“Do you really think so?” she said, still considering Vadeboncoeur in the kitchen.
“I know so. Miss Merryweather!” he said sharply. “Do stop staring at him.”
“I wasn’t staring.” Her denial might have carried more weight had she not continued to study the Frenchman with a thoughtful look on her face. “I really hadn’t considered the possibility of a romantic interlude with François, but I have always heard that the French take that sort of thing differently than we do. He might well be amenable to the idea. Thank you, Mr. Fairchild, you do make an excellent point.”
“I had no intention of making a point!”
“No, I didn’t think you did.” Reluctantly she shifted her gaze from the chef back to Cam. “François is here to teach me to make a cake.”
“You can call it whatever you want!”
She snorted back a laugh. “I call it making a cake.” She eyed him with amusement. “You know, one mixes flour and sugar and apparently all sorts of other things and bakes it in the oven.”
“I know what a cake is,” Cam snapped even as he realized he had jumped to a nearly unforgivable conclusion. Still, the situation had looked bad. “Why?”
“Because I have no idea how to do anything in a kitchen and, as I’m still not quite ready to venture out of the house, I thought learning to bake a cake would be interesting and unexpected and definitely frivolous. I shall never have to cook for myself or my family. Why, my mother never steps foot in a kitchen unless it is to instruct Mrs. Helstrom—our cook—as to the menu for dinner. And I am supposed to learn something one would not expect. Besides”—she grinned—“I like cake.”
“Isn’t there a cook in residence here who could teach you to bake a cake?”
“Yes, I suppose.” She peered around him again. “But I thought hiring a chef would be much more fun. He comes very highly recommended.”
“No doubt.” He huffed. “Very well then, you have my apologies for thinking, well, what I was thinking.”
“I’m not sure whether or not I wish to accept it.” Her brow furrowed with annoyance. “The idea that I would have to hire someone to become my lover is not merely rude but offensive and rather hurtful as well. I thought we had come to know each other better than that. I would certainly never jump to a conclusion that painted you in an especially poor light. The fact that you seem to have no difficulty thinking the worst of me is most distressing.”
“I didn’t really—”
“Oh, but you did.” She stepped closer and glared up at him. “Do you think I am so unappealing that I would have to pay a man to take me to his bed?”
“No, of course not.” He grimaced. “I didn’t mean . . . I wasn’t thinking . . .” He drew a deep breath. “You are exceptionally lovely, Miss Merryweather.”
“Then it’s my character that you think men would have to be paid to overlook?”
“Not at all,” he said staunchly. “You’re quite clever and extremely interesting. You are kind and witty and have an acute sense of honor I have rarely encountered in a woman or a man, for that matter.”
“Then the fault lies not with me but with you?”
“With me?” He paused, then blew a resigned breath. “I am an idiot, Miss Merryweather,” he said weakly.
“None of us is perfect, Mr. Fairchild. It’s important to acknowledge our own flaws so that we may strive to overcome them. You shall have to work on that.” She studied him for a moment, as if she was assessing every one of his flaws and found them both numerous and irredeemable. “Apology accepted.” She nodded firmly. “That’s enough of that then. François insists on instructing me in the basic tenets of cake making before we actually start, and I’m beginning to suspect it will take much of the day. It’s apparently far more complicated than I expected. But as I said”—a slight wicked smile curved her lips—“it will be fun.”
Not if he could help it. “While the baking of a cake does seem fairly innocuous . . .” He glanced over his shoulder at the Frenchman in the kitchen. Bloody hell. Baking with Vadeboncoeur might well be anything but innocent. There was no mistaking the way the man looked at Lucy. Cake was not the only thing on the chef ’s mind. “Surely there is something else you could learn to do that would satisfy that item on your list?”
“Nothing I could think of.” She shrugged. “At least nothing I could learn in a timely manner. Most skills take a great deal of time to master, you know.”
“Perhaps but . . .” He racked his brains trying to think of something. What could she learn? “Why, you could learn a language. Or at least a few phrases.”
“I daresay François could help me with that as well.” She cast Cam an innocent smile. “However, every well-bred woman I know is expected to speak at least a smattering of French and Italian, so learning a language is not the least bit unexpected and is far more practical than frivolous. Besides, any number of well-meaning instructors have attempted to teach me both French and Italian and, well, my mind simply doesn’t work in more than one language.”
“You could learn to play tennis perhaps.” Tennis was certainly appropriate. “Or be instructed in rowing or fencing.”
“I already enjoy tennis, and frankly, I would much prefer to be rowed than to row. And quite a few ladies of my acquaintance fence. As do I.” She smiled. “Quite well really.”
“You could—”
“I could do any number of things I suppose, Mr. Fairchild.” She sighed. “But this is what first came to mind and this is what I intend to learn. François is here and prepared to teach me, so unless you have any further objections, I suggest we get on with it.” She considered him for a moment. “I am really quite surprised, Mr. Fairchild, given there are so many other things that I might have settled on to learn that are far more difficult, if not dangerous and even scandalous. Baking a cake is insignificant compared to some of the things that have crossed my mind.” An innocent note sounded in her voice, but her eyes sparked with wicked amusement. “Would you like to hear about those?”
Without warning the unbidden thought flashed through his mind: there were any number of things he’d like to teach her as well. He ruthlessly shoved the thought aside. “Absolutely not!”
“Good, because I do love cake.” She turned back toward the kitchen. “Now if you will excuse me.”
“I have no intention of leaving, Miss Merryweather.”
“Well, I have no intention of allowing you to linger in the kitchen glaring at François.”
“It seems we are at an impasse then.” He couldn’t resist a satisfied smile.
“It does, doesn’t it?” She stepped closer, a determined look in her eye. “Mr. Fairchild, we have already agreed that I could throw you out at any moment, which would make your job much more difficult and unpleasant as I can’t believe you enjoy skulking about in the cold. I have only allowed you to join our little company because it now seems wise to have a gentleman’s presence for the purposes of safety.”
“You and I both know you won’t throw me out.” He cast her a confident smile. “We have come too far for that.”
“Yes, I suppose we have.” Her voice hardened. “However, I have no desire for your disapproving glare to follow my every move, nor do I intend to allow you to intimidate poor, dear François.”
“When did he become
poor, dear
François?” He tried and failed to hide the indignant note in his voice, ignoring the fact that she had called Miss West a
poor dear
as well as the elephant. It was simply a phrase she used both frequently and indiscriminately. Nonetheless, when she used it in reference to the Frenchman, it made his teeth clench.
“When you became an overbearing, irrational tyrant. And an idiot.”
“I am not . . .” He sighed. “I did apologize.”
“Very well.” She stepped around him, opened a tall cupboard, grabbed a folded white cloth, and thrust it at him. “If you insist on staying, you’ll have to put this on.”
He eyed it with suspicion. “What is it?”
“It’s an apron. It wouldn’t do for you to be covered in flour.”
He scoffed. “I’m not going to wear an apron.”
“As you wish. But if you are going to be here, you too will have to learn to bake a cake.”
He snorted. “I don’t think so.”
“Of course, if you don’t believe you are up to it . . .” She shrugged.
“The greatest chefs in the world have always been men,” he muttered, and snatched the apron from her hand. “I can’t imagine this will be all that difficult to master.”
“We shall see.” She smirked.
He stared at her. “You don’t think I can do this, do you?”
“Do you?”
He unfolded the apron. “You’re driving me quite mad, Miss Merryweather.”
“I cannot tell you how delightful I find that, Mr. Fairchild.” She held out her hand. “Give me your coat.”
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Why?”
“Because the apron will not fit properly over a coat.” She rolled her gaze toward the ceiling. “You would probably be most uncomfortable, which would make you even more irritating than you seem determined to be today.”
“Fine!” he snapped, pulled off his coat, handed it to her, and struggled into the apron.
“Come along then.” She nodded and marched back into the kitchen, tossed his coat onto a chair by the door, and retook her seat. “François, your class has now grown to two. Mr. Fairchild will be joining us.”
“Excellent, mademoiselle.” Vadeboncoeur cast him a smug look, then turned his attention back to Lucy. “But are you certain you wish to make a cake? A cake is nothing special.” His gaze met Lucy’s. “But a soufflé.” His voice was low and enticing, as if he was talking about something far tastier than a soufflé. “To bake a soufflé is a skill to be desired.”
Lucy stared as if mesmerized. “Yes, I can see that.”
“Flavored with chocolate perhaps.”
Lucy made an odd sort of moaning sound. “I do so love chocolate.”
Cam stared. What on earth?
“The first bite melting in the mouth . . .”
“Oh my, yes . . .” She fairly sighed the words.
“Light as the very air you breathe, an essence of flavor, the taste fit for the gods themselves . . .”
“Mmmm . . .”
“Intense and yet ethereal.”
“Oh . . .” Lucy leaned forward, her eyes slightly closed.
Good God! Cam was right. The bloody Frenchman was seducing her with words of food! Enough of this nonsense was enough.
“Miss Merryweather wishes to bake a cake and a cake it shall be,” Cam said crisply.
Lucy snapped out of whatever culinary spell Vadeboncoeur had cast and heaved a resigned sigh. “I do love cake.”
“Then let’s get on with it, shall we?” Cam removed his cuff links, set them on the table, then rolled up his sleeves and adopted a pleasant smile. “How do we begin?”
Vadeboncoeur’s eyes narrowed slightly. “At the beginning, of course, monsieur.” He cast a regretful look at Lucy, then launched into a heavily accented explanation of eggs and flour and Cam had no idea what else. Lucy still looked interested but no longer enthralled.
Good.
Vadeboncoeur’s flirtatious manner did seem to lessen but only a bit, and Cam kept a close eye on him. Not an easy task as this whole business of baking a cake was far more complicated than Cam had ever imagined. Of course, he’d never given any real consideration to what went on in a kitchen, only to what came out of it. Separating the egg yolks from the whites alone proved far trickier than one would have thought, and he and Lucy went through an astonishing number of eggs before getting the technique right. Although Cam did question Vadeboncoeur’s
technique
.
And just before the chef handed him a bowl full of egg whites and a medieval-looking instrument with which to beat them into submission, the unbidden thought struck him.
His grandmother would definitely like Lucy.
“Mr. Fairchild.” Lucy leaned closer to Cam and spoke low. François, in the far end of the kitchen, had his back to them checking the ovens. “I believe you’re supposed to whip those into a light and frothy consistency, not stir them as if you were trying to cool off soup.”
He stirred faster.
“Goodness, Cameron.” She huffed with exasperation. “François showed you how to do it.”
Apparently, anything in a kitchen was as far beyond Cameron’s abilities as foreign languages were for Lucy. Admittedly he did seem to be making an effort in those rare moments when he and François were not exchanging thinly veiled insults. Lucy considered it something of a miracle that neither had given in to the impulse to fling food at each other, although it was plain in both men’s eyes that they were tempted. But the day was still young. They were both acting like schoolboys. Or rivals. When François had stood behind her and put his arms around her to instruct her in the proper way to separate eggs, the muscle in Cameron’s jaw tightened and she wondered that his teeth didn’t crack given how hard he clenched them. It was a credit to his self-control that he hadn’t done something stupid but instead requested for François to show him the proper way as well. It was quite humorous, although she doubted either man would have agreed. Lucy had never had men snipe at each other over her before and it was very nearly as enjoyable as it was annoying.
Nonetheless, spending a few hours learning to do something he had no interest in and would never do again, as well as putting up with a man he obviously disliked, was the price Cameron had to pay for his . . . his idiocy. Imagine him thinking for so much as a moment that she had hired François to be her lover. The very thought heated her cheeks with embarrassment.
“You simply need to put more
wrist
into it.” She shrugged. “It isn’t especially difficult.”
“To whip zee eggs into a concoction as light and fluffy as zee very clouds in zee sky takes a fine hand, mademoiselle,” he said in his best, or more likely his worst, French-accented imitation of the chef. “One must use zee wrist and zee heart.”