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She reached in, the parcels rustling. “Lemon custard tart and vanilla choux.”
“Indecent vanilla is a cause I’m prepared to support,” he said. “You told me once some days the mille-feuille sings and some days it doesn’t. I’m beginning to suspect the same is true of company.”
“And which sort of day is this?” she asked, tipping her head, curls worrying loose along her temples.
He looked at her properly. Bare feet. Wind-swept hair. Cheeks pink from exertion. She looked like herself—Pepper—and somehow also like a woman who’d just discovered she could take up space.
“With you?” he said quietly. “This is the kind of day that makes a man…particular.”
Color rose along her throat. “You can’t say things like that.”
“I can,” he murmured. “And apparently I am.”
Pepper unwrapped the lemon slice with quick, practiced fingers. The crust had held; the curd caught the light.
“You may,” she said, and there was the faintest tilt to her mouth, “have taster’s privilege.”
Chester arched a brow. “How generous of you.”
She broke off a small edge—neat, precise—and held it up to him.
He should have taken it from her hand.
Of course, he didn’t.
He leaned in instead. Her hands were steady; only her breath shifted as his lips brushed the pastry—and, by accident or design, the very tips of her fingers.
The crust snapped softly between his teeth. Lemon hit first: sharp, clean, bright. Then butter. Then sugar, smoothing it all into something that made his throat tighten.
He swallowed and found her watching him as if his reaction mattered more than his opinion.
“Well?” she prompted.
He exhaled, careful. “Outrageous.”
Her eyes warmed—satisfaction, quick and unguarded. “That is not a proper assessment.”
“No,” he said, because he couldn’t help it. “It’s the honest one.”
She made a small sound that might have been a laugh and might have been relief. Then she took a bite herself, because she was apparently determined to destroy his ability to think in straight lines.
“Better than the pudding at the Dowager’s dinner,” she said, after a moment, as if comparing her own creation to another woman’s table was a perfectly ordinary thing to do.
He let out a quiet laugh. “I shan’t inform Her Grace’s favorite cook she has achieved ‘barely adequate’ in your estimation.”
True. Mother would be livid.
Pepper’s mouth curved, and when she licked a stray bead of curd from her lip, Chester’s attention snagged and did not recover.
A smear of lemon still glinted at the corner of her mouth.
His hand moved before he had decided to be a gentleman about it. He lifted his thumb slowly—slow enough she could stop him.
She didn’t.
Her breath caught. Her eyes followed the motion like she could feel the touch before it landed.
When he brushed the smear away, it was barely contact: the pad of his thumb, the curve of her lower lip. Warm.
