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He did not let himself smile as much as he wished. “A fair bargain.”

They skirted the edge of the drawing room, moving behind clusters of guests. A footman, seeing his direction, stepped smartly to open the tall glass doors at the far end—the ones that stood between overheated elegance and the night.

Cool air slid in at once, edged with salt and the faint tang of coal smoke from the town. Lanterns along the terrace cast a gentle light over stone and rail; beyond, the garden dropped away in shadow toward the darker line of the shore. The door remained open behind them; a servant took up his post just inside. Not scandalous seclusion—just enough quiet that the words from the drawing room thinned to a distant murmur.

“The steps can be slippery in this weather,” Chester said, more to give his worry somewhere to go than because she couldn’t see. Sea mist had laid a fine slick on the stone. “Allow me.”

She gathered her skirts to descend.

Not with the fragile two-fingered twitch so many ladies affected, but with a practical sweep that truly cleared the hem from the tread. For a heartbeat, as the silk rose, he saw what lay beneath: stout, sensible boots where fashion expected satin slippers. Good leather, well-worn. Her left foot went down sure and unthinking; the right followed a half-beat later, careful and measured.

Something tightened under his ribs.

Of course she wore boots.

He offered his hand for the last two steps. She took it without fuss, her grip firm, her weight light and precise. When they reached the gravel he let her go, reluctantly, as if setting something valuable down where anyone might see.

A narrow path curved along the side of the house. Roses climbed the wall there, dark leaves glossy in the lantern light, late blossoms cupped in against the sea breeze. Through the glass behind them he could still see the drawing room in slices—silhouettes, movement, the occasional gleam of a tiara—but the sound had gentled to a muffled blur.

He exhaled. “I hope this little escape will not give the gossips more to do than they already have.”

“If it does,” she said, looking out toward the dark line of the sea rather than back at the house, “we can tell them I was in need of air and that you were being…appropriately obliging.”

“Obliging,” he repeated. “That is a word that has followed me all my life.”

“And yet you slip away from dinners,” she murmured, “and ask impertinent questions about bakeries. That does not sound entirely obliging.”

He almost laughed; the word that rose up was small and dangerous. Love. It settled in his chest with a quiet certainty that startled him—not a boy’s fancy, not the polite admiration he’d been trained to feel for suitable young ladies, but something that tightened whenever she spoke of bakers and widows as if they mattered as much as dukes. He wanted this woman—Pepper, Lady Barbara, who would scold a stranger for unjust rules—to have the chance to know him, the man who had once stolen flour for a hungry family, before she ever had to meet the title that had signed her trouble into law.

He reached to touch the nearest rose instead of her; a thorn pricked his thumb, sharp and clean. It felt more honest than anything in the dining room.

“Lady Barbara,” he said. “Pepper?”

She turned back to him, all her attention coming to rest where he stood. The lantern light caught along the curve of her cheek and in the serious, searching brown of her eyes.

“Yes,” she caught herself on a breath, swallowing the name he had first given her over pastry, “Chester?”

He heard the tiny stumble before the title and, absurdly, cherished it. Somewhere under the silk and the rules, she still thought of him as the man who had needed teaching about mille-feuille.

He drew a long breath of salt air to steady himself.

“May I ask you a question?” he said.

The wind tugged lightly at her curls. From inside came the faint swell of a violin testing its first notes. She stood very still, boots firm on the gravel, as if she, too, understood that whatever came next might shift something that would not easily be put back.

“Yes,” she said.

And he opened his mouth.

Chapter 15

“May I ask you a question?” he said.

Pepper could hear the seriousness under the lightness. He didn’t sound like a man making conversation for want of something better to do; he sounded like a man who had carried one particular question out here and meant to set it down between them.

They stood at the far end of the terrace, where a narrow strip of gravel ran behind the house, squeezed between the back wall and the iron railings that overlooked the Steyne. A few rosebushes struggled along the stone; lanterns in iron brackets threw soft golden circles on the flags, and beyond the open sweep of grass the sea breathed in the dark, a low, constant hush.

They were not truly alone. The drawing-room doors stood open; music thinned itself into the night, mingling with laughter and the clink of glass. Somewhere behind them a footman pretended not to exist. It was enough to keep propriety technically satisfied.