Page 18 of Chef’s Kiss (A Knights Through Time #20)
T he thunder of hoofbeats echoed across the courtyard at dawn, followed by the crisp sound of commands being issued in an posh upper class voice that after a few days, Rachel knew well.
She stumbled from her chamber, still blinking sleep from her eyes, to find the castle’s bailey alive with organized chaos.
Isolde stood beside her palfrey, magnificent even at this ungodly hour in a traveling gown of deep burgundy that looked really expensive.
Was that real gold thread? On a dress? Her dark hair was coiled beneath a practical wimple, but there was nothing subdued about the sharp intelligence in her eyes or the way she directed her small retinue with the authority of someone born to command.
“You’re leaving?” She asked, breathing heavily after running down the stairs and through the great hall. At least she’d managed to throw on her dress and wrap a woolen cloak around her shoulders so she wouldn’t scandalize the household.
“I am going to court,” Isolde corrected, her voice carrying the satisfaction of someone who’d spent the entire night planning strategy.
“To pull certain strings, grease certain palms, and remind certain people that the de Valois family has not forgotten how to play the game.”
Tristan emerged from the stables, looking calm with his hands loose at his sides, but Rachel caught the tension in his shoulders as he strode across the bailey to meet them.
He wore his best black doublet, the one that emphasized his broad shoulders, to see his sister off.
Not that Rachel had noticed his shoulders or anything.
“You need not risk yourself for my sake, sister,” he said quietly, his voice rough with something that might have been gratitude or guilt. “If Guy discovers what you’re about?—”
“Guy de Montague is a snake,” Isolde interrupted, accepting her brother’s assistance to mount with the fluid grace of someone born to the saddle. “But he’s not the only one at court with fangs. I have my own allies, my own methods.”
She settled her reins, then fixed both Rachel and Tristan with a look that somehow managed to be both fond and threatening.
“While I am gone, you two will continue your... research... into the trade discrepancies. But carefully. No drawing attention, no dramatic gestures, no—” her gaze flicked meaningfully between them “—complications that might jeopardize what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Heat crept across her cheeks at the implication. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Isolde said with the kind of smile that had probably made diplomats nervous for generations, “that I have eyes and am not blind to what passes between you. Use the time wisely. Both the investigation and... other matters... that require discussion.”
With that cryptic pronouncement, she spurred her horse toward the gates, her small escort falling in around her like a protective shadow. She paused at the gatehouse to call back over her shoulder, her voice carrying the kind of authority that made even the wind seem to listen.
“I’ll send word within a fortnight. Be ready when the opportunity arises—it may not come twice.”
Then she was gone, leaving behind only the echo of hoofbeats and the faint scent of expensive French perfume that seemed to linger in the morning air like a promise of things to come.
Several days later, Rachel was slowly going insane from the combination of medieval boredom and sizzling tension thick enough to cut with a butter knife.
Not that there were proper butter knives in 1475. Just another item on her growing list of things to mourn about this time period, right after coffee, indoor plumbing, and the complete absence of anything resembling decent Wi-Fi.
She stood at the kitchen window, watching Tristan work in the garden with the intensity of someone who definitely wasn’t thinking impure thoughts about the way his linen shirt clung to his shoulders when he bent to tend the herbs, or rode up to show off a six-pack that would make Chris Hemsworth jealous.
The morning sun caught the dark silk of his hair, and when he straightened to wipe sweat from his brow, the fabric pulled taut across his chest in ways that made her mouth go dry.
“Focus and stop ogling the man.” She muttered to herself as she looked at the mess on the table. If she had a packet of yeast—or even proper ale barm—she could coax this into a decent rise. Here, the dough just blinked at her like, no cold butter, no dice .
“This would take five minutes with a stand mixer.” She gave up on shoving her sleeves higher and rolled them to the elbows. “Instead, I’m kneading with smoke in my eyes, banking coals like a dragon, and working with flour that’s bran-flecked and gritty.”
Sir Whiskerbottom, who had claimed a sunny spot on the kitchen table despite Marta’s increasingly creative attempts to dislodge him, fixed her with a look of feline judgment that somehow managed to convey both sympathy and mild disappointment in her life choices.
“Don’t give me that look,” she told him, punching the dough with perhaps more violence than necessary. “I’m handling this like a mature adult. A mature adult who just happens to be trapped in the Middle Ages with the most attractive man to ever brood dramatically while tending rosemary.”
The cat’s purr suggested he found her definition of “mature adult” somewhat lacking.
The kitchen door opened with a creak that made her pulse quicken, followed by footsteps she’d learned to recognize despite herself.
Heavy but graceful, confident but somehow careful—the walk of someone who’d learned to move through the world ready for either battle or ballroom, depending on the circumstances.
“The sage needs harvesting,” Tristan bellowed—well, not bellowed exactly, but his voice carried that commanding quality that made servants scurry to do his bidding, and made her pulse do interesting things. “Before the heat of the day wilts it beyond use.”
Rachel glanced up from her bread dough to find him standing in the doorway, and her brain temporarily forgot how to process visual information.
His hair was mussed from working in the garden, and there was a streak of dirt across one high cheekbone that made her want to reach out and brush it away.
The linen shirt she’d been admiring from afar was now damp with honest sweat, clinging to the defined muscles of his chest and arms in ways that should probably be illegal in any century.
“Right,” she said, proud of how normal her voice sounded despite the fact that her mouth had gone desert-dry. “Sage. For cooking. Very practical. Very innocent thoughts about herbs.”
He raised an eyebrow at her muttered commentary. “What are you babbling about?”
“Nothing important,” she replied quickly, wiping flour from her hands with a cloth that had seen better decades. “Just talking to myself. It’s a bad habit I picked up from living alone too long.”
He tilted his head, a frown on his breathtaking face. “You lived alone?” The question seemed to surprise him as much as it did her, slipping out with genuine curiosity rather than his usual careful formality.
“For three years,” she admitted, following him toward the herb garden.
The morning air was sweet with the scent of roses and lavender, warm enough to make her grateful for the light chemise and blue linen kirtle—she’d finally given in to Mistress Caldwell’s pointed comments about proper attire and allowed Tristan to give her two dresses, though she drew the line at the complicated headpieces, instead preferring to put her hair in a bun.
“It wasn’t so bad. No one to judge my cooking disasters or comment on my tendency to binge-watch crime shows while eating ice cream directly from the container.”
“Crime shows?”
She waved a hand dismissively, stepping carefully around a patch of particularly aggressive mint that seemed determined to take over the entire garden.
“Entertainment. Stories about people solving mysteries, catching bad guys, that sort of thing. Very popular where I come from.”
“And ice cream?”
“Frozen sweetened cream. Like... like if you took the best parts of custard and made them cold enough to numb your tongue.”
She caught his expression of polite bewilderment and laughed. “Never mind. The point is, living alone was fine. Quiet. Predictable. No surprises.”
“No one to share meals with,” he observed, kneeling beside a flourishing patch of sage that released its earthy scent into the warming air. “No one to appreciate your skills.”
There was something in his voice that made her look at him more closely. “Is that why you stopped cooking? Because there was no one left who understood what it meant to you?”
His hands stilled on the herbs, and for a moment the garden was quiet except for the distant lowing of cattle and the drone of bees among the lavender. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of old pain carefully contained.
“My mother used to say that food prepared with love tastes different than food prepared from mere necessity. That the cook’s heart seasons every dish, whether they will it or not.” He straightened, a handful of sage leaves cupped in his palms like tiny green treasures.
“After her death, after my father’s disappointment, after Guy’s betrayal... there seemed little point in seasoning aught with what remained of my heart.”
The raw pain in his admission made her chest ache. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“’Tis merely practical,” he said, though his careful mask couldn’t quite hide the vulnerability beneath. “Why waste good spices on bitterness?”
“Because,” Rachel said, stepping closer despite every instinct that told her she was entering dangerous territory, “sometimes the act of creating something beautiful is what reminds you that your heart is still working. Even when it feels broken.”