There is some honesty to him. For all his talk of macarons and tortes, these simple sweets really were what he'd had in the good times. The impoverished nobility still needed to live like nobility, and so for the first ten years or so of Byerly's life they'd employed a cook; she was a rough prole woman who made this sort of rustic fare, dry spice cakes and honey bread and hearty stews. Then dear papa had decided the expense was too high and sacked her without fanfare and then they'd all lived primarily on the incompetent work of the lone family steward - and then, blessedly, Nadine had decided she was going to teach herself to cook to save them all from death due to disgust. The memories are more bitter than sweet, to be fair, so that is a lie: he doesn't close his eyes and smile blissfully because of the childhood. But the taste really is exquisite. Unmatched. That, he isn't faking.

He isn't faking his curiosity, either, when she comments about her own childhood. "Now," he says, "ice cream is of course familiar to me. But rainbow sprinkles? What on earth are those? They sound charming."