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She ought not burden a man like that with her problems. He did not need a double-lived woman hanging from his sleeve.

Before she could stop herself, the words escaped.

“Mama wants me to marry,” she blurted. “And I think I should.”

His brows rose a fraction. Had she surprised him or was he about to turn and run as fast as he could?

“I am not astonished,” he said after a beat. “My mother shares the ambition. For me, that is. She uses words like overdue.”

“Kinder than words used for a woman my age. They manage to make twenty sound as though I’m a well-aged wine that’s almost gone sour.”

“I’m four years your senior, it seems. My mother can’t wait for me to settle down and fill the nursery with babes,” Chester said. To have babes, he needed a wife; to have a wife, he needed to wed. For that, a bride could prove herself useful—but without love, there would be no bride. “I’m unable to bridge the gap from point A to point B, meaning going from titled to producing an heir.”

“You’re four-and-twenty,” Pepper said, scandalized. “That is practically infantile by dowager standards.”

He huffed a laugh. “Do not let her hear you. She will recruit you to her side.”

“Never,” Pepper said. “I have my own tyrant at home.”

He glanced toward the light spilling from the house. “Does your tyrant have lists, too?” he asked lightly. “Of men you ought to like?”

“She has whole parades,” Pepper muttered. “But I am not ready to be…handed over.”

He was quiet a moment, then said, “Forgive me if this is too forward, Lady Barbara, but…do you not want to marry at all? Or do you simply object to the…parades?”

She gripped the fringe of her shawl. The music from the drawing room swelled; a new set had begun. Someone laughed.

“I do not wish,” she said carefully, “to marry a man I like.”

He stared. “You mean, you don’t like?”

“No.” She tasted fear and honesty together and went on anyway. “Because liking him would make it worse when he asked me to give up the half of myself he does not understand—Pepper, not Barbara. The part that smells of yeast and dough and wears boots and does not belong in his world.” She pointed toward the grand house. Golden light poured through the windows and out onto the garden, but the crickets in the background made it seem as though they were much farther away from the ton’s gossips inside. “It would be easier,” she added in a rush, “to disappoint, or be disappointed by, a stranger.”

The confession hung between them, raw and unadorned.

She had never said it aloud. Not to Aunt Florence. Not to Mrs. Hart. The instant it escaped, she wanted to snatch it back.

But he was looking at her as if she had just placed something precious and breakable in his hands, and seemed capable of not dropping it.

From inside the house, Mother’s voice cut across the music, anxious and bright. “Barbara? Barbara, darling, where have you got to?”

Pepper flinched.

Beside her, Chester drew in a breath, shoulders squaring as if he meant to step into something, or say it.

“Lady Barbara—” he began.

And in that suspended heartbeat, with her mother’s call in the air and roses at her back and his eyes on hers, Pepper had the wild, terrifying sense that whatever he said next might change everything.

Chapter 16

The long dining room at Darley’s rented house on North Steyne gleamed with candlelight and intention but dinner was a most unfortunate interruption, in Chester’s opinion, of what had been a lovely walk in the garden with the beautiful and witty Pepper.

Silver marched down the center like a regiment; the good porcelain smiled from every setting. The Prince’s cousin—some offshoot of Leinster’s sprawling tree—sat three seats down on Chester’s right, flanked by two Members for Sussex who liked the sound of their own opinions.

Lord Darley held court at the head of the table; his mother presided halfway down the opposite side, the Dowager’s pearls catching every flicker of flame. Lady Barbara sat diagonally opposite him.

All the way at the far end.