8 cups milk
¼ cup achiote seeds
12 blanched almonds
12 toasted and skinned hazelnuts
2-3 Mexican vanilla beans, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out
¼ ounce dried rosa de Castillo (rosebuds)
2 3-inch canela (soft Ceylon cinnamon sticks)
1 tablespoon aniseeds
2 whole dried serrano chiles
8 ounces 70% dark chocolate
sugar to taste
1. In a heavy saucepan, heat milk with anchiote seeds over medium heat. Bring to low boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low and let steep for 10 minutes, until milk is brightly colored with the anchiote.
2. Grind almond and hazelnuts together to the consistency of fine breadcrumbs. Set aside.
3. Strain out achiote seeds from milk and return milk to saucepan. Add the ground nuts, along with the vanilla beans and rosebuds, cinnamon, aniseeds, and chiles. Bring to low boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
4. Stir in chocolate. Taste for sweetness, and add sugar to taste. Strain through a fine mesh strainer.
5. Transfer chocolate to tall, narrow pot and whisk vigorously with a molinillo (wooden chocolate mill) or handheld immersion blender. It adds a wonderful frothy head. Serve immediately.
Steam rose from the boiling water, enveloping the stove in a cloud of moist, tropical heat.
“Hell.” A hand shot out and shoved the kettle off the hob.
Cleaning up after such a feast would likely take another few hours, thought the chef irritably. But that was the price—or was it penance?—for choosing to work alone. A baleful glance lingered for a moment on the kitchen’s worktable, the dirty dishes and pots yet another reminder that the aristocratic asses upstairs were gluttons for decadent foods.
More, always more—their hunger seemed insatiable.
But it wasn’t as if their appetites for sumptuous pleasures came as any great surprise to Arianna Hadley. Contempt curled the corners of her mouth. Indeed, she had counted on it.
Turning away from the puddles of melted butter and clotted cream, she wiped her hands and carefully collected the scraps of paper containing her recipes. The edges were yellowing, the spidery script had faded to the color of weak tea, and yet she could not quite bring herself to copy them onto fresh sheets of foolscap. They were like old friends—her only friends, if truth be told—and together they had traveled. . . .
Her hands clenched, crackling the papers. Not that she cared to dwell on the sordid details. They were, after all, too numerous to count.
She closed her eyes for an instant. For as far back as she could remember, life had been one never-ending journey. Jamaica, St. Kitts, Barbados, Martinique, along with all the specks of Caribbean coral and rock too small to have a name. Foam-flecked, rum-drenched hellholes awash in rutting pirates and saucy whores. And from there across the ocean to the glittering bastion of civilized society.
Ah, yes. Here in London the scurvy scum and sluts were swathed in fancy silks and elegant manners. Fine-cut jewels and satin smiles. All thin veneers that hid a black-hearted core of corruption.
Tracing a finger over a water-stained page, Arianna felt the faint grit of salt and wondered whether it was residue from the ocean voyage or one of the rare moments when she had allowed a weak-willed tear. Of late, she had disciplined herself to be tougher. Harder. But as the steam wafted over the sticky pots, stirring a sudden, haunting hint of island spices, she blinked and the words blurred. Light and dark, spinning into a vortex of jumbled memories.
Fire. Smoke. The lush scent of sweetness licking up from the flames.
“Breathe deeply, ma petite .” Her voice lush with the lilt of the tropics, the mulatto cook leaned closer to the copper cauldron. “Drink in its essence.” She sprinkled a grating of cinnamon, a pinch of anchiote over the roasting nibs. “Watch carefully, Arianna. Like life itself, the cacao is even better with a bit of spice, but the mix must be just right. Let me show you. . . .”
Dark as ebony, Oribe’s hands fluttered through the tendril of steam. “Theobroma cacao —food of the gods,” she murmured. “Now we must wait for just the right moment to douse the flames. Remember—its magic cannot be rushed.” From a smaller pot, the cook poured a measure of hot milk into a ceramic cup. Adding a spoonful of ground beans, thickened with sugar, she whipped the concoction to a foaming froth with her molinillo. “But patience will be rewarded. Drink this—”
Then the image of the old servant dissolved, and Arianna found herself staring into the shadows.
Shadows. She remembered shifting shapes of menacing black, and the rumblings of thunder from a fast-approaching storm. Dancing to the drumming of the wind against the shutters, a tendril of smoke had swirled up from the lone candle, casting a trail of twisted patterns over a bloodstained sheet.
“Drink this, Papa.” She was holding a glass of cheap rum to her father’s trembling lips. “A physician will be here soon with laudanum to help ease the pain, ” she lied, knowing full well that not a soul would come rushing to help two penniless vagabonds.
“I would rather have a sip of your special chocolate, my dear.” He tried to smile, despite the jagged knife wound gouged between his ribs.
So much blood, so much blood. Cursing the stinking wharfside alleys and the shabby tavern room, she pressed her palm to the scarlet-soaked handkerchief, trying to staunch the flow.
“I—I shall always savor the sweet memory of you,” he went on in a whisper. “I . . . ” A groan gurgled deep in his throat. “God in heaven, forgive me for being such a wretched parent. And for sinking you in such a sordid life.”
“You are not to blame! You were falsely accused.”
“Yes, I was—I swear it,” he rasped. “But . . . it doesn’t matter. Not for me.” He coughed. “But you—you deserve better. . . .”
“Never mind that. You deserve justice, Papa. Tell me who did this to you.”
“I . . .” But there was no answer, only a spasm of his icy fingers and then a silence louder than the wailing wind.
Arianna shifted on her stool, recalled back to the present by the clatter of footsteps on the stairs. Her skin was sheened in sweat and yet she was chilled to the bone.
“Chef! Chef!” Fists pounded on the closed door. “Monsieur Alphonse, open up! Something terrible has happened!”
Smoothing at the ends of her false mustache, Arianna quickly tucked the papers into her smock and rose.
Perhaps it was too late for justice. Perhaps all that mattered now was vengeance.
“Indeed?” Lord Percival Grentham’s expression remained impassive. A senior government minister in Whitehall’s War Office, he was in charge of security for London, which included keeping watch over the royal family. And with the King lingering in the netherworld of madness and his grown children mired in one scandal after another, it was a task designed to test his legendary sangfroid.
Grentham’s assistant nervously cleared his throat. “But he’s going to survive, milord,” he added hastily. “A physician happened to be treating a patient next door and was summoned in time to purge the poison from the Prince’s stomach.”