From the chocolate notebooks of Dona Maria Castellano Senor Diego Martinez invited me to study some old books in his library, and in them I found the first mention that I"ve seen of chocolate in Italy! In 1606, Francesco d"Antonio Carlette, a merchant from Florence, submitted a report to Ferdinando de" Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, on his world travels. In it, he includes a whole section on the New World and its trade in cacao. . . .

Chocolate Cookies with Gin-Soaked Raisins cup golden raisins

cup gin

3 cups sifted confectioner"s sugar (sift before measuring)

cup sifted unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-

processed (sift before measuring)

1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour (unsifted)

teaspoon salt

3 large egg whites

teaspoon vanilla

8 ounces pecans, toasted, cooled, and coa.r.s.ely chopped

1. Combine raisins and gin in a cup and let stand at least 8 hours to macerate.

2. Preheat oven to 350F. b.u.t.ter and flour 2 large baking sheets, shaking off excess flour.

3. Mix confectioner"s sugar, cocoa powder, espresso powder, flour, and salt with an electric mixer at low speed. Add egg whites and vanilla and continue mixing until smooth.

4. Drain raisins in a sieve, without pressing, then add raisins to dough with pecans. Stir until thoroughly mixed. (Dough will be thick and sticky.) 5. Working quickly, drop cup dough for each cookie onto a baking sheet, s.p.a.cing cookies at least 3 inches apart, and gently pat down each mound to about inch thick.

6. Bake cookies, 1 sheet at a time, in middle of oven, rotating sheet halfway through baking, for 15 to 17 minutes total, or until cookies appear cracked and centers are just set. Cool cookies on sheet 1 minute, then transfer carefully to a rack to cool completely.

Too unsettled to sleep quite yet, Arianna took up the candle and made her way down to the kitchen. Its worktables and well-stocked pantries were now familiar territory, for several days ago, on learning that Arianna was studying the chocolate notebooks belonging to the earl"s grandmother, the cook had issued an invitation to help make up the week"s supply of cacao for hot chocolate.

Apparently Arianna had pa.s.sed the test, for she had been given carte blanche to make use of the s.p.a.ce and supplies whenever she wished.

After adding fresh coals to the stove, she lit a lantern and gathered the ingredients she wanted. Spices and almonds, cream and b.u.t.ter, flour and sugar, a ball of cacao paste . . . after measuring out the exact amounts of several ingredients, she set the copper pot on the hob to heat.

As the gloom came alive with soothing sounds and smells of cooking, she felt her tension melting away into the kitchen rhythms.

Lost in thought, Arianna wasn"t aware of the approaching footsteps until the sc.r.a.pe of a boot on the mudroom floor jarred her from her work. Pulse pounding, she grabbed up the long-bladed chopping knife and whirled around from the worktable.

Framed in the doorway was a dark shape, a blur of black on black in the murky corridor.

Her throat seized, her hands clenched.

"A late supper?"The earl stepped out from the ominous shadows, his caped coat flapping around his shoulders.

The blade wavered as she expelled a sharp breath.

"Or is it breakfast?" added Saybrook, slipping out of his coat and shaking off the droplets of rain. He draped it over a stool and came forward into the pool of lantern light. In the flickering flame, he looked tired. Troubled.

Or perhaps pensive was more accurate. It was hard to say. She didn"t know him well enough to recognize his moods.

"Neither," she replied.

"Well, it smells good enough to eat." He paused for a look at the simmering sugar, which was slowly caramelizing to a b.u.t.tery shade of gold. "What are you making?"

Arianna pointed to the sheet of paper by the grater. "I copied one of your grandmother"s recipes for a chocolate and almond confection. I was too restless to sleep, so I thought I would try it. I find cooking relaxing."

"Sounds delicious." He went to a tall cabinet by the larder and took down a bottle. She heard a soft splash, and when he returned he was cupping a rounded gla.s.s filled with a dark amber liquid.

"Spanish brandy," he said, catching her questioning look. "Simpler and sharper than the French style. But I"m not in the mood for complexity tonight."

She looked away from his shadowed face. "What are you doing here?"

"I don"t need an invitation to enter my uncle"s house. I am family, and welcome at any hour."

Family. For a fleeting moment Arianna found herself wondering what it would be like not to be always alone.

"What about you, Lady Wolcott?" His dark eyes seemed to pierce her private thoughts. "Or whoever you really are. You must have family somewhere."

"No." Arianna scooped up a handful of almonds and set them on the chopping block. "Not all of us are privileged enough to have loving relatives. I"m on my own in this world, naught but a nomad."

"Even a nomad has a family name, one that roots her to the past, whether she likes it or not."

"I have a family name," she shot back. "I told you, it"s Smith."

"I think not."

"It"s of no concern to me what you think, sir."

"I beg to differ, Lady"-there was a quiver of silence before he spoke the next words-"Arianna Hadley."

The blade slipped, nicking her finger. "I-I don"t know what you are talking about," she stammered as a bead of blood welled up from the cut. In the low light, the color appeared more black than crimson.

Saybrook pa.s.sed her his handkerchief. "To be more specific, Lady Arianna Hadley, the only child of Richard Hadley, the fourth Earl of Morse, who left England for Jamaica in "02. The rumors hint at some dark scandal. Would you care to illuminate it?"

Arianna answered with a low curse.

"I can easily find out all the details," he went on. "But it would save me time if you told me yourself."

"Why does it matter?" she demanded.

"I don"t know that it does. However, experience has taught me that in any investigation, it"s important to have all the facts at hand, no matter how irrelevant they may seem."

She heaved a harsh sigh and resumed chopping. "He was accused of cheating at cards. One of his so-called friends confronted him with the charge, and another b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.d corroborated it. My father was given a choice-leave the country or have the incident made public." The staccato sound of the blade hitting wood grew louder. "You know the aristocracy and their precious code of honor. Had he stayed, he would have been forced to put a bullet through his brain."

"Again, I ask why?"

"Why did they frame him?" Arianna lifted her shoulders. "How in Hades should I know? Perhaps they were bored, like so many indolent aristocrats. Or perhaps they resented that my father had a knack for winning." She caught his expression and quickly added, "And before you ask-no, he was not guilty of cheating!"

Saybrook said nothing.

Unwrapping the ball of cacao paste, she began to dice it into tiny pieces. Thwock, thwock, thwonk. The rhythmic rap helped calm her temper. "My father was very clever with numbers," she went on. "He had a system of counting-the cards, that is-which allowed him to work out patterns of probability. He said it gave him an edge in calculating the odds."

"A helpful skill for a gamester."

Arianna measured out some flour, then took the mixture of melted sugar and b.u.t.ter from the stove. "How many eggs?" she asked abruptly, after stirring in the chopped cacao paste.

Saybrook consulted the recipe. "Four. The yolks are to be separated and the whites whisked until they form soft peaks."

Before she could reach for the egg crate, he pulled it to him and deftly cracked them one by one.

"What the devil are you doing?" she demanded.

The wire whisk was already thrumming against the bowl. "I, too, find cooking relaxing," murmured the earl.

She chuffed a sigh. "Yet the last time we were together in the kitchen, someone ended up dead."

"Let"s try to avoid any more bloodshed," he replied, casting a glance at her hand. "For now, at least."

"I"m innocent of any misdoing-save to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," she countered.

"So you keep telling me." He quickened his strokes. "By the by, this is just about ready."

Arianna added the chopped almonds to her mixture, then gently folded in the whipped egg whites. After spooning it into a pan, she placed it in the oven.

"And now?" asked Saybrook.

"We sit," she said, perching herself on one of the kitchen stools. "And wait. But you need not stay, sir. Obviously, you are not happy unless you are poking your nose into some dark, disgusting hole, in hopes of stirring up the muck."

"On the contrary, I take no pleasure in unearthing painful memories, Lady Arianna-"

"Lady Arianna," she interrupted bitterly. "I did not give you leave to use my given name, sir. There is no intimacy between us."

"None was intended," answered Saybrook mildly. "Perhaps you"ve forgotten the all the complex rules of aristocratic address. As the unmarried daughter of an earl, the proper form of address is Lady Arianna, not Lady Hadley. When you marry, you will take your husband"s name, or t.i.tle if he has one. I, on the other hand, am never called Lord Allessandro, but Lord Saybrook, or simply Saybrook-"

"Spare me the prosy lecture on Polite Society"s asinine rules," she snapped.

"If you mean to be successful in your charade, you cannot afford to ignore them."

Arianna hesitated, and then heaved a reluctant sigh of surrender.

"Look, like it or not, we have both been sucked into a cesspool of troubles," pointed out the earl. "And if we wish to better our odds of emerging unscathed, it would behoove us to cooperate."

"Ha!" She let out a mocking laugh. "You have some nerve to talk of trust when you have been spending your efforts digging up dirt on me, rather than pursuing the real culprit."

"If you had been more forthcoming with me, I should not have had to waste my time."

"So far, I"ve had precious little offered to me in return."