Never Resist Temptation Page 3

  Chapter 3

  It had seemed a brilliant idea, Anthony thought as he finished breakfast in his private parlor at the Old Ship Inn. To hire Jacob Léon. Candover’s weakness for sweets was well-known, and he’d been without a first-rate pastry cook since the last man eloped with the niece. If he wasn’t mistaken, word that young Léon had stepped in for Carême when the master was ill would soon get around the Prince Regent’s circle. He’d be besieged by offers, and Candover would be at the head of the line. If Léon was working for Anthony, his services could be used to lure Candover into another card game.

  Too bad the young man had refused, but Anthony wasn’t giving up yet. He’d sent Jem down to the Pavilion again this morning to sweeten his previous offer. He wondered if the young cook was aware that the Earl of Storrington was the man who’d saved him from those louts two nights ago. If he didn’t know it, perhaps he should. Gratitude might persuade him to leave Carême where money had proved ineffective. Should Jem fail again, Anthony supposed he’d better make the approach in person, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  Anthony felt a visceral reluctance to have any direct contact with the young man. He hadn’t forgotten the strange attraction he’d felt when he’d helped him up from the ground, and it embarrassed him. He’d recognized the face when Léon had spoken with Count Lieven, the Russian ambassador. At first he’d only seen an anonymous plump cook, thick around the middle with a protruding belly that testified to his enjoyment of his own confections. Only when he’d examined the young man more carefully had he connected the refined features and glowing dark eyes with the youth he’d rescued.

  Odd, really. When he’d held the boy to save him from falling he hadn’t felt at all fat.

  The door opened and Webster entered the room.

  “Back already, Jem?” Anthony asked. “I didn’t expect you for hours. Did you manage to speak to Léon? What did he say to one hundred guineas a year?”

  “I didn’t see him at all, m’lord. Things are all at sixes and sevens at the palace kitchens and the news is all over town. Thought I’d better get back and tell you.”

  Anthony looked at the groom with interest. Jem Webster was a stolid man, not given to high drama.

  “Lord Candover’s been poisoned.”

  Anthony leaped to his feet. “Good God! Is he dead?”

  “No, and they say he’ll live. There was something in a dish he had for dinner last night but he was took ill right away, after only a bite, and his valet called a doctor. They say he’ll pull through.”

  Anthony paced up and down, assessing the effect of these tidings on his plans.

  “You said the palace was upset. I can see why His Highness would be concerned, but the household? Why would such news disturb the kitchens?”

  “Because the pudding came from there. It was left over from the dinner the other night. Lord Candover’s cook bought it from the royal kitchen.”

  Jacobin was close to panic. The staff was in an uproar at the rumor that Lord Candover had been poisoned by a dish purchased from the Pavilion kitchen. The regent was said to be outraged and demanding a full investigation. The local magistrate was already interviewing the senior cooks, and it wouldn’t be long before he received assistance from London. The prince had sent posthaste for Bow Street runners to come and turn the kitchen staff inside out and upside down.

  Her disguise would never survive concentrated scrutiny, and scrutiny she would receive as the cook who’d prepared the poisoned dessert, even if no one remembered that it was she who had actually filled Candover’s dish with the rose cream. Once they identified her as a female it would be only a matter of time before they knew she was Candover’s niece. His estranged niece. They’d rush her to the gallows and never bother to look further for the would-be murderer.

  She wished she’d accepted Storrington’s offer and left Brighton already. Why did it have to be Storrington? How worse than ironic that her only offer of employment, her sole chance of escape, came from a man as wicked as the uncle whose house she’d fled. The prospect of placing herself in his power terrified her. But not as much as execution for attempted murder.

  Given the confusion in the kitchens, it was easy to escape to her own room, where she gathered her meager worldly possessions into a bundle. She sat on the bed, took a deep breath, and considered her options.

  Flight. It was the first, last and only choice available to her, and the farther the better. If she could get to France, Jean-Luc would take care of her, but she had barely enough money to pay for passage across the Channel. She didn’t even know whether he was in Paris. It might take her weeks to track him down, and she’d need something to live on in the meantime. She needed a place to hide, a way of earning more money. Her quarter’s salary from the royal household, due in a few weeks, would have to be abandoned.

  It wouldn’t be many more hours before every lawman in southeast England was searching for a young Frenchman. But they wouldn’t be looking for an Englishwoman.

  The bare bones of a plan began to form in her mind.

  But why did it have to be Storrington?

  Shown into the Earl of Storrington’s private parlor at the Old Ship Inn, Jacobin almost fell over.

  “My lord,” she said, and managed a deep bow. She hoped her voice hadn’t come out in a squeak, belying her masculine attire.

  Shock at discovering that Storrington was the man who’d saved her from the drunken workmen bloomed into relief that her uncle’s piquet opponent wasn’t the elderly roué she’d expected. Quite the contrary.

  Perhaps her plan to place her female self in his employ wasn’t as risky as she feared. This man had saved her from the drunken workmen, an act that required some courage and at least a modicum of altruism.

  Surveying him more closely than had been possible from the back row of cooks in the royal kitchen, she judged that the earl was in his mid-thirties and no less attractive than he’d seemed before. He lounged at ease in an armchair, one elegant booted leg crossed over the other, looking at her down a finely chiseled, slightly aquiline nose. He seemed to be examining the white linen jacket and apron of her uniform.

  His unsmiling gaze roused a prickly warmth in her face and a strange tightness in her bound breasts. Sternly she reminded herself that he’d gambled for the favors of a woman he’d never met, without knowing if she was willing. The shameful thought drifted through the back of her mind that with this man her fate might not have been entirely terrible.

  Having finished his perusal of her clothing, he looked up, but without making eye contact. “Mr. Léon. Does your presence mean that you have changed your mind and decided to accept my offer of employment?”

  “Is the position still open?” she asked.

  “It is, and I shall be pleased if you accept it.” He spoke without warmth and sounded anything but gratified. The expression on his face was one of distaste, almost as though he found Jacob Léon disgusting.

  “I hope I am not presuming, my lord, but I came to you because I am able to recommend another pâtissier who has a similar training to my own and is equally skilled.”

  Storrington frowned. “I had hoped to acquire your services after your triumph at the Pavilion. Who is this other cook.”

  “Rather, my lord, I should say pâtissière. She is my cousin.”

  Jacobin thought she caught an arrested look on the earl’s face, but only for a moment. His expression returned to aristocratic indifference.

  “A female? Is she French too?”

  “Half French, my lord. Our mothers were sisters but her father was English. She speaks much better English than I.”

  Storrington raised his eyebrows. “Your own command of the language is excellent. How long have you been in this country?”

  “A few years,” Jacobin replied noncommittally. “Ma cousine speaks without the accent.”

  “You worked at Carême’s shop, I gathered from your conversation with Count Lieven. Was your cousin also employed there?”

/>   Jacobin decided not to correct his misconception. “We had the same teacher, who was a senior cook there. Like me, Jane is competent in all aspects of the art of pâtisserie and confectionary. Tell me your favorite dishes and I will describe how we both make them.”

  “I’m not interested in the details of your trade, only in the results.” His tone was dismissive, but she had the odd impression he was playing cat-and-mouse with her. A sharp glint in his eyes belied the indifferent drawl of his voice. He stood up suddenly, and crossed the distance between them in three strides. Once again he stared at her white linen jacket, as though he found the uniform fascinating.

  “Will you see my cousin?” she asked, to distract his attention from her chest. Besides, she was eager to get down to business. “And would you offer the same salary?”

  From his superior height he gazed into her eyes, and her heart raced. With anxiety about his answer, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the faint masculine scent or the warmth emanating from his muscular frame as he towered over her.

  Without any softening of his steely expression, he raised his hands and calmly began to unbutton her jacket. She shivered when his fingers brushed her breasts, even through jacket, shirt, and the several layers of linen she used to flatten them. Shocked into frozen silence, she merely stared as he pushed the unbuttoned coat from her shoulders, then carefully untied the strips of cloth that held her cotton wadding “belly” in place. When she was left only in shirt and breeches, he took a step backward and looked her up and down. She was horribly conscious that the bindings around her breasts diminished, but did not level, them.

  He looked up, and for the first time she saw a gleam of humor in his eyes and the hint of a smile on his lips.

  “Cousin Jane, I presume.”

  Two hours later Anthony suspected he had taken leave of his senses. Why else would he be bowling along the road from Brighton to Storrington Hall, sharing his carriage with his newest employee, Jane Castle, a possibly murderous female pastry cook?

  So dizzying had been his relief when he realized that the latest object of his attraction was not, in fact, male, he had swallowed the explanation for her charade with unwonted credulity.

  It was, he supposed, a reasonable narrative.

  Jane Castle had applied for work at the Pavilion disguised as a youth because the great Carême refused to hire women. She feared the investigation into the poisoning of one of the regent’s friends would lead to the exposure of her sex and the loss of her job. Impulsively she had decided to accept Storrington’s offer of employment, but in her own guise.

  “I regret that I tried to deceive you, my lord.” She had shaken her head, and a few bright chestnut curls came loose from a ribbon tying them back. “Had I known who you were, that you were my kind rescuer, I would have trusted to your sense of justice and thrown myself on your mercy from the beginning.”

  She had clasped her hands to her breasts, which managed to heave quite effectively, despite the fact that they were obviously constrained by some kind of binding, and sighed, her whole body seeming to plead for forgiveness and acceptance. Jane Castle had a dramatic streak that would have graced the stage at Drury Lane. He’d rather desperately wanted to laugh. Among other things.

  Instead he’d sent her out of the room to change into feminine clothing. The urge to indulge in further examination of her underpinnings was becoming acute. He really, really wanted to remove her shirt and whatever else was underneath and discover the precise size and shape of her breasts.

  And he’d decided to engage her services as pastry cook. Without references. He’d even agreed to pay Jane Castle the same outrageous salary he’d offered “Jacob Léon,” absurd since female servants always earned much less than their male counterparts. And agreed to some conditions of employment that would likely induce fits in his secretary and his steward, who usually took care of such negotiations.

  And ruled that she travel in his own carriage instead of in the baggage vehicle with his valet.

  He peered at her out of the corner of his eye. She sat primly across from him, dressed in a sensible cloak and bonnet over a plain gray gown, very suitable for a superior servant. She didn’t look nearly as enticing as she had in breeches, but it made no difference. He vividly recalled the feel of her slight waist when he’d prevented her from falling. And the slender but delectable curves revealed that morning when he’d removed her jacket and that ridiculous padding. He should have let her squeeze into the other carriage with the trunks. That unusual sweet scent, which he thought he’d now identified as vanilla, was wafting faintly from her side of the carriage. Being penned in a confined space with her was creating havoc with the usual orderly working of his brain.

  His surreptitious glance had been intercepted. “My lord?” Huge brown eyes widened in question.

  He cleared his throat. “Er, tell me about your upbringing. Were your parents in service?” He suspected not, since she spoke English perfectly in a well-bred accent with just an occasional—and attractive—Gallic roll.

  “Neither of them were pâtissiers,” she said, not exactly answering the question. “I was apprenticed to a cook after they died.”

  “When was that?”

  “When I was twelve. My father first and soon afterward my mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied. “I lost my own mother when I was five.” And wondered why he’d said that. He rarely spoke of his mother, and never to strangers.

  “In which part of France did you live?” he continued hastily.

  “Always in Paris.”

  “Hm, during eventful times.”

  “I was born the year of the Terror.”

  “And did your parents approve of guillotining aristocrats?”

  Her gloved hands were clenched into fists. The firm jaw, which he’d once thought masculine but now gave her face character, was thrust forward. Pale winter afternoon light filtered through the carriage window and illuminated a small but distinct indentation—more than a dimple, perhaps a shallow cleft—in her chin.

  “No!” She turned full face to him. She glowed with passion. “Absolument non! My father was a man of peace. He approved of the principles of the Revolution but he never wished for anyone to die.”

  “Liberty, equality, and fraternity,” Anthony said ironically.

  “And what’s wrong with that?” Jane asked fiercely. “Can you tell me what is wrong with such principles?”

  “Not a thing, save that they are impossible to achieve. You only have to look at the career of Napoleon Bonaparte to see where your revolutionary ideals got you.”

  She sighed. “I can’t argue with that. My father always mistrusted Bonaparte. He died soon after his coronation as emperor, and it’s my belief that it was the final death of the Revolution that killed him.” The fire had faded from her eyes, leaving a look of great sadness.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “You must miss him very much.” He was beginning to wonder about her father. What kind of Englishman settled in France, and apparently remained there, even when the countries were at war?

  “Your father was a man of education?” he probed.

  “He was well educated for his station in life.” Miss Castle’s tone was unconfiding and her features had set into a guarded neutrality. But he noticed again that her hands were clenched hard enough to cause her pain. He found himself more and more curious about her.

  “Were you also well educated? Did you expect something better in life than to enter service as a cook?”

  “I am quite content with my situation,” she replied evasively. “I am devoted to my craft. In fact, if you don’t mind, my lord, I would like to take this opportunity to ask you about your requirements. What are your favorite dishes?”

  Anthony would rather be talking about her background. It hadn’t occurred to him when posing as a lover of sweets that he would actually be expected to show knowledge of the subject.

  “I’m not very good with names,” he demurred.
“Especially French names. I was never very good at French.” This last fact at least was true. He had his own reasons to despise all things French, including the language, and he’d deliberately neglected that part of his schooling.

  “What do you like to eat for breakfast?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “The usual things, I suppose. Beef, ham, eggs sometimes. Toast.” He brightened up. “Toast. I like bread.”

  Jane looked puzzled. “I was not aware that baking bread would be one of my duties.”

  Anthony had very little idea of the division of labor below stairs. His butler and housekeeper saw to those details. Come to think of it, he was completely ignorant of the duties of a pastry cook.

  “Why don’t you tell me some of the things you make best and I’ll tell you if I like them,” he improvised.

  Miss Castle looked at him a little oddly, but appeared to give his idea some consideration.

  “Do you enjoy Nesselrode pudding? It’s one of His Highness the Prince Regent’s favorite dishes.”

  “Remind me what’s in it.” It was doubtless some vilely rich concoction if Prinny adored it.

  “Chestnuts, cream, eggs, raisins, maraschino brandy.”

  Gad, he thought, it sounded disgusting. He must come up with a pudding he liked.

  “Gooseberry fool. I’ve always enjoyed that.” He had too. In the nursery.

  “Very English,” commented his high-priced Paris-trained pâtissière. “Hardly something you’d need to hire me to make.”

  He racked his brains. He’d never had much of a sweet tooth and now he couldn’t for the life of him remember a single pudding, even one he didn’t like. He closed his eyes for a moment and envisaged a sumptuous buffet at a banquet.

  Aha. What the devil were those things called?

  He opened his eyes in triumph. “You know what I really like, Miss Castle? Those little puffy things. Can you make puffy things?”

  What in heaven does the man want with a French pastry cook? Jacobin wondered, as it became obvious that Lord Storrington, far from being a “connoisseur” of continental pâtisserie, was a total ignoramus on the subject. She’d think he was engaging her for quite a different position if he hadn’t tried to hire her before he knew she was a woman. She wasn’t unaware that, were his intentions dishonorable, he might have preferred her as a man. But though he’d conducted himself perfectly correctly since removing her jacket, she’d intercepted a glance or two that went beyond what was appropriate for a nobleman toward a cook. Confined as her life had been at Hurst, she hadn’t reached the age of twenty-three without learning to spot male appreciation. This particular gentleman didn’t prefer boys.