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“Any interference that comes with the fires stoked and the kettles already boiling is a sort of gallantry I will always indulge,” she said sweetly. “We shall be punctual.”

Henry, unable to let the moment pass without lobbing one more stone, piped up, “If the gentleman’s coming to the gate, I’ll tell the men he’s real. They said I was telling tales that I met the Flour Duke.”

“Tell them I’m worse,” Chester said dryly. “I’m punctual.”

Lady Florence’s eyes danced. “How alarming.”

He inclined his head to the ladies, to Henry, and let the servant escort him back to the hall. The front door opened to a Brighton evening, where the sea kept making its same bold promise to the shingle and never quite broke it.

He had a dinner to take at Darly’s like cod liver oil. He had a mother to outlast with civility till he could bid society good night. He had a service door to find at one fifty-five tomorrow. He had Darley to put off and a Board to face and a dozen ways this could all go badly wrong if anyone ever thought to ask why the Duke of Wyndale cared how a pâtisserie kept its kettles boiling such a far way from London.

“Your Grace?” the footman murmured, offering his hat.

“One moment.” Chester took the hat, but instead of stepping straight into the night, he paused on the threshold to pull on his gloves. The door stayed a hand’s-breadth ajar. Voices drifted from the side passage—women’s voices, lower now, no longer performing for a duke.

“…Pepper is not in the house,” Lady Florence said, exasperation threading through the words. “That’s the fourth time I’ve said it.”

“But what about the vanilla?” Henry.

“She is not in the house,” Mrs. Hart answered calmly. “She is at the dinner.”

Chester went very still.

“At the Darley dinner?” Her voice pitched up. “With my sister and half of Brighton? Have you lost your senses?”

“She is where she belongs,” Mrs. Hart said. “For tonight.”

Lady Florence groaned softly. “This is a disaster.”

“Not yet,” Mrs. Hart said. “Not unless the duke looks too closely.”

Whatever did that mean?

Chester’s pulse jolted hard enough to make the glove bite his wrist.

He stepped back from the crack before his shadow betrayed him, let the door shut fully, and descended to the waiting carriage with his mind racing ahead to chandeliers, copper pans, and a woman in an apron somewhere behind both.

Darley could wait.

He put his hat on, smiled at the absurdity of hope, and walked into the salty air. Wanting anything of her beyond a perfect custard and a clear conscience was absurd; wanting it anyway felt dangerously, deliciously like the start of something he could not name.

Tomorrow, he had told himself at luncheon, he would be there to hear it.

Tonight, it seemed, he would hear her in the clatter of spoons at his mother’s chosen dinner.

Two worlds were colliding in his heart, and he had the sense that the sweeter one would settle deeper than he’d ever anticipated.

Chapter 13

By the time Pepper and Mother reached the Wyndale’s rented house on North Steyne, she had already burned one finger on hot caramel, sugared three dozen rose petals, and nearly strangled herself in her own chemise.

The front drawing room did not care. It smelled of beeswax and respectability, not sugar and panic. Lamps shone on gilt frames and sea-green walls; the long windows were curtained just enough to hint at the dark silk of the Channel beyond. Gentlemen formed little knots near the hearth; ladies arranged themselves on sofas like carefully placed flowers. Somewhere behind the walls, Pepper knew, real work was still going on—plates, pans, steam.

Here, no one was supposed to know that. The two worlds were kept separate: only food moved one way and used dishes back. Upstairs’ polite society and the downstairs kitchens couldn’t be further apart if they were on different planets.

“This is my daughter,” Mother chirped, bright as a bell trying very hard not to sound like a warning.

Pepper turned from the French doors through which a footman had disappeared with a tray of sugar-dusted tartes. The woman opposite did not return the greeting at once. Instead, the hostess with silver-gray hair and a frown line that seemed to express displeasure before she could voice it gave Pepper the sort of deliberate once-over one might give a cabbage at market that looked well enough from a distance but might yet reveal a bruise.