Secret Desires of a Gentleman

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “Do you think I care what people say in whispers behind my back?”

  “Perhaps not, but Lawrence does. He cares a great deal. He would have felt the social stigma of your marriage far more keenly than you, for he finds losing anyone’s good opinion almost unbearable. I love my brother, but I also recognize his flaws. Lawrence has never been good at facing up to unpleasant realities. The social snubs, the dwindling invitations, the gossip, would have eaten away at him, bit by bit, destroying him and you and any love that might have been between you.”

  The sureness with which he spoke infuriated her. “And all’s well that ends well,” she shot back. “How convenient life must be for you, to always be able to bend people to your will and justify it because it’s for their own good.”

  She departed without waiting for a reply. Outside the building, she walked along the Embankment, breathing deeply of the dank air coming off the river, trying to banish the anger she felt.

  It was a blustery spring day with a chilly wind. A cab slowed invitingly, and Maria hesitated with a glance at the sky. It looked like rain, but even though she had forgotten her umbrella, she did not lift her arm to wave the hansom down. She felt like walking.

  He was always so complacent, she thought in frustration, as she strode along the Embankment. So sure of himself. Who was he to meddle in other people’s affairs? Who was he to decide what was best for everyone else? Why did he always have to assume he was right about everything? He’d always been like this, and it had always been the most infuriating thing about him.

  Maria paused and turned toward the river. She rested her forearms on the rail of the balustrade, staring at the ships going by, but in her mind’s eye, all she could see was Phillip’s countenance. How much harder he seemed than the boy she’d first met, the boy with the serious face who’d looked up at her sitting in the willow tree that day twenty-two years ago with a frowning, doubtful face, as if she were a woodland sprite or water nymph, or some other creature he’d never encountered before.

  She’d been the cause, really, of his broken arm, but he’d taken a beating rather than tell his father she’d been the instigator of the rope swing. Phillip had taught her cricket so she wouldn’t be laughed at anymore. Phillip, not Lawrence, had been the one to insist she be allowed in their tree house, and that it was all right for a girl to learn how to fish and play football. Phillip had been the one whose laugh she’d always wanted to hear, the one whose approval she had craved, the one she’d really baked tarts for every day.

  She’d forgotten all that. She’d forgotten him, and how much she’d adored him when she was a little girl, forgotten how it had hurt when he’d allowed position and class to come between them and ruin their friendship.

  Her mind flashed back to the summer she turned fifteen, of how she’d come home from France to find that only one of her two best friends was glad to see her. She felt again the pain and bewilderment she’d felt then, the pain she’d felt whenever Phillip had turned away, whenever he’d refused to speak to her, whenever he’d seen her coming and walked in the other direction, the pain of a snubbed fifteen-year-old girl who could not understand why the boy she adored would no longer speak to her. Phillip might not know it, but he’d broken her heart long before his brother had.

  And wasn’t that, really, part of the reason eloping with Lawrence two years later had seemed so appealing? Maria made a sound of self-reproach. Galling to look back as a woman and see how silly she had been as a girl.

  Two summers after her return from France, her father had died, and she had wanted Phillip’s reassuring presence, but he hadn’t been there. The marquess by then, he’d been touring his estates, too caught up in his own affairs to even send her a letter of sympathy. But Lawrence had been home for the summer, and it was to him she had turned instead. He’d been terribly attractive that summer and his offer of marriage had seemed like the answer to a prayer, and she’d fancied herself in love with him. But now, looking back, she could see that she hadn’t really loved Lawrence. And he hadn’t loved her, for if he had, he wouldn’t have abandoned her. No, they had not shared a lasting love, but a fleeting, adolescent infatuation, spurred on by her girlish insecurities and her underlying fear—the fear of being penniless and alone that had been eating away at her since her father’s death. Galling as it was to admit, Phillip had been right again.

  Maria sighed and turned around, staring up at the carved stone lions of Somerset House. It began to rain, but she scarcely noticed, for she was still caught in the past. Her first flat when she’d come to London had been only a few blocks from here, she remembered, a nice parlor flat all her own off Tavistock Street, far more comfortable than her room below stairs at Kayne Hall. Because of the money Phillip had given her, she’d been able to afford the expense, but she’d been so lonely living by herself. So young and desolate and alone.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, those early days in London echoing back to her with a poignancy she hadn’t felt for years. The Hawthorne brothers and all the pain they’d caused her were in the past, but it seemed the past still had the power to hurt.

  She took a deep breath and forced herself to look on the bright side. If all those things hadn’t happened to her, she wouldn’t have ended up in London working for the great chef André, who’d been a friend of her father. Without André, she wouldn’t have been serving supper at the ball where she’d met Prudence, who’d been working as a seamstress mending the ladies’ ball gowns. Without Pru, she wouldn’t have moved into the lodging house in Little Russell Street to share a flat, and she wouldn’t have found a whole new set of friends. Most important, she would never have carved out this life for herself, a life that enabled her to fulfill the dream she’d had since she was three and she’d made her first pat-a-cake out of mud.

  The rain stopped, and the sun came out. With it, her melancholy mood vanished. She straightened away from the balustrade, shaking off the past as she went down to the Temple underground railway stop to begin the journey home. She was halfway to Mayfair before she realized that she and Phillip had never discussed the details of the May Day Ball.

  Chapter 8

  God sends meat, and the devil sends cooks.

  John Taylor

  Nothing has changed, Phillip thought, watching her through the window of his office as she walked away along the Embankment. All the frustration and desire he’d felt that night on the balcony came roaring back, so hot that it was almost like physical pain, and just as he had done that night two weeks ago, he fought against the desperate, aching desire to follow her.

  Though he’d always tried to pretend otherwise, he had never been any less immune to her charms than his brother. Both of them had been wont to tag after her like panting puppies. The fact that he still had that foolish inclination was a galling thing to acknowledge.

  She stopped walking and as she turned to stare out over the river, he tried to recall just when this stupid need to be near her had begun, but he could not pinpoint an exact moment. Perhaps it had always been there, from the moment he’d first seen those big hazel eyes staring down at him from amid the fronds of a weeping willow, or perhaps when she’d batted at that cricket ball and missed, much to the amusement of the other children on the village green. In those days, of course, it had all been so simple and innocent—just the desire to be with a girl who had a pretty smile and was jolly good fun, who played a decent game of chess and could make him laugh.

  The summer he was seventeen, it had become something far less innocent. His father had died the year before, and he’d come down after finishing at Eton to spend the holidays at Kayne Hall and tour the estate before going on to Oxford. Upon his arrival, he’d found that Maria was also home for the summer, a very different Maria from the one who’d left for France four years before. A magical transformation had taken place while she’d been away, and the gawky, reed-thin girl he’d always known was gone, replaced by a luminous creature with satiny skin, soft pink lips, and a pair of perfect breast
s.

  That was when he’d begun to dream about her, dreams of kissing her and touching her. He’d woken up many a night that summer to find his body on fire with need—and with shame, too, for even at seventeen, he’d known the rules. A gentleman did not shag the daughters of the servants.

  When Lawrence, also home from school, had admitted to having similar thoughts about her, he’d laid his younger brother out with a blow to the jaw that had shocked and bruised them both. They’d never discussed it again.

  You were different after your father died.

  She was wrong, of course. It was true that he’d changed toward her, but she had misinterpreted the cause. It wasn’t his father’s death and his ascension to the title the year before that caused him to shut her out the summer she came home and treat her as a servant rather than a friend. It was the fact that being friends with her had ceased to be enough, and anything more had never been possible.

  He’d taken it for granted that Lawrence understood that, too, but two years later, Phillip had come home from his annual tour of the estates to discover how wrong he’d been.

  Having graduated from Eton, Lawrence was home from school for the summer holidays, and when Phillip arrived a month later, it hadn’t taken long to realize his brother was more infatuated with Maria than ever before. He’d seen the pair of them flirting in the rose arbor and exchanging glances and whispers too intimate for their disparate positions. Desperately trying to stay away from her himself, Phillip had kept busy with estate matters and tried to deny that anything more than a mild flirtation was going on. But when he’d discovered, through a tattling servant, their plans to elope, he’d been forced to recognize his own willful blindness. And as the Marquess of Kayne, he’d known what his duty demanded.

  By the Embankment below, she stirred, bringing his attention back to the present, and he watched as she turned away from the river. She leaned against the balustrade behind her, and when she tilted her head back, he tensed, thinking for a moment she could see him observing her through the window. But no, he realized, she was looking at Somerset House, and he relaxed again, his mind returning to the events of the past.

  Odd, he thought, closing his eyes, how everything that day at Kayne Hall was a blur except those few brief moments alone with her in his study. He could barely remember confronting Lawrence, but he could recall every detail of being with her. How she’d looked standing in his study that afternoon with the summer sun through the window glinting off her hair so bright it made him blink. The tears streaming down her face as he’d told her of Lawrence’s decision to part from her. His own voice, cold and detached to mask the rage seething through him, as he’d extracted that fatal promise from her. Her shaking hand as she’d taken the bank draft from his outstretched fingers.

  With a violent effort, he shoved the past out of his mind and opened his eyes to find she was still standing by the Embankment. He reached out as if to touch her face, and his fingertips hit the window glass. Damn it all, why was she standing down there in the rain with no coat and no umbrella? Didn’t she have a shred of sense? He wanted to go down there and pull her back inside where it was warm and dry, but he could not do it. He would not. Where she went, what she did, were not his concerns.

  His palm flattened against the glass, and he closed his eyes again, imagining that it was her warm, silken skin he touched rather than the hard, cool pane of the window, giving in for a few brief moments to what had never been anything but fantasy.

  This time when he opened his eyes, she was gone. He turned away from the window, reminding himself that fantasy was all it could ever be.

  As Phillip had promised, Maria received a typewritten dossier the following day, which included the details of the upcoming ball and a list of the other charity events for which she would be pâtissier. In addition to the May Day affair, there was to be one other ball of similar size at the end of the season, and between the two, a luncheon, a cotillion, and a garden fête would also take place. Mr. Fortescue had also provided the date and time of each event, but he had forgotten to mention when Phillip wished to meet with her to discuss further details.

  She sent one of her maids next door with a note for him requesting an appointment as soon as possible to approve her dessert selections for the May Day Ball and to discuss the quantities required. The next morning, she received a reply from his secretary, informing her that in regard to the selection, she had his permission to serve anything she liked. His lordship, she was told, implicitly trusted her judgment on such matters, and a personal appointment would not be necessary.

  A free hand was all well and good, Maria thought, but Phillip was so damned exacting, and she had no intention of proceeding without some understanding of what he expected. She needed more information—the theme of the event, the other dishes to be served, the cost allowance she was to be given. She sent him another note, pointing out her lack of knowledge on these matters, and informing him she would appreciate further direction.

  This time, her response was delivered by a footman on behalf of Monsieur Bouchard, his lordship’s chef, who, the note informed her, would be happy to discuss all menu arrangements with Mademoiselle Martingale, and would be pleased to receive her in his kitchen at half past eight o’clock the following morning.

  Phillip, it was clear, wanted as little to do with her as possible, and was handing her off to his staff. That was perfectly fine with her. Until she met Monsieur Bouchard. Then everything went to hell.

  The chef, a stout, balding little man with an enormous black mustache and an even more enormous opinion of his own culinary brilliance, would be pleased to accept the help of mademoiselle with all preparatory work, of course. Even a commonplace English girl, he was sure, could create a decent gâteau and an acceptable pâte à choux—parbleu!—but as for the rest, he would make his own arrangements.

  Maria studied Monsieur Bouchard’s complacent smirk for a moment, and wondered for perhaps the thousandth time why head chefs were always so full of themselves. “So, that is all I am to do, Monsieur? Make sponge cake and cream puff shells?”

  He beamed at her as a tutor would to a particularly bright pupil. “The baguettes would be most welcome, too, mademoiselle. And perhaps the bread and cake crumbs. You shall send them here as I need them, s’il vous plaît. You may be assured, I will use them to create the finest desserts imaginable.”

  In other words, she was to do the unappreciated work, and he was to receive all the praise.

  “I don’t think so,” she said with her sweetest smile. “It’s clear you have not been apprised of the arrangements, so allow me to explain them. His lordship has named me as pâtissier for this ball, and it is I who shall make the desserts, monsieur.” Her smile vanished. “All of them.”

  “You?” He looked her up and down and began to laugh. He glanced around and the members of his staff began to laugh, too, following his lead. “C’est impossible, ma petite,” he said indulgently. “You are a child.”

  With that, he flicked his wrist in a gesture of dismissal and turned away, adding over his shoulder that she would receive an order for the quantities of bread and cake his staff would need within the week.

  Maria studied his back for a moment and thought of André, who’d hurled a plate at her head, called her an imbecile, and fired her the first time he’d seen her making profiteroles because he’d thought them too small, only to rehire her a few moments later, after she’d called him an impossible old goat and shoved one of the tiny kirsch-flavored cream puffs into his mouth. She knew that with temperamental chefs, there was only one way to gain respect and achieve mutual understanding.

  “A child, you say?” She slammed her hands down on the worktable in front of her hard enough to rattle the crocks and bowls that rested on it. “My father was a protégé of the great Soyeur!” she roared, watching as Bouchard turned back around to face her and his staff began to slowly step away, retreating to the far corners of the room. “I have trained in Paris! I have been
a pâtissier to André Chauvin!” She was now shouting at the top of her lungs. “I have made croquembouche for the Duc d’Orleans and tarte Tatin for Prime Minister Gladstone! Yet, I am to bow down to a puffed up little Frenchman with delusions of grandeur? Non!” She slammed her hands down on the table again with a fervor worthy of any Gallic chef. “It shall not be so!”

  Bouchard was now giving her an assessing stare, and there was a glimmer of respect in his expression. But it was clear he had no intention of relinquishing control so easily. “Sacré tonnerre!” he shouted back, striding toward her. “Such impudence from a child is not to be borne. I am chef de cuisine to the marquess and I supervise the chefs for the marquess’s ball! You are accountable to me, mademoiselle!”

  “I am accountable to no one!”

  “You will use my recipes.” Hands on his hips, he leaned toward her across the worktable. “You will work under my direction and perform only the tasks I give you.”

  “The hell I will!” She leaned forward as well, until she and the little Frenchman were almost nose to nose across the table. “I am not your kitchen maid, monsieur! I am an independent pâtissier, with my own establishment. I will use my recipes, and my staff will make them.”

  He let fly with a stream of French invective, and she matched it with a few choice insults of her own. But when a third voice entered the argument, it was loud enough to override both of them.

  “What in blazes in going on down here?”

  Both she and Bouchard turned to find Phillip standing in the doorway to the kitchens, informally clad in a white shirt, claret-red dressing gown, and black trousers. He was frowning like thunder.