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By the time she reached the turning for their rented house, her ankle was throbbing properly. The boots that had felt right on the sand now pinched at every uneven cobble. She limped harder, more with her heart than her feet.

I had been almost whole with him, she thought, fierce and bewildered. And now I hurt again.

The idea that she might not need his name lodged itself under her ribs like a stubborn crumb of burnt sugar. If he were only Chester, she told herself, only this man on the sand, it would be enough. I don’t need the title. I don’t want it. I just wanted him.

The house came into view—prim face toward the sea, useful spine toward the mews. Somewhere inside, Aunt Florence and Mrs. Hart were probably arguing with a salamander. Papa’s recipe rustled softly when she moved.

Pepper slipped a hand over the little rectangle of paper and pressed it flat.

When you find a man worthy of your heart, you’ll make him this crème. His reaction will tell you all you need to know.

She had not meant to test Papa’s words on anyone. She had scooped the little porcelain pot into her reticule before leaving the kitchen with the vague excuse that she ought not leave Papa’s work unattended—but she knew very well that was a lie she told herself. The crème was for Papa, for the Pavilion, for a future where her parents might share air again without shattering.

But the thought came anyway, bright and terrifying: If he tastes it. If he tells me the truth, how bad could it really be?

Her fingers found the pot through the fabric of her pocket, feeling the cool, rounded edge press against her palm. All it would take was the tiniest smear on a biscuit, the lightest touch to his tongue. He would swallow, smile, and then…what? Spill whatever lay locked behind that careful mouth because she had tricked him into it.

No. The word landed heavy in her chest. To use it on him without his knowing would make him an experiment, not a man. It would turn his secrets into ingredients to be measured and stirred, the way the ton had once tallied her as risk and bad investment. Should there be truth between them, it must be offered freely, not dragged out of him by a spoonful of Papa’s magic.

She let her hand fall away from her pocket, the pot bumping against her hip with every breath, a silent reminder of what she would not do.

She climbed the back steps her weight distributed out of long habit, into the heat and sweetness of the kitchen, where work still waited.

If he likes the crème, she admitted to herself at last, then fate is sealed.

Whether it sealed her salvation or her heartbreak, she did not yet know.

But at four o’clock, in a room full of sugar and politics, she was going to find out.

Chapter 23

When she arrived at the house shortly after noon, Pepper’s world split cleanly in two.

At the back of the house, life beat to the patter of spoons and the snap of eggs. At the front, it rustled in silk.

Pepper chose the back first.

The kitchen was already hot. Copper gleamed in rows; the small salamander glowed with banked coals; the air smelled of sugar and steam and that particular nervous brightness that meant everyone’s hands were busy and everyone’s minds lived four hours ahead.

Except hers. She couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had changed in just one day—Chester’s mouth on hers in the way his promises had sounded—half like hope and half like fear.

On the side table, nested in a larger bowl of ice, sat the custard she had made at dawn: a smooth, pale lake waiting for fire. Papa’s crème. She could still feel the weight of his notebook in her hands, the way his handwriting had looked in the lamplight, as if he stood at her shoulder again: When you find a man worthy of your heart, you will make him this crème.

She had not written Chester’s name anywhere; names, she was learning, could be false things. But she had thought of him with every turn of the whisk, every careful strain of the mixture into the mould. His reaction would tell her more than any title ever could. Should he taste it and understand—should he see the care, the risk, the piece of her folded into the custard—she would finally know who he truly was, no matter what the world called him. Since that hour on the beach, every careful layer of caution she’d arranged around her heart had quietly come apart at the seams. She had meant to be sensible. Aunt Florence had asked for sense, Mrs. Hart had warned her, and Pepper had solemnly promised herself she would keep her balance—at the beach, in kitchens, and especially where men and her heart were concerned. Then he had walked beside her barefoot, tasted her lemon tart from her fingers, and kissed her as if he’d been waiting his whole life to discover what her mouth felt like.

From that moment on, she’d put on her sensible boots and walked away from him; she had missed him, which was absurd. One kiss, one walk, an hour stolen from her day—and yet there it was: the unbelievable ache of wanting him near.

The thought that he would be at the tasting—that he might be there when everything she was threatened to collide and either knit together or blow apart in scandal—should have terrified her. On the contrary! Should the world shake under her feet this afternoon, she wanted Chester there when it did as the man who had seen both her halves and, with alarming calm, treated them as one whole woman.

What did the clergymen say at weddings? She had heard the words, had watched cousins and neighbors repeat them with shining eyes, and had never once wanted to trade places. To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health… For so long those phrases had sounded to her like a polite bargain struck between strangers. Now, thinking of him, they felt suddenly, impossibly, like a promise she wanted to give and take equally with both hands.

It did not seem to matter what name lay coiled behind his. Lord This, Duke of That—she found she did not care. Names were paper and ink and expectations. What she wanted was the barefoot man on the sand who had caught her when she stumbled and kissed her as though she were not the damaged “stock” they whispered about but something rare and entirely chosen.

To love and to cherish.

Her breath caught on that thought.

Cherish. To be held like she were not a problem to be solved, but a treasure to guard. To look across a room full of silk and titles and know there was one man who saw her, not her limp, not her prospects, not the plan her mother meant to realize with her future.