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A shiver went through her, visible only in the fine tremor of her shoulders. “More pastry?” she asked, voice steady but a shade too innocent.

“Wrong P,” he said. “Present.”

Her hand tightened around her fork. “Chester,” she warned under her breath.

“Wyndale,” he corrected. “Your husband. Entirely entitled to present his wife with rooms. And…” His lips brushed the soft whorl of her ear. “…other things.”

Color rose, swift and lovely, under her skin.

“Now,” he added.

She put her fork down.

Ten minutes later that felt like a hundred, after enough polite leave-taking to satisfy even the Dowager, he had her hand on his arm and was leading her up the grand staircase of Wyndale House.

The house had never felt like his before. Not truly. It had been his mother’s stage, his father’s legacy, his duty. Tonight, with Pepper’s palm warm against his sleeve and Margy’s distant squeal echoing from the nursery where the girls had been bribed with custard to stay put, it felt—finally—like home.

He opened the door to the new master chambers and let her step inside ahead of him.

Pepper’s breath caught.

He had kept very little of his old room. A few books. A painting. Everything else had been stripped and remade with her in mind. The great bed had been refitted, hung with new draperies in a soft, deep cream. The walls were lined with paneling and damask in a gentle, rippling pattern that hinted at water without being literal. One entire wall had been replaced with shelves and cupboards for books, recipes, whatever she pleased. The carpets were thick, forgiving.

A door stood partly open opposite the bed: the private bath with the new porcelain tub and the thoroughly modern notion of hot water on demand. Another, farther along, was shut.

Pepper went to the window first. The curtains were drawn back; the city spread below them, roofs and chimneys and distant lamps.

“Is there a room for me?” she asked, not quite turning.

“Yes,” he said.

He crossed to the closed door and opened it.

A small passage led through to the duchess’s chambers—a large, elegant room with its own bed and desk and polished wardrobe. The walls were papered in the exact shade of her sea-green gown; sunlight would turn the space into a quiet, clear pool in the mornings. Over the bed hung a painting he had commissioned from a young artist with a good eye and few scruples about clients: the curve of Brighton beach at low tide, sand rippled and inviting, sky pale and wide.

Pepper stepped through the passage as if walking into someone else’s story.

“The duchess’s rooms,” he said. “I thought…you might want to redecorate after you move in. This is your space, where no one walks in without knocking. Where you can write or bake schemes or throw shoes at my name when it appears in the Times. Everything can be changed if it does not suit. Every color, every piece of furniture. You have only to say what you wish, my love.”

She drifted to the mirror—a tall glass in a brass frame that caught her from crown to slipper.

Her reflection looked back at her: hair arranged in soft curls, veil pinned and now thrown back, gown falling in sea-green waves. Duchess. Baker’s daughter. Pepper. Barbara. All of her, together.

“I am not beautiful enough for this,” she murmured, almost to the glass. “For any of it.”

He crossed the space between them before the words had finished leaving her mouth.

“You,” he said, quietly ferocious, “are more beautiful than anything in this house. Than anything money has ever bought me, or duty has ever demanded of me. You are the only thing… ahem, person… I mean… you are my irreplaceable beauty. You do not have to feel like a duchess tonight. You only have to feel like Pepper. The rest will come later. Slowly. As you decide.”

Her throat worked.

“But you want me to sleep here?” she asked, still very much Pepper, practical even when spinning.

He almost laughed. “I want you to do whatever you like,” he said honestly. “I want you to know this is yours. That you can shut the door and be as alone as you wish, and I will not take offence.” He took a breath. “But,” he added, softer, “if you will let me be greedy, I would rather invite you to my bed. Every night. Every morning. Every stray afternoon the House of Lords releases me early. Or here, if you prefer, or on the Brighton beach in summer.”

Her lips curved. She looked at their reflections, not at him. “And what would we do,” she asked lightly, “in all those places?”

“Read Parliamentary reports,” he said solemnly. “And play whist.”