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“She does not know our connection,” Chester went on. “In her mind, Chester is a man who walks on beaches and eats too much lemon tart, and Wyndale is the idiot duke who signs circulars that squeeze her father’s accounts.”

He could imagine the way she’d say Wyndale behind the counter at the Pavilion, like a stone she meant to throw. The thought of that look turning on him—of her gaze shuttering as she realized the man who held her hand on the sand was the same one who had made her life harder on paper—made something in his chest twist. He had stood on the beach with her laughter in his ears, with her trust settling careful as sugar on his tongue, and known that three simple words could anchor it or would take all of that away. I love you versus I am Wyndale.

“I keep meaning to tell her,” he said quietly. “I open my mouth to do it, and then I want one more conversation where she says my name without flinching. One more walk where I am just the clerk she chose, not the duke she despises. Every time I wait, I know I’m making the reckoning worse—and I still…wait.”

Reed studied him for a long moment. “Does she like Chester?” he asked.

Chester’s mind betrayed him with traitorous clarity: her laugh breaking free on the sand; her hand tucked in his like it belonged there; the look on her face when he told her she was not less. His voice came out rougher than he wanted.

“I think so,” he said. “Oh, how I hope so.”

“Then lead with Chester,” Reed said simply. “Make sure that when she hears ‘Wyndale,’ she already knows the man behind it. The one filling nurseries with orphans and changing rules for bakers’ businesses because he remembers what it is to be hungry.”

“And when she finds out I kept it from her?” Chester asked, staring past Reed at nothing, at a stretch of sand and a woman in a sea-green gown walking away from him. “When she realizes I am the name she’s been cursing for months?”

Reed’s voice lost every trace of teasing. “Then you beg her pardon,” he said. “Like a man, not a duke. And you spend the rest of your life proving you’ll never hide behind the title again.”

Chester let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“Begging,” he said wryly. “You do like to see me humbled.”

Reed’s smile flashed, quick and younger than his years. “I like to see you happy,” he said. “You stole flour for me and gave my family our lives that winter, remember? Perhaps this time you can steal a little grace and a life filled with love for yourself.”

Chester huffed a laugh despite himself. “Thank you.”

“My honor, Your Grace,” Reed said, with a bow that was mostly mockery and mostly gratitude, and slipped from the room.

Left alone, Chester looked down at his ink-stained fingers, then at the empty space where Reed had stood.

In a few hours he’d be standing under painted domes, listening to silver spoons crack sugar, watching a room full of people judge the work of a woman who had already judged his soul and found it…in need of improvement —and he meant to start that improvement with himself, not just his policies.

“At the tasting,” he murmured, “she’ll see what I do with my whole name. And then”—his throat tightened, but he forced the last words out—“then she can decide whether she’ll have the man, or send the duke out of her life.”

He reached for his coat with hands that didn’t feel entirely steady.

For the first time since inheriting Wyndale at age nineteen, he found himself hoping—truly hoping—that someone would choose him for the heart he’d been hiding, not the title he’d been born to.

Chester rose and walked to the window.

Outside, the pale curve of the sky showed between rooftops. Down in the street, his mother’s coach waited, glossy and overmanaged, flanked by footmen. The Dowager appeared a moment later, every line of her posture precisely correct. A gesture, a word; the household shifted to suit her.

She did not need to see him to assume he would follow. He always had.

He rested his palm lightly against the glass.

Not entirely on your terms today, he thought.

“At the Pavilion,” he said to himself, “I’ll find a way to let her see who I am. The man who cares whether bakers’ children eat in winter. The man who would rather fill a nursery with orphans than marry a woman he cannot respect.” His throat tightened. “And then I will tell her whose name I carry—and ask whether she can forgive it enough to take it on anyway.”

“Let Wyndale wait,” he told the empty air. “She deserves Chester first.”

He reached for his coat.

Chapter 25

At about four o’clock, the Pavilion hummed like a hive gone slightly mad. Music and laughter leaked under the doors; gentlemen murmured over pastries as though assessing bloodlines; somewhere a prince was being impressed on Chester’s behalf. Wyndale was doing splendidly. Chester, however, could not stop looking for one small woman in sensible boots hidden under a gown.

He had endured the introductions, the bows, Darley’s smug little nods. He had even said something coherent about flour stability to His Royal Highness. None of it mattered. What mattered was the flash of Pepper across the tasting room—her gown the exact color of the Channel on a clear morning. For a moment, her eyes had lifted and found his, and everything changed.