Read Chapter 23: The Recipe Book Fugitive

The critic’s smile was a thin, precise thing, the kind Clara had seen on men who enjoyed watching others squirm. He gestured toward the counter where Julien had set the worn, leather-bound book—the recipe book, *her* recipe book—with the casual entitlement of a man who had never been told no.

“The famous manuscript,” Delacroix said, his voice silk over gravel. “I’ve heard whispers about this for years. Élise Marchand’s personal bible, passed down through generations. May I?”

Clara’s heart was a trapped bird beating against her ribs. Julien stood motionless beside the oven, flour dusting his forearms, his face unreadable. He had just saved her—coached her through a salvage that had turned a disaster into something the critic had called “promising.” And now this. The book he had apparently been holding for days, the one she had torn her bakery apart searching for, sat in plain view like a grenade with the pin already pulled.

“It’s not—” Clara started, then stopped. Her mind raced through the lie the critic had already accepted once: that the diary in her desk was the personal record of Élise’s baking life. If she claimed this book was something else—a family keepsake, a journal—he might not press. But the gleam in his eye told her he already suspected.

“I’m afraid it’s lost,” she said, the words tasting like ash. “That’s a different thing altogether. My aunt’s old travel diary. Nothing to do with recipes.”

Delacroix’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “Lost? But I saw the gentleman place it on the counter not thirty seconds ago.”

Julien’s jaw tightened. For a moment, Clara wanted to scream at him—to demand why he had brought it here, now, without warning. But the critic was watching, and the bakery’s silence was amplified by the hum of the oven and the drip of a tap in the sink.

“It’s not the recipe book,” Clara repeated. Her voice sounded thin, even to her own ears. “It’s a personal memoir. My aunt was a private woman. She wouldn’t have wanted— ”

“Then you won’t mind if I glance at it,” Delacroix said smoothly, and took a step toward the counter.

Julien moved first. He placed his hand flat on the book, his fingers splayed over the cracked leather. “She said it’s not for you.”

The critic’s smile faltered. “Monsieur, I am simply curious. The review I write tomorrow will shape the reputation of this establishment for years to come. A little transparency would go a long way.”

“The review can wait,” Clara said, surprising herself with the steel in her tone. “If my bread isn’t enough to judge, then perhaps you should leave.”

Delacroix studied her for a long moment. The bakery smelled of warm crust and lavender, the afternoon light golden through the dusty windows. A bead of sweat trickled down Clara’s spine.

“Very well,” he said at last, with the air of a man granting a favor. He took a step back, adjusted his jacket, and produced a small notebook from his breast pocket. “I’ll finish my notes on today’s loaf. But I warn you, Mademoiselle Ashworth—if I discover you’ve been less than forthcoming about the provenance of your baking, the review will reflect it.”

He turned and walked toward the front of the shop, where he sat at the corner table and began to write, his pen scratching across the paper with maddening deliberation.

Clara didn’t dare breathe until he was out of earshot. Then she rounded on Julien.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Her voice was a furious whisper. “You had it. You had the book this whole time, and you let me tear this place apart looking for it. You watched me panic. You watched me nearly fail. And you didn’t say a word.”

Julien’s hand was still on the book, but his shoulders had dropped. “I was going to tell you.”

“When? When the critic had already exposed you? When I was mid-disaster and you decided to waltz in like a knight in shining apron?”

“I found it three days ago,” Julien said quietly. “In the old church records. Élise had left it with the priest’s family decades ago—a safeguard. She told my grandmother once that she never trusted a secret to a single hiding place. When Pierre mentioned the chest, I made the connection.”

Clara’s hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against the counter. “And you didn’t think to mention this to me? The woman who has been searching for it every single night? The woman who’s had a deadline hanging over her head since the day she arrived?”

“I wanted to give it to you at the right moment.” Julien’s voice dropped. “The day you finished your own loaf, without my help. The day you proved to yourself what you can do.”

“That’s not your decision to make!”

“You wouldn’t have accepted it,” he said, and there was something raw in his voice now. “Every time I’ve tried to help you, you’ve pushed me away. Told me you didn’t need me. That you could do it alone. So I kept it. I thought if I waited—if I found the right moment—you’d see it as a gift, not a crutch.”

Clara opened her mouth to retort, but the words died in her throat. The critic was watching them from the corner, his pen paused, his head tilted like a bird eyeing a struggling worm.

She lowered her voice further. “You had no right. This is my aunt’s legacy. My bakery. My fight. And you withheld the one thing that could end it.”

“And if I’d given it to you the day I found it?” Julien challenged. “Would you have believed I hadn’t been using it myself? That I hadn’t already memorized every recipe and was only sharing the leftovers?”

The question struck her like a slap. She wanted to deny it, but the truth was a bitter pill—she *would* have suspected him. She still did, half of her. The man who had refused to give her his family’s own recipe book, who had guarded his secrets as fiercely as she guarded hers.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice hollow.

Julien’s hand fell from the book. He looked at her for a long moment, his dark eyes searching her face. Then he turned and walked toward the back door, pausing with his hand on the frame.

“The book is yours. It always was. I wasn’t keeping it from you to hurt you, Clara. I was keeping it because I needed you to reach the point where you wouldn’t need it.”

He left. The door swung shut behind him with a soft click, and Clara stood alone in the bakery’s kitchen, the recipe book sitting before her like an accusation.

She reached out and touched it. The leather was warm from Julien’s hand. She opened the cover, and her breath caught.

The pages were filled with Élise’s handwriting—the same angular script Clara had seen in the diary—but these were recipes. Dozens of them. Lavender boules, sourdough with wild rosemary, the dark rye with fig that had built the bakery’s reputation. Notes in the margins in a different hand, older, faded: *Mother’s trick—let the dough rest an hour longer in the cool.* And on the inside cover, a single line in Élise’s writing:

*For my successor, when she is ready to bake with her own hands, not my shadow.*

Clara closed the book. Her fingers trembled.

“Mademoiselle?” The critic’s voice floated from the front. “I’d like a word before I finalize my assessment.”

She tucked the book under her arm and walked out to face him. Delacroix smiled up at her, notebook open, and Clara saw that the page was nearly full.

“I understand Monsieur Pâtissier’s lesson today salvaged your loaf,” he said. “But I wonder—if he is the one baking, who exactly am I reviewing?”

He let the question hang in the lavender-scented air.

Clara pulled out the chair across from him and sat down, the weight of the recipe book pressing against her ribs. “The question,” she said, her voice steady despite the storm inside her, “is whether you’re reviewing bread or someone’s story.”