Never Resist Temptation Read Online Free

Russia.”
    â€œThank you, Your Excellency,” Jacobin replied in the same language. It felt good to converse in French, and she could relax now she was sure Candover wasn’t in the visiting party. “I added only a few finishing touches. Most of the praise must go to Monsieur Carême.” Thus she tactfully dismissed hours of painful work. She couldn’t afford to offend Carême by having it reported she was stealing his glory.
    â€œYou are very young for such responsibility. Where did you learn your skills?”
    â€œI was apprentice to a former colleague of Monsieur Carême,” Jacobin replied, “a cook who worked at the maître’s shop in the Rue de la Paix. I have been fortunate, even at second hand, to learn some of the master’s extraordinary skill.”
    â€œVery good, very good,” interrupted the regent, sounding impatient. “Very well done, young man. Your master will be pleased with you, I have no doubt.” He turned to the head sauce cook. “I shall have my own physician attend Carême.” Then, doubtless considering his lesser servants sufficiently honored, he drew the ambassador’s attention to the construction of the kitchen and the vast central steam table, capable of keeping forty platters of food hot at the same time.
    Jacobin feared she had now drawn the interest of the entire staff and the envy of many. Given the intrigues and resentments that were rife in the prince’s kitchens, her rise to prominence would cause more problemsthan not. In her situation it would be safer to relapse into obscurity. As soon as she could, she escaped out to the kitchen court to share a tankard of ale with young Charlie and Dick Johnson. Dick was an amiable member of the confectionery staff, who didn’t hold “Jacob’s” Frenchness against him. Right now he was more interested in his potential windfall from the sale of the food surplus than in Jacob Léon’s sudden notoriety.
    â€œI wonder how much we’ll get from this morning’s work,” he mused, blowing a smoke ring from a cheroot, filched by one of the footmen from the post-dinner detritus of the dining room. “Let’s hope the head cook doesn’t rise from his bed and snaffle the lot.”
    With Carême still indisposed, the kitchen staff was particularly cheerful that morning, for the earnings from the surplus food would be distributed to the staff according to the long-established system of entitlements. Not least among the grudges held by the Prince Regent’s staff against the French chef was Carême’s habit of making his own deals for the sale of food and retaining the income for himself.
    â€œ Mon Dieu, it doesn’t seem fair,” Jacobin agreed, “if it is indeed true that his salary is two thousand guineas. Quelle richesse! ”
    Charlie’s eyes looked ready to pop at the notion of such wealth. “Wot would you do with two thousand yellow boys, Jake?”
    Jacobin laughed and rumpled the boy’s hair. “I don’t know, Charlie. Maybe drink a bottle of wine every day? The good stuff, not the filth they serve to the staff.”
    â€œOne! I’d drink two! And get meself a fine coach and ’orses and drive round all day like a nob.”
    â€œI’d marry Alice Tomkins,” averred Dick, who was consistently ignored by the prettiest kitchen maid. “She’d be all arsey-varsey for me if I was rich. And I’d get out of here and buy me a cottage in the country.”
    â€œNot me,” Jacobin countered. “I’d go to London and open a pastry shop, and all the fashionable households would buy from me, instead of Gunter’s.”
    â€œYou could do it, Jake,” said Charlie. “Your pastries are the best in the kitchen.”
    â€œAnd how would you know that?” she asked. “None of the others let you pinch samples like I do.”
    â€œI know,”