Page 74
Chester had been staring at the same column of figures so long the ink had turned from meaning into patterns.
Flour allocations. Dock tallies. Neat marginalia about “improved stability.” All perfectly worthy. None of it the reason his pulse kept climbing toward four o’clock.
He set the pen down before he snapped it.
His mother would say the problem was that he was not thinking hard enough about Lady Barbara—her impeccable bloodlines, her dowry, the way she sat at the top of the Dowager’s carefully compiled list of “prospects.”
Pepper.
Not Lady Barbara, not a prospect to be weighed and measured. Pepper barefoot on a beach, laughing with the wind in her hair. Pepper behind a curtain, tasting of wine and vanilla and danger. Pepper in a kitchen, arguing with a duke’s circular as though she expected the duke to listen.
It was absurd, how much of him now orbited that one determined woman.
A knock broke the spell.
“Come in,” he said.
Chester looked up as John Reed stepped in—no longer the scrawny boy from the estate cottages, but Wyndale’s steward now: shoulders filled out, coat decently cut, a ledger where a charity sack of flour had once been.
“Forgive the interruption, Your Grace,” Reed said. “You asked for the Society report, and the figures on the noon-pay houses before you left for the Pavilion.”
“Set them down,” Chester said, rubbing his brow. “How bad is it?”
Reed opened the ledger. “Better,” he said, and that one word eased something low in Chester’s chest. “Before, the small bakeries had to put coin on the barrel the moment the flour reached their doorstep—whether or not they’d sold a single roll. If the morning trade was poor, they went short or defaulted, and the dock men thought them bad risks.” He ran his finger down a column. “Now they take their flour at dawn and pay at noon, out of the morning’s takings. Defaults have dropped. Dock men are less inclined to hoard sacks for the grandes maisons; they know the weights will be checked, and there’s honest coin waiting from the little shops by midday.”
Chester glanced at the page. The numbers lined up reasonably, obedient little soldiers. They did not show Pepper calling his first circular a noose—but they were a start.
“We’re still losing some of the smallest,” Reed added. “The ones who can’t scrape together coin even by noon.”
Chester exhaled. “I can’t conjure money into their tills,” he said quietly. “Only make sure the sacks aren’t rigged against them.”
“For what it’s worth,” Reed said, “this is the first time in years anyone has tried.”
That, too, was more comfort than Chester liked to admit. “Thank you,” he said.
Reed shifted, produced a second folded sheet. His expression changed from wary to troubled. “And this,” he said. “From the Society for the Orphans of Master Bakers. They…want your opinion.”
Chester broke the plain seal.
Your Grace,
We regret to inform you of the sudden passing of Master and Mrs. Dobbins, late of Bishopsgate, leaving three female children.
Ages three, four, and one month. No close kin in trade. A cousin in service who might take one girl. A farmer’s wife willing to nurse the infant—for a fee. The Society could bury the parents and offer a tiny stipend, but our funds do not stretch to lodging all three; our present thought is to send the babe to the Foundling Hospital and place the elder girls in an orphanage until they are of an age for service…
Chester folded the letter before the polite ending could finish.
“What do they propose?” he asked.
Reed’s mouth tightened. “The baby to the Foundling Hospital, the older two to an orphanage until they’re old enough for service. They ask whether you have ‘guidance,’ since you’re one of the most generous patrons.”
Guidance. As though a title were useful only for telling people how to lose their children neatly.
“Absolutely not,” Chester said. “They are not to be split. Not while I have roofs and coin.”
Reed blinked. “You mean to take them on, Your Grace?”
Chester leaned back, letting the thought run its full length.
