and eager to teach her all about what was clearly a business, though Aunt Dorothy insisted it was merely a hobby.

Aunt Marjery was more reserved, but it was only natural for her to be more interested in her own daughter than a niece who was a stranger, except for a lifetime of letters. Mary got on well with the maids, and it was nice to spend time with women near her own age, though their consciousness of the class difference, and Mary's relationship with their employer, stood in the way of close friendship.

But four things conspired to spoil her enjoyment. First, she missed the sea. She had lived her entire life within the sight, smell, and sound of it, until she first came to London, and as each day passed, she yearned for it more and more. The sea was home, and this land-locked valley, however pretty, was not.

Second, no matter how sharply she spoke to herself, she could not stop thinking about Rick Redepenning. She couldn't possibly miss a man she had spent less than a day with in the past five years. She was merely worried about his injury, that was all, that he might not be taking care, might not be healing. No matter what excuses she made, she was well aware she was in danger of once again falling in love with Rick the Rogue—if, in fact, she'd ever fallen out of love.

Third, Cousin Enid did not want her here. At first, Mary had been sure she was just being over-sensitive, but Enid took every opportunity to find fault and to sow discord between Mary and Enid's mother. And all was done with a smile, with poisonous remarks in a voice that dripped treacle, until Mary doubted she'd heard correctly.

Mary tried to like Enid. They were cousins, after all. But she was impossible to like. She made it clear she did not want to live in this country town, and she resented the enterprise absorbing Aunt Dorothy and distracting Enid's mother, another dumpling of a woman, but a faded shadow of her sister.

Enid would be leaving, she told her mother bluntly, as soon as she had control of her inheritance. That happy day was still some six years in the future, when she turned twenty-five, unless she found a man of suitable rank and wealth to be worthy of her hand in the country backwater in which her mother insisted they remain. Meanwhile, she refused to have anything to do with the baking for fear the taint of 'trade' might follow her into a life better suited to her consequence as daughter of an esquire.

As Mary carefully tied the two boxes of gingerbread ready for delivery, the fourth cause of her discomfort came in.

"Well, hello, Miss Pritchard. All alone, are we? How pretty you look this morning."

The alderman, Mr. Owens, was a regular and popular visitor to the house, so much so, he wandered freely into the kitchen and its attached workrooms without announcement, as he had today. According to the maids, the widower had set his sights on Miss Dorothy Pritchard for his next wife, and she—Mary was convinced—was not averse to the idea. Recently, however, his heavy compliments had been addressed to Mary, and he seemed to go out of his way to find her alone.

She inclined her head, the barest minimum politeness required.

"Have you come to collect your daughter's baking, sir?"

"No, no. Ruthie will do that herself. She's just out there in the kitchen with your good aunts. What have you there, eh?" He came around the table to her side. As Mary moved backward to avoid him, her head struck the shelf behind her, upending a canister that struck her a glancing blow as it fell. Mary staggered, and was momentarily grateful for Mr. Owens' steadying hands.

Until she heard the gasp from behind him.

Until she opened her eyes to see both aunts, her cousin, and Ruth Owens standing in the doorway, their mouths identical O's of shock.

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