The Marriage Test

by Betina Krahn

  “Wake up, milord. Your supper awaits.” A voice cut through the pleasant darkness … a familiar voice … a woman’s voice. He sat up with a jerk and fumbled to keep from emptying the dregs of his tankard into his bathwater. Sitting on a chair across from the end of his tub was the subject of the tantalizing dream he had just been forced to abandon. There she was. In the flesh. Looking warm and fresh and delectable enough to eat.

  “What the devil—” He reddened, checking to see how much of him was exposed. Thankfully, not much; the water was gray from the soap. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to give you a taste of something,” she said, leaving the chair to kneel beside the tub. That was when he realized she had a covered dish in her hands.

  “You invaded my bath to—to—”

  “Bring you something to eat. You are hungry, aren’t you?” she said calmly, discarding the lid and drawing out a wedge of what appeared to be custard pie or tart. “I think you may remember this.” She held it up toward him, urging him to take a bite.

  “This is absurd. You shouldn’t be here.” He looked around frantically, feeling a prickle of anxiety running over his scalp. “Where is my squire?”

  “Not here. Try this, milord. I made it specially for you.” She smiled and he hoped it wasn’t because she could see his growing panic.

  “Cooks do not invade their lords’ chambers and force-feed them tarts,” he declared irritably, staring at that morsel and feeling his mouth begin to water. “I am about to leave my bath, and if you don’t remove yourself, you’ll have only yourself to blame when you’re subjected to the sight of a man’s nakedness.” When she didn’t move, he glowered and leaned forward with an air of threat.

  “Don’t expect me to pick you up when you faint,” he announced, clapping hands on the side of the tub as if preparing to rise. “If you swoon, you’ll lie where you fall until my squire comes and scrapes you up.”

  “I’m a cook, not a bride, remember? Nothing on your person could possibly unhinge me.” She narrowed her eyes defiantly. “I’ve seen oxen and capons and even sausages being made.”

  She shoved the pie an inch closer, with a stubborn look. She was calling him on his threat, and he wasn’t certain which was more alarming … his desperation to have her go or his desire to have her stay.

  “All right, dammit. If it will get you to leave,” he said, his voice suddenly thick. He bit off a piece and as he chewed, his heart all but stopped.

  He knew that taste. An egg-based custard flavored by chunks of rich pink-fleshed fish and a musky, garlicky, mushroom-like flavor that coated his mouth like culinary velvet. It was a heaven-inspired pairing of the very best produce of land and sea … salmon and truffles. He chewed slowly, luxuriating in the tastes, feeling the flavors seeping up the back of his throat into his head, rattling the closed and padlocked gates of his sense of smell.

  “Where did you get—” He looked at her with his mouth drooping and she stuffed another bite of the torte into it. He chewed, feeling a shiver course through him. He seized the remainder of the piece and took the third bite on his own. “How did you ever find—where did you get this recipe?”

  “We cooks have our sources, milord. You do recognize the taste?”

  He caught the knowing glint in her eyes and felt a quake of anticipation run through his body. She knew something she couldn’t possibly know. But just now the larger part of his consciousness was focused on that well-remembered and often-longed-for taste.

  “Truffles,” he said thickly, his mouth already watering for more.

  “Salmon Truffle Torte,” she said, then braced on the side of the tub and pushed to her feet. “There is more, milord. Lots more.” Her voice was low and earthy and as thick with the potential for pleasure as the torte she had just fed him. “But you have to get out of the tub and come with me to get it.”

  At that moment he would have followed her to the end of the earth. Stark naked.

  He rose out of the water like Neptune himself, and stalked out of the tub and across the stone floor to the toweling draped over a stool. His legs were a little weak and he could feel memories and emotions stirring in him … palpable and volatile and not a little alarming. He turned his back to her so she wouldn’t see how his hands were trembling. He pulled on a pair of tights and then a long shirt and simple tunic. The moment his belt was on, she took him by the hand and led him out the door and up the winding stairs.

  The sentry lookout was much as it had been a fortnight ago. The large wooden shutters were thrown back to the open air and there were hampers stacked around, and a linen-draped table was set before the bench on the balcony. His mouth began to water and the hollow feeling in his middle intensified as he sank onto the edge of the cushion-strewn seat and watched her light several candles and place them just out of the breeze. In the sky overhead, the dusky rose of evening had given place to encroaching purple hues. He gripped his knees and watched her swaying toward him with something in her hands.

  She slid onto the cushion-littered seat beside him and held out a spoon of something. After a moment, he opened his mouth and was rewarded by another taste he hadn’t experienced in more than seven years: Oyster and Truffle Soup.

  Upon his first bite, his eyes closed. On his second, he gave a ragged sigh. His third he rolled around in his mouth, savoring the meatiness of the oysters, the richness of the broth, and the pungent flavor of the mushrooms.

  “It’s been a long time since I had oysters,” he said, his voice resonant with pleasure he couldn’t suppress. “Especially with truffles.”

  “The oysters came from Bordeaux,” she said, edging closer.

  “And the truffles?” he asked, taking another bite.

  “We cooks have our—”

  “Sources,” he finished for her, staring into her softened smile and shimmering eyes. He lost track of everything else for a moment … until she guided his hand to fill the spoon and raise it to his mouth. And while he was occupied with imbibing that liquid paradise, she slipped the band from his nose.

  “Hey!” He tried to grab it back but she refused to release it, looking steadily into his gaze, making him think about what she was doing.

  “You won’t need this tonight,” she said softly, exerting just enough force to take it from him and lay in on the table by his trencher.

  He stared at the curled band of metal on the white linen and realized what she was doing. For the last seven years that band of steel had been his sole defense against both the sensory assaults of the world and his own charged and overpowering emotions. Tonight, she was stripping him of that defense and demanding that he let his emotions run wherever his potent senses led. The alarming thing was that she had no idea where those complex and volatile emotions could lead. And for once, he didn’t, either.

  “This isn’t fair, you know,” he declared.

  “Fair? You expect ‘fair’ from a maid who was sold by an abbess to a nobleman who all but imprisoned her in his kitchen and made her cook for hours on end without a single word of praise or simple gratitude?”

  He stared at her heart-shaped face with its stubborn chin; at the clear, bright mind visible inside those haunting eyes; and at the strong, sleek little body honed by exertion to withstand hours of intense labor. She was right. She was no shrinking violet or easily bruised lily. She was a strong, capable, intelligent young woman. And she was demanding to be let into the heart she had already laid siege to and won.

  He closed his eyes and prayed he wasn’t making a huge mistake. Because, if she were willing to weather the storms that were coming their way …

  Then it was done.

  His decision made, he lifted the bowl of soup to his nose and took a long, slow breath. His eyes closed as the vapors—mingled scents of earth and sea, perfectly blended—curled through his deprived and ravenous sense, reaching for the very core of him.

  “He made them for you, didn’t he?” she said quietly, near his ear. “Grand Jean.” He opened his ey
es and nodded.

  “How did you know?”

  She smiled and left the bench. He continued to eat and by the time he reached the bottom of the bowl, she was back with an uncovered platter.

  Rich scents billowed up from an artful fan of slices of golden, sautéed capon … basking in a sauce made of truffles and mushrooms in wine and almond cream. For a moment he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t even blink.

  Then she draped a slice onto a finger of bread and offered it to him.

  Flavors and smells that seemed to come from both the depths of earth and the heights of Heaven filled his head. He ate that piece, then another, and another …

  Memories and old lessons mingled with new desires and awareness to burst through the last of his carefully wrought restraints. He looked up into her eyes, his head filled with potent scents from his past and his body filled with warmth from her nearness, and saw his past and future merging.

  He reached for her, drew her close to him on the bench, and startled her by putting a piece of the capon into her mouth. She groaned softly and melted against his shoulder. Her eyes glistened and her lips reddened as she licked sauce from them. When she looked up at him … open and heart naked … he glimpsed what this dinner, this special bid to his senses and passion was meant to accomplish. She wanted to be fully that which fortune, guile, desire, and perhaps even the Almighty Himself had conspired to make her.

  The next instant his lips covered hers. Her scents curled through him … the dark soil and garlic fragrance of truffles on her hands and near her mouth … she tasted while cooking. The hint of long pepper remaining on her fingers … the musk of warm cream and newly ground flour … the tart, winey sweetness of early pears … cinnamon and nutmeg … the dust of ground almonds … the more subtle layering of lavender and fresh soap …

  She was not only the cook, he realized, she was the feast.

  His feast.

  In that moment he knew. Abbess, count, duke, king … none of them, not even all of them together were going to keep him from having this woman. Pulling her onto his lap, he kissed her and accepted unequivocally—for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health—everything she had just offered him.

  With a triumphant laugh, she hugged him and covered his face with kisses before turning back to feed him more of that magnificent bird and truffles. Sauce dripped down his chin and she laughed and caught it with her tongue … following it up to his lips and offering him the taste of it on her.

  Long, sensuous, truffle-flavored kisses gave way to wine-sweetened sighs and groans of mounting pleasure that were carried away on the gentle evening breeze. She fed him truffles shaved over a creamy rice and almond pudding … then wined-spiced pear and almond custard tart …

  Between bites they kissed and explored the pleasures of touch as well as smell and taste. He sought out her shape beneath her simple woolen gown and she traced the mounded muscle of his chest and the broad plane of his back. She nuzzled his neck and ruffled his hair and ran her nails against the grainy texture of his beard stubble … satisfying her curiosity, setting to memory every texture and line of him. He caressed her curves and teased the tips of her breasts through her garments and relished her response to the delicious new pleasures he showed her.

  Drunk with wine and truffles and Julia, he finally slid her from his lap, rose, and pulled her to the door and along the passage to the steps. There, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her down to his chamber.

  Kicking the door closed behind them, he bore her to the great draped bed and sank onto it with her beneath him. The exertion and change of location cleared his head more than he would have liked. For a moment he lay looking down at her, savoring every tantalizing detail of the view.

  “Want to change your mind?” he asked. “Last chance.”

  “Let me think,” she said with a hint of breathlessness. “A lifetime of abstinence, scratchy woolens, and making the same frumenty every morning … or … a lifetime of loving a handsome, strong, honorable man who knows me and wants me and has chosen me over safety, sanity, and the king’s favor? No … no change of heart here, milord.”

  “But if you had to choose again?” he said. “If you could start over, what would you want to do?”

  “Exactly what I have done, milord. And”—she reached for his hand and slid it onto her breast, her eyes twinkling—“I do believe I would choose this, too.”

  With a growl, he sank his arms around her and prepared to kiss her within an inch of her life.

  She slid her arms around his neck and gave him a searing hot kiss that melted him all the way to his loins.

  With a groan, he pushed up onto his knees and stripped off his shirt.

  Julia watched him towering above her, drank in the movements of his big, powerful body, and felt like her every muscle had turned to mush. When he reached for the lacings of her gown, she tried to help, but she seemed to be all thumbs and limp fingers. By the time they were both naked, she was breathless with laughter and gloriously embarrassed.

  “As your husband,” he said, eyes glowing, “it’s comforting to know that the one thing you’re not good at is getting out of your clothes.”

  She laughed and held her arms out to him, but he remained on his knees, astride her, for one more eternity-bound moment.

  “You are beautiful,” he murmured as he sank over her, running his nose along the hollow of her throat and up to her ear, inhaling her. “So very beautiful.”

  “Fresh rose water,” he said against her hair. “And new linen.”

  “I remembered that you liked the smell,” she said.

  “Ummm. You were right.” His kisses trailed down the side of her neck to her shoulder. “The lavender and cream of your soap … you bathed last night.”

  “I’ll never have secrets from you, milord,” she said, inhaling as he reached the tip of her breast. There he stopped and tensed … smelling, tasting her nipple. “Honey,” he said in desire-tattered tones. “Your breasts smell like honey.” She gave a soft, knowing laugh as he licked and suckled and tantalized her the way she had just tantalized him. After a few sizzling moments, he raised his head to look into her passion-darkened eyes.

  “You put it there for me?” he whispered.

  “I have a few more surprises for you, milord.” Her smile was temptation incarnate. “If you can find them.”

  “Oh, God,” he groaned, realizing it was indeed half a prayer.

  Hungry for all of her secrets, he covered her naked skin inch by inch. At her elbows he found a hint of sweet, tart pear and in the cleft between her breasts was a stunning blend of fine spice … cinnamon and ginger and cloves and pepper. Behind each ear was a hint of heliotrope, and at her knees he found the must of grapes.

  But beneath it all, blending those exquisite scents into a harmony, was the deeply moving scent of Julia herself. A hint of salt and tang of vinegar … a musk that spoke of arousal and invitation … a salty, roe-like fragrance that mingled with the fruitlike sweetness of her skin.

  And he could smell it all … in layers … opening levels of sensitivity when he wanted them … focusing all of his awareness on her … just her.

  He raised his head from the curve of her hip and found her looking at him with her heart visible in her eyes. She was the key, he realized. It had come full circle. His salvation had begun with a cook, and now was completed by one.

  Who else but a woman of her sensitivity to flavors and scents could understand the strange workings of his internal world? Who but a brave and profoundly compassionate woman would be willing to open her heart to a man who had closed off his own emotions to the world? Who but his Julia would risk everything to follow her heart and in doing so, help him to find his?

  He kissed and caressed her with care, plumbing the depths of his own feelings and capacity for tenderness, drawing the power of restraint from the lush and enervating pleasures she offered him.

  She gave herself wholly … no
thing held back … never guessing that the subtle scents with which she had marked her body had become a path to freedom as well as a path to love for him. Needs she had never experienced before began to uncoil in her body and carry her into a deepening response. He showered attention on her throat and breasts and waist and limbs and she felt the pleasure of it all the way into her bones. By the time he slipped between her thighs and began to tantalize her with slow, rhythmic motions, there wasn’t a part of her body that wasn’t marked permanently by the possession of the pleasure he gave her.

  The deeper, richer contact she craved came at maddening slow pace. Her impatience to have more of him bore testimony to the care with which he introduced her to each new pleasure. As a hot and urgent haze of need built in her, she began to understand that some of the delight of joining came from the anticipation of still greater pleasure. She began to meet his movements and then to encourage them with her sighs and responses. Gradually, the tension and longing reached unbearable levels in her body and she tensed and arched against him, seeking whatever would shatter that tantalizing bright bubble of tension in her body.

  Then, as that delicious strain and expectation reached some divinely ordained limit, it felt as if she burst and shattered into a thousand little pieces … flung in all directions, disappearing into pure light.

  It was some time before her senses cleared and she felt him withdraw and pull her close against him. She was floating slowly back to the here and now, when she felt the rumble of his chest against her ear and realized he was speaking.

  “I love you, Julia of Grandaise. There’s no going back now.”

  Several hours later, well into the night, Julia awakened to find Griffin propped on his arm beside her, watching her. Somewhere in the night, he had pulled a quilted coverlet over them. She roused, responded to a gentle kiss, and snuggled closer to him. The silence was sweet, but the sound of his voice speaking her name was sweeter.