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“I’m wond’rin’ if Toby will bring a girl home for Valentine’s Day,” Lovett mused as she closed the cabinet door. She was cleaning up the kitchen after a long day of baking, Sweeney sitting down at the table. Valentine’s Day was tomorrow and she was staying open. She doubted many people would come to Fleet Street for their dates, it was far from the most romantic place, but she would rather have it open to get some cash for anyone who did come by.
Sweeney gave a noncommittal hum from where he was sitting, picking apart the food he had been given, eating only the scraps that still looked edible. There wasn’t much, Mrs. Lovett really wasn’t known for her skills in any type of culinary area, cooking or baking.
“Mr. T. You listenin’?”
“Yes.”
“Then what did I—”
“Toby.”
Lovett paused before smiling. He was actually listening for once, which was surprising, but not unwelcome. “I suppose you are.”
Sweeney hummed again. Now that she had it in her mind that he was paying attention he could block her out again. He went back to his food, picking up a piece of meat and examining it, contemplating whether it was safe or not. And whether it was actual meat or one of his clients. He pushed it away and grabbed one of the beans she had put on his plate, hesitantly trying that one.
Lovett went back to straightening up the last few things left out. She wasn’t planning to scrub and clean, just to tidy up a bit. “Ya’know, with Valentine’s Day coming up it’s got me thinking, without my Albert, I’ll be alone again.” In honesty she didn’t care about Albert. It had never necessarily been a happy marriage. They had gotten married because they needed to marry before they were too old to do so, not for love. “And without Lucy you’ll be alone. So, why don’t we fix both of our problems and just have our own thing?”
Sweeney didn’t reply, so she kept talking. “That way neither of us’ll be alone on Valentine’s Day and we can just be each other’s for the day.” A single day felt far too short for her liking, but it was certainly better than not at all.
Sweeney still didn’t reply though.
“Mr. T. I thought you said you were list’nin’.”
Sweeney paused and then nodded a bit. “I am,” He said, despite not having caught a word of what she said.
“Then whadda’ya think about the idea?” Lovett leaned against the counter, looking over at Sweeney expectantly.
Sweeney froze, realizing there had been a proposal or a question he had missed. He didn’t want to admit he had been tuning her out and listen to her complain about it though, so he had to give an answer. What would the harm be? He nodded a bit. “It’s not a bad plan.”
Lovett straightened up, surprised, but undeniably excited. “Really?” She asked.
Oh no. “Really,” Sweeney repeated, having a feeling he should have said something else. He had no clue what he had just agreed to but judging off of Lovett’s excitement, it wasn’t a good thing for him.
Lovett smiled. “I guess the holiday spirit ain’t only a Christmas thing,” She said.
Sweeney nodded a bit and got up. “I’m going up to tend to the shop,” He said. He needed a reason to get out of here before she got him wrapped up in something else. This was why he never tried to spare her feelings, because it got him into trouble every time. And now he wasn’t only tied up in something she seemed far too eager about, but he didn’t even know what it was.
“’ave a good evenin’ then, Love.” Lovett watched as he left, smiling still. She had fully expected him to refuse her completely and shut down the idea, but he had actually agreed. She had no clue why, but she wouldn’t complain. Whether it was because he was actually moving on from Lucy or just didn’t want to be alone to dwell on her, she didn’t care. She was going to have him all to herself tomorrow, that was what mattered.
“Toby, Dear, can you put the closed sign outside in the street?” Lovett asked as she finished fishing out the last few ingredients in the kitchen.
“Sure thing,” Toby said immediately, walking over to the door. “But I thought we were staying open today.”
“Change of plans,” Lovett said, putting aside some eggs.
Toby shrugged, grabbed the sign, and walked out into the street, setting it out so people would be able to see it before coming up to the shop itself. He straightened it out and walked back inside, where Lovett was rooting through one of her drawers for the measuring cups. “Do you need help, Ma’am?” He asked.
“No, I go’it,” Lovett said without looking up. She found the cups she was looking for and got back up, shaking out her skirts. “You have any plans for the day, Lad? Any girls you wanna spend the day with?”
Toby shook his head.
“Why not go see that girl who always comes by the shop? She gave you ‘er address, that means she wants you to stop by. I can spot’cha a penny or two, you go get her flowers or chocolate and then stop by.” For the last month or so, a girl had started coming to the shop regularly, always talking with Toby. And she hadn’t overlooked the fact that Toby seemed just as eager to talk to her.
She had given him instructions on how to get to her place probably a week ago, but Toby had yet to stop by.
Toby went red with embarrassment. “I-I uh… I think I’ll just stay here,” He said.
Lovett sighed. “She’s gonna think you don’t like ‘er if you never go over.” She reached into the small jar of coins she had on the counter for small, last-minute purchases like this and handed Toby two. “Go out, buy her somethin’, write her a note, do somethin’. You don’t gotta stick around, just let her know you did somethin’.”
“But—”
“Toby. Go.” She was usually never so blunt with the boy, but she was tired of this by now. For a month she had been watching the two of them pine back and forth over each other but nothing ever happened. Today was the single best day to do something though and she wasn’t about to let Toby do nothing. She had been waiting for them to make even a slight move, even just hang out with each other for a few minutes after the shop closed.
She pushed the boy towards the door again. “Just come back before too late tonight,” She told him.
Toby was a bit unsure, but he nodded a bit and started off. He had no clue what he was supposed to do, but Lovett had mentioned flowers and chocolates, so he would see if he could find those for cheap somewhere. They might not be the best quality, but he would try to find something.
Lovett went back inside and walked back over to the counter, setting down a bowl and starting on her own task. She didn’t have chocolates, sure, but she did have ingredients. Not for chocolate, but for a cake. And she knew how to make a cake.
She grabbed her cookbook and flipped it open to the cake section It had been a long while since she had made cakes, but it couldn’t be that hard. If she could make pies she could make cakes. She flipped through the recipes, examining the types of cakes she had.
A rich crème cake, a plain crème cake… she didn’t have the stuff for either of those right now.
A Washington cake? No, that wouldn’t work. She didn’t have raisins and if memory server her correctly, Sweeney didn’t like them anyways.
A French cake might work… but she didn’t have twelve eggs.
Oh, a scotch cake. But she didn’t want to separate the eggs right now or sift flour. And it also took more raisins. She took the recipe out anyways and set it aside so she could make it for herself.
She found a recipe for a sugar dough cake and paused. That was pretty simple, she could probably do that one. She took that recipe out as well and set it on the island counter, closing the book and putting it back where it belonged. She looked over the steps, reading the first one. Dissolve a teaspoon of saleratus in a wine glass of wine or milk.
She paused. She didn’t have wine and she couldn’t remember if she had milk or not… but she had gin. And possibly brandy? Gin would work well enough, she supposed. She walked over to the shelf she had and grabbed the bottle of gin she had, opening it.
She grabbed the teacup measuring cup and poured the gin into it before she rooted through the cupboards for the saleratus. She found it relatively quickly, measuring out the small amount and pouring it into the gin, dissolving it with the spoon.
Once that was done she checked the next step. Strain onto three teacups of raised dough. Right, she needed to make that. She started gathering the rest of the ingredients. Dough she could make with her eyes closed.
Forty minutes later her and the whole kitchen was covered in flour, everything dusted white like it had started snowing. But no matter the mess and the time, she had ended up with dough. She was suddenly glad that Sweeney never left his shop, because she didn’t want him to walk in on this. It was supposed to be at least a bit of a surprise. She dropped the dough and turned back to the recipe, looking for the next step… Which called for lukewarm melted butter.
If she had known she needed that she could have melted it while she made the dough. But she hadn’t known, so now she needed to wait for that and do nothing except wait. She grabbed the butter and broke it into roughly the right shape before she put it into a pan and set it on the oven, which she threw some wood onto and lit with the matchbox she kept on the ground by the wood stove.
She checked the instructions again, deciding to read ahead and see if there was something she could do while she waited for the butter to melt, having learned by now that if she kept going like this she would only increase the time it took her to do everything. She scanned over the steps, looking for what she could do.
Three eggs well beaten was needed in a step or two. She could do that. She grabbed the eggs she had taken out and took three. She cracked one of them into the bowl with ease, smiling. The next one didn’t go so well. She only succeeded in getting a chunk of shell into the bowl she was cracking them into, and when she tried to get it back she further broke it into pieces. She sighed, leaving it. A bit of shell wouldn’t kill anyone.
Probably.
The third egg she accidentally cracked too hard on the counter and smashed into the counter, leaving her with a mess. She was about to grab a second one, but she paused. She could work with this… Lovett turned and grabbed a measuring cup, filling it with flour that she poured onto the egg, mixing it in to thicken it before picking up what she could and adding it to the bowl before grabbing the spoon and starting to beat them together. No one had to know that she had done that.
She wrinkled her nose at the sight of what looked like the leg to one of the roaches she had in her kitchen. It was probably from the flour. But digging it out would only cause more of a mess, so she didn’t bother trying to fix it.
Now. How well was well beaten? Just until the whites and the yolks were combined? Until they got frothy? No, it didn’t say froth the eggs, it said beat the eggs. So most likely just combined. She sped up the speed she was beating them, trying to finish faster, but it just made her arm sore. She looked into the bowl, shrugging a bit. It looked good enough.
She walked over to the stove and took the butter off of it, stirring it with the same spoon she had used for the eggs. She grabbed yet another bowl and put the dough in it, adding the butter into it, mixing them together the best that she could. She paused, remembering the rest of the ingredients. She removed her hands from the bowl and added the eggs, walking over to get the sugar she needed as well. She paused, realizing she had forgotten to check how much she needed. …Did it really matter though? She grabbed a random measuring cup and filled it with sugar before adding it in and mixing it in.
She looked over at the recipe again. Work it together for a quarter hour. Wonderful… Her arm was still sore and now she had to do this for a quarter hour. Oh. She was supposed to have added cinnamon as well. Well, that wasn’t a problem, she could just add it now. She walked over to the cinnamon, squashing a roach with a rag on the way. She grabbed the bottle and unscrewed it, grabbing the teaspoon to fill. The recipe just said ‘A couple teaspoons’. It didn’t give her an exact amount. So two teaspoons would work fine.
Over the bowl, she reminded herself. So if it spilled then it would get into the dough instead of over the counter. She unscrewed the lid and held the jar over the bowl, tapping the top to pour it, freezing when she accidentally poured far too much of it into the bowl, sending a cloud of cinnamon into her face, causing her to cough a bit.
She looked down at the bowl, setting the cinnamon down on the counter. Okay. That was about fifteen times more than the recipe called for… but it would be fine. Maybe Sweeney liked cinnamon. She sighed and went back to mixing them together with her hands, folding the dough on itself, praying that this would get better.
As it would turn out, she didn’t mix it together for fifteen minutes, instead making it about seven minutes before her arms hurt too much and she just deemed it good enough. She remembered the next step. It was the easiest one. Add into cake pan. She grabbed her pans, looking down at them. One was rusted from when she had used it to catch water from a leak in the shop, the other had a live roach in it along with a long dead one.
She killed the live one and tossed its body off onto the floor of the kitchen and got most of the dead one out before grabbing the dough, splitting it in half and putting a half in each pan. She had to let them sit in a warm place now, it said. It was warm enough here. Room temperature was warm, right? Maybe not as much considering it was February, but if it wanted hot it should have said that.
She let those sit and started to clean up the rest of the kitchen again, gathering all of the tools she had used and sweeping the spices onto the floor. She would sweep them up later, for now they could just stay there.
She got about half of the kitchen cleaned before suddenly remembering the cakes. She had definitely let those sit for too long, but if anything she had messed up were going to ruin them she doubted that that would be the thing.
She grabbed the pans and took them over to the oven, opening them and putting them in. She slid them in after removing a pie that had been left in there for who knows how long. She threw the pie away and closed the oven door, glancing over at the clock. The recipe didn’t mention how long to bake it, so she would just check on it in ten minute intervals and hope it didn’t burn.
It did in fact burn, but only minimally, so it was a win in her mind. Maybe she should try to ice it to make it look a bit better. She hadn’t made icing in a while either, but she remembered it being easy. She glanced over at her cook book, but didn’t bother with it. She didn’t need it for icing. If memory served, it was just eggs and sugar.
She grabbed another egg and a teacup of sugar, hoping that the proportions were at least close to correct. She dumped the sugar in and cracked the egg, grabbing the same spoon from before and mixing it. But it wasn’t turning out right. It was just getting clumpy. She frowned, looking around the kitchen to see if she could spot anything she had forgotten.
Confectioner’s sugar, she realized. It called for powdered sugar. She dropped the spoon and walked over to where she kept things the sugar and the flour. If sugar was there then confectioner’s sugar should be there too. And it was. But she was running low on it. But, low wasn’t out of, so she just dumped the rest of the bag in and grabbed another egg, pouring it in and starting to mix it again.
It still wasn’t exactly turning out, but it looked… a bit better. Possibly.
Lovett sighed and just stopped. She would make it work, she decided. She was determined the make it work, no matter what.
Sweeney ran a hand through his hair as he came downstairs. He had decided to open for a few hours to make a bit of extra cash, but with it being Valentine’s Day, everyone wanted something specific and they wanted it perfectly. Sweeney knew he could do it with ease, but they still decided to try and lecture him.
Not only were they lecturing him on his own job, but they were lecturing him to do exactly what he was doing anyways.
He pushed the door open and came in, where Mrs. Lovett was standing among a messy kitchen once more. Not that he was surprised. He wasn’t sure why she cleaned it at all, it would be back into disarray in a minute anyways.
What was unexpected was an odd baking concoction she had put proudly down on the island. “…What is that..?” He asked, eyeing it up.
“It’s a cake. For you.”
“For me?” Sweeney repeating, looking between Lovett and the cake. Lovett looked proud, but if he was being honest, he couldn’t find what she was proud of, because it certainly couldn’t be… this monstrosity.
“Yep.” She gestured to the cake with a smile.
Sweeney stared at the cake, feeling a mix of emotions. And not a single one that had him wanting to eat whatever Lovett was trying to pass off as a cake here. The “icing” (he assumed) was chunky and haphazardly spread, chunky in places, and not anywhere in others. There was already a roach or two examining it and from the looks of it, Lovett had killed a few others as well.
He also didn’t want to even consider what had gotten mixed in with the dough and then baked inside of it. He had seen her baking pies and he doubted her cake skills were much better. There was cinnamon on the top in a blob, but he was assuming it was supposed to be a heart of sorts. The two layers were completely misaligned and the top layer looked like it was a wrong breath in its direction away from falling off. Not to mention the very obvious burnt cake hiding underneath the icing.
As he watched Lovett kill another roach and smack her hands together to try and get the corpse and the guts off of them, no doubt causing bits of it to fall on the cake, he felt his stomach turn. There was no way he was eating this. “I’m… not hungry,” He said.
“Nonsense, you go sit’own. You’ve been workin’ all day, you deserve a break. And what better way to spend a break than with a cake?” Lovett came around the island and pushed Sweeney down into the chair before going over to the cake and cutting a piece of it, plating it and setting it in front of Sweeney, handing him a fork as well.
Sweeney examined the cake, noting the odd orange tint as he took the fork reluctantly, poking at it skeptically.
When he made no move to actually eat it, Lovett just pressed further. “Well? Go on then?”
Sweeney hesitantly grabbed a bit on his fork, taking a bit. His senses were immediately assaulted with a mix of flavors, the most noticeable being an overwhelming cinnamon taste. That explained the tint. And as he chewed he felt his teeth crunch against what he was guessing was bits of eggshell. The icing was just straight sugar with a slight egg taste.
He wasn’t sure how he managed to swallow it, but he somehow did, not saying anything as he struggled to keep it down.
“Well, how is it?” Lovett asked eagerly.
“It’s…” Sweeney just shook his head a bit, not even sure what he could say about it, positive or negative. “It certainly is something, Mrs. Lovett.”
“Good or bad?”
Sweeney just shook his head again, looking down at the cake again, praying he wouldn’t have to try and choke down more of it than he already had.
Lovett smiled a bit at the motion, noticing it wasn’t in his usual dismissive or rude way. It also wasn’t necessarily in a great way, but the fact it wasn’t a horrible reaction was a win in her book. “‘appy Valentine’s Day, Mr. T.”
“Yeah… happy Valentine’s…” Sweeney mumbled.