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“She may demand,” he said, “all she likes.”

Her mouth curved. “You have been very brave with her. I am proud.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” he said. “Earlier, when Dr. Fernando told her it was a boy, she cried onto my shoulder and said—and I quote—‘The child’s mother has sense, even if my son does not.’”

Pepper laughed, then winced. “Do not make me giggle, I beg you. Everything aches.”

“I will keep my idiocy to a gentle simmer,” he said. “Names. All right. We can appease tradition first. Something solid. Your grandfather’s name?”

She shook her head. “Bad memories.”

“Mine?”

“You already have it. I refuse to shout ‘Chester’ in a crowded house and end up with two idiots answering.”

“Fair.” He thought for a moment. “We could honor someone who has actually kept us alive. Reed.”

Pepper glanced down at the baby, considering. “Reed would be…astonished,” she said. “And insufferably pleased.”

“As well he might,” Chester said. “He was a starving boy when I first met him. Now he runs half the estate ledgers better than any man my father ever hired and frightens the Board into treating small bakers like human beings. If anyone deserves to see his name on a ducal cradle, it is Reed.”

Warmth spilled through her at the thought: the thin boy in the yard, the steward with the iron pen, his name carried forward in a house that would never again lock its granaries against hungry children.

“Or Henry,” she added. “Henry would be delighted by any child, and he would insist on teaching him pastry before letters.”

“So would your father,” Chester said. “We’ll come down some morning and find Papa and Henry and our son all elbow-deep in sugar while Reed stands over them with a ledger, trying to calculate how many buns they’ve given away.”

That picture settled over her like a benediction: Papa in her kitchen and in her life, not just in hidden corners on rainy days; Henry fussing over pastry; Reed pretending not to be fond of any of them.

“What about two names?” she said. “One yours, one mine.”

His brows rose. “Mine?”

“I believe your people expect something respectable,” she said. “Let them have it on the end. Stockton. Perhaps a dull courtesy name or two in the middle, if it comforts them. But the first names…” She looked back down at the baby. “Reed, for the boy who became a man who kept your conscience honest. And Duval, for the man who taught me that sugar could be a language.”

“Reed Duval Stockton,” Chester repeated slowly. “Future Duke of Wyndale, scourge of unfair circulars, terror of the nursery, inevitable thief of biscuits.”

They both looked at the baby, as if testing it.

He yawned, outrageously, and punched his fist into the air.

“It suits him,” Chester said gravely. “Reed Duval, who will one day sign papers without ruining bakeries.”

“Reed,” Pepper echoed, tasting the name on her tongue, feeling how it threaded through all the parts of her life—Harley Street, Wyndale, the Board, the boy in the yard and the man with the copper pans. Something settled in her then—not the sense that she had paid some debt, but that a new thread had joined the tangle of her life. Not the only one. Not the most important. Just…new. Glad.

A soft knock interrupted them. Dr. Fernando’s discreet cough followed.

“Your Graces?” he called. “There is a delegation forming in the corridor. I fear I may not be able to hold them much longer.”

Pepper leaned her head back against the pillows and closed her eyes for a moment. “Do we let them in?” she asked.

Chester bent and brushed a kiss against her damp temple. “Do you feel ready?”

She considered. Her body felt like trampled dough; her heart felt like it had risen three times too high.

“Yes,” she said.

He raised his voice. “One grandmother at a time,” he called. “And no one is to tell Margy that Pudding was almost his name.”