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His mother had spent a full spring furnishing the London nursery—cots lined up like little soldiers, a rocking horse with a red leather saddle, wallpaper scattered with white lambs. She’d walked him through it with a tour guide’s pride, naming heirs and spares the way other people named flowers. He’d stood in the doorway, hands behind his back, feeling nothing but dread. Children as proof. Children as duty. Children ordered like pastry because a title demanded it.

Pepper’s voice pressed in, fierce as sea wind in that Brighton corridor: a girl who limps today…questions about heirs…heirs are everything.

The remembered cruelty turned in his stomach.

“I don’t care,” he said slowly, surprised to hear the words aloud, “if the nursery is full of my blood or borrowed hearts, so long as it’s full of children who need my protection.”

Reed’s brows climbed, then one corner of his mouth tugged up. “That is not the outcome Her Grace had in mind when she chose lambs for the wallpaper,” he said. “But I’ll confess, I like your approach very much indeed.”

“Then she ought to be careful what she wishes for,” Chester said. “She hated it when I stole a sack of flour, and now that escapade has turned into the best steward we ever had who terrifies half the Board with his ledgers.”

He flicked the folded report with his fingers, feeling the weight of it in a way that had nothing to do with paper. This was not a sack of flour smuggled out under his coat; this was three lives, three small girls who were nothing to him by blood and everything to him by need. His father would have roared at the notion of bringing them into Wyndale’s care—no heirs, no advantage, no use to the line at all. His mother would call it sentiment, a dangerous habit in a duke. For a moment his stomach dipped. Perhaps he was about to make a fool of himself. Maybe he was wrong.

But ages two, four, and one month would not leave his mind. Little hands. Little shoes. Girls the world had already decided it could do without. What, precisely, was the point of all his ledgers and titles and careful schemes for small bakeries—of all that comfort—when he couldn’t spend a scrap of it to keep three children together and fed? A dukedom that couldn’t manage that had no right to its name.

He drew a steadier breath and met Reed’s eye. “Who knows what three little girls might become—so long as someone bothers to keep them together and fed.”

Color climbed Reed’s neck. “You were nearly disinherited for that sack you gave my family,” he muttered. “You do remember?”

“I remember,” Chester said. “I also remember you as a boy who thought I was mad and followed me anyway because I was a few years his senior.” His mouth softened. “Write to the Society. Tell them Wyndale House in London will receive the girls. All three. They’re to stay together. I’ll cover the nurse for the babe and whatever’s needed for the older two until they’re old enough to choose their own paths.”

Reed hesitated only a heartbeat. “And Her Grace?” he asked, though his eyes said I already know the answer.

“My mother wants children in her nursery,” Chester said. “I’ll provide them. Should she complain, they’re not the right sort, she may take that up with her conscience.”

Reed huffed a quiet laugh. “Very good, Your Grace.” The honorific held more affection than distance.

He turned in an effort to leave. Chester’s hand found the edge of the desk instead.

“Reed.”

“Sir?”

“There is…” Chester broke off, irritated to find his tongue clumsy when he’d faced Parliament with less trouble. “Another matter. Of a more private nature.”

Reed’s face sobered in that particular way it did when the past came between them like shared ground. “Is this about the lady who wrote that letter calling your circular a noose,” he asked, “or the lady you escorted into the garden when you were meant to be impressing Leinster’s cousin?”

Chester closed his eyes briefly. “You are terrifyingly well informed.”

“You pay me to notice things,” Reed said. “Is it the same lady?”

There was no point in pretense. “Yes.”

“Ah.” Reed leaned a hip against the chair opposite, as though settling for a long story. “Complicated, is she?”

“Utterly,” Chester said. “And entirely worth it.”

Reed’s mouth twitched. “They usually are, once you start liking them.”

Liking. The word felt absurdly small for the way his chest tightened when he thought of her standing on the sand with her hair down and lemon on her tongue.

He turned the Society letter over in his hands. Ink blurred into sea-green silk, boots splashed with saltwater, a small, fierce face tilted up in indignation and wonder by turns.

“She hates Wyndale,” he said quietly. “On principle. On paper. With very good reason. For years, every order with his seal has meant small shops putting coin on the barrel before they’ve sold enough to be sure they can cover it. This new ‘coin at noon’ rule is only a halfway step; she cannot know I argued for payment at day’s end and the Board would only give me noon. From her side of the counter, it must look as though Wyndale strangles them with one hand and then calls it kindness when he loosens his grip by an inch.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. Perhaps she was not wrong. Half-measures still left marks; the ledgers looked better, but the risk still sat squarely on the shoulders of people like Pepper, not on dukes who could afford a bad week’s trade.

Reed winced. “I’ve met that fellow,” he said dryly. “Didn’t like him much myself. Does she know you…don’t particularly like him either?”