“Do you find this terribly tedious?” he asked suddenly.
“Oh, no. I love my work.”
He persisted, “Do you ever grow tired of tasting chocolate?”
“Again, no. I love my work.” She couldn’t imagine a day when she tasted chocolate and felt anything less than delight.
Nodding at her answer, he asked. “Did you always know you would do this?”
“Yes,” she confessed. “I had a good palate for it, my father says, from early on. When my sisters would cram any sweet into their mouths, even those awful boiled colored balls which we all now detest for their poor quality, I would be more discerning.”
Keeping her face blank, she asked him, “What about you? Did you always know you would be a duke?”
He blinked, opened his mouth, got the joke an instant later, and then laughed uproariously.
Amity felt a wave of warmth trickle through her at having amused this man. It gave her genuine pleasure to make him happy.
“Water, please,” he said when his last chuckle died away.
She poured him a glass, which he drank down quickly, probably thirsty from so much chocolate. He set it down and wiped the back of his mouth on his hand, looking entirely at home in her work room.
She straightened. She mustn’t allow herself to get too comfortable with him. This wasn’t a real friendship, and their association would undoubtedly end entirely in less than a fortnight.
“I suppose we should concentrate on the texture of the third chocolate from yesterday. You thought that had the most spirit, and for your purpose of winning the Lady Madeleine, I think we need one with spirit, don’t you?”
He was staring at her and simply nodded in agreement.
Feeling a little ruffled at his scrutiny, she continued, “That one was plain chocolate with orange liqueur. The Brayson will be plain because we don’t want to risk the milk chocolate and not orange flavored. I can create some samples with the other flavors we’ve discussed. Do you think you — or rather, she — would like a filled center, such as a piece of candied ginger, or shall I keep the same creamy smoothness in the middle and add a flavored syrup or oil?”
“Creamy smoothness,” he said, staring at her.
Amity was certain his gaze dropped to her mouth when he spoke, and a frisson of excitement sizzled down her spine.
“I shall work on a few later, perhaps with ginger juice or essence of pear which might do nicely—”
“Why not now?” he asked.
“With you standing here?” The thought unsettled her. “Won’t that be a terrible waste of your time?”
The duke shook his head. “If I am not in the way, I would very much like to stay.” He looked around. “I’ll sit on that stool, and if you need me to taste something, I shall.”
A strange request, but she could hardly turn down a duke. Nor did she want to, for she enjoyed his company tremendously. If he stared at her and made her nervous, however, she would have to send him on his way.
Instead, he told her stories of the haut ton that kept her laughing for the next hour, and in between, she showed him how she melted solid chocolate in her bain-marie. He stood close and watched while she explained how chocolate was too delicate to come in contact directly with the bottom of a flame-fired pot, hence the pot-inside-a-pan-of-water method. She even let him stir, unable to keep from smiling at him since he looked like a child helping in the kitchen for the first time.
With a start, she realized it probably was his first time over a stove. Sweet Mary! She had put a duke to work over a cooktop.
“You really should let me pin an apron on you,” she offered again.
He sent her a scornful glance, then asked, “Is it done, do you think? May I taste it?”
“It will taste exactly as before it melted, except it will be hot. So, the answer is no. There will be plenty for you to taste in a minute. Now, pour two-thirds onto the marble.”
“Directly onto it?”
“Yes, I cleaned it while you were stirring. Go ahead. Pour it in a big circle, a puddle. Don’t worry, it won’t flow off the marble. It will start to cool at once.”
As he’d been told, he poured until she told him to stop. However, when he nearly put the hot pot down on her Italian marble, she shrieked.
“No!” She grabbed his wrist to restrain him. Their gazes locked. “I mean, please, my lord, set it on the trivet. We shall need it again soon.” She released him, not quite able to believe she’d laid hands upon a duke’s arm. It felt like any other man’s, firm and strong. Like Jeremy’s, she reminded herself. The man she would eventually marry.
The duke did as she instructed, and then she let him pull up the stool to the counter.
“Don’t you wish to sit?” he asked, hovering over the merrily painted blue stool Beatrice liked to use when making toffee. “I cannot sit if you do not.”
His gentlemanly manners prevented him breaching the rules of gallantry.
“I prefer to stand when I work,” Amity told him. “I can easily reach everything I need and move quickly about the room.” She frowned. “Perhaps we can agree to leave the standards of decorum at the curtain,” she said, gesturing toward the rich blue hanging that separated them from the rest of the world.
“What happens in here,” he suggested, “can be an exception to the rigid behaviors of so-called proper society.”
She nodded. “In here, we shall behave as comfortable friends. Agreed?”
He barely hesitated. “Agreed,” he said, taking a seat on Beatrice’s stool, which squeaked slightly.
Amity hoped the duke wouldn’t end up on his backside upon the floor.
“Now, we shall temper the chocolate.”
HENRY COULDN’T REMEMBER when he’d enjoyed himself more. He watched her wield two differently shaped tools, one with a long narrow blade, one with a shorter, wider one, yet neither were sharp. She scraped the chocolate from the marble over and over, flipped it, then spread it upon the marble again. When she seemed satisfied, she held the pot with the scant remaining chocolate at the edge and scraped all the cooled, thicker mixture into it. She stirred this until she’d created a delightfully, glossy blend.
“Tempering crystallizes the cocoa butter in the chocolate. I’m doing that first by warming it to the right temperature, then with movement. The cocoa butter in tempered chocolate is transformed into a stable form.”
“Meaning?” he asked, leaning forward to look into the pot.
“I’ve guaranteed that when it cools, which is in a matter of minutes, the chocolate will hold shape, break with a satisfying snap, and have a beautiful shininess.”
“Now what?” he asked, realizing he was speaking softly as if watching a play.
She bit her lower lip. “This will harden in about three to five minutes, so we must roll our balls and dip them in.”
“We?” he asked, but he washed his hands at the sink and let her put him to work.
Using the now firm chocolate fondant from the cold box, which had become like a creamy paste as she’d told him it would, they rolled it into balls with their palms. Next, they quickly dipped each ball directly into the tempered chocolate with their fingers and set them on trays lined with wax paper. He hadn’t been in such a mess since he was a small boy. Frankly, he loved it.