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That was Wyndale’s mother, Pepper reminded herself fiercely, not Chester’s. Surely his own mother could not be so bloodless. Surely—

A door had opened and now there were footsteps. Voices. Coming nearer. Male and female both, the sort of sound that meant callers drifting toward the retiring room.

Not Mother as Pepper had initially thought.

The blur in her eyes sharpened back into fear. If anyone saw her here—red-eyed, too close to a gentleman in a dark passage—it would not matter whether she could dance, only that she had been alone.

If they see me weeping with a man in a dim hall, I am finished.

“Pepper—Lady Barbara,” Chester corrected himself, hearing the danger she had not yet voiced. His voice dropped. “Forgive me.”

His fingers closed around her elbow. Not rough. Not possessive. Just…decisive. Her body chose survival faster than her pride; she let him guide her sideways, into the narrow indentation beneath the sash window, between a tall palm in a brass pot and a window draped in thick curtains. The heavy fabric fell almost shut around them, leaving a slim gap to the corridor and just enough space for two people to stand very still and hope to be mistaken for shadows.

He swept the curtain forward with his free hand. The corridor shrank to a thin strip of lamplight at the bottom, and the world beyond became sound more than sight.

They were suddenly close. Closer than the ballroom rules allowed, that was certain. Her shoulder brushed the front of his coat; her back found the cool glass; the curtain’s velvet brushed her hair. He smelled of fine wool and clean linen and a breath of good red wine—and under it all, something that reminded her absurdly of vanilla that had once stood too near a stove, or perhaps that was her own scent?

Pepper’s heart rattled against her ribs. If someone twitched the curtain aside, she was ruined. If no one did, she might still be ruined, because her heart felt entirely prepared to leap the rest of the way and land against his.

“Wyndale has lost his good sense,” a man’s voice said lazily, on the other side of the curtain. Pepper recognized the false concern from too many of Mother’s stories from London’s drawing rooms. “Half the Board swears he’s set on stripping money from the great houses and pouring it into the ovens of small bakeries.”

“Do not be melodramatic, Mr. Darley,” came the Dowager Duchess’s crisp reply. Pepper froze. “My son is trying to steady prices, not commit treason against his own class.”

“You call it steadiness, Your Grace,” Darley said, the respectful tone thin as paper. “I call it dangerous. If he insists on sharing what ought to go to great houses with every little shop that can wave a receipt, where will it end? A duke waiting his turn behind a baker? It is not helping his reputation in Town.”

Chester went very still. Pepper felt the change in the line of his arm next to her, the way his breath flattened out.

Good, she thought fiercely. Chester must despise Wyndale as I do. Let the Wyndales feel a little discomfort for once.

“Reputation matters less than legacy,” the Dowager replied. “I care what history calls him, not what they murmur at Brooks’s. This flour business is tiresome but necessary. What concerns me more is that he appears in absolutely no hurry to marry.”

Ah. There it was. The same dinner conversation continued, apparently, with anyone who’d hear her out…

Darley sounded positively eager. “There was that girl at the table tonight,” he said. “Lady Florence’s daughter. Pretty enough, if one likes the serious sort. Though I am told she has opinions about flour.” A low chuckle. “Most unbecoming in a young lady.”

Heat flared up Pepper’s throat. Her hand clenched in the wool of Chester’s sleeve before she could stop it. His arm tensed under her fingers.

“The Beaumont girl,” the Dowager said, “is unsuitable. I am told she has a…difficulty with her ankle. If there are questions about her health since the ton knows she had mumps, there will be questions about heirs. Heirs are everything. A duchess must not merely decorate a table; she must secure a line. A girl who limps today may—”

She broke off delicately, letting implication do the cruelty.

The words landed in Pepper’s chest like stones. There it was, neat as a baker’s tally: one childhood fever that had “gone to the brain,” and ever since the doctors had spoken of her as delicate, perhaps unsafe in childbed. Never mind a sharp mind, capable hands, the way she could turn flour and sugar into something people queued to buy, or the letters she wrote to the Board. To people like that, she was still only a limp and a question over whether her body could bear heirs.

As if I’d ever breed anything for Wyndale but hatred.

Beside her, Chester’s body answered. The arm along hers went from warm to iron-hard in a breath; the fine wool under her fingers tightened as muscle bunched. His breath slipped, then came back sharper, dragged in through his teeth as if he’d bitten down on something. She felt, absurdly, the faint thud of his heart where her shoulder brushed his chest, suddenly faster.

He’s angry, she realized, startled.

It scraped at her more than the Dowager’s verdict had done—that a man with a title and a perfectly sound stride should flinch at those words on her behalf.

Could I be so lucky that Chester cares for me genuinely?

“And in the meantime,” Darley added, “a little female distraction would do him good. Take his mind off these misguided flour notions. His duty is to his line, not to the shopkeepers of London.”

Their footsteps moved on, swallowed by the swell of music emanating from the other room.

Silence collected behind the curtain like a third person.