Chapter 57 - Fifty Seven
Today’s activity was baking cookies. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, glinting off the polished copper pots and pristine marble countertops. The air was thick with the warm, sweet smell of sugar, butter, and cinnamon.
"Okay, ladies. Be careful now. The trays are still hot," Lady Isla announced, her voice cheerful as she placed her own tray of perfectly golden-brown cookies on a cooling rack at the central table. "We’ll leave these to cool for a moment. In the meantime, I will be coming around to see all of your wonderful works."
She started to move from table to table, a graceful and encouraging presence, complementing one lady on the uniform shape of her cookies and correcting another on her baking time. Delia had just pulled her own tray from the oven. She looked at the other ladies’ cookies—all perfectly round, uniformly baked, and elegantly arranged. Then she looked at her own. They were... different.
They weren’t perfectly round; some were shaped more like ovals, and others were slightly shapeless blobs. The edges were a little too brown, but the color of the cookies themselves was a beautiful, vibrant red, thanks to the strawberry food dye Lady Isla gave them. A worried frown creased her brow.
Across the room, Duchess Lyra had just set down her own tray. Her cookies were flawless, each one a perfect circle, smelling deliciously of cinnamon and almond. She smiled, pleased with her work. As she gazed at her own creations, her eyes drifted across the room and landed on Delia. She saw the younger woman’s worried expression, the way she anxiously compared her misshapen cookies to everyone else’s.
Just as Delia looked up, their eyes met. For a split second, there was a connection, a moment of silent observation. Then, Lyra immediately averted her eyes, turning back to her own perfect cookies as if she had been caught committing some terrible sin by simply looking at Delia.
A small, amused smile touched Delia’s lips at Lyra’s surprisingly childish behavior.
Lyra, meanwhile, was having a fierce internal conversation. "Wait a minute, why are you avoiding her, Lyra Carson?" she chided herself. " I didn’t do anything wrong. Or did I? Is it wrong to feel a sliver of pity for the girl?" She watched as Lady Isla made her way over to check on Delia and her questionable cookies.
"Let me see yours, Delia," Isla said, her voice kind.