Chloe knew that “gauls” must be the “galls” she had collected from the oak trees. As for the rest, a pint of beer, even strong stale beer, sounded good right about now.
With Mrs. Crescent’s help, she managed to get through the recipe, and restrained herself from drinking the beer, but had to remember to visit the parlor chimney two or three times a day from then on to shake her vial of ink.
“Not to worry,” Mrs. Crescent had said. “I shan’t let you forget.”
With a total of ten Accomplishment Points now, Chloe faced two days of practicing riding sidesaddle on Chestnut, the nicest horse in the stable. In her spare time, she picked up as many of Fiona’s chores as she could when the camera wasn’t around, noting that her maid seemed sadder than ever. She also made a point of scouring the estate, tramping through gardens looking for shafts of sunlight and shadows, trying to solve the riddle from Sebastian. That was how she knew she was more than smitten. None of the paintings or clocks in Bridesbridge fit the description in the riddle, not even the pocket watch on Grace’s chatelaine.
Her oil paints and stack of painting paper went untouched as Mrs. Crescent started Chloe on another task that would take more than a week: needlework. She had to embroider a fireplace screen for fifteen points when in fact the extent of her needlework skills were sewing on buttons that had fallen off. So much for her days of leisure.
When she scrambled down the servant stairs into the basement kitchen to help Cook do the baking for the tea, she found Cook standing at the pine worktable, beating dough with her fists. Flies buzzed around as a couple of kitchen maids, who seemed sixteen years old at most, stoked the fire in the open range, apparently to set something in the cauldron hanging above it to boil. A hare, dead and skinned, hung from the rafters, and all manner of tongs and knives and industrial-sized soup ladles hung from hooks on the walls. Black clothing irons stood upon a shelf, and everything reeked of onion.
Cook and the kitchen maids curtsied upon Chloe’s entrance, and the formality flustered her. She rolled up the decorative, gauzy yellow sleeves of her overdress. “Do you have an apron? I’m here to bake for the tea party.”
Cook shot Chloe a look with her icy blue eyes. “You can’t possibly bake. You belong upstairs!”
Chloe snagged an apron from one of the wooden hooks near the copper pots and tied it around herself. “If you just tell me where the strawberry-tart recipe is, I’ll begin with that. I just made my own ink, I’m sure I can get a couple of the items from the tea menu taken care of over the next two days.”
Cook looked at the kitchen maids, who giggled. “If the lady insists. Here’s the recipe.” Cook opened a reproduction cookbook, called A Propre new booke of Cokery, and pointed with a finger tipped in flour.
To make a tarte of strawberries.
Take and strayne theim with the yolkes of foure egges & a little white brede grated/then ceason it vp with suger & swete butter and so bake it.
Short paest for Tarte.
Take fyne floure and a curscy of fayre water and dysche of swete butter and lyttel saffron, and the yolkes of two egges and make it thynne and as tender as ye may.
“Well?” Cook asked. “Get to it. The scullery maid has gone to the trouble of picking the strawberries. I’m about to fill the mincemeat pies and the kitchen maids are in the midst of making the trifle you requested. I’m afraid you’re on your own for a bit.”
Luckily, Chloe had made enough fruit tarts in her time that a recipe wasn’t even necessary, although she had never used saffron, and washing the strawberries in a dry sink, without running water, wasn’t very effective, and then forcing them through the sieve took infinitely longer than if she’d been able to use her food processor.
Considering that she rarely baked in her own modern kitchen, her sudden enthusiasm for desserts and spearheading tea parties could only be attributed to her overwhelming desire to impress Sebastian. What other explanation could there be for turning into a Regency domestic diva?
When it came time to put the tart crust in the oven, Chloe was stumped. The open range didn’t have knobs, a touch pad, or a temperature gauge. In fact, the kitchen had no refrigerator, no running water, and no disinfectant soap either. Not to mention a microwave or coffeemaker.
Who knew that two centuries would make such a difference in the kitchen?
She stood in front of the open range a good five minutes until Cook stepped over, took the pie tin with the crust, and shoved it in with a wooden oven handle.
“Keep an eye on it now.” Cook shook a finger at Chloe.
After the crust browned, Chloe filled the tart and put it in the range. “What next?”
“You’ve done well,” Cook said. “Can you help me gild these confections?”
“Absolutely.” Chloe felt as if she had established some sort of relationship with Cook.
Cook brought a plate of handmade chocolates from the scullery and set them on the pine table along with a tin of edible gold dust.
“You simply dab them like this.” Cook demonstrated.
She handed Chloe what at first seemed to be a cotton ball, but it didn’t take long for Chloe to drop the thing on the table. The room began to spin around her.
“What—what is this, Cook? It’s not a cotton ball, is it?”
The kitchen maids, who were beating eggs in a bowl, giggled again.
The scullery maid plucked feathers from a partridge, but didn’t even look up from her work.
Cook left off from grating suet and came over to Chloe. “That, my dear, is a rabbit’s tail, and it makes a wonderful brush, doesn’t it?”
Chloe steadied herself against the table. She realized she hadn’t eaten the pigeon pies and cold lamb for lunch, and she felt queasy. “I’d better check the oven—I mean range.”
Thank goodness her strawberry tart needed to be taken out. She covered the tart with a cloth to keep the flies off. By the time she returned to the table, Cook had gilded all the chocolates for her with said rabbit tail.
“You’ve done a wonderful job helping us here.” Cook turned to the kitchen maids. “Hasn’t she, girls?” Cook asked.
The maids nodded in agreement.
“Now, I’m sure you have things that need tending to upstairs, like shaking your ink that’s set in the chimney? And we’d best get started on dinner. There will be plenty more to do tomorrow.” Cook patted Chloe on the back as Chloe hung up her apron. “As for tonight, I sure hope you’re hungry. We’re making stewed hare and partridges for dinner!”
On Saturday evening, after two full days of alternating between the riding field and the kitchen, Chloe collapsed in a settee in the parlor, wondering if massages had been discovered yet or not.
She’d gained ten more Accomplishment Points for riding, but the others had gained fifteen for more advanced riding and découpaging a box while she was in the kitchen.
“No rest for the weary, Miss Parker.” Mrs. Crescent clapped and Fifi barked.
“I shook my ink vial three times today, Mrs. Crescent.”
“No, no, it’s not that.”
“What, then? Darning a footman’s stockings? Trimming Lady Grace’s pantalets?”
Mrs. Crescent motioned her to get up. “Come here, dear, and you will see.” She led Chloe to the drawing room, a footman opened the doors, and at first, all Chloe saw was the candlelight.
Sebastian rose from a high-backed chair near the fireplace, stepped over to her, and bowed.
Chloe wondered if she still smelled of mincemeat from the kitchen. She curtsied.
“Mr. Wrightman is here to take your silhouette.”
“Only if Miss Parker wishes me to,” he said.