Secret Desires of a Gentleman by Laura Lee Guhrke

Author:Laura Lee Guhrke [Guhrke, Laura Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0061456829
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2008-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Ice cream is exquisite. Too bad it isn’t illegal.

Voltaire

A fter giving Monsieur Bouchard some of her best culinary masterpieces to taste, Maria spent the afternoon paying bills and reckoning up her accounts, leaving her apprentices to work without her for the remainder of the day. When she returned to the kitchens that evening, she found Miss Dexter had done fine without her. Miss Hayes, however, had run into difficulties.

Maria stared at the pair of flat, dark brown discs on the worktable, then glanced at the younger woman across from her. “Third oven?” she guessed.Miss Hayes gave an unhappy nod. “Yes, ma’am. I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t circulate heat as well as the others.”

Miss Dexter turned from the counter where she was filling tins with the shortbread and fat rascals she had baked in preparation for the following day. “It does all right for some pastries, if you watch them close. But cakes don’t do well.”

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” Miss Hayes said, sounding almost tearful. “I know you told me not to bake cakes in that oven, but I forgot.” She gave a sigh. “Half a pound of butter and a good bit of chocolate wasted. If you need to deduct the expense from my wages, I understand.”

Maria thought of all the times she’d had her wages garnished for culinary mishaps, and she put a hand on the girl’s arm. “I won’t do any such thing, Miss Hayes. Anyone can make a mistake, especially at the end of a long day. Just remember, no cakes in that oven.” She glanced at the watch pinned to the bib of her apron. “Why don’t the two of you go home? It’s seven o’clock. After nearly fourteen hours here, you two must be exhausted.”

The weary faces of her apprentice chefs brightened considerably, and several minutes later, the two young women had slipped into their mackintoshes and departed for home.

Maria grabbed a Cornish pasty and an apple out of the larder and went upstairs. She ate her makeshift meal as she ran water from the taps for a bath. After washing away a day’s worth of flour, sugar, sweat, and coal dust, she braided back her damp hair and changed into her nightclothes. As on every night, Maria was asleep by eight o’clock and awake and downstairs ready to work by half past three the following morning.

The shop and kitchens were quiet, for her maids would not be stirring for another two hours, and it would be another thirty minutes after that before her apprentices returned to begin their day, but Maria didn’t mind the solitude. Here, before the making of the day’s breads and cakes began, before she found her time taken up with the daily rush, was her opportunity to indulge her creative instincts. All her best recipes had come to her in the wee small hours before dawn.

She stoked the fire in one stove to life, then put a cross bun from the day before on the warming board and made herself a cup of tea and a soft-boiled egg.

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