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“I feel like a cake someone’s over-dusted with powdered sugar,” Pepper said. “Pretty. One wrong move and it all blows off.”

Aunt Florence’s gaze dropped to the bracelet, then back up. “Love does happen in this family,” she murmured. “In spite of everything. Do not be afraid to want it.”

“I’m not afraid of wanting it,” Pepper admitted. “I’m afraid of choosing wrong.”

“Then let him show you who he is,” Aunt Florence said. “Before you worry what they call him.”

Who he is. Not what he’s called. Exactly what Chester had asked of her on the beach.

They held each other’s eyes for a steady moment, then Aunt Florence let her go. “Down you go, my dear. The custards and the ton are waiting at the Pavilion.” She brushed an imaginary speck of flour from Pepper’s sleeve. “Your mother is still arguing with herself over which shawl to wear—that will keep her upstairs for an age. Take the back stairs. Mrs. Hart has the Pavilion’s servants’ carriage waiting in the mews. You and the desserts will be halfway to the sea before your mother even reaches the front hall.”

It meant that Henry and Brigitte would be going on ahead in the Pavilion’s own carriage, out of Mother’s line of sight, and Mother need never know that the sweets beneath her nose had begun life in her own kitchen.

Pepper drew a breath. Silk pulled over her ribs; pearls cooled her wrist; beneath both, something new and reckless thudded in her chest.

I will see you.

She gathered her sea-green skirts and went down by the back staircase, through the swing door into heat and copper and her other life.

The kitchen wrapped around her at once—steam from the iron boiler, warm breath from the hot cupboard, the dark-thread scent of sugar thinking about turning. Brigitte packed custards into straw-lined hampers with a nurse’s care. Henry stood over a pan of syrup, watching for the moment it tipped from clear to gold.

“Do not burn,” he scolded it. “You may think you are duchess, but you will behave.”

Mrs. Hart turned—and stopped. “Oh,” she said softly. “Look at you.”

Pepper plucked at her skirt. “Mother has decided I am a weapon,” she said. “She is sending me to the Pavilion polished.”

Aunt Florence let out a low whistle. “If I were a duke with bad politics, I would be very afraid of how sharp you may prove to be this afternoon.”

“The Duke of Wyndale will not notice me,” Pepper said. “He cares for circulars, not dresses.”

Mrs. Hart’s eyes went sharp and kind at once. “Then you will be everything you choose to be, my dear,” she said quietly. “Remember what you are risking—and whom you are risking it for.”

Papa. The pâtisserie. The fragile hope of pulling her parents back into the same air.

Chester.

Today she was making crème for princes and dukes, she told herself. For Papa. For the shop. For the chance to live whole.

But a small, treacherous corner of her whispered that if Chester tasted it—and whether his eyes went soft and astonished in the way she already knew—she would have her answer about more than sugar.

“Time,” Henry announced. “The Pavilion carriage will not wait for custard, however magnificent.”

They loaded the hampers: custards nestled in straw and ice, sugar in a sealed jar, the little copper salamander wrapped in cloth. The whole enterprise felt, to Pepper, like sending her heart out in pieces disguised as dessert.

She stood a moment, looking at it all—her two lives, balanced on trays and linen, about to be carried into the same room.

“Ready, my dear?” Mrs. Hart asked softly.

“No,” Pepper said honestly. “But the custards are. And…he will be there. That will have to do.”

She lifted her skirts, braced herself and walked toward the waiting coach, toward the Pavilion domes, toward the Duke of Wyndale and the man on the beach.

Hoping with every step that whatever name he wore, it was Chester she wanted at her side when the worlds of her life collided.

Chapter 24

An hour before the tasting at the Pavilion at Chester’s rented house in Brighton…