Page 7

The arguments read clean—clean rarely meant kind.

Outside the window a boy trotted beside a bread cart, chalk still white on his fingers from the board that listed today’s legal loaf weight. A woman counted coins twice and pressed her lips thin before letting them go. The coach rocked on; the scene slid behind, but it did not leave him.

For years he had told himself his work was prudence. England’s stomach before England’s sentiment. Since the Corn Laws, grain had been dear even in ordinary years, and prices jumped on every rumor. Middlemen who hoarded cargos, great houses who tried to buy whole cartloads in advance—someone had to keep the Board steady. Someone had to be the dull certainty other men cursed and later thanked. His mother would say the same voice must choose a wife like a good mare—sound, untroubling, fit to carry the line—duty first in ledgers and nurseries both.

And yet he imagined her again behind the counter.

Chester asked the coachman to turn back to Harley Street.

And as soon as the carriage pulled closer to the bakery and he could see through the shop window, he saw her again behind the counter. Not simpering. She had wrapped the pastry with a craftsman’s assurance, not a shopgirl’s flourish. What is the price of steadiness for people like her?

He didn’t answer, because the honest answer would complicate the day.

Names glinted in the margin—Harcourt, Reed, Darley—factors who would mind the funnels. Good men, mostly. Hard-nosed when the wind turned. They would sleep. Smaller kitchens might not.

Chester lingered in the carriage for just another moment for what would be his excuse to go back to the bakery again, less than an hour after his first visit of the day?

The gorgeous woman behind the counter is not a good-enough reason. Or is it?

Work, focus on work.

And he had plenty of paperwork.

He turned the page and found a neat note from his steward: Brighton banquet—dessert course pending; Guardian to advise. French sweets preferred. There it was—a narrow door that opened the way he needed. As Guardian of the Royal Table, he was expected to recommend houses for royal tastings at the Pavilion; no one would question a small trial. A handful of shops could be invited—hers among them—and he could call it diligence for the summer table and mean every word of it. If her pâtisserie proved equal to the task, orders could follow: steady ones, paid promptly. A ton favorite—and in time perhaps a Royal Warrant—gave even a modest kitchen an advantage with the flour men that no Board circular could ever grant. It might be enough to keep a little shop breathing through a lean month.

He took another measured bite, obedient to her rule: layers together. It tasted like the opposite of compromise.

He pictured returning with an errand that was both duty and excuse: I require a sampling for a Brighton supper for His Royal Highness. Not Wyndale-on-a-seal, not a man with a ledger—simply a patron with a palate and a question: What would you serve to change a difficult mind? He wanted to see the answer appear under her hands.

If his mother sat opposite, she would remind him this was not his concern: choose a bride, secure the future of the line—sons in the nursery, titles safely marched along—stop drifting into bakeries instead of Almack's. But he knew what his circular had done to a kitchen like this one. He had signed the policy that made small houses pay coin at noon before they had sold enough to cover it, and here was the cost standing behind a counter with flour on her cuffs. He wanted to know whether he could make it right—not as Wyndale with a seal, but as a man with a use for good pastry and a reason to come back. But ballrooms felt like theatre. This—paper warm from a woman's careful hands, the plain truth of butter and sugar—this felt real. He wanted, absurdly, to be only a man to someone, not a seal on a page.

He had never liked the look on a debutante’s face when she realized men could be titles first and people second. The realization came sooner with him than with most. He could not blame them; he did not forgive the feeling.

Chester signed where Reed had left a line. Wyndale. A grain of sugar fell as the ink glistened and left the faintest star at the tail of the e. He stared at it—ridiculous, small—and felt the weight all the same.

He blotted the page and wrote beneath, a single instruction that could pass as routine:

Arrange private tastings—London pâtisseries with exceptional skill.

No formal notice; afternoon calls.

No one could accuse him of bending policy for one pretty baker if half a dozen kitchens were summoned. It looked like administration but was hope with a cursive flair.

He should have asked her name. His mother would have called it harmless, the sort of little entanglement a duke might allow himself between Acts at the opera—a pretty baker’s girl, a few weeks of amusement, forgotten by the time the banns were read for the proper bride. Chester had never wanted that kind of thing. He had seen too many women smile because a title left them no graceful way to say no. He wanted to be a man a woman chose, not a name she dared not refuse—and a baker’s daughter with flour on her sleeve deserved a husband, not a careless story in somebody else’s drawing room.

He should not want to know her as much as he did.

But her face looked as though she had a story to tell and he couldn’t help but long to know it.

He folded the paper tray back into a parcel and slipped the second slice inside, like a promise he didn’t entirely trust himself to keep. The coach slowed for traffic; somewhere a costermonger called strawberries, and the sound made him think of the way she had said layers—as if truth depended on things meeting properly. His hand twitched toward the roof of the coach, the old signal to turn back toward Harley Street. He let it fall to his knee instead.

Whitehall first; work always came first. The detour could be forgiven later, if he wrapped it in a visit to the Customs House on that side of town. Tomorrow, he would return at the same time. If she stood behind that wide brim again, he would behave as only a man who wanted a perfect bite—and the person who taught him how. And perhaps—if the confectioner’s sugar didn’t sprinkle his velvet coat—he would learn her name before the sugar melted.

And if she wasn’t there, he would order the same dangerous pastry and wait—coat spotted, patience thin—until the bell chimed and the wide brim appeared. Some things were worth the mess.

Chapter 3

By the next afternoon, with London bright enough to tempt even cautious ankles, Pepper took the first step downstairs for her constitutional—and halted at the sound of her mother’s voice drifting from the morning room.