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Chester didn’t blink. “A dozen,” he said, putting twice the coin on the counter. “And if you keep them this good, I’ll send more custom your way.”

Pepper stared at him. “You don’t need—”

He shook his head. “Consider it tuition,” he said lightly. “You can’t teach me about sugar that sings and then let me ruin it with indifferent vanilla.”

Evans wrapped the pods as if they were a relic and not an ingredient, and handed the packet to Pepper. They both reached for it and her hand brushed Chester’s as she took it. The brush of skin—no more than an instant—shot through her like a fuse on fire.

She stepped back too quickly and nearly collided with a stack of jars. “Thank you, Mr. Evans,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as breathless as she felt.

“Ma’am,” Evans murmured, eyeing the pair with the cautious admiration of a man watching two people pay more for vanilla than he’d earn in a month. He didn’t have to say what he was thinking; the faint, incredulous smile gave him away.

Outside, the wind tasted of salt and coal and something sharp from the sea. It tugged at her ribbons; she caught them in one hand and pressed the vanilla closer with the other.

“I didn’t expect this,” she said at last, once they’d gone a few paces toward the rail.

“Good,” he replied. “It was either that,” he said, “or arrange a meeting in a flour warehouse. ‘My lady, pray meet me between the second and third sack.’ It lacked poetry.”

She huffed a laugh before she could stop herself. “And you thought an apothecary more romantic?”

“I thought,” he said, glancing sideways at her, “that if I mentioned vanilla, you would come.”

Heat slid up her throat. “You are very sure of yourself.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I’d like you to be sure of me.”

Sure of him in kitchens and corridors and whatever future they dared try to build between those two worlds.

The words landed like a touch. She looked away too quickly, out over the rail, pretending sudden interest in the pale strip where sky met restless sea.

They walked in companionable silence for a few steps. Ahead, the rail broke where a narrow path sloped down toward the beach. The racket of the main parade softened behind them—the carriages, the calls, people being seen.

“Come,” Chester said, nodding toward the path. “If we stay up here, half of Brighton will decide they’ve discovered a scandal. Down there, we might only alarm the seagulls.”

“Down there,” she pointed out, “is shingle. Stones and I are not on good terms.”

“Then we shall improve the acquaintance,” he said, already angling toward the gap in the rail. “We’ll call it…political strategy. A secret summit toward a new alliance.”

“I didn’t want an alliance with stones,” she muttered, but she followed her right foot finding each stone a moment behind the left.

The path was not steep, but the loose pebbles made for treacherous footing. Twice she felt her ankle threaten to revolt; twice his hand closed, light but steady, around her elbow—just enough pressure to keep her from sliding, never enough to make her feel dragged.

The beach opened below, a long curve of rounded shingle, darker where the tide had lately run and left the stones wet and gleaming. The waves rushed up, hissed through the pebbles, then rattled back in small, clattering retreats. A few children scrambled up and down the slope; further along, a couple of fishermen were arguing with a boat. This stretch, though, just below the path, was devoid of people.

“Here,” Chester said.

A broad, flat rock jutted up from the sand a little way from the path. He shrugged out of his coat in one easy motion and laid it over the rock, dark blue against pale stone.

Pepper swallowed. “You will ruin it,” she protested. “Sea air and sand—”

“It exists to be ruined,” he said. “At least this way it suffers gloriously.” He stepped back and gestured. “Please.”

It was the kind of consideration she was more accustomed to seeing in novels than in life. For one suspended second she hesitated, every precaution her mother and Mrs. Hart would have voiced rose up: A lady does not go walking alone with a gentleman, or at least not without consequence. Furthermore, a lady does not sit on a gentleman’s coat. A lady does not sit on rocks. A lady does not sit anywhere that is not approved and upholstered.

But Pepper had never been much good at being only Lady Barbara.

She sat.

The rock was cool through the layers of her gown; the coat cushioned the worst of the edges. Her boots—solid, sensible, loyal—rested awkwardly against the pebbles.