Read Once Upon a Summer Day for Free Online Page B

black trim, black trews with a silver-buckled black belt, and black stockings and black boots. I have also included a crimson sleeve-kerchief. Will they do?”
    “Ah, Gerard, you would make me into a dandy. Even so, it will be nice to wear something other than my leathers. Indeed, they will do.”
    “Very good, Sieur.” Gerard took up the empty goblet and the bottle of wine. “I will inform Madame Millé as to when you will be down, and then I shall return to dress you.”
    As Gerard left the bathing room, Borel smiled and shook his head. Dress me. Though I always don my own clothes, he insists he must “dress” me.
    Borel settled lower into the hot water, and relaxation slowly eased into his muscles. It was only after long moments that he realized just how tense he had been.
    He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the metal slope of the tub. . . .
    . . . And in but moments, it seemed, he awoke in water gone tepid to see Gerard standing silently and patiently by.
    “Oh, Gerard,” said Borel, “Madame Chef will have my hide.” As he snatched up the washcloth and soap he looked at his hand and broke out laughing. “My wrinkled hide, that is.”
    Within a quarter candlemark, with his straight, silvery, shoulder-length hair still damp, he was scrubbed and dressed, and downstairs sitting at the head of a long, highly polished, blackwood table. Quickly, he finished the last of his apéritif —sliced mushrooms lightly sautéed in creamery butter. At a signal from Borel, one server whisked away the modest dish while still another server removed the small glass holding a trace of a pale red wine, one that Albert, the voluble sommelier, had called “a refreshing, rose-colored wine fortified with a hint of fruit and a crisp touch of sweet aftertaste—perfect for clearing the palate of any vestige of a previous drink.” A third server set a bowl and a silver soup spoon before the prince, and a fourth waiter came in from the kitchen, a great tureen in hand. He ladled out soupe à la crême de légumes assaisonnée avec des herbes. When that was done, a fifth server set down a small loaf of bread on a modest cutting board, with a knife in a groove for slicing, and he put a porcelain bread plate to the prince’s left, while yet a sixth server placed at hand a dish of pale yellow butter pats embossed with the form of a snowflake. The loquacious sommelier set a new goblet to Borel’s right and said, “My lord, I have selected a special blanc to stand up to the heartiness of the soup: a full-flavored, substantial white wine with grape and apple aromas mixing well with the mustiness of barrel-aging and culminating in a robust aftertaste.”
    At a nod from Borel, the sommelier poured a tot into the goblet and then waited as Borel swirled and inhaled the aroma and took a sip and said, “A fine choice, Albert.”
    Albert smiled and filled the goblet half full.
    The meal continued, the soup followed by venison in a light splash of a white cream sauce, with a sautéed medley of green beans and small onions and peas, all accompanied by a hearty red wine poured from a dusty bottle laid down for many years in a cool cellar. As the effusive sommelier put it, “I have selected a red that will enhance Madame Millé’s splendid dish, a wine almost delicate in its complex bouquet holding a suggestion of aged cedar, a trace of pipeweed, and a hint of sweet, fragrant leaves of a kalyptos tree. Its rich flavor should spread evenly across the tongue, exciting senses of sweet and bitter equally, followed by a pleasant, drying sensation upon swallowing.”
    Borel smiled to himself at the sommelier’s abundant description, but tasted the wine and said, “Again, Albert, a fine, fine selection,” and then he ravenously tore into the meal.
    After two full helpings, at last Borel leaned back in satisfaction, the plate empty before him, scoured clean, the last of the sauce sopped up with small chunks of bread.
    And then the éclairs were