“Yes.” She nodded emphatically. “Perhaps I should start cooking regular meals.”
“My manly heart is enraptured.”
“You need to keep up your strength if you are to serve me.”
Gabriel’s chair legs smacked the kitchen floor. He leaned forward, nearly touching her. “If you needed me to serve you, Marietta, you should have just said so.”
Her cheeks flamed under his intense stare, his one-sided grin. “Serve Kenny.”
“Well, that I am most unwilling to do. It’s you or no one.” He tipped the chair back again.
She snorted. “I highly doubt that.”
“I am in demand, it is true.”
His tone was nonchalant. She wondered about him once more. He used the female attention whenever he needed, but intuition told her that he didn’tlikethe attention. Strange. She’d met popinjays in the ton, more than one cock of the walk, a score of libertines, Corinthians and dandies, and all of them seemed to revel in female attention. Or at the outside be arrogant concerning it. Gabriel Noble was arrogant about it, yes, but it covered something else. Something deeper.
“Then it is decided,” she said. “You will try your hand at this meal, and when that doesn’t work, I will start cooking regular meals and we can stop relying on Mrs. Rosaire for everything, though her delicious soups and stews would be nice to continue.” They were just too good. From the amount of food he partook in her presence, though, Gabriel didn’t eat enough. “And perhaps I will need to clean up after you as well.”
She really should watch her tongue. Her cooking was average at best. But Noble was just too good at most things. This was going to be amusing.
Unless he was a run of the mill cook as well. Then she would just have to outdo him at being average.
“You are allowing me to cook tonight, then? You aren’t going to bemoan my sending Mrs. Rosaire away?” There was something in his eyes as he made the last remark. Something that cautioned her to be wary. She ignored it, too high on their banter after a trying day.
“Go ahead, Noble. Give it a go.”
He unfolded himself from his chair. “What would you like to eat?”
She clasped her hands together on top of the table. “I’ll leave it to you.”
“Salmon with wine sauce?”
She blinked as he turned and walked to the sideboard. He pulled two slabs of fish from underneath and deftly tossed an onion from one hand to the other.
“Pardon?”
“Is salmon with wine sauce to your taste?”
She met his eyes and saw the glimmer there. The high was still upon her, but suddenly she wasn’t sure she was going to be celebrating his defeat after all. “Are you sure you should try something like that? I will settle for something much less.” Let it not be said that she lacked stubbornness.
“Oh, no. No, no, no, Marietta. I can’t have you settling.” He smirked and grabbed a large butcher knife, tossed it into the air, then cut and boned the fillets. He gathered vegetables and dry ingredients, laying them out across the high cooking table.
Her feet moved of their own volition when he started chopping things as if born to the knife. She stood next to him, one hand along the high table edge.
“There is a reason you don’t eat as much at the table, isn’t there?” A cook was always sampling as he went.
“There is.”
“Mrs. Rosaire doesn’t make the soup, does she?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“She does not.”
She closed her eyes at the confirmation. Of course. That was why Jeremy had almost corrected her.
“You must have taken a nice laugh at my expense.”
He looked at her out of the side of his eye, through the hanging locks. “No. It’s just something I don’t share with people.”
