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Chester took his seat, ignoring the barb for now. He could afford to. Today he had custard and a woman in a sea-green gown to win over as Wyndale, not merely as Chester.

“Shall we begin?” the steward asked.

They started with the predictable: a lemon ice, shaved pale and sharp into crystal dishes. An almond flummery from some Bond Street house whose name Chester didn’t catch.

Complaisant, well-executed things that would not offend anyone or be remembered five minutes after they left the tongue.

The steward lifted each dome in turn; the suppliers’ representatives stood, bowed and explained. Notes were taken. Comments made. A score, scribbled in neat numerals at the edge of the ledger.

Chester did his duty. He tasted, he observed, and when pressed for an o pinion, he borrowed the language he had heard Pepper use—praising where it was due and gently redirecting where some ambitious pastry-cook had, in her words, committed a crime against texture. He was no expert, not really, but he had listened to one often enough to fake it for the sake of a ledger.

All the while, a part of his attention stayed fixed on the far side of the room.

Barbara sat between her mother and whom he now knew was her aunt, Lady Florence Beaumont. Despite her straight spine, hands folded lightly in her lap, the little pearl bracelet glimmering at her wrist, he could see how tense she was. She looked every inch the young lady her mother wanted the world to see: composed, attentive, perfectly at ease.

Except—

Every so often, as another dish was presented, she leaned the tiniest fraction forward, eyes brightening in a way that had nothing to do with social curiosity and everything to do with evaluation. When an Oxford Street man proudly unveiled a parade of little biscuits, Chester saw her fingers twitch minutely—eager, perhaps, to inspect the crumb.

He knew that look. He’d seen it with her apron on.

Pepper, looking out from behind Barbara’s eyes.

The first of the custards arrived shortly after the ices. Not theirs. A reputable city house had sent up a respectable crème brulée in glass cups, glazed under a sugar crust that looked, to Chester’s practiced eye, the slightest shade too dark. Flour played little part in such a dish; the war over sacks and circulars would show itself more plainly in the puff and crumb of pastries still to come, but he tasted anyway.

The steward cracked the top with his spoon; the Dowager took her ceremonial bite; polite murmurs were exchanged.

He tasted it. The sugar had gone half a breath past gold into bitterness; the custard beneath was over-sweet in compensation.

The man from the supplying house ducked his head, chastened.

As Chester handed the spoon back, a small movement across from him caught his eye.

Barbara—Pepper—had closed her eyes on the first bite. Just for a second. When she opened them again, he saw the verdict there long before she spoke.

Lady Erica leaned toward her. “Well?” she whispered. “Is it good?” Chester hid a smile; he had seen Lady Erica defer to her daughter’s palate at every dinner and ball since Barbara could toddle up to a dessert table.

“It’s…edible,” Barbara said politely. “It will appeal to people who like to be shouted at by sugar.”

Lady Florence smothered a laugh in her handkerchief. Chester had to clamp his jaw to keep his own grin from escaping in full.

The steward cleared his throat. “And now,” he said, “we have a special entry. A London pâtissier, recently recommended to His Royal Highness’s household for their work with small houses. The Pâtisserie de La Loire on Harley Street.”

Pepper went very still.

Did she avoid her mother’s gaze on purpose?

A woman, the steward addressed as Mrs. Hart, was summoned from the side and stepped forward with calm precision. “Sir,” she said to the steward. “Ladies. Gentlemen.” Her voice had the sort of steady reassurance that sounded as though it could soothe generals and governesses both. “Monsieur regrets he cannot be present himself. He is unwell. But he has sent his best.” Across the table, Pepper’s mother went rigid, fingers whitening around the stem of her glass as the same soberly dressed woman Chester had seen at Pepper’s shoulder in Harley Street now stepped forward as the voice of a London shop. Lady Erica’s gaze sharpened, then smoothed to polite blankness; with the ton watching, Chester would have wagered there was outrage under that composure, but she swallowed it—for now.

“And his…representative?” the steward prompted.

Lady Florence clinked her wine glass with the stem of her spoon. Her gaze flicked, lightning-fast, to the far side of the room.

“My niece,” she said, with a charming little smile at the assembled company, “has taken a particular interest in the matter. Lady Barbara Beaumont is a great admirer of London’s small trades. I thought it only appropriate she should speak on their behalf.”

Lady Erica blinked. Chester would have staked a year’s flour profits that this was not a plan she had been consulted on. But the Dowager’s brows rose, approving the mention of trade. And the prince’s butler, a man who always looked to Chester’s eye as though he collected noble patronage the way others collected coin, nodded at once.

“Lady Barbara,” he said. “If you would be so kind.”