Amity groaned inside her head, imagining how her mother and sisters might have behaved.
“Good day, my lord. I will not let you down.” A ridiculous thing to say, she chided herself, as she curtsied. She wasn’t a diplomat stopping a foreign war. Merely a chocolatier developing a confection for an over-indulgent man to give to the beautiful woman on whom he’d set his sights.
Undoubtedly, her creation would win over the fair Lady Madeleine to any proposal the Duke of Pelham made during the party or after.
Even more assuredly, Lady Madeleine did not need chocolate to persuade her to marry the duke.
“Good day, Miss Rare-Foure. A pleasure to meet you.”
Turning away, she sighed at such handsomeness and went inside with the duke’s footman trailing behind. And, as expected, all hell broke loose.
Chapter Two
Like King Louis XV, who prepared his own hot chocolate in the kitchens of his private apartments in the palace, Amity was considered by her family to be the greatest lover of this creamy, delicious beverage. No matter the season, no matter the weather, she started her day like a French royal with a cup of steaming, milky, liquid chocolate. Close at hand, her slender white and gold chocolate pot was perched delicately on three feet upon the table.
Depending on her mood, she added aromatic vanilla beans to the boiling milk, ground cloves, or cinnamon. It was often enough to keep her fueled like a workhorse until the early afternoon.
Sometimes, when in a hurry, she used Cadbury’s pure Cocoa Essence, which she found superior to any of the other cocoas that were on the market. Apparently, the Duke of Pelham had not been so fortunate as to discover it. In any case, above all, she preferred her own homemade concoction of shaved Swiss chocolate and milk.
After yesterday’s excitement, the next morning, Amity thought she might need a dash of vanilla bean and some extra sugar — and risk the tooth decay!
As soon as she had stepped from the duke’s coach into her family’s shop the previous afternoon, she’d been assailed.
“Amity, you’ll never guess who stopped in,” her mother crowed to her from behind the counter, her usual place, with a clean apron pinned over her day gown. “Fine-looking as the new day and tall and eyes a shade of—”
“Mother!” This from Beatrice, the next younger of Amity’s two sisters, for they were a family blessed by females, which was a joke among them for her father had said he couldn’t believe he’d had another blessing and then another.
Beatrice, with the sole blue eyes in the family, was looking past Amity to the footman wearing the ducal livery.
“Do not interrupt,” their mother said.
“Mother,” Beatrice tried again, wanting to stop her from saying anything more embarrassing until after the footman left.
“Ooohhhh,” squealed Charlotte, the baby of the family at seventeen and who’d just come in from the back room carrying a tray of newly sculpted marzipan. “Has the dishy, dashing duke returned? Or only his servant?”
Amity sighed. She could picture the pandemonium she had missed when the Duke of Pelham, himself, had stepped into Rare Confectionery earlier in search of her. Her father’s tempering nature, so useful at home, had been absent as he always left the running of the shop entirely in the capable hands of his wife and daughters.
After requesting the footman place her packages on the nearest counter, Amity had sent him on his way with a sack of four chocolates for his trouble. She couldn’t help watching through the glass door as he climbed aboard the coach that whisked her duke away.
Her duke! Lady Madeleine’s duke actually. But for a few moments....
Amity sighed, still thinking about it the following morning. In the sunny dining room of their home on Baker Street, with its cheerful yellow and cream wallpaper, everything was perfect. She sipped her chocolate, enjoying the peace and quiet—
Charlotte gamboled in, somehow being noisy even when saying nothing. The “saying nothing” didn’t last long.
“Wasn’t yesterday exciting?” Amity’s youngest sister went to the sideboard and gathered her breakfast onto a plate, helping herself to tea, coddled eggs, and toast.
Amity knew to what — and to whom — she referred. “It was,” she agreed.
“When he came in,” her sister continued as she took a seat, “my eyes about popped from my head, and you should have seen us all curtseying so low, my chin was practically between my breasts.”
And Charlotte had an ample bosom in which her chin could nestle, Amity thought ruefully, while her own was what she considered merely adequate.
The day before, after the duke’s footman left, they’d all started talking at the same time, and then a customer had entered and another and another. Soon, the workday had finished, and everyone scattered. Their mother went to her ladies’ gardening society meeting that spent more time tipping sherry than discussing blooms. Charlotte eagerly accompanied a friend to a painting class although none of them could imagine why since she didn’t seem to have an ounce of talent for it. She hadn’t produced a finished work in two months, and they were all starting to think she had her eye on the friend’s older brother, rather than on the canvas at hand. And Beatrice had attended a literary salon at Lady Turbity’s townhouse as she did twice a week without fail.
Amity spent the evening in the kitchen playing with various recipes, imagining what would represent the perfect Brayson chocolate. Everything had come out unpleasant and even bitter. When she’d gone to bed, she’d dreamt of the Duke of Pelham wading through a thick chocolate river to get to her, only to have Lady Madeleine scoop him up on a silver spoon right before he reached her.
Amity eyed her sister, who was enthusiastically buttering her toast in between sentences.
“I hope you all didn’t behave too vulgarly when the duke entered,” Amity said, idly stirring the molinet, the long whisk resting through a small opening in the hinged finial of her chocolate pot. Swishing the molinet kept her chocolate from settling or separating, ensuring the second cup was as well-blended as the first. And she very much enjoyed a second cup.
“No, of course not. Well, maybe a little,” Charlotte grinned, her sweetly bowed lips curving upward. “But when he asked for the talented chocolatier whose reputation was spreading throughout London, we were disappointed to say you weren’t there.”
“Never mind. You described me to him, and he found me. It was a little shocking.” Amity smiled at her sister. “I rode in his coach.”
Charlotte whistled with excitement, a nasty habit no one could break her of. “Tell me everything, particularly what he wanted with you. Will you become the Duchess of Chocolate?”
It was so close to her own misinterpretation of the duke’s proposition that Amity swallowed her hot beverage down the wrong way and began to cough.
“Don’t be silly,” she managed when she could breathe. Grabbing the napkin off her lap, she wiped her mouth. “The duke wants me to create a special chocolate treat for the female he has set his cap on.”
“A man doesn’t set his cap,” Beatrice’s voice preceded her into the room. Taller than either her older or younger sister, the middle Rare-Foure sister had a regal air as she came unhurriedly into the dining room, helped herself to breakfast, and took a seat. “A man sets his sights upon a woman. A woman sets her cap, but she sets it at, not for, a man.”