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They passed a greengrocer with a boy no more than ten arranging the produce. Lemons winked from a crate, thick-skinned and good for zest. Pepper paused long enough to buy a dozen, handed the boy some coin, and tucked them into Mrs. Hart’s bag. “We shall bring these to Brighton for the tasting.”
One lemon slipped from her hand and rolled.
Pepper quickened; her right foot lagged that familiar half beat, the old hitch showing when she moved too fast. The boy stared. She caught the lemon with a neat sweep, set it back in the bag, and tipped him a conspiratorial smile. He straightened at once, pleased. Children she could manage. It was the prying eyes and scrutiny of ballrooms that made her careful. Another reason why going to Brighton as Pepper from the pâtisserie and Lady Barbara was a bad idea.
Mrs. Hart’s gaze slipped to the bundle under Pepper’s arm. “You are holding that recipe as if it could draw steel.”
“It could,” Pepper said. “It will. He told me when to use it. I will not waste it on the wrong person.” Pepper straightened. “I am tired of being asked to be less.”
“It shows that you’re going to Brighton with your guard up, my dear,” Mrs. Hart said, fond and unsparing. “Keep a little softness for when you need it.”
They resumed. A vein of cloud crossed the sun; the light on the street cooled. The town house loomed, pale and respectable, two flights of stone stairs and a window that caught the sky.
Pepper laced her fingers tighter around the recipe. “If Mother discovers any of it—Papa, the kitchen, me—she will feel betrayed.” Not just cross, not merely vexed. Betrayed. She had spent twenty years wearing widow’s black for a man who had never existed, telling drawing rooms the story Grandfather had written for her, all so that Pepper could be Lady Barbara instead of a baker’s child. The one time, as a little girl, Pepper had asked why she had no papa, Mother had gone white, sent the maid away, and said only, “He died bravely. Do not ask again,” in a voice that shook. Since then, every question about fathers, France, or the past had been turned aside with a smile that did not reach her eyes. Pepper loved her. She also knew that if Erica learned her carefully guarded daughter had slipped into a flour-dusted kitchen and claimed the baker she’d been told to forget, it would feel like a rejection of every sacrifice she had made.
“She will feel many things,” Mrs. Hart said. “It is not betrayal I fear. It is doing the wrong thing. My loyalty is to you. If any choice harms you, I will not make it. Your mother does love you, Pepper, in the way she knows how. She believes she is giving you safety as she understands it.”
Pepper’s throat burned for a moment, unexpected and fierce. “Safety is a room with doors I can open.”
“Then let us see to your keys.”
They turned down the final lane. Their own steps on familiar stone set a beat that felt like a drum for nerves. Pepper breathed slow. She let the recipe fill her hands again.
“I will go to Brighton as both, Pepper and Lady Barbara,” she said. Saying it twice made it more true. “I will be Lady Barbara when I must. I will be Pepper when I can. I will feed those men something honest, and I will watch who tastes and lies about it.”
Chapter 7
Sir,
The newspapers have been pleased to style me the Flour Duke since printing a particular indignant letter in The Times; in your private correspondence you now promote me to Flour Tyrant. If I possessed such unchecked power, the Board’s rules would already look very different. Until that day, I must be content to move stubborn men by inches—and for that work, your particulars are of far more use than your epithets.
Wyndale
Your Grace,
I am most certainly not a Sir, and confess I take some offence that you appear to expect only a man to grasp your laws and policies. If you wish your rules to weigh only on men’s shoulders, you must first discover how to keep them from our bread. The noon bell does not make the trade fair—it only marks the hour the poor finally arrive with coin, after the rich have chosen first. Until then, you would do well to remember that not all your critics wear breeches.
M. Beaumont
Chester read the letter again on the way down to the river.
Not a Sir. He could almost hear the huff in the ink. If you wish your rules to weigh only on men’s shoulders, you must first discover how to keep them from our bread. Bold words for a small house. Bold hand, too. The little hook on Beaumont’s had become as familiar to him as his own signature.
Outside the Customs House, London smelled of river, grain, fish, and too many men who had been up since before dawn. Carts rattled over the stones, sacks swung from shoulders, clerks shouted for space. Wheat from the eastern counties, flour sent down from inland mills—everything passed through here to be stamped, tallied, and divided.
“Your Grace.” Reed, his trusted steward[AR12][GS13], came up beside him, ledger under his arm, coat already dusted white. “Darley and the others are in the warehouse. Harcourt’s admiring his columns. Reed looks as though something doesn’t agree with him.”
“Soup or conscience?” Chester asked.
“Hard to tell,” Reed said. “The Board doesn’t use the latter enough for me to recognize it.”
The warehouse was dim and thick with flour dust. Men straightened when Chester walked past, suddenly very busy with ropes and hooks, as if they hadn’t just been talking about the duke who meddled with their routines.
Darley stood at a makeshift table—a board over barrels—with Harcourt and Reed on either side, finger stabbing at a page.
“Wyndale,” Darley said easily. “We’re agreed at last, aren’t we? Consolidate the lighter lots, best flour to the big houses, leftovers to small trade. Everyone gets what they pay for.”
Chester swallowed his impulse to hit Darley and kept his fists to himself. The only thing he meant to fight was the policy that would do all the real hitting—straight at the small businesses Darley dismissed so easily.
