Page 37

The house’s main drawing room opened into a smaller one at the side, laid with a modest buffet to bridge the time until supper. Pepper slid toward it gratefully, using the movement of the crowd for cover. If she could not escape to the kitchen, she could at least inspect what passed for pastries in a ducal seaside establishment.

The side table offered its wares in stiff little ranks: lopsided buns sulking beside each other, slices of plum pudding that had clearly been bullied into neatness, and a few biscuits that looked as though they’d died ten minutes past their prime in the oven for nothing.

Pepper took a glass of ratafia from a footman more because he expected her to than because she wanted it. The scent of almonds fought with wax and cologne and a faint, ghostly fishy air of the sea.

She set the glass on the edge of the table and leaned in to survey the sweets. The bun tops were dull; the pudding edges cramped; the biscuits were, unforgivably, all one color. She’d do better tomorrow. Henry was preparing what she’d asked of him, and Aunt Florence and Mrs. Hart would make certain that the display on the morrow would put this one to shame. She wanted to impress Chester—the kind man with the careful hands—and this was the best chance Papa had for a Royal Warrant.

Someone moved up beside her. A man—tall enough that his shoulder blocked the lamplight for a moment, confident enough that he did not seem to notice.

“Anything good tonight?” he asked.

The voice was low, cultured, with that unhurried certainty some men wore like a coat. It walked down her spine before her mind caught up.

Pepper kept her gaze on the buns. “Nothing but lopsided milk-rolls,” she murmured, “unimaginative plum pudding, and something that was slightly too crisp yesterday and has been drowned in sweetened milk today to hide it.”

She heard his breath catch—a huff that might have been amusement. Or outrage. A gentleman who loved his cook could take offense at such honesty.

“It appears,” he said, “that you have given this some thought.”

“Well,” she said, still not looking up. Where had she heard this voice before? “One can tell a great deal about a house from its pastry. These suggest…fear. No one dared suggest anything that might go wrong.”

“Fear is a reasonable response to pastry,” he observed. “It is more temperamental than politics, and politics is already intolerable.”

That line brushed something in her. She had heard that voice talk about politics. About flour, about allocations, about…

Recognition came in two waves. First the sound—it was him, the man from Harley Street, the one who had learned ainsi instead of pretending he already knew. The one who had asked her name and used hers when he gave his. The one whose gloved fingers had touched hers over a sugared choux and made her breath misbehave.

He’s the reason I’m in Brighton.

Then, a split second later, the fabric twisted around her ankle.

Her hand tightened on the edge of the table. The chemise chose that moment to tangle itself more firmly around her boot. She shifted her weight—left sure, right careful—and felt the fabric bite.

Oh no.

The floor tilted. The table edge slipped from her glove. Her body remembered every fall she had not quite managed as a child and braced for a new one—ratafia, boots, ruined dignity.

A hand closed around her elbow. Firm, sure, exactly where she needed it.

“Steady,” he said.

Pepper’s world narrowed to a circle of lamplight, the pressure of his fingers through silk and linen, and the smell of clean starch, spice, and the faintest trace of something that made Pepper want to fall into his arms.

She looked up.

It was him.

The man from the pâtisserie. The elegant customer who had learned to take all the layers together and thanked her for it. The same eyes—clear, gray, intent—and now they were much too close, and fully aware of her.

Time misbehaved. The room went hushed at the edges, voices smearing into a soft, distant murmur. The only sharp, precise thing left was the way his gaze found her and held.

For one impossible heartbeat he looked as if he had stepped straight out of the Harley Street morning and into this Brighton evening without noticing anything in between.

“Pepper,” he said.

The name left his mouth as if it had been waiting there all day. Not Lady Barbara. Not Lady Florence. Pepper. Here. Here?

Her cheeks flamed. How can I be Pepper to him and Lady Barbara in the next room with Mother and that dreadful dowager?