Read Online The Marriage Test by Betina Krahn - Free Book Online Page B

I will not cook here.”
    For a moment, it looked to her as if he might try to enforce his order physically. Then he wheeled and stalked back through the camp, barking orders for his men to cook their own game. As he disappeared into the nearby woods, she felt every eye in the camp turn on her in confusion.
    “If she’s the new cook”—mutters reached her ears—“why don’t she
cook?”
    Her cheeks burned, her fisted hands throbbed, and her legs might have given way if she hadn’t been leaning against the cart. She climbed up onto the cart again and sat on the rear board watching the men’s progress toward dinner and enduring Regine’s baleful looks.
    “I have to make him respect me and my work,” she defended her course.
    “And what about them?” Regine gestured to the men gathered glumly around the fire. “Don’t they deserve a bit of help?”
    “They’ve managed to feed themselves up to now.”
    “You know, hoarding talents is serious business with the Almighty,” Regine mused, rubbing her own hollow middle. “Not to mention the fact that we will have to eat what they produce.”
    Regine had a point; they would have to eat his men’s cooking for the week it would take to reach the count’s home. That observation, along with the disappointment Sir Axel and Sir Greeve tried valiantly not to show, softened her determination. She left the cart to venture closer to the campfire and heard the arguments taking place among the men charged with cooking.
    They had cleaned the rabbits and now debated whether they should stick them on a spit, as usual, or toss them into the great pot hung too close to the flame … where they would undoubtedly sizzle and scorch into a charred bit of rabbit leather. Heaven knew what they intended to do with the onions, cabbage, and parsnips piled nearby.
    She paused by the basket piled high with bread and tested a loaf with her thumb. The crust gave nicely, surprising her, and the loaves smelled wheaty and fragrant. Next, she paused by a small barrel that stood nearby, wetted her fingers with the drips from the wooden spigot, and sniffed. Wine. Snagging the tin cup that hung on the barrel, she filled it and sipped. It was deep in color and redolent of raspberries and a hint of spice in a fine fume of oak.
    Sir Greeve caught her standing there with the cup in her hand and a frown on her face. “If he doesn’t mind buying bread and wine from locals, why doesn’t he buy a decent joint of meat? Some pork or lamb for a proper meal?”
    “He’s … not partial to hung meats.” Sir Greeve winced.
    Julia blinked. That made as much sense as saying he didn’t like water because it was wet. Aging meats by hanging them in a cool place and allowing them to tenderize was a cornerstone of good cooking. Half of the meat recipes Sister Boniface had imparted to her began:
“Take some well-hanged meat …”
    “He says if you hang pork it turns to worms. And lamb goes green and slimy.” Axel appeared on the other side of her and sighed. “Won’t even let us hang game birds … quail, wild geese, swans. Insists they be fresh killed.”
    “So, you have to find fresh meat when traveling with him.”
    “And we don’t have time much for hunting. So if we can’t find an agreeable cottager, we eat mostly small birds and rabbit,” Greeve put in with a rueful look. “Very bad rabbit.”
    Julia looked at the stoic faces of the men crouched around the fire and felt compelled to do something. It wouldn’t take much. Deciding, she drew a cup of wine from the barrel and strolled over to the cooks, missing the way Axel and Greeve grinned and elbowed each other behind her back.
    “A pity you don’t have a bit of bacon to season that pot before you chop up the meat and toss it in,” she said, peering over them toward the pot.
    “I think we might have a bit of bacon,” one of the men declared, rising and pouring through the contents of a bag of provisions lying nearby. Producing a slab of