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On Thursday morning, he found a scrawny orange tabby in his study.

“That’s Max,” said Nina, and then to Max: “You belong in the butler’s pantry.”

Max, however, preferred the study.

That evening, when Alan returned home from the theater, his feet led him downstairs rather than upstairs. His entire household was in the kitchen eating cake off his best china.

Nina saw him first. “Mr. De’Ath.”

The salutation struck him like a slap of cold water.

“What’s all this?” he asked gruffly. Kessler and McAdams parted, and he saw the remains of the cake on the table. He gave a twitch of his head.

Aristocratic weddings often featured cakes like marble sculpture, blinding white and yards high, each tier decorated with elaborate sugar flowers. This cake was simple in comparison, one tier, circular but bumped out at regular intervals with crenellated towers. The icing was textured like a stone wall.

“A castle?” He looked at Nina. Her cheekbones were flushed.

“It’s the Bastille,” said Kessler. “For Rouget’s birthday.”

“We stormed it,” added McAdams helpfully.

Rouget handed him a plate.

The cake was chocolate. The stone façade was marzipan and royal icing.

He could tell that his appearance had introduced an element of constraint into the revelry, so he took himself back upstairs.

The taste of sugar on his lips disquieted his dreams.

—

By Saturday, he admitted what he’d realized on Friday.

He sat at his desk in his study wiggling his injured fingers, picking up his pen. Twirling his pen.

He could write.

He could write in a flowing hand. When Nina knocked, he dropped the pen, and then he dropped his head, in self-disgust. Was he going to pretend he’d lost the use of his fingers forever? Resort to subterfuge so that Nina could misspell her way through his essays and he could stare like a besotted clod?

Some men preferred to dictate.

He preferred to write.

“Good as new.” He held up his hand as she passed into the room.

“You mean you can hold a pen?” She stopped.

He gave his pen another twirl to demonstrate.

“I have other things for you to do,” he said, because her face was clouding, and he wondered if she still thought he might sack her. “Citations to check, for my book. And I still need you to watch for the children.”

It didn’t sound like much.

“You can bake in the mornings,” he said, “if that’s to your liking.”

He hardly needed constant baking. Perhaps, though, if he started entertaining for tea and hosted a salon . . .

He might dry up his lines of credit before Geoffrey turned over a shilling, but until then he’d keep Nina in almond paste and citron.