The kitchen at Fairleigh Park was palatial in dimension, as grand as anything to be found at Chatsworth or Blenheim, and certainly several times larger than what one would expect for a manor the size of Fairleigh Park.
Bertie Somerset had the entire kitchen complex renovated in 1877—shortly after he inherited, and two years before Verity Durant came to work for him. After the improvements, the complex boasted of a dairy, a scullery, and a pantry each the size of a small cottage, separate larders for meat, game, and fish, two smokehouses, and a mushroom house where a heap of composted manure provided edible mushrooms year round.
The main kitchen, floored in cool rectangles of gray flagstone, with oak duckboards where the kitchen staff most often stood, had an old-fashioned open hearth and two modern closed ranges. The ceiling rose twenty feet above the floor. Windows were set high and faced only north and east, so that not a single beam of sunlight would ever stray inside. But still it was sweaty work in winter; in summer the temperatures inside rose hot enough to immolate.
Three maids toiled in the adjacent scullery, washing up all the plates, cups, and flatware from the servants' afternoon tea. One of Verity's apprentices stuffed tiny eggplants at the central work table, the other three stood at their respective stations about the room, attending to the rigors of dinner for the staff as well as for the master of the house.
The soup course had just been carried out, trailing behind a murmur of the sweetness of caramelized onion. From the stove billowed the steam of a white wine broth, in the last stages of reduction before being made into a sauce for a filet of brill that had been earlier poached in it. Over the great hearth a quartet of teals roasted on a spit turned by a second kitchen maid. She also looked after the civet of hare slowly stewing in the coals, which emitted a powerful, gamy smell every time it was stirred.
The odors of her kitchen were as beautiful to Verity as the sounds of an orchestra in the crescendo of a symphony. This kitchen was her fiefdom, her sanctuary. She cooked with an absolute, almost nerveless concentration, her awareness extending to the subtlest stimulation of the senses and the least movement on the part of her underlings.
The sound of her favorite apprentice not stirring the hazelnut butter made her turn her head slightly. “Mademoiselle Porter, the butter,” she said, her voice stern. Her voice was always stern in the kitchen.
“Yes, Madame. Sorry, Madame,” said Becky Porter. The girl would be purple with embarrassment now—she knew very well that it took only a few seconds of inattention before hazelnut butter became black butter.
Verity gave Tim Cartwright, the apprentice standing before the white wine reduction, a hard stare. The young man blanched. He cooked liked a dream, his sauces as velvety and breathtaking as a starry night, his soufflés taller than toques. But Verity would not hesitate to let him go without a letter of character if he made an improper advance toward Becky, Becky who'd been with Verity since she was a thirteen-year-old child.
Most of the hazelnut butter would be consumed at dinner. But a portion of it was to be saved for the midnight repast her employer had requested: one steak au poivre, a dozen oysters in Mornay sauce, potato croquettes à la Dauphine, a small lemon tart, still warm, and half a dozen dessert crepes spread with, mais bien s?r, hazelnut butter.
Crepes with hazelnut butter—Mrs. Danner tonight. Three days ago it had been Mrs. Childs. Bertie was becoming promiscuous in his middle age. Verity removed the cassoulet from the oven and grinned a little to herself, imagining the scene that would hopefully ensue should Mrs. Danner and Mrs. Childs find out that they shared Bertie's less-than-undying devotion.
The service hatch door burst open and slammed into a dresser, rattling the rows of copper lids hanging on pin-rails, startling one of them off its anchor. The lid hit the floor hard, bounced and wobbled, its metallic bangs and scrapes echoing in the steam and smolder of the kitchen. Verity looked up sharply. The footmen in this house knew better than to throw doors open like that.
“Madame!” Dickie, the first footman, gasped from the doorway, sweat dampening his hair despite the November chill. “Mr. Somerset—Mr. Somerset, he be not right!”
Something about Dickie's wild expression suggested that Bertie was far worse than “not right.” Verity motioned Edith Briggs, her lead apprentice, to take over her spot before the stove. She wiped her hands on a clean towel and went to the door.
“Carry on,” she instructed her crew before closing the door behind Dickie and herself. Dickie was already scrambling in the direction of the house.
“What's the matter?” she said, lengthening her strides to keep up with the footman.
“He be out cold, Madame.”
“Has someone sent for Dr. Sergeant?”