“Actually, he said that His Grace was not at home,” Maeve clarified. “Which simply means that the duke does not wish for company. I should expect no less from a man who rarely enters society.”
“A hermit. How delightful,” Meg said under her breath, picturing Merleton with a pallid complexion and a beard long enough to drag on the floor.
“But that is neither here nor there,” Maeve continued. “Because we did not travel this way to encounter the duke at all.”
“We didn’t?” both Meg and Myrtle uttered in unison.
The elder Miss Parrish shook her head, her expression severe as a scholar’s. “There are recipes we wish to collect. Legendary recipes, in fact. Nothing more. Isn’t that right, sister?”
“You never told me of—”
“You’ve become quite forgetful in your old age, Myrtle. Why, it was just yesterday when we discussed the fables,” Maeve reminded her through a tight smile.
“Ah, yes, those recipes.”
Meg eyed the two of them. She wasn’t buying it for a minute.
But that didn’t stop Maeve from trying.
“You might have heard the tales of them as well, my dear,” she said. “The book dates all the way back to King Arthur’s court. It is said that the pages are illuminated in gold and silver, the cover encrusted with precious gems. The recipes themselves were once touted as divine creations that no man could resist. They hold the power to imbue the person who sups on them with certain attributes. A knight’s valiance and bravery in battle, for example, or even a maiden’s steadfast love . . .”
The threads of a memory from long ago tickled the back of Meg’s mind. And as she listened to Maeve speak with unmistakable reverence, gesturing with a sweep of her slender arm toward the grounds and castle walls, she felt her certainty of their plot waver.
After all, if there was one thing more important to the aunts than seeing every young person they knew advantageously married, it was finding the perfect recipe . . .
And then stealing it.
The aunts were positively unapologetic in their quest. Meg’s sister-in-law, Ellie, had once revealed that the aunts had been pilfering the kitchens of fine houses for years in preparation of her long-awaited nuptials. And after Ellie and Brandon’s wedding last year, the aunts had gained a level of notoriety for their selection of dishes and discerning palates.
Their success had been so great, in fact, that they’d received over a hundred requests for an invitation to the christening breakfast they’d hosted for Johnathon, the newest addition to the Stredwick family, this past spring. The unprecedented feast had been raved about in the society pages as well.
“. . . and this illustrious book was the very reason that the duke’s family first received their noble titles and lands,” Maeve concluded.
In that instant, Meg realized that it wasn’t too far-fetched to believe their reason for coming here was about a recipe. Perhaps it wasn’t a matchmaking scheme, after all.
But just as the thought entered her mind, Myrtle burst forth with a clap of excitement.
“Oh, sister! We must have these recipes for hosting our next wed—” She stopped and cleared her throat, recovering awkwardly with “Wed-nesday breakfast.”
Aha! Caught you!
They were likely itching to outdo themselves at their next fete. Clearly, their unexpected fame had gone straight to their heads.
But Meg was not about to be the sacrificial lamb on their altar!
Tapping the toe of her nankeen half boot on the grass, she crossed her arms. “I am not marrying the duke.”
“Of course not, dear. You’ve never even been introduced,” Maeve said with an unconcerned flit of her fingertips. “My sister and I are hardly the types to throw you into the arms of a stranger, no matter what his title and financial holdings might be.”
“Oh? And what about that afternoon walk in Regent’s Park with the visiting vizconde from Spain? I distinctly recall being driven into his path.”
Myrtle blinked owlishly and lifted her rounded shoulders in a shrug. “Another bee?”
So, they were playing the innocents, were they?
Meg was not fooled one bit. If this detour was precisely what they declared, then she wanted them to prove it.
“Very well,” she said, calling their bluff. “If we truly are here for the sole purpose of stealing a recipe, and there are no tours allowed inside Caliburn Keep, then how do you propose we do it? It isn’t as though they will put up the bunting if we knock on the door.”
The Parrish sisters smiled at each other.
“I do believe I just heard a challenge,” Myrtle said, her cornflower blue eyes dancing with mischief as she tossed the core of her apple toward the water, then chafed her hands back and forth.
“As did I,” Maeve answered with a cunning arch of her brows. “Mark my words, Miss Stredwick. We will not only gain entrance but we’ll have the perfect recipe in our hands when we depart.”
Meg swallowed down a sudden rise of apprehension. There was something a bit too determined in their gazes. And she wondered if it was wise to ever underestimate this pair.
Chapter 2
A recipe for disaster
After a short walk along a slender path, their skirts rustling against tussocks of striped grasses as a melody of birdsong cascaded down from the boughs of fragrant foxglove trees, they entered a manicured front garden of slate flagstone with a burbling fountain at its center.
Meg was thoroughly charmed. But this picturesque setting made the facade of Caliburn Keep even more imposing as they neared.
A high wall of ancient stones seemed to have risen from the earth in this very spot, like a mountain after an earthquake. The pale escarpment hosted a towering oaken door large enough to drive a carriage through, and lofty arches filled with mullioned windows that appeared to trap the blue sky and cottony clouds within the diamond panes.
She wasn’t certain if the story the aunts had told her about the dukedom dating all the way back to the time of King Arthur was true, or even if there were actual legendary recipes. Yet she had to admit that, in such a place, it would be simple to confuse fancy for reality.
And against her better judgment, her curiosity was most definitely piqued.
Unfortunately, they didn’t advance much farther than the dragon’s head doorknocker before the stony-faced butler informed them that there were no tours inside the castle walls. He was brusque in his delivery. Then, without giving his audience a chance to utter a syllable of dismay, he began to close the door.
At least . . . until Maeve suddenly spoke.
“My good sir, you wouldn’t be related to the famous actor Mr. Cooke by chance?”
He paused, his head tilted in speculation, either because he’d never been asked such a question or he didn’t know whether or not to be insulted by it. “Nay, madam. Not as far as I am aware.”
“Pray, forgive me,” she continued. “It’s only that, with the way the light graced your visage just now, I was certain that you were the same man I’d had a terrible girlhood fancy toward. I can remember seeing Richard III at the Theatre Royal a dozen times and sighing like a lovesick calf throughout the entirety.”
The door opened a bit wider.