“I recall that play. Might have seen it myself a few times, back when I was a strapping young lad. But that was ages ago,” he said, standing taller in his dark livery and giving a smart tug to the hem of his waistcoat.
“Then, the years have been most kind to you, sir.” Maeve looked askance as if embarrassed by her boldness.
Was it Meg’s imagination or had Maeve’s voice taken on a breathy quality? She expected such behavior from Myrtle. Heaven knew she flirted shamelessly with every nut seller in Regent’s Park. But this hidden side of Maeve was an absolute revelation. What an outlandish minx!
The butler cleared his throat, and there was a hint of ruddy color brushing the crests of his cheeks. “I don’t suppose a brief tour of the Hall of Knights would be out of the realm of possibility.”
Then the door opened.
When they were led inside, Maeve gave her a secret nod as if to say, And that is how it is done, my dear.
Meg had to bite the inner wall of her cheek to keep from laughing.
But the three Fs of persuading a gentleman was a lesson lost on the likes of her.
She had not always been so cynical. At one time, she’d dreamed her London Seasons would have been filled with flirtations, dances, parties, and calls from gentlemen wishing to escort her to Gunter’s for ices or on afternoon drives through the park. Her ivory dance card would have been forever full and Daniel Prescott would have been so jealous that he’d have begged to marry her without delay. She had even imagined putting on a coquettish display of needing time to consider his proposal, before finally giving her eager consent.
But that was not the reality she had encountered.
Even though she was an accomplished woman of two and twenty, she had a rounded face that made men treat her as if she were fresh out of the schoolroom. Even Daniel had told her that she was—
No. She stopped before she gave him another thought.
The entire purpose of this holiday was to cast him as firmly from her mind as she might a spider that had vanished from sight in her bedchamber. Since she wasn’t the type to bury herself beneath the coverlet and let dread consume her, she’d decided to be strong and rationalize that a single spider bite—or broken heart, as the case may be—surely wouldn’t kill her. Would it?
Meg shuddered. Perhaps that wasn’t the best analogy. Because now, she couldn’t help but imagine herself cocooned in a silken pod and waiting to become a hairy arachnid’s midnight snack.
So much for casting that from her mind.
Realizing that her musings had gone a bit dark, she blinked and abruptly redirected her attention to the butler.
Mr. Gudgeon recounted the keep’s history as he led them through a broad archway and into a vast tapestry-strewn hall where knights in armor stood at attention on either side. And Meg noticed that his tone had become theatrical as if to reach a great audience hiding somewhere in the minstrel’s gallery at the far end.
Maeve batted her lashes up at him. “Positively riveting. And to think, all these knights had once protected a book.”
“Not just a mere book, madam. No, indeed,” he said with chest-puffing pride. “A treasure trove of recipes that once fed King Arthur himself as well as every knight at his round table. Not only that but the very stone that once held the sword is the same pedestal upon which the book sits.”
“Gracious! Aren’t you afraid that someone will come along and try to take them?”
He chuckled. “Many have tried. They’re locked up tighter than the crown jewels. And the Tower of London has nothing on the family vault.”
A frustrated sigh left Myrtle, and Meg wondered how the sisters planned to move forward after this revelation.
They were in the middle of the sixteenth-century armor—an era that she would forever think of as the Age of the Codpiece—when her attention was diverted from a rather alarmingly turgid specimen as Myrtle’s question for the butler prickled at Meg’s ears.
“Forgive the interruption, good sir, but my young charge has bid me to inquire about a repairing room where, perhaps, she might freshen up before the lengthy journey ahead,” she said, not caring a whit that Meg’s cheeks were quickly turning as red as the dragon standard hanging on the wall.
Mr. Gudgeon seemed hesitant at first. However, as it became clear that the two of them planned to leave Maeve behind with him, the butler was more than happy to direct them.
Through Myrtle’s uncanny ability to divine a path through the winding corridors and down the stairs, they promptly found themselves standing at the humid mouth of the bustling kitchens.
The cook had her back to them, her attention divided between the fowl turning on the roasting spit, loading pies into a mezzaluna opening of the bake oven, stirring two copper pots atop the surface of a brick Rumford stove nestled into a flued alcove, and calling out instructions to a troop of harried sculleries over her shoulder. She was so occupied with a myriad of tasks that she never even looked toward the door to see Myrtle skirt inside.
As she snooped, Meg remained just outside and smiled at the din of culinary commotion. She didn’t know what it was about the companionable chatter, the rattle of pots and pans, the hollow thwack of a cleaver against a wooden trestle table or the chiming of a whisk in a wide copper bowl, but the sounds had always appealed to her.
They reminded her of home, she supposed. Not Crossmoor Abbey but the quaint country cottage where she’d lived when her mother and father were still alive.
“This way,” Myrtle whispered, drawing Meg out of her musings, then summarily towed her down the corridor. “Not a recipe in sight. Must have them all stored away.”
Meg was about to suggest that they return to the Hall of Knights when she was ushered into a little cupboard of a room just beyond the larder.
Blinking to accustom her eyes to the dim light filtering in through the partially open door, she noticed a shelf of preserves, a flour-dusted pinafore hanging on a hook and a slender writing desk tucked into the corner. Above it hung a framed square of muslin embroidered with the words of the famous chef Marie-Antoine Carême: “The fine arts are five in number: Painting, Music, Poetry, Architecture and Sculpture—whereof the principal branch is Confectionery.”
By all accounts, this was the cook’s office. Meg emitted a gasp of wonder. “How in the world could you have known where to—”
Myrtle set a finger to her lips, silencing her as a pair of chatting maids passed by in the corridor. Meg nodded, somewhat dumbfounded, and more than a little impressed, at witnessing this de cape et d’épée—cloak-and-dagger—side of the elder woman.
Myrtle was crafty and quick in her search. She even slipped a hatpin free to manipulate the lock of a drawer and summarily withdrew an aged book. It was filled with pages that were yellowed and wavy at the edges, some hosting scrawled lists splattered with constellations of various sauce drippings and others written in a looping curlicue script and topped with full moons of teacup stains.
A recipe book!
She paused on a particularly well-used page with the words The Duke’s Favorite scrawled across the top. Without delay, she slipped a folded scrap of foolscap from a hidden placket on the side of her lavender skirts. She smoothed it on the desk surface, then dipped a waiting quill into a bottle of ink and hastily jotted down the recipe.