The Marriage Test

by Betina Krahn

  “In other words, how much I spend is none of your concern.”

  “I beg to differ.” She darted past him and stopped directly in his path, causing him to arch and teeter to avoid touching her. “If I am to plan meals and bargain with local producers and purchase staples, spices, and equipment, I must know what I have to spend.”

  “Who says you will do the buying?” He tried to look through her instead of at her, but he could still see she had taken serious umbrage at that prospect.

  “All cooks do their own buying, milord. How else can we be sure the ingredients we use are fresh and healthful? How else can we be held accountable for the safety and nourishment of the household we feed?” She yanked and tied the laces on the half-open front of her gown. “When was the last time your cook went to a spice market?”

  “I haven’t had a head cook for some time,” he replied, refusing to watch what she was doing.

  “Well then, your steward. How long ago did he attend a fair or travel to a spice market to replenish your spice chest?” When he didn’t answer, she finished the bow she was tying and tried another tact. “When was the last time your kitchen served you anything made with cinnamon or nutmeg or a good fine spice?” She drew a conclusion from his silence. “If you cannot say, then it has been too long a time, milord. If I am to revive your kitchens, then I must do some buying on the way to your home.”

  “So that’s it. You want me to throw good money after bad.” He bent closer to her, scowling. Wittingly or not, she had just provided the most convincing evidence to date that she was a true cook. He had never known a cook—young or old, seasoned or green—who didn’t harangue his patron for more money or a chance to spend it at a market or fair. “You expect me to spend money at the behest of a cook who refuses to cook.”

  “A cook without the proper ingredients and tools cannot do much, milord. Surely you can see that,” she said, straining to sound reasonable.

  “Out of the question,” he said, lowering his face still closer to hers.

  He could see that she was trying to avoid meeting his gaze. Smart wench. Then in the silence that settled between them, she turned her head slightly and slid into his gaze like melted butter into bread. Perhaps too smart. Perhaps she sensed that some of the heat building in him had nothing to do with anger or outrage.

  “What is your favorite spice, milord?” Her voice was suddenly full of texture and nuance that made his ears heat and sent a surge of anticipation prickling through his scalp. He felt a need to swallow, but found himself incapable of doing it. “What taste do you crave above all others?”

  The growing tightness in his throat now prohibited speech as well. Was she leaning closer to him or was he swaying toward her?

  “What makes your mouth water and your heart skip in anticipation? Cinnamon … a dusky red powder that tingles the tip of your tongue? Or could it be ginger … hot and bright along the back of your throat? Perhaps it is nutmeg … sweet and nutty … caressing your lips and bathing your cheeks with flavor …”

  Julia was mildly surprised by the words leaving her mouth. Tingles and caresses. Bathing in flavor. Someone else must be talking; she was too busy sinking in pools of hot Baltic amber to string together a coherent thought.

  Every part of her body had come alive with awareness of him. She should move, blink, clear her throat … something … anything but stand here gazing into his eyes and succumbing to the mystery of a man who owned her time and talents and, despite the exorbitant price he had paid for them, seemed to value neither.

  “Pepper,” he said in a cracked whisper. “I love pepper.”

  “Red or black, milord?”

  “Both.”

  “Short or long pepper?”

  “Short.”

  “Is it the spiciness or the heat that you find most pleasing?”

  “H-heat. Eye-watering, blood-searing, sweat-out-a-fever heat. Red hot. Like a glowing iron poker.” His gaze flowed over her head and he curled his hands into fists at his sides.

  She was warm from the sun, but felt her skin glowing hotter where his notice touched it. As she watched, feeling strangely sensitive in every womanly part of her, he parted and wetted his lips. Instantly, all of her awareness settled on his bold, generously curved mouth. Moist now. Glistening.

  “I’m sure there will be wonderful peppers at the fair’s spice market,” she murmured, trying to rescue her senses from the puddle of melted resolve in the middle of her. “Pungent fresh pepper that will burn your nose and make your eyes water and your blood heat. I make a special three-pepper pottage with red pepper and horseradish and mustard and paprika …”

  “Say that again,” he demanded, his voice deep and rough.

  “Red pepper and horseradish and—”

  “The name of the dish,” he specified, his eyes darkening in the centers.

  “Three-pepper pottage.”

  “Again.”

  “Three-pepper pottage.” The words caused her mouth to draw into a bow and she felt his gaze on it like a physical touch. “Three-pepper pottage.”

  His head lowered.

  She raised her chin one accommodating inch.

  “Ahem.”

  Sister Regine’s voice from nearby startled them both and set them lurching apart with heat-burnished faces and luminous eyes.

  “We … were just … I was just a-asking about …” she stammered.

  “Spices.” He cleared his throat with an authoritative rumble and glared at her. “Consider performing your rightful duties and I shall consider your request.”

  Sister Regine watched as he strode off and turned on Julia with a frown.

  “What in Heaven’s name was that all about?”

  “I was asking for permission to attend a hot fair outside Paris,” she responded, feeling damp inside her garments and oddly exposed.

  “Oh, is that what you were asking for.” Regine narrowed one eye. “All of that staring and breathing and blushing over a few grains of spice?” Her other eye narrowed. “Cooking must be more involving than I thought.”

  Julia’s face flamed as she headed back to the cart.

  “You have no idea.”

  That night, they camped on a hill outside of Paris, overlooking the city’s hazy glow upriver and more distinct lights coming from the campfires in the market camps that littered the valley below. There was enough breeze from the west to keep the market smells at bay and provide a steady cooling. And when the men arrived in camp with fresh chickens bought from a nearby farmer and looked to her, she glanced at her brooding master and gave them a nod that set them scrambling for their knives and fire steel.

  As she did the night before, she strolled the camp, peering, assessing, and giving advice that yielded some of the finest chicken sops the men had ever tasted. Her refusal to cook was compromised, but toward a higher good. And unlike the night before, the count also took a portion of bread, filled its soft center with the savory chicken, and ate hungrily.

  When the meal was finished and the tools were cleaned and packed away, Julia retired to the cart to prepare for sleep. When she returned from visiting the bushes, she found the count sharing a silence with Regine.

  “Milord.” She paused warily at the side of the cart.

  “A reasonable supper,” he observed.

  “Which would have been greatly improved by the addition of some sage and parsley, and rosemary.” She looked pointedly at him, then away. “And perhaps some long pepper.”

  He scowled.

  “You’ll have your visit to the spice market tomorrow,” he said, laying down the challenge. “And then we’ll see what sort of a kitchen steward you truly are.”

  Julia contained her smile of triumph until after His Lordship had stalked away. She turned, eager to engulf Regine in a hug, and found the cherub-faced sister contracted into a defensive knot.

  “I don’t see what you’re so happy about,” the little nun declared with rising anxiety. “Fairs are noisy, smelly dens of mammon and
iniquity.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sister Regine, as it happened, had it half right. The Hot Fair outside of Paris was a sprawling, noisy distillation of all that was worst and best about the great city. The gathering drew established merchants and itinerant peddlers, sly tavern keepers and gawking sheep herders, wool-clad burghers’ wives and ladies in fine damask … as well as an army of wardens, notaries, and fee collectors, and their opposites: cutpurses, moneychangers, and short-weighting merchants. From the highest to the lowest, every aspect of Paris society was represented.

  It was the haze they noticed first as they descended into the valley. Before the dew dried that morning, hearths, ovens, and braziers had begun spewing streams of smoke as bakers, wafer makers, confectioners, sauce makers, roasters, and food vendors prepared their wares for the day ahead. Shortly afterward the lanes of stalls, tents, and carts began to bustle with people and ring with the calls of merchants hawking wares. At the base of a growing din lay a hum of hammers, cart wheels, and grindstones, and over its top skimmed the laughter floating from taverns and jugglers’ audiences and the squeals of racing children.

  Sister Regine had chosen to stay behind and pray for her success, so Julia arrived at the fair with a cordon of escorts headed by Sir Axel and Sir Greeve. Her heart beat like a caged bird in her chest, both from the excitement of seeing something she’d heard stories about and from anxiety that in this foreign milieu, her judgment and ability would be put to the test.

  Her first few impressions alone were worth whatever price she had to pay to gain them. She halted the party to watch two jugglers traversing a narrow plank while balancing balls on their noses, then went on to watch a banner maker at work, investigate a number of cooking tools at a tinsmith’s stall, and laugh delightedly at a mummers’ performance of a henpecked husband who finally evened the score. Sir Axel and Sir Greeve quietly pointed out the trick in a sleight-of-hand shell game and then closed ranks around her to usher her past a tavern fight turned ugly.

  There was color, noise, and activity all around … things to attract the eye and extract coin from the purse. Not that she actually had a purse. His Lordship had decided to entrust his coin to the care of Sir Greeve and Sir Axel … who, she strongly suspected, had also been given the authority to override any purchases that seemed unwise. Annoying as such oversight was, it was not exactly fatal to her hopes for the day.

  “Look, demoiselle,” Axel whispered with awe, pointing to a series of carts draped with gaily colored trims and ribands, chaplets of flowers, and ladies’ caps of all shapes, colors, and sizes. “It’s like a rainbow.”

  “Lovely indeed. But not on my list.” She turned away with a sigh.

  “List? What list?” Greeve frowned as he thumped Axel’s arm to wake him from his trance and hurried after her.

  “I’ve made a roster of the things I use most commonly and are probably needed in His Lordship’s kitchen. First on that list is bolting cloth.”

  “Cloth?” Axel lurched along after them.

  “For wrapping, pressing, draining, straining, and sieving. Really, Sir Axel, I should think you would know how frequently cloth is used in a kitchen.”

  “Well, I …” Axel seemed a bit flustered. “But of course. Bolting cloth.” The moment she moved on, he looked to Greeve and shrugged in bewilderment.

  As they entered the cloth merchant’s lane they slowed and perused the open tents filled with bolts of cloth. Sir Axel spotted some coarse bleached cotton and ducked inside a tent to hold a bit of the fabric up for her to see.

  “You said you wanted a coarse, sturdy cloth.” He tugged on the weave to demonstrate. “This seems sturdy enough.”

  Julia gave both merchant and merchandise an assessing glance.

  “I’m afraid it won’t do,” she said distinctly, turning to leave.

  The merchant rushed over to intercept her. “Oh, but look again, milady … it is excellent cloth … very sturdy … good for many uses.”

  “I’m sure it is fine cloth, monsieur, but le Comte de Grandaise must have only the finest in his kitchens.” She smiled sweetly.

  “Milady, this is the finest bolting cloth made.” Seeing her under the escort of two knights, the merchant apparently assumed she was a lady, despite her simple garments. He was torn between expressing outrage at her conclusion and pleading with her to reconsider it. “I carried it all the way from Florence myself, a month back. The finest cotton Italy has to offer … woven with care by Florence’s expert looms. Surely you have heard of Italian cotton.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Axel put in earnestly. Then he looked again at the cloth and frowned. “But doesn’t it seem like it’s been stretched in places?”

  Julia looked up to find the portly knight staring at the cloth with widened eyes. So artless. So sincere as he pronounced an opinion guaranteed to curl a cloth merchant’s beard. The first rule of good bargaining was to have more than one person in the negotiations, even if that other person was not a buyer himself. And so much the better if the third person didn’t know he was part of the process.

  “So it does,” she agreed, rubbing the cloth between finger and thumb.

  “That is the nature of the weave, milady,” the merchant declared.

  “Are you sure it hasn’t been wet? Perhaps rained upon and dried?”

  “Milady!” The merchant grew livid. “Never! My cloth is never wetted and stretched. A vile and deceitful practice employed by some of the ungodly heathens in my trade.” He spit on the ground to condemn those unworthy wretches and glared at his competitors in nearby stalls. “I am an honest man … long a resident of Paris … respected in my hall.”

  “I did not mean to imply otherwise.” She gave an apologetic smile. “But now that I look closer, I believe it may be an unfortunate gauge for kitchen work. Too gross a weave for finer straining and too fine a weave for thicker work.”

  “Can you not test it?” Axel proposed, drawing a gasp from the merchant.

  “No need. I will just call on the other stalls,” Julia said, backing toward the entrance. “Someone will have cloth perfect for my lord’s kitchens.”

  “No, please, milady … save yourself the steps. You will only be disappointed by the inferior offerings of the others. Perhaps”—he looked unhappily at Axel—“we could arrange a test.”

  “I’ll find a sauce vendor,” Axel declared eagerly.

  Half an hour of hard bargaining later, Julia exited the stall with seven bolts of excellent kitchen cloth and the knowledge that cloth merchants, at base, were no different than farmers with loads of cabbages, onions, and peas. Soon with the help of Sir Axel and Sir Greeve, who fell quite naturally into the role of the eternal skeptic and the overeager assistant, she added tinsmiths, waferers, basket weavers, dried fruit sellers, nut merchants, stone cutters, and oil merchants to the brotherhood of the susceptible.

  Each bargain she struck added to her confidence and carried her that much closer to the stalls of the spice sellers, merchants who knew the worth of their precious wares and were renowned to be shrewd and difficult traders. But each bargain she struck also added to the bolts, baskets, earthen jugs, and bundles her escorts had to bear. By the time they paused, midday, to purchase some meat pasties and apples roasted on sticks, the three guardsmen who accompanied them were groaning under the burden of those bolts of cloth, heavy bags of nuts, wooden flats of dried fruits, earthen jugs of spiced oils, bundles of dried herbs, a large stone mortar and pestle, and sundry small tools from the tinsmith. And Sir Greeve was counting the coin that was left with no small alarm.

  “Only a few livres left and we have yet to buy a single grain of pepper,” he said, paling.

  Julia gave him a confident smile.

  “I’m sure His Lordship has more.”

  Griffin had removed his sun-heated tunic of mail and sat in his leather jerkin, studying the parchment containing the royal decree that he must marry the daughter of the Count of Verdun by Michaelmas. He raked a hand through his ha
ir and wished he could just toss the offensive document into the fire and pretend it didn’t exist. But he couldn’t, and he was trying to sort out what kind of dower lands he would be forced to settle on his unwanted bride. He searched the loathsome document for her name. Dammit—his fate was linked to the chit and he couldn’t even remember what she was called!

  A motion in the distance caught his eye and he looked up to find Greeve and three of his men struggling manfully up the path to their camp with arms full of all manner of bolts, boxes, bags, and bundles. Their burdens were so great that their legs fairly bowed from the weight they carried. He bounded up and directed them to the cart, where, to Sister Regine’s chagrin, they dumped their cargo onto the cart bed and when that was full, piled it up on the seats. Groaning with relief, they stretched their cramped fingers and aching backs and stumbled over to the fire to collapse on the well-trampled grass around it.

  “What the devil is this?” Griffin demanded of Greeve as the knight stared with dismay at the deep red marks Julia’s purchases had left on his fingers. “Where is she … that cook of mine?”

  “I came”—Greeve leaned against the cart, panting—“to bring these and get additional coin, milord. The demoiselle has begun to buy spices and I have only a few sous left. She bade me return and”—he swallowed hard—“get more.”

  “More?” Griffin lashed a glance at the fair in progress in the distance. “She’s bought all of that and still wants more?”

  “If you’d seen her, milord—she’s a marvel. She can charm the chasuble off a bishop.” Greeve smiled as if hoping to appease his lord. “I left her with Axel in the lane of the spice merchants. She said to tell you that her very next purchase would be pepper.”

  Griffin felt as it he’d been punched. The nerve of the wench, taunting him with his own preferences. And the memory of how she had learned them.

  “The hell it will.” He shoved the parchment he’d been reading into his courier pouch and strode for the path down the hill toward the fair.