Many years ago, the villagers of Delport used to hold a grand contest every
year. The Delport Festival of Cuisine was famed across the Basin for the
delicacy of its culinary creations, and hopeful chefs travelled to Delport from
all the surrounding cities and villages in order to compete.

The theme of the festival was always the same: food to inspire... l'amour. Or,
in the catchy and memorable slogan of the festival: "Food to get you in the
mood."

Each year, the judges picked three winners. There was a large cash prize for
each finalist, and - most importantly - the winning recipes were scribed with
great ceremony into the Delport recipe book.

This monster of a tome was the stuff of legend. Covers of solid gold contained
pages gilded with gleaming silver. Precious gems covered the whole book, and a
huge, ornately decorated lock kept the contents safe from prying eyes. It was
probably the most tastelessly excessive book ever seen with mortal eyes, but
then it had to be. The ornate binding had to live up to the contents.

The book was under the custodianship of the Mayor of Delport, and its hiding
place was a great secret.

There was one particular year in which the festival was more popular than ever.
Hundreds of cheerful citizens of the Basin were packed into the limited confines
of Delport village, supporting their favourite chef and hoping to be allowed a
taste of the recipes.

In this particular year, the events of the Festival took an unexpected turn.
That year, the three winners were as follows:

An entrant from Celest had contributed a delicately spiced oyster casserole.
That recipe was very popular, and had to be closely guarded from the crowd.

A furrikin from Estelbar won with a curious collection of tiny, colourful cakes.
Nobody knew what was in those cakes, but it was powerful stuff. That victory was
inevitable.

And finally, Delport's own entry secured the third winning place. A young human
lady put forward a selection of delicate butterfly biscuits. A nibble of one of
those airy little things and a person was set for the night. This victory
inspired a great cheer across the village.

The time came for the Book of Recipes to be collected, with suitable pomp and
ceremony. The Mayor disappeared, closely guarded to prevent anyone in the
crowd's following him to learn the hiding place of the book. A lot of time
passed, though the crowd hardly noticed; the furrikin winner had been
celebrating by passing out pieces of the cakes.

At last, the Mayor returned. His appearance caused great consternation, for he
reappeared without the Book.

He gestured for silence, and took a deep breath. In a huge voice he announced:

"The Book has been stolen!"

A collective gasp shook the crowd, and one delicate young woman immediately
began a fit of constructive hysterics. She was quickly stifled.

The Mayor held up a piece of paper. "The thief has left a note!" he roared. He
read it out.

The note said: Give me all the gold in the village, or you will never see your
precious recipe book again! I will be waiting at the Junction Milestone at
midnight, two days hence.

This was a terrible blow to the Delport Festival of Cuisine. A clamour went up
immediately as everybody offered an opinion on What Ought To Be Done. The Mayor
had just resolved on dispatching his own Elite Guard to deal with the thief,
when one of the contest winners stepped forward.

It was the young human lady, Delport's own citizen. "Fear not, Mayor," she said
with a smile, and as she smiled the crowd fell silent in awe. "I will retrieve
the recipes."

And the Mayor was easily convinced, because if Delport could be said to have a
Secret Weapon, then this young lady was definitely it.

She had the sort of beauty that could hold a crowd spellbound (as it was indeed
doing at that moment). She had long black hair, huge dark eyes, perfect
porcelain skin, and of course - the most important feature - she had a faultless
hourglass figure. Some sour prunes among the spectators had conjectured that her
victory in the contest had more to do with her looks than her talent; but of
course they were quite wrong about that. It had a great deal to do with both.

For Sylvie was a very precocious young woman indeed. She knew exactly how to
manipulate the desires of the human soul; her recipe was only the tip of a
veritable iceberg of expertise. She graced the crowd with one more smile as she
turned away, and disappeared.

Two days passed anxiously in Delport. Some held the same faith as the Mayor in
the young lady's skill, and worried more for the safety of the lady with the
luminous beauty. Others thought the Mayor had clearly lost his wits, though no
wonder, they said, for Sylvie surely knew exactly how to steal the wits of a
man. She was known to have taken no weapons with her, nothing to protect
herself; instead she had dressed herself in her favourite gown of clinging pink
silk, and taken a stock of the best recipes from the contest in her clutch bag.
She looked magnificent.

At the dawn of the third day, Sylvie reappeared in the village. She looked a
little mussed, perhaps, but otherwise she was unharmed; and she immediately
thrilled the villagers with one of her divine smiles as she held up the book.

Or the remains of it. The covers were gone; all that remained was the pages.

"The thief felt a great deal of interest in the gold, and none at all in the
pages," she said with a knowing smile. "Fool."

On the topic of the thief, she would say only that it had been a poor, misguided
fellow, but since she had allowed him to keep the precious materials, he had
been quite ready to give up the recipes.

There was great celebration across the village, and Sylvie, of course, received
a handsome reward for her services. New covers were wrought with great care to
rebind the sacred pages. The three winning recipes from that year were scribed
inside, and the new Book closed and locked once more. But when it came time for
the Mayor to reclaim it, Sylvie looked very grave.

"Now, Mayor, your stewardship has been enthusiastic but not very effective," she
chided gently, and tears came into the Mayor's eyes at receiving such a harsh
rebuke from so lovely a face. "I think I had better take care of it, don't you?"

"But where will you keep it?" asked the Mayor.

Sylvie only smiled.

The following week, the sounds of construction began to echo across the village.
The denizens of Delport soon grew annoyed with the constant hammering and
banging and clanging; but one gentle smile from the beautiful Sylvie and their
wrath usually subsided. If not, she was known to be gracious enough to grant
them a preview of her delicious recipes, and that was sure to do the trick.

After some weeks of furious effort, the new building was largely finished and
the interior decoration began. The first rooms to be furnished were Sylvie's own
chambers, placed in the best position on the first floor. And there she took the
Book, secreting it somewhere within the new Chateau D'amour. Much speculation
abounded later as to the precise location of the Book, but nobody was foolish
enough to seek it, especially when the fate of the thief became known.

For, during the process of the building, a rumour had begun to circulate. It was
said that a man from Stewartsville had been found alone in a little hut not far
from the Junction Milestone. He had been found in an unsuitable state of
undress, securely tied and quite dead; though his fate should not be pitied to a
great extent, as an expression of perfect bliss wreathed his dead face.

It was generally accepted, however, that to mess with Madame Sylvie was probably
a bad idea; and if anybody wondered what had happened to the precious materials
that had previously bound the book, they were wiser than to say so to Sylvie.

And so the treasured Recipe Book has remained hidden in perfect secrecy ever
since. Its contents are known only to the chatelaine, whose culinary expertise
fills the exquisite dining room of the Chateau with all of the best recipes for
l'amour.