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He turned back to Monsieur Duval.

“I would like,” he said steadily, “nothing more than to spend the rest of my life earning the love and respect of your family. And, if you permit, to make a formal proposal to your daughter tonight.”

Monsieur Duval’s gaze did not waver. He looked from Chester to Pepper, measuring something Chester could not yet name.

Then his brows lifted, the smallest fraction. “Ma fille?” he said softly. “The decision is yours. But as for me—” He turned back to Chester. “You have my blessing.”

He squeezed Lady Erica’s hand and, with the unspoken understanding of long practice, drew her aside toward Lady Florence and the Dowager.

In the space of a minute, the drawing room emptied to a different sort of hush.

Only Pepper remained where she was; only Chester and Anna stood opposite her.

He could hear his own heartbeat. He suspected she could, too.

Slowly, he crossed the distance, stopping an arm’s length away. Anna blinked between them as if making note of every detail for later.

Pepper broke the silence first.

“Who is this?” she asked, voice very controlled. Her gaze was on the baby, not on him.

“This,” Chester said quietly, “is Anna.”

At the sound of her name, the baby gurgled, as if in affirmation.

“And I,” said a small, solemn voice from the doorway—Margy, entirely failing at being shooed away—“am Margy.”

“I’m Bess,” came the whisper behind her.

Pepper’s mouth curved, almost against her will. “Of course you are,” she said.

Chester cleared his throat. “I…volunteered the nursery. The one my mother prepared for my children.”

“I read the notice,” Pepper said. “In the papers. The revised circular. The part about the Society.” Her eyes flicked, finally, to his. “You must think yourself very chivalrous.”

“Tired,” he said honestly. “Frightened. Stubborn beyond all reason. Chivalrous is…low on my list.”

“Well, you have come to the wrong person if you want praise,” she said, chin tilting. “I pity the girls. I do not pity you, Wyndale.”

The name landed with deliberate precision.

He flinched. I deserved that.

“You promised,” he said quietly, “once, on a beach, to see past the name.”

“And you,” she retorted, “have come to ask me to wear it? That is not looking past it, that is letting it swallow me.”

He couldn’t argue. Not with that.

Before he could speak again, Mrs. Hart appeared at his elbow as if conjured by domestic instinct. “Give me the babe, Your Grace,” she said briskly. “You will want both hands for this, and I have been in need of someone small to spoil.”

Anna protested with a small squawk as he surrendered her; Mrs. Hart settled her with the ease of long practice and retreated. Mrs. Hart, seizing her moment, shepherded Margy and Bess out with promises of biscuits. A flurry of shawls and skirts and muttered French and outraged aristocratic spluttering swirled toward the door.

The door clicked. The silence that followed felt…different.

Chester drew a breath.

“Pepper,” he said. Her name tasted like hope and fear together. “Please forgive me.”