He put the bowl aside and reached for one of the buns he had enrobed earlier, the chocolate just set. “Try this,” he urged. “It is a new confection, a choux bun stuffed with acrème pâtissièreflavored withmyrtilleto make them a royal purple. I mean to top them with a little sugar crown as acadeaufor the Princess of the Alpenwald,” he added, gesturing towards a tray of dainty golden crowns fashioned from spun sugar.
“Cadeau?”Stoker asked, rolling the word in an imperfect imitation. “Why not just say ‘gift’?”
Julien shrugged. “Because French is so much more elegant on the tongue, and it reminds Veronica that I am, unlike you, a cultured and sophisticated man. Now, do you want one or not?” he asked, pointing to the tray of crowns.
Stoker required no further invitation. He popped one of the buns into his mouth, his eyes rolling heavenwards as he chewed. Julien smiled again. “You like, my friend?”
The question was very nearly rhetorical. It was impossible to sample any of Julien’s confections and not be enchanted. But like all geniuses, he lapped up praise as a kitten laps cream.
“Heavenly,” Stoker assured him.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Julien stuffed one of the little buns in. “Taste,” he commanded.
I did as he ordered, savoring for just a moment the lush extravagance of the berry-flavored cream, the crisp pastry, the darkly seductive chocolate. “Divine,” I managed through a mouthful of choux.
Julien gave a nod of satisfaction, an emperor receiving his due.
Stoker began to speak but Julien raised a hand in mock horror. “My friend, we do not talk of unsavory things before the stomach has been prepared. It is almost time for luncheon, and you will eat with me. We will have good food and some excellent wine I have liberated from the hotel cellars as part of my wages, and then we will talk of other matters.”
Stoker did not have the fortitude to resist Julien’s offer. In a trice, one of Julien’s minions had whisked away the trays of pastries and bowls of chocolate and cream, laying the worktable with a fine linen cloth and bringing chairs. An array of delectable dishes appeared—a simple soup, a game pie flavored with herbs, juicy cutlets, delicately roasted vegetables, a savory custard of leeks and cream. All was piping hot and served with a quiet deference that demonstrated the respect Julien commanded in the kitchens. With the food came the promised wine, soft as velvet on the palate, and I watched Stoker visibly relax, as contented as a jungle cat after bringing down a tender gazelle.
When the last bit of custard had been scraped up and the last crumb consumed, Julien spread his arms expansively.
“Now, why do you burst into my workroom without notice? You might have caused my masterpiece to collapse,” he said with a gesture towards the marble table behind him. It was covered with tray after tray of dainties, each lovelier than the last—rosewater puffs, fruits-of-the-forest tartlets, violet and blackberry gâteaux—but in the center sat an enormous meringue mountain, carefully sculpted to resemble the Teufelstreppe. Rivers of glacier-pale blue sugar flowed down the sides, and the top was heavily dusted with icing sugar. A soft drift of whitesugary threads had been fashioned into a cloud and was, through some confectionary sorcery, attached to the peak, as if captured just at the moment it had drifted past the summit. Halfway down the mountain, an edible escarpment had been crafted, an outcropping to support a castle fashioned of golden pastry. It was very like the castle I had seen in the engravings at the Curiosity Club, complete with turrets and machicolations and a tiny silken banner attached to the flagpole.
“It is the most spectacular thing I have ever seen,” I told Julien.
A lesser genius would have preened a little, but Julien merely accepted it as his due. “Of course it is because it is the best thing I have ever done.”
“What is it for?” Stoker asked, putting out a tentative finger.
Julien slapped his hand away. “Do not touch it! Have another choux, have twenty, but do not even breathe upon my darling.”
He stood protectively between his pastry sculpture and Stoker, who happily picked up the tray of choux buns and set to work. Mollified, Julien explained.
“It is to be displayed in the grand foyer of the hotel and then taken to the Curiosity Club for the opening of the exhibition. It was commissioned by the princess herself,” he said proudly. I did not begrudge him his pleasure in his accomplishment. Julien had been born in the Caribbean to enslaved parents. His journey to France and to culinary excellence had required talent and sacrifice as well as an ironclad belief in his own abilities. His friendship with Stoker had been born in an instant when they recognized in one another the same character of bone-deep determination to do what they believed right, no matter the cost. My own relationship with Julien was grounded in flirtation and a keen appreciation for the talent behind his work as well as the sheer pleasure in looking at a handsome face.
“Wait here.”
He disappeared into another room and returned bearing a tray which he presented to me with a flourish.“Pâte de guimauve,”he said. “In honor of the cat of the princess which is called by that name.” The tray was laden with tiny delicacies molded in the shape of dainty cats.
“How charming! What are they?” I asked as I selected one.
“Rosewater meringues. They will melt upon the tongue. Try one,” he urged. I did as he bade me. The confections had been tinted the palest shade of pink, the outside glossy and ever so slightly crisp. It dissolved almost instantly to a mouthful of rose-scented sweetness, not soapy, as one might expect, but tasting of sunshine and summer and a garden bursting into bloom.
“Exquisite,” I told him.
He preened. “You say such delightful things to me,ma chèreVeronique.”
I fluttered my lashes a little and he puffed out his chest before plying me with dark chocolate bonbons topped with sugar-dusted violets. I ate two, emitting a tiny moan of pleasure as I did so.
Julien beamed at me in satisfaction. “For you it is a pleasure to create. You have the Gallic appreciation of the senses.”
Stoker snorted at him, but Julien waved him away. “All Englishmen are philistines,” he pronounced sternly before turning back to me. “You would do better with a Frenchman who would appreciate your subtleties.”
He waggled his eyebrows at me in a sort of invitation, and I plucked anotherguimauvefrom the tray, licking the marshmallow from my fingers when I finished.
“You are very good to me, Julien,” I said. “And perhaps you would be better still and tell us if the manager of the Sudbury, Mr. Lovell, has recently taken on a new chambermaid. Tall, slender, clever eyes?”
