Tonight he wished only to read his newspaper at dinner without being distracted—or profoundly disturbed—by a bowl of soup.
But his fingers had already gripped the spoon again and skimmed the surface of the soup. His hand rose, lifting the spoon to his lips. He felt himself leaning forward a fraction of an inch.
He forced the spoon to return to the soup. It was too late. He was too old for this, too accustomed to being indifferent to his meals.
He resumed his perusal of the newspaper, though he was no longer certain whether he was reading of French bombings or American elections.
After an uneasy pause, Prior took away the soup.
Dinner was a bloodbath of Romans-at-Carthage proportions.
Verity had been perplexed by Mr. Somerset’s strident demand for only three courses, but not overly alarmed—if she was as good as she believed herself to be, then one course was enough. One mouthful was enough.
She did not learn about the soup immediately, for items carried away from the dinner table were returned to the scullery, rather than the kitchen itself. For the second course she served prawns that had been caught off the coast at dawn, creamy pink and bathed in a velvety white wine sauce. Along with the prawns she sent half a dozen small plates: lightly fried oysters, mussels in a curried broth, glazed chestnut, buttered peas, gratinéed potato, and braised leek.
After her initial diaster-laden months as Monsieur David’s apprentice, in the Marquess of Londonderry’s household, Verity had realized, to her own and everyone else’s amazement, that she was talented before a stove. She had a sensitive nose, an unpolluted palate, and a manual dexterity rivaling that of a circus juggler’s.
But she’d always cooked from instructions handed down to her—Monsieur David, having worked under the great Monsieur Soyer as well as at the court of Napoleon III, had a wealth of recipes that most cooks would give their knife arm to possess. That was, until she’d met him, a man who could find no pleasure in food, who only watched her wistfully as she ate and ate and ate.
Only then did she start thinking about the desires, fears, joys, and pains so inextricably intertwined in something as simple as a meal. Only then did she begin to cook purposefully, not merely to earn her wages and keep a roof over her head, but to satisfy hungers that extended beyond the needs of the stomach.
And everything she’d done, she did with him in mind, sometimes with memories of him like a print of fire in her head, sometimes with only a faint trace of longing seeping through her thoughts. But always, hovering just above the threshold of consciousness, was the constant refrain: if one day she had a chance to cook for him…if one day she had a chance to cook for him…
Her food became sensual—the tenderness of a kiss, the abandon of rolling down a grassy knoll on a summer afternoon, the intensity of a lover’s gaze. She created new dishes—dishes both humble and extravagant—with but one goal in mind: to break through the barrier of the years and return him to a time before his losses had robbed him of this most primary of pleasures.
She wanted to give him happiness on a plate.
One bite, that was all she needed.
And one bite was apparently all she got. Mr. Prior himself came into the kitchen and took her aside to speak to her. The soup had been rejected after two sips, said Mr. Prior. And when the second course had been spread before Mr. Somerset, he’d sampled one of everything, chewed gravely, sat silent another minute, and risen from the table.
He was done with dinner. He did not even require the third course, the petit pot de crème au chocolat that the year before had had Monsieur du Gard, the Parisian industrialist, weep openly at the table because it made him remember his chocolate-loving sister, who’d given up school—and chocolate—so he could be educated.
Minutes passed before Verity realized that Mr. Prior was still speaking. She laid a hand on his sleeve to stop him from further apologies. “It’s all right, Mr. Prior,” she said, too numb to quite understand what had happened. “Gentlemen are what they are. Their preferences must prevail.”
She troweled on her French accent. Everyone belowstairs knew that when her English approximated the slurriness of wet cement, she was done speaking.
Mr. Prior nodded and left. Verity turned back to her apprentices. “Well done,” she said. “It was one of the best dinners we ever cooked.”
And so it had been, abbreviated though it was. She’d thought it would be enough—it and all the blessings her heart could bestow—but she was wrong.
She had been entirely mistaken.
At eleven o’clock at night, someone knocked on the library door. It was Prior.
“Would you be needing anything else, sir?” asked the butler.
As a matter of fact, Stuart would. Having had next to nothing at dinner, he was hungry.