Bea agreed that the chef’s behavior did not appear to match his sentiment, but she allowed for the possibility that he had sought to hide the depth of his disappointment by engaging in polite conversation. She herself had done it on more than one occasion when she’d believed Kesgrave indifferent to her appeal.
“And how did Mrs. Wallace seem?” Bea asked, wondering if the housekeeper’s behavior could have been spurred by something more sinister than a general disgust of foreign travel. Had she known of a threat to Monsieur Alphonse and sought to keep him safe by turning down his proposal, effectively renouncing him for his own good?
If that was the case, then she had failed spectacularly in her purpose.
Or perhaps the explanation was far more innocuous, and she simply could not bear the thought of leaving Kesgrave’s service.
Regardless of the cause itself, if Mrs. Wallace had rejected him for any reason other than a lack of affection, then she would have been sad or forlorn.
“It is impossible to say,” Joseph replied.
Bea nodded, not at all surprised by this response. “Because she maintained the inscrutable air of good humor one expects from an experienced housekeeper?”
“No,” he said sharply, “because James came running into the room with the news that the duke had just brought his bride home and that threw her into a state of extreme agitation. For a few minutes she paced back and forth in the scullery, folding all the drying cloths and scrubbing rags as if the first place the new duchess would visit was the kitchens. Then she ordered Cook to make fresh tea cakes and told me to clean the mirrors, which was odd soup because I had already cleaned them earlier in the day. I tried to point this out, but she was too agitated to listen. So I came upstairs and cleaned them again.”
Ending his answer on a disgruntled note, Joseph realized with belated insight that his description reflected poorly on the housekeeper and he immediately sought to amend the account. “That is to say, Mrs. Wallace had been anticipating the arrival of the new duchess for more than a week and had everything so well prepared there was nothing left for her to do but straighten the towels in the scullery,” he said, then looked at the butler again, as if seeking his approval.
Bea, who was impressed by the clever reframing, hoped Marlow bestowed it, although how the footman would ever know escaped her.
“So the conversation between Mrs. Wallace and Monsieur Alphonse happened yesterday?” she asked, drawing attention away from the sensitive subject of her own arrival. She was no more comfortable hearing about it than Joseph was describing it.
“It did, yes, your grace,” he said, “at approximately three-thirty in the afternoon.”
“Three-thirty,” she repeated thoughtfully. “And you said he was in the middle of preparing food for a small dinner party?”
He replied promptly in the affirmative.
“Did Monsieur Alphonse happen to mention how small?” Bea asked.
“Eight guests to dine in addition to Mrs. Mayhew and himself,” Joseph said, proving himself to be a very helpful bystander.
As she had yet to be a duchess for a full day and her family rarely extended invitations to dine, Bea truly could not say if the chef’s behavior was strange or not. But it struck her as quite odd to leave the kitchen whilst preparing for a large—in no universe would she allow the prospect of hosting eight for dinner to be considered small—party to pay a romantical call on a neighbor. Mrs. Wallace had turned down his kind offer, but what if she had consented to be his wife? They would have in effect become betrothed, and she had a difficult time imagining a newly engaged man ceasing his expressions of joy to check on the progress of the quails.
Would not the more practical plan have been to wait until the next morning to make his proposal, when there would be fewer demands on his time? As he had already handed in his notice, he would be free from commitments and welcome to press his suit at leisure.
Ah, but what lovesick swain ever paused to contemplate the pragmatism of his actions? If the idea to make an offer had come upon him in a burst of excitement, then he might have been no more able to restrain himself than he could hold water in his hands.
And yet, Bea thought, the two pieces didn’t quite fit together—the spontaneous proposal and the patisserie in Paris. If he had known for a while that he was leaving, then why dash out in the middle of dinner preparations to make an offer? Had it truly not occurred to him earlier that he might want her to accompany him on his new venture?
Yes, it definitely seemed strange to her that a man who had decided to establish a business in a foreign country hadn’t realized until less than a week before he left that he might want the woman he loved to come with him.
If nothing else, it was egregiously poor planning on his part.
Maybe she was examining the question from the wrong perspective, she thought and considered the possibility that something happened to alter his plans. Conceivably, an event
