Prelude to Heaven

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  She followed right on his heels, glad to be away from the smell of the coop. They passed the barn and entered another fenced pen, where a gray and white goat bleated a greeting at them. Dumond paused, giving Tess a rueful glance over his shoulder. “You can't cook, you don't like hen houses. I don't suppose you've ever milked a goat?”

  She shook her head with an apologetic smile. “I'm afraid not.”

  “You’ll have to learn.”

  When he moved toward the goat, Tess set down the pail of eggs, entered the pen, and moved to stand beside him. He went into the connecting barn, returning with a length of stout rope and a stool. He tethered the animal to the fence with the rope and pulled the stool forward, then patted it with his hand. “Sit there,” he told her.

  Tess complied. The goat, trapped between her and the fence, bleated again, butting her head against Tess's shoulder hard enough to tip the rickety stool.

  “Stop that, goat,” Dumond ordered, pushing the animal's head away before she could do it again.

  Tess grinned at his words. “Goat?” she asked. “Doesn't she have a name?”

  He shrugged and placed the pail under the goat's legs. “None that I know of,” he answered and hunkered down beside her. “Now, grasp—”

  “Sophie,” Tess interrupted, reaching up to pat the goat's flank. “Don’t you think that’s a good name for her?”

  “Pay attention, mademoiselle,” he ordered and proceeded to explain how to milk a goat. Tess listened carefully, watching as he squeezed and pulled the teats of Sophie's udder, causing milk to splatter into the pail. “You try it.”

  She did try, doing exactly what she had seen him do, but nothing happened. Patiently he explained again and Tess tried again, but still she had no luck. She frowned, sitting back on the stool. “What am I doing wrong?”

  “Nothing. It just takes practice.”

  After several more tries, Tess had still obtained no milk, and Sophie stirred, bleating protest of her clumsy efforts. But Dumond showed no impatience. “Let me show you.” Leaning forward, he closed one hand over hers.

  Tess jerked involuntarily at his touch, and she felt his hand tighten. She drew in a sharp, panicky breath.

  “Squeeze, mademoiselle,” he told her, seeming not to notice. “Squeeze and pull.”

  She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but his arm was entwined over hers, his palm against the back of her hand, his fingers pushing hers into the proper motions, and she found it unnerving to have a man so close. She felt smothered and had to work not to break free.

  Taking deep breaths, she focused on the task and not the man, forcing her hand to relax within his to do the work, and a few moments later, their joint efforts were rewarded. Milk hit the side of the pail with a splattering hiss. After a few more similar successes, he let go, leaving her to do it alone.

  She did, and when Dumond finally pulled the pail from beneath the goat, she stared at the milk that filled it, feeling again that sweet sense of accomplishment. She turned her head to look at the man beside her. “I’ve milked a goat,” she said, laughing in disbelief and satisfaction. “At last, I’ve done something real. Something useful.”

  He tilted his head, giving her a thoughtful look. “Is that so astonishing?”

  She thought fleetingly of her role as the elegant Countess of Aubry, of the endless tension that lay beneath the surface perfection she’d worked so hard to cultivate, of all the times she’d failed to be perfect. “More astonishing than you know,” she murmured and jerked to her feet.

  To her relief, he asked no more questions. Instead, stood up as well. They took Sophie to the pasture, where he tethered the goat to the tree stump. He and Tess then started back to the château.

  As they passed the wild, overgrown patch of berries, he paused to study the canes. “A few more weeks, at least, before we have berries.” He shook his head, displaying obvious regret.

  “Ah,” she said with understanding. “Like blackberries, do you?”

  “I used to steal our cook’s blackberry tarts when I was a boy,” he said, and flashed her a sly, sideways glance full of mischief that told her even without his confession what he he’d been like as a child.

  She smiled. “Warning me what to expect, are you?”

  “Mais oui,” he admitted, smiling back at her.

  Tess stared, realizing this was the first time she’d seen him smile. It was a stunning smile, perfect white teeth in a sun-bronzed face, a smile that chased away the broody shadows in his black eyes and made even Tess’s heart, immune nowadays to male charm, skip a beat.

  It was a fleeting smile, however. “Come, mademoiselle,” he said and turned away. “We have work to do.”

  Back in the kitchen, he set the pails of milk and eggs on the work table, then stoked the fire in the stove. “When you cook eggs, you must have a low fire,” he explained as he put a cast-iron skillet on the stove to heat.

  Tess listened as he explained how to control the heat of the fire in the stove. She watched as he made a stuffing for the omelet of spinach, wild mushrooms, and shallots. He showed her how to oil the pan and how to chop and sauté the vegetables. She listened with genuine enjoyment to the sound of his voice. It was a rich, languorous voice—warm and very French, and reminded her of the Provence sun.

  She watched as he cracked eggs into a bowl rapidly, expertly, using only his left hand. A man's hands were something Tess had learned to be wary of, and Dumond’s were large, strong hands with the long fingers of an artist. She was fully aware of the strength in those hands, but she thought of how, together, they had milked the goat, and she appreciated that there was tenderness as well as strength in his hands. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the tension within her, tension that for three years had made her feel stretched so tight she thought sure she’d snap, seemed to slacken. Just a little, just enough that she sighed with relief.

  He looked up at the sound, pausing, the fork in his hand poised over the bowl of eggs, but when she shook her head dismissively, he resumed his task and began to whip the eggs vigorously with a fork, ladled in a bit of milk, then poured the mixture into the pan heating on the stove. She noticed how, when the eggs were cooked, he added the spinach and folded the omelet over with an expert flick of his wrist. Curious, she asked him, “How did you learn how to cook?”

  He turned a pepper grinder over the pan, lightly dusting the omelet with the black spice, and he was silent so long, she thought he wasn't going to answer her question. But he finally said, “When I was twenty-one, I went to Italy. I wanted to paint, I wanted to study the masters. But I had no money and no one to sponsor me. I needed employment.”

  A wry smile tilted the corner of his mouth. “I happened to meet an Italian nobleman who was in desperate need of a French chef. As you know, French chefs are always in great demand. I convinced him that I was perfectly suited to the task.” His smile widened into that heart-stopping grin again. “He actually believed me when I told him I could cook.”

  “Just like me, then.” Tess laughed. “But what did the nobleman do when he found out? Did he throw you out in the street?”

  “No. In fact, he became my first sponsor. I painted portraits of his entire family.”

  “Wasn't he angry at being deceived?”

  “Of course.”

  “But then why—”

  “Perhaps,” Dumond said, his eyes meeting hers, “he felt that everyone deserves a chance.”

  Tess pondered his reply as he slid the omelet from the pan to a plate. When he carried the food to the table, he walked past her and said something more. His voice was so low, she barely heard his words. He said, “You should laugh more often, mademoiselle.”

  ***

  While her new employer went off to sketch, Tess continued her battle against dust and cobwebs. She dusted furniture, swept floors, shook out rugs and draperies, and washed down walls, working her way through most of the ground floor by late afternoon.

  As she took yet another bucket of dirty w
ater out to be dumped, she spied Sophie standing in the garden, munching happily on herbs and weeds. With a groan, Tess dropped the bucket and went after the animal, but time and again, the goat skipped nimbly out of reach.

  Twenty minutes later, panting from the heat and exertion, she led the disgruntled Sophie back to her pen, her hand firmly clutching the collar of rope around the goat's neck, the other end of the rope, now chewed through, dragging on the ground behind them. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she told the animal as she removed the rope and closed the gate of the pen. Sophie only glared back at her, unrepentant.

  Tess coiled the rope and took it back to the barn. Unlike the hen house, the barn smelled only of hay and disuse. It was empty, save a few rusty tools and burlap bags, as dark and dusty as the château, and just as lonely.

  She tossed the rope into one of the empty stalls and turned to leave when a faint cry stopped her. She paused, unmoving, and when the cry was repeated, she stepped forward and peered into the next stall. There, sitting in one corner, was a kitten. At the sight of her, it meowed piteously.

  She entered the stall and dropped to her knees beside the small orange ball of fur. It looked to be about two months old. “Oh, poor baby,” she breathed, lifting the kitten gently in her hands. “Where's your mama?”

  The kitten answered with another meow.

  “All alone, hmm?” She checked the animal for injuries, and was able to verify with some certainty that it was a male before setting it down and commencing a search, but a thorough perusal of the barn and stable revealed no other kittens and no sign of the mother cat.

  Her new-found friend cradled in her hands, she returned to the house, but before going inside, she paused beside the well and drew up the bucket. She knew Dumond had put the milk remaining from breakfast in a sealed jar and lowered it into the well before departing that morning, and the kitten was probably hungry.

  Her guess proved correct, for it only took the animal a few minutes to lap up an entire bowl of milk. Afterward, he ambled across the room, found a place right in the center of the kitchen that suited him, and laid down, seeming right at home.

  “I think I shall call you Augustus,” she told him, but the kitten didn’t seem impressed. He simply yawned, curled into a ball, and went to sleep.

  Tess was still watching him, and still smiling, a few minutes later when Dumond returned. She stood up as he entered the kitchen, but the cat did not move.

  “Stop!” Tess cried out at the inexorable direction of Dumond’s steps. “You'll tread on Augustus!”

  “What?” He came to an immediate halt and looked down. The orange fur ball at his feet was still asleep, oblivious to the boot that had almost flattened him.

  “A cat,” Dumond muttered, his lip curling, giving Tess a belligerent look. “I hate cats.”

  Her eyes widened with deliberate innocence. “He's only a baby.”

  As if to prove it, Augustus gave a faint, pitiful-sounding meow.

  “I found him in the barn,” Tess added as she picked up the empty bowl from the floor. “Foxes probably got his brothers and sisters. I don't know what could have happened to his mother.” She looked at Dumond, who was once again staring at the cat with obvious distaste. “You have mice,” she said, even though she had seen no evidence of that fact.

  “I also have traps,” he said, not falling for that particular ploy.

  “He’s all alone,” she added, changing tactics. “With no one to take care of him but us.”

  “I hate cats,” he repeated.

  They stared at each other across the kitchen for a long moment, then Dumond gave an impatient sigh, raked a hand through his hair, and stepped over the kitten. He strode across the room and through the door to the corridor beyond. His boot heels thudded on the wooden floor as he walked away, and his muttered words floated back to her. “I hate cats.”

  Tess smiled and glanced at Augustus, who meowed again. “Don’t worry,” she said as she scooped up the tiny animal and rubbed his nose with her own. “I think he's going to let you stay, too.”

  ***

  The following day, Dumond sent Tess out to milk the goat and feed the chickens on her own. She wrinkled her nose with distaste at the thought of the smelly hen house, but she took the pails and went without complaint. The chickens, as Dumond had told her yesterday, were her responsibility now.

  She milked the goat first, and she found her task much easier than she had the first time. Sophie seemed to appreciate the difference too, and didn't shy impatiently away or complain with indignant bleats.

  Afterward, she put Sophie out to graze and hoped she wouldn’t be chasing the stubborn goat again this afternoon. She made a mental note to see what could be done to reinforce the fence around the pasture, then she went to the henhouse.

  To her surprise, no foul stench greeted her as she approached. She inhaled deeply, but the only smells were fresh morning air and a faint tinge of vinegar. She stepped inside.

  The coop was clean. Astonished, she stared at the loose, freshly raked dirt beneath her feet and the shelves of neatly piled straw where the hens roosted. Dumond must have cleaned it yesterday while she had thought him off sketching somewhere.

  She should have been grateful for his thoughtfulness, but instead, she felt dread burn inside her. Her reasoning mind told her it was a simple act of consideration, of kindness, and yet she shivered, suddenly afraid.

  A memory flitted through her mind before she could stop it, a memory of dresses and the horrible, ripping sound of silk.

  “Pink! With your coloring?” Nigel's contemptuous voice seemed to fill the hen house. “Just once, I give in to you and allow you to select your own gown for a ball, and this is the color you choose? Pink? Your taste is appalling, madam.”

  She’d been glad, she remembered, for the unexpected bit of freedom he'd given her, but that had been foolish, for he granted her such unexpected pleasures only to snatch them away again. Tess stared at the ground, seeing not the raked dirt floor, but instead Nigel's boot grinding remnants of pale, peach-colored silk into a plush Axminster carpet. The gown had not been pink, but that fact hadn’t mattered to Nigel. He’d simply needed an excuse, any excuse, to punish her. She had not been able to attend that ball.

  Nigel had taught her well. Any act of kindness was suspect. Torment was sure to follow, or payment extracted. A man didn't show kindness for nothing. She wondered what payment Dumond might expect.

  Chapter Six

  While Tess was out with the goat and the chickens, Alexandre picked vegetables in the garden, but when he returned to the kitchen to prepare them, he could not keep the kitten out from under his feet. Augustus insisted upon rubbing his ankles, meowing for his attention, and generally being a nuisance.

  “If it’s food you want, you'll have to wait,” he told the animal as he moved him to an out of the way corner. “I’m allowing the mademoiselle to keep you,” he threw over his shoulder as he returned to the other side of the kitchen and resumed his task, “but I'll be damned if I'll be the one to feed you.”

  Augustus, however, would not stay in the corner, and Alexandre was finally forced to capitulate. He allowed Augustus the dubious pleasure of lying on top of his foot, rubbing the boot leather and purring.

  He couldn't help wondering what the petite mademoiselle would say about the hen house. He hadn't cleaned it for her, of course. It was a task he’d been meaning to do for quite some time, and her slightly green expression had sufficed to remind him of that. Still, a tiny little part of him, a part he didn't want to think much about, hoped she would notice and appreciate what he had done.

  When she returned to the kitchen, he watched her out of the corner of his eye as she took the pails of milk and eggs to the table. She didn't say a word.

  Because she was facing away from him, he could not see her expression. The line of her back was rigidly straight, but her head was bowed, and her hands gripped the table, tenseness in every line of her still form. “Mademoiselle?
”

  Her head came up. He heard a choked sound. “Yes?”

  He set down the knife and turned, disentangling the kitten from his feet, and walked over to stand beside her. She didn't move. Rather concerned now, he leaned forward and bent his head to see her expression, but she perceived the movement and turned her face away. “Are you unwell?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “You ...” She paused, taking a deep breath. “You cleaned the hen house.”

  “It needed cleaning.” He didn't like this, the way she stood so still, so rigid, as if to keep control over powerful emotions he couldn't fathom.

  “Was that the only reason?”

  “Of course.” He didn't want to admit, even to himself, that he had done it to see her smile. He dropped his hand from her shoulder and turned away. “What other reason could there be?”

  He got no reply to that, and he resumed chopping scallions, a bit nettled by her reaction. He didn't know what he'd expected her to say, but one of her infrequent smiles and a “thank you” would have been nice.

  ***

  A routine became established those first two mornings, and Tess and her employer continued the pattern during the two weeks that followed. He gave her two cooking lessons each day, teaching her how to prepare meats, how to make sauces and soufflés, and how to properly use herbs and spices. But everything was done in a stiff and uncomfortable fashion, without the camaraderie of that first morning in the kitchen.

  In the afternoons, while Alexandre went off to paint or sketch, Tess spent her time cleaning, or mending, or doing laundry. Occasionally, when she was sweeping the upstairs floors or putting away laundry, her gaze would stray to the locked doors at the end of the corridor, and she would wonder what lay within those rooms, but she did not have much time to dwell on the matter. There were plenty of tasks to occupy her.