26 Quotes by Martine Bailey

Women dream in courtship, but wedlock wakes them.

The more they talked of escape, the harder it was to dowse the flame, for it shone like a gateway to a golden world. The Dutch Indies were famed as the most beautiful string of islands in the world, green hillocks scattered in calm blue seas, blessedly free of the head-hunters that plagued the Pacific. As for food, Jack had heard tell of luxurious feasts, of roast pig and yellow rice: the very words made their stomachs rumble.

That's how it is for us servants. No one pays you much heed; mostly you're invisible as furniture. Yet you overhear a conversation here, and add a little gossip there. A writing desk lies open and you cannot help but read a paper. Then you find something, something you should not have found...

Every cook knows it's a rare day when you have all the parts of the perfect dish. But that day back at Mawton I had everything I needed: white fleshed pippins, pink quince, and a cinnamon stick that smelled like a breeze from the Indies. My flour was clean, my butter as yellow as a buttercup.

Buttoning up my new damson wool redingote, I put on my other new purchases, a hat trimmed with sable and matching muff and tippet. I had at last found costumes that suited my character: gowns in rich sapphire blues, purples, and emeralds, tight-sleeved and high-waisted. Our neighbor the milliner had taught me a voguish way with broad-brimmed hats, worn at the tilt Van Dyke fashion, with feathers and rosettes.

Come and sit by the fire, pet. Want a Little Devil? Devilinos, the Italians call 'em." She pushed a dish of exquisite little brown globes, studded with comfits, towards her. Mary was as hungry as a hawk; when she put one in her mouth it was sweet yet bitter, melting but nutty; by far the most marvelous thing she had eaten in her life.

I wanted to try dainty Italian fare, and bought spicy Bologna sausage, pink papery hams, hard white bread, and chalky cheeses. I also bought the makings of a Mackeroni Pie I had seen made at an inn, and a new sort of green stuff named brockerly that proved a great deal tastier than cabbage.

It was almost Christmas, and Renzo was preparing all the delicacies Florentines must eat at the festival: roast eels, goose, fancy cakes with marzipan frills, and a kind of minced pie they call Torta di Lasagna, stuffed with meats and raisins and nuts.

They all hushed as Brinny, the one murderess of their crew, told them of the making of her bride cake, with primrose yellow butter and raisins of the sun, fattened on smuggled brandy. The further they sailed from England, the fonder they grew of the pleasures of home: plum trees with bowed branches, brambles in the hedge, cream from a beloved cow.