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Pepper’s mouth pinched and she paled as if he’d laid a dead frog on the counter instead of the money; she looked toward the door, then back to him. A small battle played out in the line of her jaw. When she spoke, her voice was composed. “After careful consideration,” she said, “I am authorized to accept on behalf of my father.”

“Thank you.” He let the words carry more than courtesy.

She nodded once, as if they’d settled a bet. “How many guests?”

“Fifty covers for the room,” he said, “and a smaller table for those who matter more than they ought.” The corner of his mouth shifted, almost a smile. “You choose the menu. I will sign for what you require.”

“And if what we require is scarce?” A gentler note, but it struck true. “If recent allocations make noon become too late?”

He felt it land. I did that.

“Then you will tell me what you lack,” he said, quieter, “and I will make it reach you.” It sounded perilously like a promise a man might make to a woman he meant to cherish; it was, he told himself firmly, only business. The same hand that had signed the circular could, at least, turn some of its weight back toward her. Once, as a boy, he had smuggled flour from his father’s stores to keep a tenant family from going hungry; he could still see the thin wrists, the dusted table, the pressed snowdrop under his inkstand to remind him why rules mattered. The Board talked of figures and frauds at the docks, but here was the cost in one small kitchen on Harley Street. If he could not undo what he had written, he could at least make sure his power reached her as surely as his policy had.

Her eyes narrowed, testing for vanity and finding none to push against. He lifted the parcel she had boxed; the scent of vanilla softened the edge of the moment.

“What’s best besides this?” he asked, letting lightness back in.

“Crème brûlée,” she hushed like a delicious secret. “When the top crinkles like fresh ice in winter. Or lemon tart, if you feel adventurous.”

“I like burned sugar and adventure,” he said.

A woman’s voice from the back called for instruction as if she were a lady at Almack’s being called back before she could be compromised; Pepper’s attention cut away, clean and efficient, then returned as if pulled.

“Saturday at four o’clock?” he asked. “My man will come for your list within the hour. Tell your father I am grateful.”

“I shall,” she answered, and color rose sweetly in her cheeks. He had the ridiculous urge to thank the blush for attending but it was so sweet he felt gutted to leave.

His mother wanted Brighton to present him with a row of eligible girls in silk; instead he had just arranged for a pâtisserie to feed them. It was not at all the same thing, and yet the thought of her work gracing those tables sat more comfortably in his mind than any quadrille partner his mother might set before him.

He gathered the parcel he meant to savor and inclined his head. “Until Saturday, Pepper.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded and inclined his head.

“For coming back, I mean, not just your purchase,” she added—and then, as if deciding something, reached to the side and lifted a small, sugared choux. No paper. She offered it on her palm. “Try this, please.”

He hesitated only long enough to be polite. His fingers touched hers as he took it—barely a brush—and a clean, sure pull went through him. Not sugar or hunger. Something he had never felt and could not name without changing it from the perfect innocent splendor it was.

He tasted it. The shell was light, the cream quiet and true, the sugar a brief spark. “Yes,” he said, finding his voice. “That.”

He didn’t let himself say her name again. He turned. The bell lifted and sang. Outside, he drew a breath that tasted of orange and sugar and the kind of trouble a man makes for himself. You’ve bought her time. Now buy her flour. And if you do it well enough, perhaps no one will ever see how narrowly the girl in the bonnet has come to the edge of the decisions that guided you since boyhood. He set his hat low, smoothed his coat, and let the day take him—meetings, men, the tidy word stability. He would sign what needed signing. Not, if he could help it, the parts that would starve her.

The light had sharpened. He stood a moment with the parcel warm in his hand and the taste of allocations lying bitter as pith. He had appointments enough to last until summer’s late dusk—men who preferred one channel and his seal at the end of it. They would say stability. He would hear easier for us.

He climbed in, told the coach to move, and meant to read the papers. Instead he opened the parcel, broke a shard of top with his thumb, and took one careful bite—layers together, as she’d taught him. Sweet. Cream against crackle. A balance that did not ask permission from anything louder than itself.

If we have flour at noon.

He tapped his copy of the Board brief and wrote in the margin: No exclusive contracts. Each day’s flour consignment to be divided in three lots—one for government and His Majesty’s forces, one for the great houses and hotels, one kept back for the street bakeries at the public price, coin by noon. Fewer toasts for him at Darley’s table, perhaps, but fewer empty counters in streets like hers.

The nib bit the paper. He felt better for it as if this were the closest a man with a seal could come to turning the right key in the right lock.

He set the second slice aside for luck and told himself this flutter had everything to do with pastry.

Chapter 5

His voice still rang in her bones even after he’d left with his parcel of sweets.