The Marriage Test

by Betina Krahn

It suddenly occurred to her that while he was her main concern, there would undoubtedly be other people to please as well. His lady wife, for instance. Strange that Sir Axel and Sir Greeve had neglected to mention their lady. How could they forget so important a point in describing her new home?

  She swallowed against the tightness that returned to her throat.

  What kind of woman would be unlucky enough to be wedded to a powerful, hungry beast of a man who found the world just too smelly to bear?

  Chapter Seven

  The day wore on and the cart swayed, pitched, and bounced along the road south, past burgeoning fields of grain and fattening flocks of sheep, through orchards redolent with the fragrance of plum and apple blossoms, and between fields sown with turnips, cabbages, squash, and melons. The count was nowhere to be seen when they stopped, midday, to water the horses and stretch their legs. But as the sun began to lower, he appeared and directed them off the road to a site he had selected for the night’s camp … within sight of a village.

  There he ordered a sizeable fire built and metal rods tented above it to hold an iron pot. Nearby he had his squire unroll a leather pouch of knives, fire forks, and ladles and a chest of basic spices of the type carried by noblemen in hunting parties or on military campaign. Shortly, a rider arrived on a donkey fitted with panniers containing loaves of bread and a sack of provisions. Several of the men who had disappeared across nearby fields and into the woods near their camp returned with rabbits, which they laid in a pile beside the fire.

  Julia had watched those preparations and the speculative looks aimed at her with mounting dread. When the count himself strode over, she knew what he would say before he opened his mouth.

  “My men have provided the game and the fire. It’s time for you to prove your worth and produce something edible for us.”

  “I beg your pardon, milord, but producing something truly edible under such crude circumstances would require nothing less than magic.” She folded her arms and raised her chin. “And I am not a practitioner of the magical arts.”

  Her refusal clearly caught him off guard. He came alive, growing across her field of vision.

  “Indeed?” His eyes narrowed. “I was given to understand that the convent’s cook had learned a hot and spicy bit of magic from some gypsies.”

  “Really, Your Lordship.” She looked positively scandalized. “How would I have encountered gypsies while living and working in a convent?”

  His features tightened.

  “You’ve been acquired at great cost to cook for me.” He pointed to the preparations. “Pick up the knife and the game and do so.”

  “I am an artisan. A tempter of palates. A mistress of culinary secrets.” She swept the makeshift campfire with a look of disdain. “Not a rabbit singer who works by the side of the road.”

  His fists were clenched at his sides as he leaned over her, adding the considerable persuasion of his physical power to his argument.

  “You are my cook,” he ground out. “I am ordering you to cook.”

  She raised her gaze to his and thought she must have lost her wits. He was big and forceful and right now was overpowering her senses and rattling her teeth in their sockets. Then through her rising panic, inspiration struck.

  “I will comply with your order, milord”—her gaze focused on that band of metal that clamped his nose together—“if you will agree to remove the band from your nose and smell what you are eating.”

  His shoulders swelled like rising bread.

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort. Who do you think you are, to lay down terms and conditions to me?”

  “Your head cook, milord. You must be willing to trust me with your senses as well as your health and well-being. If you do not trust me to cook agreeably for you here—this humble fare—then I will not cook here.”

  For a moment, it looked to her as if he might try to enforce his order physically. Then he wheeled and stalked back through the camp, barking orders for his men to cook their own game. As he disappeared into the nearby woods, she felt every eye in the camp turn on her in confusion.

  “If she’s the new cook”—mutters reached her ears—“why don’t she cook?”

  Her cheeks burned, her fisted hands throbbed, and her legs might have given way if she hadn’t been leaning against the cart. She climbed up onto the cart again and sat on the rear board watching the men’s progress toward dinner and enduring Regine’s baleful looks.

  “I have to make him respect me and my work,” she defended her course.

  “And what about them?” Regine gestured to the men gathered glumly around the fire. “Don’t they deserve a bit of help?”

  “They’ve managed to feed themselves up to now.”

  “You know, hoarding talents is serious business with the Almighty,” Regine mused, rubbing her own hollow middle. “Not to mention the fact that we will have to eat what they produce.”

  Regine had a point; they would have to eat his men’s cooking for the week it would take to reach the count’s home. That observation, along with the disappointment Sir Axel and Sir Greeve tried valiantly not to show, softened her determination. She left the cart to venture closer to the campfire and heard the arguments taking place among the men charged with cooking.

  They had cleaned the rabbits and now debated whether they should stick them on a spit, as usual, or toss them into the great pot hung too close to the flame … where they would undoubtedly sizzle and scorch into a charred bit of rabbit leather. Heaven knew what they intended to do with the onions, cabbage, and parsnips piled nearby.

  She paused by the basket piled high with bread and tested a loaf with her thumb. The crust gave nicely, surprising her, and the loaves smelled wheaty and fragrant. Next, she paused by a small barrel that stood nearby, wetted her fingers with the drips from the wooden spigot, and sniffed. Wine. Snagging the tin cup that hung on the barrel, she filled it and sipped. It was deep in color and redolent of raspberries and a hint of spice in a fine fume of oak.

  Sir Greeve caught her standing there with the cup in her hand and a frown on her face. “If he doesn’t mind buying bread and wine from locals, why doesn’t he buy a decent joint of meat? Some pork or lamb for a proper meal?”

  “He’s … not partial to hung meats.” Sir Greeve winced.

  Julia blinked. That made as much sense as saying he didn’t like water because it was wet. Aging meats by hanging them in a cool place and allowing them to tenderize was a cornerstone of good cooking. Half of the meat recipes Sister Boniface had imparted to her began: “Take some well-hanged meat …”

  “He says if you hang pork it turns to worms. And lamb goes green and slimy.” Axel appeared on the other side of her and sighed. “Won’t even let us hang game birds … quail, wild geese, swans. Insists they be fresh killed.”

  “So, you have to find fresh meat when traveling with him.”

  “And we don’t have time much for hunting. So if we can’t find an agreeable cottager, we eat mostly small birds and rabbit,” Greeve put in with a rueful look. “Very bad rabbit.”

  Julia looked at the stoic faces of the men crouched around the fire and felt compelled to do something. It wouldn’t take much. Deciding, she drew a cup of wine from the barrel and strolled over to the cooks, missing the way Axel and Greeve grinned and elbowed each other behind her back.

  “A pity you don’t have a bit of bacon to season that pot before you chop up the meat and toss it in,” she said, peering over them toward the pot.

  “I think we might have a bit of bacon,” one of the men declared, rising and pouring through the contents of a bag of provisions lying nearby. Producing a slab of bacon and a knife, he cut several thick strips from the slab and looked to her. She merely glanced at the pot, and he took the hint and tossed them in. They sizzled violently as they hit the hot metal and she suppressed a smile.

  “Of course, if it were my kitchen, I’d say the pot was much too close to the flame. It will cook meat too fast and either burn it
or make it tough.”

  Instantly, the men set about raising the pot and lowering the coals, looking to her until she nodded.

  “And onions in the fat and a bit of garlic sweeten and impart flavor to whatever is added next. Lots of onions for wild rabbit stew.”

  A bullnecked fellow with a wild shock of salt-and-pepper hair, called “Heureaux” by the others, seized several onions and a few cloves of garlic from the spice chest, and sliced them into the hot grease. A pleasant aroma began to waft from the pot after a few moments, and as she gave the contents a look, she casually tipped the cup of wine she held into the pot.

  “Oops.” She shrugged with a scarcely apologetic little smile. “Well, it won’t hurt those rabbits to have a bit of wine to simmer in.”

  Catching on, the men added four more cups of wine while looking to her, stirred the contents, and then looked to her again. In went the rabbit meat. Then the carrots. And some water. Then the lid went on. Parsnips were readied and added as the stew cooked. When a pleasant aroma issued from the pot, she stopped by the spice box and suggested a bit of salt, a few cracked peppercorns, a bit of cumin, and some lemon savory might improve the taste of the stew. When the spices had been added and given a chance to impart their flavor to the mix, she looked to the heat-reddened faces of the men collected around the fire.

  “I think it needs to be tasted.”

  Sir Axel eagerly volunteered. When his eyes closed and he moaned softly the others laughed and headed for the loaves of bread in the nearby basket.

  She appeared by the pot to help the first fellow slice his great round loaf in half, then she plunged her fingers in to pull out a great hunk of the soft middle and fill the opening with a cup of the stew. She repeated the process with the second half and carried it to Sister Regine, who fairly melted with longing as Julia thrust it into her hands.

  “It smells wonderful.”

  “Not so bad,” Julia said perching on the end of the cart with a mischievous grin, “considering what we had to work with.”

  Later, as dark was settling over the camp, the count reappeared and strode over to the fire, where the stew pot had been kept warm in the dying coals. He seized a hunk of bread and a cup of wine and headed for the sleeping canopy erected by his squire.

  “Here, milord,” Sir Axel said, calling after him, “we’ve saved you some of the stew.” All eyes were on the count as he halted and glanced back at the fire.

  “Bread is enough for me,” he declared.

  “Are you sure, milord?” The soldier Heureaux came up from a sitting position to his knees. Several others came alert with him.

  Griffin of Grandaise glanced hotly across the camp to where his stubborn cook and her chaperone were settling into a pallet of blankets placed over a mat of dried grasses on the cart bed.

  “I’m sure.”

  The words unleashed a scramble for the stew pot still warming in the coals. The men snatched up remnants and cuttings from the bread basket and scrambled to dunk them into the pot.

  He watched in consternation as they gobbled the contents down like greedy children. As the rush slowed, he stalked back to the fire and peered into the emptied pot. There was one streak of sauce, one small morsel of meat left at the bottom. He tore a piece from his bread and sopped it up. Studying it for a moment, he cautiously took a bite.

  It tasted of garlic and onions … bacon … salt and pepper … rabbit … and wine. His mouth defied him to water, anticipating more when there was none. When the hell did any of his men learn to cook like—

  He wheeled to look at Axel and Greeve, who were suddenly busy rolling out their pallets for sleeping. Then he looked to his guardsmen. Heureaux intercepted his scrutiny and, with a smile, directed his glance across the campfire to the cart. It took a moment for the sense of it to register.

  She was responsible. She might not have cooked exactly, but she’d done something to make their usual disaster edible. And he’d missed it.

  He reddened and stalked for his cot with his stomach rumbling for more.

  Dammit.

  Chapter Eight

  Griffin awakened hungry and irritable the next morning and as they resumed their journey, his mood darkened still further. Axel and Greeve kept wending their way back to the cart, and each time his own gaze went with them and lingered alarmingly on the halo of reddish hair that belonged to his cook. Each time he roared for them and sent them riding ahead on some errand or other. But his attempt to discipline his own gaze and thoughts was not so successful.

  He kept recalling the defiant flash of his new cook’s unusual eyes as he held her against the convent wall.

  That was what bothered him most, he realized. Julia of Childress might know something about kitchens, might even be a cook of sorts. But to him, she would always be a female first … a tart-tongued, pepper-haired wench who was brazen and arrogant and entirely too full of herself. And the last thing he needed was a temperamental female meddling in what was left of his beleaguered kitchens and bringing them to a grinding halt … especially as he was preparing to take a bride he wanted about as much as he wanted to have both of his legs broken on a rack.

  Midday, they located a copse of trees near a stream and stopped to be out of the hot sun for a while. The men watered the horses and tied them out in a grassy area, then removed their helms and sun-heated mail shirts to sprawl beneath the trees.

  Griffin was in the process of joining his men when he saw his new cook and her chaperone slipping away along the leafy bank and followed, intending to order them back to the cart. But they continued, out of sight of the others, to a bend in the stream where the flow had gouged out a shallow pond. He stopped and watched for a moment, curious about what they would do.

  Through the trees, he saw Julia of Childress raise and tuck her skirts into her belt and wade bare-legged into the cool water. She kicked up a spray and called to Sister Regine to join her. The good sister declined.

  Rightly so, he grumbled mentally. What the devil was she doing out there in the water, exposing her legs. Smooth and muscular and neatly tapered. He watched her untie the top of her gown and open her chemise to splash water on her throat and chest. Smooth throat and creamy … a pang of frustration shot through him as she turned slightly and blocked his view of her bared breasts.

  Look at her. No cook worth her salt splashed around bare-legged and bare-breasted in a stream. She was supposed to oversee the feeding and nourishment of his whole household, for God’s sake, and here she was prancing around in a stream like some pagan water sprite. How could he possibly trust his health and well-being to a female who behaved like a deranged bacchanal—

  A branch snapped somewhere and she snatched her chemise together and whirled to search the bank. His heart skipped at the sight of big green eyes set in a heart-shaped face and framed by a swirl of bright hair. All he could think was that in sunlight that hair seemed more like spun gold than dusky red pepper.

  “What are you doing there, Your Lordship?” she called breathlessly.

  He realized that the wood that had snapped was beneath his foot. He had inched forward into the sunlight without realizing it and now stood fully exposed on the bank above her. Appalled at being caught staring, he scrambled for an excuse.

  “You’re too far from the others,” he managed to grind out. “The closer we get to Paris, the more travelers about. It’s not safe for women to be abroad—”

  “Paris?” She suddenly began wading toward the bank. “Did you say we’re near Paris?”

  “Yes.” He blinked, dismayed to see her heading directly for him as she left the water. “We’re … just over half a day’s ride to … Paris.” He stumbled back a step as she came toward him grappling with the ties of her chemise and pulling the top of her unlaced overgown together. When she reached him, the hem of her gown was still raised and tucked in her belt and her legs were bare and wet from the knees down. He backed another step and then another, reddening with embarrassment at his instinctive retreat.r />
  “I have been meaning to speak to you about that, milord.” She finally yanked her hem free and let it fall, then used her shift and gown to dry the water on her legs. He suffered equal impulses of fascination and horror as she pushed the fabric over those sleek contours that had just burned themselves into his brain. “Since we are so close to such wonderful markets, I thought it would be a good time to replenish your supplies of spices and—”

  “Ohhhh, no.” He rescued enough of his wits from the heat pooling in his loins to realize that this was no time and he was in no condition to engage in such negotiations. “We are not setting foot inside Paris. And that is final.”

  He turned back to the camp, desperate to put distance between them.

  “Not Paris proper, milord.” She came after him, holding her hem up and picking her way through the dried grass and shrubby undergrowth. “The Hot Fair held to the north of Paris this time of year. I have never been there myself, but I’ve been told that the Paris merchants bring their wares out of the city to set up stalls in the open air. Merchantmen arriving from the East stop at the fair when sailing up the Seine on their way to the Hot Fair at Troyes. It’s a grand market … everything imaginable … the freshest foods and spices … and good prices …”

  Her voice had begun to fade and, against his better judgment, he glanced over his shoulder. She was hopping up and down to keep her balance as she brushed her feet and shoved them into her slippers. Appalled by the way he had paused to watch, he wrenched his attention forward and struck off again, quickening and lengthening his stride. She soon caught up.

  “How much do you spend in a year on spices and condiments, milord? Quite a bit, I should imagine.”

  He scowled and refused to honor her with a glance.

  “My steward does the buying and keeps my household accounts. And he is under strict orders not to bother me with tallies of turnips and trenchers.”

  “In other words, you have no idea how much of your coin is spent each year to feed your household,” she charged, breathless from the effort required to match his pace.