‘Good idea, although I’m calling it hunter’s chicken. I’ll leave the fancy French names for the hotel in Newton-cum-Hardy with the fancy French owner and the grumpy chef,’ said Meg.
‘I’ll take the tray with the veg,’ said Louise.
‘And I’ll bring the plates. But only two at a time. I’ll have to come back anyway. No need to show off how many plates I can carry on my arm.’
She wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, not even her mother, but Meg didn’t trust her plate-balancing skills at that moment.
Had Meg known Justin was going to be at the meal, she’d have done something a bit more complicated than profiteroles, but they’d had a booking for afternoon tea and so she’d done eclairs for the visitors. After making acroquembouchefor Alexandra’s weddingshe felt she could make choux pastry in her sleep. Now, although the profiteroles were piled up nicely in dishes, filled with cream and covered in a really good chocolate sauce, she felt embarrassed. If she was the good pastry chef she’d almost claimed to be, she should probably have been offering something a bit more elaborate, although she couldn’t think what that might be. She brought them in on a tray, her head held high.
Justin gave her an inscrutable look, but didn’t comment. Andrew and Louise both oohed and aahed obligingly.
‘Would you like coffee in here or in the drawing room?’ she asked the moment everyone had put down their spoons. She planned to dump the coffee and then flee.
She felt she’d got away with it: no one asked her if she wanted coffee, probably because she firmly said she didn’t, and she had nearly finished the washing-up before Justin caught up with her in the kitchen.
‘You’re not a bad cook for an amateur,’ he said, with just a hint of a twinkle.
‘Couldn’t you have said “gifted amateur”?’ Meg replied.
To her surprise, he laughed. ‘I suppose not even I can be that patronising. But considering you haven’t been classically trained, you are very good.’
‘I think Mme Wilson, who taught me in London, cared a lot about food. I only realised quite how high her standards were when I started getting catering jobs.’
‘What sort of establishment was it?’ Justin seemed curious.
‘Most of her students were debutantes who were there to keep themselves busy in the mornings and to be made more attractive to aristocratic husbands. But we weren’t all like that.’
‘So you don’t want an aristocratic husband?’
‘I can’t imagine anything worse!’ Although saying this reminded her of Alexandra’s Antoine, who was very aristocratic. But Antoine was different.
‘What about your mother?’
Meg put down the saucepan she’d been scrubbing. ‘What do you mean?’
Justin sighed. ‘Does your mother want an aristocratic husband, or would one who is set to inherit a very beautiful old house do?’
‘Are you implying my mother is after your father’s money?’
‘I’m hardly implying it, I’m saying it outright. Does your mother have a history of working for men she then tries to marry?’
There was so much that Meg wanted to say, to express her utter fury at the outrageousness of his suggestion that she took a deep breath and just said, ‘No. It’s usually the other way round. I’ve never known her to be remotely interested in any of the people she’s worked for. She has to leave jobs because her employer begins to become a nuisance.’
‘She doesn’t seem to find my father a nuisance.’
‘That’s probably because he’s not one. He just seems kind and considerate, a good employer, who doesn’t make unwelcome advances.’
‘Thank you for the testimonial.’
‘The strange thing is that he has you for a son,’ said Meg.
Justin laughed again, genuinely amused. ‘At least you can’t accuse me of making unwanted advances.’
‘Well, not to me, you haven’t, but maybe other women who work for you have had a different experience.’ She looked him firmly in the eye and then suddenly thought of Laura Wilde who had shown them round: elegant, well-groomed and thin. They both worked at the hotel. But would advances from Justin be unwelcome? she wondered. Possibly not!
‘I can assure you,’ he said, still entertained, ‘that I never make unwanted advances.’
‘Good for you,’ said Meg, wondering if she could nip round the kitchen table and escape, although it would be an extremely cowardly thing to do. ‘And I’m sure you never bully anyone in the kitchens you run either.’
