Secret Desires of a Gentleman

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “My lord, thank the good God you have come.” Bouchard turned toward his employer, his arms stretched out in an imploring gesture. “Who is this girl who comes to me and declares herself pâtissier? It cannot be so, that such a waif shall—”

  “Waif?” she interrupted and also stepped toward Phillip. “This man of yours who calls himself a chef has done nothing but demean and insult me from the moment I walked in!”

  “It is I who have been insulted!” Bouchard cried. “I who have been demeaned.”

  Phillip held up his hands. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard enough. From both of you,” he added, glancing from the chef to her and back again. “Monsieur Bouchard, I take it you do not wish Miss Martingale to be pastry chef for the ball,” he said in the tone of one trying to handle the situation in a calm and rational manner. “What, precisely, is your objection?”

  “The cuisine, my lord, it is to be French.” Bouchard spread his arms wide with an exaggerated shrug. “Yet I am sent an English girl to make the pastries? Impossible! It is not the simple bread and butter pudding we are to serve. Mademoiselle, she is English. She cannot make the complicated French pastry. And,” he added with a derisive glance in her direction, “She is too young. I must have a pâtissier with experience.” He returned his attention to Phillip and lapsed into French, slapping the back of one hand against the palm of the other to punctuate each syllable as he went on, “Il faut mettre la main à la pâte.”

  “I’ve been putting my ‘hand to the dough’ since I was three years old, I’ll have you know!” she cried. “And I’ve been a professional pâtissier for nearly twelve years. I have worked with some of the finest chefs in Europe.”

  “Bah!” Bouchard scoffed. “Twelve years only? That is not enough to work under me.”

  “That’s good,” she shot back, “because I will not be working under you!”

  The Frenchman started to speak again, but Phillip stopped him. “That will do, Monsieur Bouchard,” he said, causing Maria to give the chef a triumphant glance.

  “Now, Miss Martingale,” Phillip said, bringing her attention back to him, “would you care to tell me what you’ve done to infuriate my chef?”

  “He’s just angry because he didn’t get a pâtissier of his own choosing. Meaning one he can bully.”

  “This is intolerable!” cried Bouchard. “I am head chef. Never will she work with me. Never. She must go.”

  “Monsieur,” Phillip began, but Maria interrupted.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I have settled the pastry menu,” she declared, folding her arms. “A menu which my staff will prepare under my supervision, using my recipes and my methods.”

  “Your methods?” echoed Bouchard. “There is no method to the English pastry cook.”

  “Why, of all the—”

  “Enough!” Phillip roared, cutting her off. He leaned forward and grabbed her by the arm. “Come with me.”

  “Why?” She pulled against the hold Phillip had on her arm, but she was no match for his superior strength. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Out of here, before my kitchen staff declares a mutiny.” He pulled her out of the kitchen, and as she was forced to depart, she shot a glance over her shoulder and saw Bouchard waving farewell to her, a triumphant smile on his face.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” she cried in exasperation as Phillip began propelling her up the stairs. “I had the situation well in hand.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “I did! Until you arrived.”

  He didn’t bother to argue with her. They reached the ground floor, turned on the landing and went up another flight of stairs. A few moments later, they were in his drawing room. “What was that all about?” he demanded, closing the door.

  “You instructed me to see Monsieur Bouchard and arrange the details of the menu for the ball. So I was.”

  “You call that shouting match arranging things?”

  “Yes, and it was all coming along famously until you interfered.”

  “Oh, yes. Famously.”

  She made a sound of impatience. “You don’t understand. Bouchard and his staff cannot handle the entire supper for a ball with over four hundred guests, which is why your brother hired me in the first place. Bouchard needs a pâtissier to assist, but his pride is stung that he was not allowed to choose his own. And when he sees that I am young and I am female, it is a further blow to his pride. In front of his staff, he must swagger a bit and exert his authority as head chef.”

  “Then why in heaven’s name didn’t you just let him do so?”

  “Because I would be the one to suffer for it! If I had given in, we would be doing his pastry recipes his way, and my establishment would be nothing more than an extension of his kitchen, supplying him with loaves of bread and trays of lady fingers, and I would be little more than a servant running back and forth at his beck and call. For us to work together as colleagues, I have to stand up for myself.”

  “Not when I am having my breakfast right overhead, you don’t!”

  “I couldn’t allow that pompous Frenchman to believe for one moment that he is in charge of me or my staff.”

  “That pompous Frenchman happens to be one of the finest chefs in London.”

  “As am I. Which was the point of the entire argument. He threw down the gauntlet by insulting me, and I responded in kind. I know it flies in the face of all your notions of proper behavior, Phillip, but to do anything less would have been a great disappointment to him.”

  Phillip was staring at her in disbelief. “You mean he wanted you to rail and shout at him?”

  “Of course. He wouldn’t have a shred of respect for me otherwise. My theatrics tell him I am a culinary artist, that I am worthy to work with a chef of his talent and ability. I have a temperament. I have pride in my work. I will not make his recipes, but my own. I am arrogant. These are things Bouchard understands and admires. Don’t you see?”

  He didn’t. “All I see is that you take great delight in showing off your histrionic talent at every opportunity. You should be on the stage.”

  “The point is that I was well on my way to convincing him of my abilities when you dragged me out of there!” She frowned in aggravation, looking at him as if he was the one who’d done something wrong.

  “I was having a serene, peaceful meal this morning,” he informed her, feeling quite testy, “when war began erupting below stairs.” He looked her up and down, shaking his head. “I might have known you would be the cause. I shall be fortunate if I do not receive a resignation letter from my chef before the day is out.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said and turned away. “He won’t resign.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To finish what I started,” she told him over one shoulder as she started toward the door.

  “Oh, no,” he said and grabbed her wrist. “You are not going back down there.”

  She stopped in his hold with an impatient sigh.

  “For heaven’s sake, Phillip, let go of me,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m going back to my shop to make pastries for that impossible little man. One taste of my ganache, and he’ll think he’s found the nectar of the gods.”

  Phillip let her go, though he was doubtful that even the nectar of the gods would prevent his chef from resigning. That evening, however, as he was preparing to go out, he found he had underestimated the powerful effects of a fine ganache.

  He was in the foyer waiting for his carriage to be brought around when his butler informed him that Monsieur Bouchard would like a moment of his time. He agreed somewhat unwillingly, wondering what Maria might have done to further agitate the little Frenchman, but the chef was all smiles as he came bustling into the foyer.

  “Ah, my lord,” Bouchard said, lifting his hands in a flamboyant gesture as he approached, “the petite mademoiselle may be English, but she is not the little miss of milk and water. Non, not that one.”

  Phillip raised an eyebrow. “Are you spe
aking of Miss Martingale?” he asked, the other man’s benignant expression making him a bit doubtful on that point.

  “But, of course! She throws the tantrum this morning and boasts to me that she is worthy to be pâtissier for your lordship’s ball, but I look her up and down and I am not so sure, despite her pretty shop next door. And when you drag her out of my kitchen, I think, ah-ha, that is the end of this little one. But then, she brings the plate of pastries, slams them down before me, and storms away. I look at the little cakes she has brought, and I think they are pretty enough, but this does not signify. After all—how do you English say?—the pudding is proved when it is eaten, no? So I taste them with much trepidation.”

  “And,” Phillip said, feeling rather as if he were about to enter a burning house with an armful of dynamite, “did you like them?”

  Bouchard clasped his hands together with a blissful sigh. “Magnifique,” he breathed with reverence. “Her mille-feuille is crisp but tender. Her profiteroles are sublime. And her ganache…” He pressed his fingertips to his lips and made a smacking sound. “Perfection itself.”

  He couldn’t help feeling relieved that there would be no more vociferous battles below stairs. A man wanted peace in his home. “So you are now willing to work with her?”

  “Mais oui! She is a pâtissier of the first excellence! My lord is brilliant to have found her.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his apron pocket and handed it to Phillip. “This is Bouchard’s menu for the ball supper. If you approve, I shall present it to la petite mademoiselle so that she is able to choose and prepare the proper pastries to accompany.” With that, he nodded happily and departed.

  Phillip put the folded sheet in the breast pocket of his jacket as he watched his chef bustle away, and he shook his head in bafflement. Cooks, he decided, were the very devil.

  Chapter 9

  Ice cream is exquisite. Too bad it isn’t illegal.

  Voltaire

  After giving Monsieur Bouchard some of her best culinary masterpieces to taste, Maria spent the afternoon paying bills and reckoning up her accounts, leaving her apprentices to work without her for the remainder of the day. When she returned to the kitchens that evening, she found Miss Dexter had done fine without her. Miss Hayes, however, had run into difficulties.

  Maria stared at the pair of flat, dark brown discs on the worktable, then glanced at the younger woman across from her. “Third oven?” she guessed.

  Miss Hayes gave an unhappy nod. “Yes, ma’am. I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t circulate heat as well as the others.”

  Miss Dexter turned from the counter where she was filling tins with the shortbread and fat rascals she had baked in preparation for the following day. “It does all right for some pastries, if you watch them close. But cakes don’t do well.”

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am,” Miss Hayes said, sounding almost tearful. “I know you told me not to bake cakes in that oven, but I forgot.” She gave a sigh. “Half a pound of butter and a good bit of chocolate wasted. If you need to deduct the expense from my wages, I understand.”

  Maria thought of all the times she’d had her wages garnished for culinary mishaps, and she put a hand on the girl’s arm. “I won’t do any such thing, Miss Hayes. Anyone can make a mistake, especially at the end of a long day. Just remember, no cakes in that oven.” She glanced at the watch pinned to the bib of her apron. “Why don’t the two of you go home? It’s seven o’clock. After nearly fourteen hours here, you two must be exhausted.”

  The weary faces of her apprentice chefs brightened considerably, and several minutes later, the two young women had slipped into their mackintoshes and departed for home.

  Maria grabbed a Cornish pasty and an apple out of the larder and went upstairs. She ate her makeshift meal as she ran water from the taps for a bath. After washing away a day’s worth of flour, sugar, sweat, and coal dust, she braided back her damp hair and changed into her nightclothes. As on every night, Maria was asleep by eight o’clock and awake and downstairs ready to work by half past three the following morning.

  The shop and kitchens were quiet, for her maids would not be stirring for another two hours, and it would be another thirty minutes after that before her apprentices returned to begin their day, but Maria didn’t mind the solitude. Here, before the making of the day’s breads and cakes began, before she found her time taken up with the daily rush, was her opportunity to indulge her creative instincts. All her best recipes had come to her in the wee small hours before dawn.

  She stoked the fire in one stove to life, then put a cross bun from the day before on the warming board and made herself a cup of tea and a soft-boiled egg. The maids, she noted as she ate her breakfast, had left something on the central worktable. Curious, Maria pulled up one corner of the cheesecloth and found Miss Hayes’s chocolate torte. Perhaps the maids had thought to keep the torte for breakfast. Maria broke off a corner of one layer and popped it into her mouth. As she tasted the dense, underdone cake, she was intrigued by its chewy texture and powerful chocolate flavor. Struck by an idea, she knew the maids would have to find something else for their morning meal.

  She straightened away from the table and set down her cup, then she ventured into the larder and the ice room. An hour later, she was piping thin lines of green royal icing onto a row of tiny, chocolate-encased squares.

  Preoccupied with this painstaking task, she did not hear footsteps coming down the steps outside, and when the tradesman’s door opened, she jumped, sending an unintended stream of icing across the petit four she was decorating. She was even more surprised by the identity of the tall man in the doorway.

  “Phillip!” she gasped. “How you startled me! What are you doing roaming about at this hour?”

  “I might ask you the same question. Don’t you ever sleep?”

  She smiled at that. “The work in a bakery always begins early,” she told him and bent again over the row of petit fours. Skipping the one she’d ruined, she moved on to the next, piping on two crossed ribbons and a tiny green bow.

  “I don’t wish to interrupt your work,” he said as he entered the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

  “You’re not.” She paused again. “Just coming home, I suppose?” she said, noting his black evening suit.

  “Yes.” He gave a slight cough. “When the carriage pulled up, I saw that your lights were on.”

  Thinking of the last time that had happened, she couldn’t resist making fun. “Careful,” she told him. “People might see you down here and think something scandalous is going on.”

  He shifted his weight, looking uncomfortable. “I have something to give you, otherwise I would not have come.”

  “It seems a bit reckless of you, Phillip. After all, you must have a care for your reputation.”

  “Don’t you mean your reputation?”

  “Oh, no,” she answered without pausing in her task. “I’m a woman in trade. No one would ever think me an innocent miss whose reputation needed protecting. No one would even raise an eyebrow to see you down here. But it’s different for you.”

  “How so?”

  “I can see the society pages now. The Marquess of Kayne,” she added in a lofty tone as if reading from a society column, “is a man known for his impeccable good manners and his strict observation of the proprieties. But we at Talk Of The Town have evidence to the contrary! He has been seen visiting a certain pastry chef in Mayfair before dawn. Oh, the horror! What is society coming to?”

  She piped on the last tiny bow and looked up to find him watching her, his mouth curved with a hint of amusement. “Perhaps I was a bit punctilious before,” he admitted. “Forgive me for thinking to protect your good name.”

  “I appreciate your efforts, honestly, but it’s quite unnecessary, and would prove futile in any case. I accepted long ago the assumptions some people have about women in shop trade, and I know there is nothing I can do about it.”

  “One of those assumptions being a lack of
virtue?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but went on, “Not that it makes a difference, of course, but I truly did have a reason for coming down here.”

  She formed a bow on the last petit four and set the pastry bag aside. “Something to give me, I think you said?”

  “Yes.” He set aside his hat and walked toward her. Halting on the other side of her worktable, he pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket and held it out to her.

  “Not an eviction notice, I hope?” she said, in a half-joking way as she took the sheet.

  “No. It is a menu for the ball from my chef,” he told her, coming around to her side of the table and looking over her shoulder as she unfolded the sheet. “You will notice there is no pastry menu. He is allowing you to choose it yourself.”

  “Is he indeed?” She chuckled. “So Monsieur Bouchard has decided I’m up to the job?”

  “You are a pastry chef of the first water, Miss Martingale. You are magnificent. Your pastry is sublime. Your ganache is perfection.”

  “My, my, I am moving up in the world.” She smiled, feeling a sense of satisfaction as she glanced over the menu in her hands, noting the usual ball fare for a ball supper: lobster patties, salmon salad, cold tongue, ham and pheasant, fresh fruit—

  “Are these what has my chef singing your praises?”

  “Hmm?” She looked up, casting a sideways glance at the man beside her, and found that he was studying her newest concoction.

  “These? No, I didn’t give any of these to Monsieur Bouchard,” she answered as she refolded the menu and put it in the pocket of her apron. “I invented this recipe only this morning. The result of an accident. One of my apprentices was attempting a chocolate torte in that third oven and things rather went awry.”

  “You mean the oven that produced the flat sponge cake?”

  “Yes. The result proved the same with chocolate torte, and the texture was a bit more dense and chewy than ordinary cake, but the taste was quite enjoyable, and it seemed a shame to let it go to waste. So, I cut the cakes into squares, topped them with an ice cream I flavored with crème de menthe, wrapped them in dark chocolate fondant and decorated them with mint icing as you see, making a sort of frozen petit four.”