Page 46

Twenty people, three floral arrangements, and a pair of overenthusiastic candelabra lay between them. He could just see her past the other guests: a blur of rose silk, the tilt of her head, the line of her shoulders. Enough to know she was there. Not enough to hear a single word she said or that was said to her.

The soup arrived. It was better than the company he had and worse than the company he wanted.

“Wyndale,” Leinster’s cousin boomed over the rim of his plate, as if reading the list of courses. “Your circular has caused a stir at Brooks’s. All these thirds and purses at noon. Darley tells me you mean to put a leash on the docks.”

Chester’s fingers tightened on his spoon. At the far end of the table, crystal chimed; one of the ladies laughed. He couldn’t tell if it was her. Had she heard him being called Wyndale?

“Leashes are for dogs, not grain,” one of the Sussex men said. “But you have throttled a good many games, Wyndale. Porters can’t skim what doesn’t pass their hands twice.”

The violinist in the adjoining music room chose that moment to attack a particularly high note and wrestled it to the floor like an angry cat. The sound sliced through the conversation, obliterating whatever the women were saying at the far end. Lady Erica leaned in toward her daughter. Pepper’s color rose, clear even across the table. Her mouth pressed flat; she glanced once toward the Dowager, then bowed her head and applied herself to…not eating. Her fork poked around her plate. Nothing seemed to reach her lips.

His jaw set. His mother had said something, or done something. He knew that look on a woman’s face. Lady Erica Beaumont’s smile had the strained sheen of someone keeping several fragile objects aloft. The Dowager looked smooth and pleased. Pepper curved in on herself, shoulders just a shade slumped.

He had never envied a fish course so much. At least it had a chance of reaching her.

“Of course,” Darley drawled from across the table, voice smooth as rendered fat, “one appreciates your…principles, Wyndale. Thirds for the shops and all that. But now there’s talk you mean to go further. Half the allotment at noon, regardless of size?” His brow lifted. “You’ll have every pettifogging baker from Piccadilly to Harley Street thinking himself equal to the Clarendon’s kitchen.”

“Size shouldn’t matter,” Chester said before he could wrap it in diplomacy. “Coin at noon should. Any house that can pay upon delivery ought to stand level in that moment, whether it feeds princes or apprentices.”

Leinster’s cousin barked a laugh. “You always were soft. Next, you’ll be giving away bread on the Steyne and calling it policy.”

“I’ve no intention of giving anything away,” Chester replied. “I intend to make it possible for honest bakeries to keep their doors open without begging favors from men like Darley. Charity and meritocracy are related but seem to be entirely foreign to you.”

Darley’s smile thinned. “And I suppose you quote the good Book at us next. Or some improving poet.”

The soup disappeared; fish replaced it. Chester had no memory of tasting either. As the plates changed hands, he saw Lady Erica lean toward Pepper again. A sentence—sharp, short—fell; he couldn’t hear it, but he could see the effect. Pepper stiffened. Color climbed her throat, hot and painful-looking. Her eyes flicked once—just once—toward his mother, then down. She set her fork aside altogether.

He had the absurd urge to get up, walk the length of the table, and take the chair next to her, just to see what lay on her plate and if it could be replaced by something she preferred, and whether he could make her smile.

But there were too many prying eyes, so he contented himself with lifting his wine.

“You could do worse than an improving poet,” he said to Darley. “Langland, for instance. Piers Plowman.”

“Oh, please, not at dinner,” one of the MPs groaned. “He’s bringing out the plowman.”

Chester let himself smile because otherwise he would have looked straight down the table until everyone noticed. “In that ‘heavy, thorny thing,’” he said, “there’s a simple notion: a man’s worth isn’t measured by his purse, but by the number of people who are glad he exists. The plowman works quietly, steadily; men are better for walking beside him. The greedy and the false—” he shrugged “—they have gold, but no one would cross a field for their company.”

“You propose to run the Customs House on poetry now?” Darley asked, amused.

“I propose,” Chester said, “that when a man stands between a ship and a kitchen, he remembers the people at the other end of the loaf. If half our consignments can be paid for honestly at noon, then half should be within reach of those counters. The rest can go to gentlemen who like their ledgers plump.”

Harcourt wiped his mouth, thoughtful. “Half at noon is ambitious,” he said. “The big houses won’t enjoy it.”

“The big houses won’t starve,” Chester replied. His mind flicked, unhelpfully, to a narrow kitchen, shaking hands on copper, a woman in a bonnet teaching him how to eat properly. “Without it, smaller kitchens might.”

“And if the Board balks?” Leinster’s cousin asked. “They’ll call it sentimental.”

“They already have,” Chester said. “I’ll press the amendment anyway.”

Said aloud. Not just scribbled in a margin for his own conscience. He felt better for it.

From the far end of the table, Mother’s laugh chimed—a little too bright, a little too triumphant. Lady Erica joined in a beat late. Pepper did not. She sat straight-backed, her plate barely touched, listening to something his mother said with that rigid politeness that meant she wanted to be anywhere else.

Chester shifted his grip on his knife. Every time some man leaned over to clap his shoulder and say “Good fellow, Wyndale,” he had to school his face not to wince at the sound of his own title.

He half-expected her to startle each time she heard it, to look up, to connect the man beside her in the garden with the name she loathed on paper. She never did. Either she was very good at not listening to the wrong conversations, or the violinist was saving him.

Chester moved his knife and fork when politeness demanded and drank more wine than usual, because it kept his hands from drumming on the table.