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Every muscle in her body tried to do three different things at once: curtsy, pull free, flee. The chemise in her boot chose “trip” instead.

She wobbled. His grip tightened, drawing her infinitesimally closer to keep her upright. They were suddenly near enough that she could see the slight darkening of his jaw and the way his eyes flicked, just once, to her mouth as if confirming it was the same one that had pronounced ainsi in a shop.

He looked stunned and delighted and horrified all at once, as if some private hope had just leapt from fantasy into fact and begun to rearrange the furniture of his entire life without asking.

Her throat worked. No sound emerged.

From somewhere across the room, Mother’s laugh rose, high and bright as cut glass. Pepper heard the note in it that meant she had just realized something was happening without her.

“Barbara?” Mother called, the name like a thrown rope. “Darling, where have you—”

Her words cut off as she turned and saw them at the sideboard: her daughter with a man’s hand on her arm, their faces inches apart, the remains of ratafia trembling on the table between them.

“Barbara.” This time the syllables came out closer to a gasp. Mother was already on the move, skirts swishing, a smile building like a shield.

Pepper’s heart lurched.

She could not be Pepper and Lady Barbara in the same breath. She could not be the baker’s daughter whose opinion on mille-feuille he trusted and the lady her mother meant to barter into a title. She could not stand here, caught between boots and slippers, between truth and silk, with a duke saying her forbidden name.

“Your Grace,” Mother said, arriving in a flurry of perfume and horror disguised as delight. “I see you have met my daughter.”

Pepper could not tell whether the world was about to fall apart, or finally, dangerously, begin.

Whose Grace was it, exactly?

Chapter 14

Chester had seen women swoon before.

They usually did it neatly—onto an obliging sofa or into the arms of a mother who had been waiting all evening to be dramatic. They did not do it while disparaging plum pudding.

“…nothing but lopsided milk-rolls, unimaginative plum pudding, and something that was slightly too crisp yesterday and has been drowned in sweetened milk today to hide it.”

He had been heading toward the side table for the sake of movement more than food. Now he stopped, amused in spite of himself. No debutante in a silk gown spoke that way about desserts in a ducal drawing room. A housekeeper, perhaps. A cousin who meddled in the kitchens.

Then she shifted her weight.

Her chemise, poor conspirator, caught in her boot. He saw the moment the fabric bit and the balance went. The glass of ratafia wobbled on the table; her knees began to fold.

He didn’t think. His hand closed around her elbow—warm silk, thin bone, the faintest tremor under his fingers.

“Steady,” he said.

She smelled of sugar and starch and the faintest trace of rosewater, as if she had passed through more than one world to stand here. Her head tipped up.

Pepper?

She was half-turned, bonnet gone, hair coiled and pinned, pink silk instead of flour dust—and he still knew her faster than he knew his own crest. The same eyes, wide and bright and entirely too honest; the same mouth that had told him he was eating his pastry wrong.

His heart did something unhelpful against his ribs.

“Pepper,” he heard himself say, low.

Her pupils flared. For an instant, everything in her went very still. Then the name seemed to hit her like the tilt had: color rushed into her cheeks; her hand snapped tight on the tablecloth.

Across the room, his mother’s laugh cut the air like a flick of a fan.

“Barbara?” a woman’s voice—Lady Beaumont’s—called, sharp with alarm. He’d seen her converse with Mother. “Darling, where have you—”