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“Tell me,” he said. “If it’s too much. If it’s…” He swallowed. “If you regret.”
She reached up, cupping his face in both hands, drawing him down until his forehead rested against hers.
“I am Barbara now, Duchess of Wyndale,” she said, the names tasting wild and right all jumbled together. “But still Pepper. I have survived dough that tears, sugar that burns, doctors who sigh, and dowagers who talk about heirs as if they are pastries on a tray. I am terrified. But I am not fragile.”
His breath caught.
“I love you,” she said, because the words wanted out more than she wanted safety. “So please—for once—do not be dutiful. Be reckless.”
His laugh broke on a groan.
After that, there were no more clear sentences.
There were sounds: both of them, surprised, greedy, breathless. There were moments she felt the old fear rise—what if it hurts, what if this proves them right—and then his hand was on hers, his voice in her ear, offering her a choice rather than a demand. Every time she hesitated, he stilled. Every time he stilled, she chose, pulling him closer.
Deeper inside her body.
And yes, there was discomfort. Newness always had edges. But the ache was wrapped in something else—heat and closeness and the astonishing sensation of being wanted everywhere she had ever been ashamed.
At some point she realized she had stopped worrying about whether her right leg would misbehave. His weight anchored her. The bed was solid. The world did not end when she shifted awkwardly; he simply adjusted with her, as if they were dancing a waltz few others knew the steps to.
When pleasure finally swept through her, it felt nothing like the tidy marital duty she had heard whispered about in drawing rooms.
It felt like the first time sugar caught the exact right shade under the salamander. Like the first spoon cracking a perfect crust. Like kissing on Brighton beaches and realizing, halfway through the wild, breathless adventure, that her ankle had forgotten to protest when her heart was full.
After, they lay tangled in a heap of linen and limbs, the great Wyndale bed rumpled beyond saving, her body humming in places she had only ever imagined could find a voice.
Chester’s chest rose and fell under her cheek. His heart hammered against her ear. One of his hands traced idle patterns on her back, as if to reassure himself she had not evaporated.
“Well,” she said at last, voice muffled against his skin. “That was…practice. Part one.”
He made a faint, strangled noise. “If we must practice that every night for the next fifty years,” he said hoarsely, “in the name of science and heirs and proving your doctors wrong, I suppose I shall endure it.”
She smiled into his shoulder.
“What if there is no heir?” she asked quietly. The question still lived under her ribs, even now. “What if this is simply…us, and no one else?”
His hand stilled for a moment; then resumed its lazy path.
“Then I will die a very happy, very tired man,” he said. “And your father will be forced to adopt Margy as his successor in the pâtisserie, which might be the only truly terrifying prospect in this whole house.”
She snorted.
“Don’t,” she warned. “You’ll make me love you more, and that feels unsafe.”
He turned his head, pressing a kiss into her hair.
“Too late,” he murmured.
They lay in comfortable silence for a while, the steady ticking of the clock on the mantel marking out the fact that time, shockingly, had continued even while her whole world had been rearranged.
“Chester?” she said eventually.
“Yes?”
“If this works,” she ventured, “if we wake up one morning and discover that all that practice has resulted in…” She gestured vaguely between them. “…outcome. What will you do?”
He considered it.
