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They tore him away from her with two words.
“Your Grace.”
The steward’s voice hit like a cold douse of water down the back. Chester’s mouth was still on hers; her fingers were still knotted in his coat. For one raw, suspended second, he considered ignoring the summons entirely—letting the prince, the Dowager, the entire Board cool their heels while he stayed right here, being only the man she wanted.
“Your Grace, they are ready for you in the tasting room. His Royal Highness’s steward begs you will attend at once.”
He felt her flinch at the title. Felt it like a blow. Of course, she would. In her mind, Wyndale was ink and injury and circulars; Chester was the fool who walked on beaches and stole kisses in corridors. Now the two men had crashed together in a single syllable.
He let his forehead rest against hers for the space of one stolen heartbeat. “I have to go,” he said roughly—the duke’s duty fighting the man’s desperate wish to stay.
He untangled himself inch by inch, every muscle protesting, and stepped back. The corridor rearranged itself: plaster, palm, trays. The mask of Wyndale slid into place over Chester’s aching heart.
Then he turned toward the steward, pulled his mask into place, and walked away from the woman he wanted more than sense. Every step away felt wrong, an argument against duty he could not quite silence.
“His Grace, the Duke of Wyndale.” The announcement rolled across the Pavilion’s impressively large saloon like a stone across a pond, sending little ripples of attention outward. Heads turned; fans fluttered; a few lesser men attempted not to look impressed.
Chester stepped through the tall double doors and into the press of light and gilt.
The tasting saloon had been dressed for ceremony. A long table ran down the center, draped in white, its surface a parade of covered dishes and crystal bowls, the silver domes catching the glint of chandeliers overhead. At one end, the prince’s butler and a pair of royal tasters sat with ledgers open and quills ready. Down either side, a scattering of invited grandees: a brace of MPs with self-important hair, a judge, two ladies with the kind of faces that suggested nothing on the table would be equal to their expectations.
His mother, naturally, had secured a place near the top. Beside her sat Lady Erica; beyond her, her sister, Lady Florence, in a shawl that looked like it had opinions aligned with Pepper’s.
And at Lady Erica’s side—
He followed the butler through the painted door and back into the blaze of light and noise. Conversation swelled; crystal chimed. Of Pepper, there was no sign near the service entrance. Sensible woman—gorgeous, delicious lips—she would have slipped the other way along the passage, back through the kitchens and in by the door allotted to staff and poor relations, not dukes who forgot themselves in corridors.
Those corridors led to chambers upstairs where he’d love to taste her some more. So much more.
I have to control myself.
Sea-green silk. Dark hair. The curve of a familiar jaw, turned at that precise moment toward a maid who’d bent to murmur something about extra chairs. Pepper must have taken the back way round; there she sat, perfectly proper, as though she had not been in his arms a minute ago.
She didn’t look up when his name was spoken.
Of course, she didn’t. When had anything about this day chosen the simple path?
He felt his mother’s gaze like a hand on his sleeve and inclined his head to the room, offering the bow expected of him.
Only when the formalities relaxed, and the air returned to its ordinary level of tension, did she lift her head.
Pepper’s eyes found him across the room.
For a heartbeat, she looked at him the way she had on Harley Street and on the beach: as if he were just Chester, coatless, laughing, barefoot in the sand. But he saw that recognition dawn in her face, watched her breath catch just a fraction, and thanked every loudly talking guest and rustling silk skirt that had turned his formal announcement into indistinct noise at her end of the table. For this one stolen moment, he could still be only Chester to her.
“Promise?” she mouthed, small and incredulous.
He let himself smile, just for her. “Lady Barbara,” he answered with the smallest of nods.
And there it was again—that treacherous, soaring feeling in his chest, like the scaffolding he’d been built on all his life was quietly being dismantled in favor of something wilder and more alive.
Wyndale to the room. Chester to her.
“You are late,” his mother murmured, low enough that only the prince’s man and Chester heard, drawing him toward an empty chair by her side.
“Your steward has never tasted such thoroughness,” the prince’s man said with a bow that held more amusement than rebuke. “His Grace has been in the kitchens. We are assured that everything is in order.”
“Everything,” Darley murmured from further down the table, “except his priorities.”
