The Marriage Test (3 page)

For the first time in weeks—
months!
—he wanted to smell something. Fresh, tender lamb cooked to perfection … rubbed with garlic and stuffed with mint. He swallowed, ripped off another piece, and dipped it into the pink sauce. Pepper and garlic … in an almond milk base … with lamb juices and a hint of sweet grape for color and richness. Suddenly he was desperate to smell it, had to know the full effect of it, for good or for ill.

He reached greasy fingers up to the steel band he wore habitually across his nose and slid it off. Bracing himself, he held the lamb under his nose and inhaled. The scent of perfectly seasoned and roasted meat staggered him. He turned the hot lamb shank over and over, sniffing, absorbing, and luxuriating in every nuance of the combined meat, flame, and spice.

Biting off another huge chunk, he grinned and chewed enthusiastically, savoring every precious moment the meat was in his mouth. After several large bites, he turned to the pie again, smelling it this time before slicing and tasting. Cinnamon and saffron … oh, beautiful plums … tender, juicy pork … flaky crust with just the rapturously right amount of seasoning. Then he went to the purloined pasty that proved to be filled with chicken seasoned with sweet leeks and layered with spinach and what looked like a light-colored cheese. He sniffed—gratified to detect recently milled flour, new cheese, and fresh fat used in the frying—and dipped and sopped and devoured, growing steadily more enthralled.

It was nothing short of miraculous. Every dish, every sprig or dash of spice, every aroma blended uncannily with the others … not only in the same dish, but with all of the others in the whole meal. The pottage blended with the pasties, which blended superbly with the pies, then the lamb and the pork with the pink garlic sauce … which led to the rich entremets …

And that hedgehog, whose rump turned out to be made of a dense, sweet yellow cake of sorts, studded with currants, soaked with almond milk and spices … cardamom, cloves, and nutmeg. The soft, melt-on-your-tongue interior presented a stunning contrast to the browned, crunchy almond spines.

He groaned with pleasure as he ripped more meat from the lamb bone, and stuffed his mouth full of the chicken-spinach pasty with the pungent light cheese. Quivering with pleasure, he finally abandoned all attempts at self-control. Bite after glorious bite, the juices ran and the aromas and scents filled his head as he closed his eyes and sampled and smelled and savored …

At that very moment, Julia of Childress was meeting the abbess at the top of the steps leading down to the kitchens. The head of the convent was wringing her hands and nearly as pale as the white ruched linen of her wimple.

“The bishop has just arrived.” The abbess looked as if the statement pained her physically. “Light-fingered old trout. Says he heard the duke was visiting and hoped to pay his respects to His Grace.
Humph.
Snooping about is more like it. And he catches us serving meat. I suppose it’s too late for just bread and pottage.” She gave the air a sniff and winced. “The entire convent reeks of cooked flesh.”

“Reeks?” Julia bit her lip to keep a bit of her “spirit” from boiling over.

“You’ll just have to carry on and serve what’s been prepared. But no entremets or spiced wine at the end of the meal.” The abbess shook a finger. “I won’t have the bishop flogging me with canon law again for not fulfilling our tithes. Heaven knows, he’s already eyeing our prime croplands along the river.” She whirled and exited to the dining hall in a fierce billow of black.

Julia watched her go with mounting anger.
Bread and pottage.
She ground her teeth. She understood the abbess’s problem … distrust for the acquisitive, high-handed bishop she was forced to obey … but it was still
the abbess’s problem.
It would take nothing less than a miracle to give one visitor the impression of wealth and another the impression of poverty with the same meal. And good as she was in the kitchen, miracles were still a bit beyond her.

As she stomped back down the steps to the kitchen, she carried with her the memory of the abbess’s shaking finger.

No entremets. Her eyes narrowed. The devil she’d leave off the entire final course. She and her kitchen staff had labored for two long days to create this meal. She refused to wreck the menu just to make the abbess feel less conspicuous in front of the bishop. Truth be told, she wanted her food to be conspicuous. Memorable. Astounding. This was her first and perhaps her only chance to serve a nobleman of the duke’s status. If she were ever to have a chance to marry and leave the convent, she would have to draw the attention and interest of someone as influential as the Duke of Avalon. This was her chance and she was not about to relinquish it because the abbess didn’t want the bishop to realize the convent had substance enough to feed a duke like a king!

She made for the tables positioned near the hearth, stood watching, and nodded at the wafer-thin slices the old sisters were carving. Snatching a piece of meat, she rolled it and dunked it into the nearest sauceboat.

For a moment she stood with her eyes closed and her mouth busy, critiquing the spices, the roasting time, and the distance from the coals. After sufficient deliberation, she sighed, licked her lips, and produced a satisfied smile.

“Perfect.” She wheeled on the young sisters and maidens collected to watch with widened eyes. “Don’t just stand there. Let’s go feed a duke!”

After a few moments of total chaos, Julia accompanied the train of servers to the bottom of the steps leading up to the dining hall, calling last-minute instructions as she sent them two by two, carrying covered serving platters of meat and roasted vegetables and boats of sauce between them. Almost as quickly as it had risen, the confusion and tension in the kitchen subsided and she turned her attention to the finale of the meal.

The trays of entremets—laden with stuffed fruits, candied nuts, almond tarts, and cinnamon-dusted pastry crisps—seemed a bit sparse and she rearranged them to make them look better. Thank Heaven she hadn’t insisted on producing something more exotic. When she learned the duke’s young son traveled with him, she decided something simpler, even playful would delight both father and son. Perhaps the simplicity of the meal’s finale would mitigate the penance the abbess would inflict on her for serving the sweetmeats anyway.

Then she came to what she intended to be the
pièce de résistance
of the meal and stopped dead, staring in horror at the desecrated hindquarters of her precious hedgehog conceit.

“But—but … what … who …”

Strangling on her own juices, she turned to the trio of old kitchen sisters who had just collapsed on stools away from the heat of the hearths and ovens.

“Who cut into the—”

She halted at the sight of the veiled and wimpled trio fanning themselves with their aprons, looking utterly exhausted. If they knew anything about it, they would have said something. They had taken almost as much delight in the creation of the hedgehogs as she had.

She turned back and with trembling hands tried to close and tuck and repair the ruined creature. It was no good. The little beast was beyond saving. Her heart sank. Who would do such a thing? She clasped her hands together, grappling with the hurt and sense of betrayal roiling inside her. Who in the convent would be so callous or so greedy as to steal a special dish intended for their most esteemed patron?

First the abbess demands she not serve the carefully crafted finish of her feast and now this!

Seizing control once more, she forced herself to think about how the situation could be salvaged. She hadn’t made enough for all of the diners … perhaps if she presented the one remaining hedgehog whole, while quickly cutting and serving the other before they could see its missing rear …

Then she spotted a puddle of sauce on the planking beside the hedgehog tray. Dabbing a finger into it, she tasted it and recognized her pink garlic sauce. Someone had dribbled it on the table. She spotted another pool by her feet, and followed a string of dribbles leading across the floor to the far side of the kitchen. Whoever had stolen part of her hedgehog had stolen sauce. And what was sauce without something to dip into it?

She followed the trail to stacks of barrels, crates, and grain bags at the edge of the open wall, where she heard moaning and soft, unmistakable mouth-smacking sounds. Her eyes widened.

The wretch hadn’t bothered to carry the food out of the kitchen before stopping to consume it!

She pulled a bag of grain from the top of the stack and realized that there was a opening between the stacks and the wall. Furious, she charged around the stacks and into that opening … to find herself facing a pair of tawny eyes set in a broad, muscular face smeared with grease, sauce, and pastry crumbs. It was a man, sitting behind the barrels and flour bags with a cache of purloined food, eating as if there were no tomorrow.

“Why, you miserable, thieving—” She leaned down to grab him by the top of his tunic to haul him out of his hiding place and spotted the food-stained napkin by his feet dotted with stray almonds …
slivered, fried almonds.
She braced and pulled with all her might. “Come out of there!”

Up he came, with a lamb bone in one hand and a pie tin in the other. By the time he reached his full height, she found herself staring up at a tall, dark figure with shaggy hair, broad shoulders, and a mouth covered with food.

She blinked, momentarily taken aback by his size. His features were angular, but he had none of the hollow, desperate malnourishment of the abjectly poor about him … which stoked her ire even hotter.

Griffin of Grandaise lurched to his feet, emerging from his food-induced daze to find himself caught between stacks of barrels and a kitchen wall holding a well-gnawed lamb shank and a mostly empty pie tin. His awareness quickly broadened to include the food all over his chin, the grease, crumbs, and flour on his padded tunic, and the fury of a young woman pulling back a fist to plow it into his midsection.

“Ooof!” He bent double, emptying his hands to grab his stomach.

“How dare you sneak into our kitchens to steal food?”

He reacted instinctively to both the shock and discomfort, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her back out the opening and around the corner of the open kitchen wall, out of sight. He clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle her cry of surprise as he shoved her back against the stones and pinned her struggling form there with his body.

“Hush!” he commanded. She was choking furious and croaking out something that sounded on the order of “miserable … thieving …”

Then it hit him … the smell of the dog cart filled with kitchen parings and offal that he had fled for a niche in the kitchen … the odor of sun-heated, fermenting waste and burgeoning rot. It slammed through his head and his whole body reacted, contracting in a wave of revulsion and nausea. Groping frantically for his nose clip, he managed to hold down both the feast he had just eaten and the girl he had trapped against the wall while donning the smooth metal clip that saved his senses and sanity.

After a moment, the onslaught of moldy onions, bloody chicken feathers, and rotting carrot tops and cabbage leaves subsided. He shook his head and forced himself to take a few breaths.
Think,
he commanded himself.

She thought he was here just to steal food, he realized, which meant his disguise was working. But a nobleman of his stature couldn’t afford to be caught skulking about a nunnery, stealing food, and being assaulted by the kitchen help. He had to get away.
After
he learned more about the cook.

“I won’t hurt you, wench,” he ground out, staring into the girl’s eyes. Big green eyes, that just now contained sparks enough to look like a grass fire in progress. “Nor will I release you until you tell me which is your head cook.”

She glared mutinously at him and made it clear, as she tried to bare her teeth against his palm, that removing his hand to hear what she said would be unwise. Cursed female. He adjusted his grip to avoid those teeth.

“Is it one of the old sisters?”

She shook her head, but the fire in her gaze made it impossible to say whether that meant the cook wasn’t one of the sisters or that she refused to tell him. He growled, fighting the scent of decay still rumbling in his head to think.

“Is your head cook one of the nuns? Tell me and I’ll let you go.”

This time his offer made an impact; she quit trying to bite him.

Again she shook her head.

“If I take my hand away, do you promise not to cry out?”

After a moment she nodded and he gentled his grip.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” she snapped the instant his fingers departed her skin. “Sneaking into a convent and stealing food meant for the duke—”

“What is she like, this cook of yours?” he demanded, craning his neck toward the edge of the wall to look at the sisters collapsed in a far corner.

“Big enough and mean enough to make you wish you’d practiced your thieving ways somewhere else.”

“Strapping, is she?” he deduced. Good cooks generally were. They had to be. There was always hauling, mixing, grinding, and pounding to be done. Wrestling massive iron kettles, griddles, and spits about the kitchen required a certain amount of brawn … not to mention the fact that skimmers, tongs, and ladles were the weight equivalent of lances, battle-axes, and maces, and demanded the same kind of stamina.

“She’ll have your ears for candle wax,” came the wench’s reply.

“Strong, eh?” He narrowed his eyes, trying desperately to focus his thoughts through the mingling waves of exquisite and onerous sensation lingering on his senses. “But not overly smart … all she could come up with to present to the duke was
hedgehogs.”

The wench’s mouth opened, then snapped shut.

“The duke brought his son. It was for
him
she made the hedgehogs, you big oaf. And if you don’t get out of here”—she tried to push some space between them—“she’ll stuff you headfirst into a vinegar barrel and leave you to pickle.”

The mention of pickling unexpectedly reasserted the memory of the slurry of soured and rotting scents around him and conjured up the remembered scent of brine and vinegar and the half-rotten smell of pickling cabbage …
Stop that!

“Speaks both French and English, does she?” He forced his attention to his other senses … only now realizing that he was pressed hotly against the length of her body … that she was young and soft in the places a woman should be soft … and that he was having to work like the very devil to hold her there.

“And Latin. And Italian.” She ceased shoving and twisting long enough to look up into his face and declare: “The abbess says she’d speak the devil’s own tongue if it meant getting Old Scratch’s recipes.”

“A better cook than Christian, then.”

She looked as if the comment outraged her, then abruptly nodded.

“She learned to cook from gypsies.” She lowered her voice to a fierce whisper. “It was them that taught her to use all manner of secret herbs and eastern spices … like
devil’s heat, curry,
and
paprika.
Makes food so hot, it flames a body’s innards like a foretaste of eternal damnation.” Her eyes narrowed. “You should try some. A few bites of her stew and you’d be on your knees praying for forgiveness.”

She gave another furious push. He just managed to counter it and realized that he was now having to exert every bit of force he possessed to contain her. It registered in his mind that there was a reddish cast to her light hair. That made sense. Red hair always meant a pepper-hot disposition. He found himself wondering if she smelled like pepper, too. Or maybe tasted like it.

Good God. He quickly put some space between him and the wench.