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Mrs. Hart’s hand brushed her sleeve, a quiet vow. “Then we will keep him well, and keep the ovens running at a profit.”

Pepper nodded, throat tight. Coin by noon, the notice said—yet the men with full purses would be there at dawn, and the small shops would arrive last to pay the same price for what was left.

I have to tell him. About Brighton. About the notice with Wyndale’s seal—the Flour Duke’s policy. About how much she could not say aloud in a drawing room.

They turned the last corner. The door of the pâtisserie shone ahead, glass bright as a promise.

She tightened her grip on her reticule. I have to tell him—

The bell lifted to sing, and Pepper stepped in.

Chapter 4

The carriage jolted over a rut, and Chester’s temper bumped with it. London had that gray, pressing light that made a man think of ledgers and long corridors. He had a list of meetings and a mother who would like him to emerge from them at Brighton Pavilion announced and betrothed. The Guardian of the Royal Table needed an heir; she’d proclaim all too hastily, Chester was sure of it. To whom hardly seemed to matter, so long as she was sound, presentable, and likely to fill a nursery. He had, folded beside him, a neat packet of papers that turned grain into numbers and men into signatures—his new circular on flour, tidy as ink and twice as heavy.

Stability, they called it—good for hotels, hard on kitchens. He let the phrase sit, then set it aside. One more stop before Whitehall: the bakery. If she stood at the counter, he would buy what she told him to buy. If not, he would let the errand be pastry and call himself sensible.

He tapped the roof. The coach stopped at the Harley Street corner and settled right where Chester could see her through the window. He stepped down into the thin noon light and set himself to rights—cravat straight, two fingers through his hair though the hat would hide it, a useless comfort that steadied him anyway. He closed the buttons of his blue coat and moved to the window for a single, quick look a man in his position had no business taking.

She was there.

A tilt of bonnet, the lift of her chin as she spoke to a maid, the quick, exact press of a paper fold. His mother would have dismissed her at a glance—too much competence in her hands, too little fortune at her back. He felt the flutter his mother would attribute to an empty stomach. It was not hunger for bread.

Go in. He stood on the pavement a heartbeat longer than a sensible man would, all at once aware of his own size, the coat, the hat, the way titles walked into rooms before men did. This is absurd. You are here for pastry.

He went in.

He was there for her.

The bell chimed; he caught a glimpse of her at the case—and then she vanished through the door behind the counter.

Where did she go?

He stepped all the way to the counter, listening. A soft commotion in the back: the whisper of skirts, a metal set down on wood.

“There’s a customer waiting—vite,” quickly, a man said, voice roughened by a cough.

“No, I’m going,” came a tender voice. Her?

In French, the man again stated, dry with impatience, “Pourquoi tant de façons, tout à coup?” Why put on airs all of a sudden?

“She just walked through the wind with me and needs to sit down,” an older woman answered in French. Luckily, Chester had always excelled at French, at Eton and Oxford alike.

She came out—bonnet a little crooked, cheeks warm, breath arranged into composure a heartbeat too late.

“Where are you going?” Chester asked before he could think better of it.

“To you!” The words leapt; her hand flew to her mouth. Color rushed prettily into her face.

The tightness in his chest eased. He could almost forget flour and ledgers if he could stand here and watch the way she made art from it. Yes. This is why small businesses matter first; this is why large hands shouldn’t take everything.

For a second, neither of them moved. Then she set a plate on the counter and arranged herself as if he were only a customer—which was a kindness he rarely received in life because dukes were usually seen for money or influence, not as people.

“Good afternoon,” he said, formal because anything else would be dangerous.

“Good afternoon,” she returned, just as formal. Her gaze flicked—not shy, not bold, simply attentive. “You’ve come back.”

“I had one more stop before business,” he said. I hoped you’d be here. “You advised me yesterday. I thought to practice eating mille-feuille properly.”