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You will know, Chester thought, not taking his eyes off her, who has been careful.
The steward passed the first ramekin to the prince’s taster, then to the Dowager, then down the line. A footman set one before Chester.
The silver felt oddly heavy.
He tapped the surface.
The crack was exquisite. Not a shatter, not a sludge—one clean break, the sugar giving way under exactly the right pressure. The custard yielded, leaving a neat shard on the spoon.
He lifted it to his mouth.
Vanilla. Sugar. Heat. Patience. All the things he knew were in it and, beneath them, something that had not been there in Harley Street years ago when Monsieur Duval had made the same dish alone.
Pepper.
The way it balanced on the line between tenderness and structure was her. Fierce enough to hold. Soft enough to yield in the right place. It was a confession of everything she’d shown him on a beach written in cream and fire.
He set the spoon down very carefully, but to fight for her as Wyndale, he’d have to pick up the proverbial sword.
Chapter 25
Pepper did not remember sitting down.
One moment she was standing at the head of the table with a spoon and a ramekin and the word Wyndale hanging in the air like smoke; the next, she was back in her chair between Mother and Aunt Florence, her hands folded very correctly in her lap and her heart battering itself to pieces against her ribs.
Across the linen, he looked exactly as he had in the corridor: the same dark hair, the same ridiculous mouth she had kissed until she forgot there was a world beyond the width of his shoulders. Only now there was a ring on his hand and a prince at his elbow and the word Wyndale attached to him. Argh!
For one treacherous heartbeat, his eyes met hers. All the noise in the room seemed to thin. She saw it—the flicker of raw apology, of wanting, of a man who had been Chester in her arms and was now a duke in a borrowed skin. Then someone leaned to speak to him; his mouth flattened; he looked away.
In her mind, the syllables kept slipping: Chester, Wyndale, Flour Duke, liar. None of them seemed to fit neatly; they scraped.
I kissed the Flour Duke! Ugh!
I fell in love with… she couldn’t think the thought to end. The world had tilted.
“…one of the finest things I have ever tasted,” he said, and the room murmured approval. He liked it, some treacherous part of her thought, even as another whispered.
He lied about everything.
No, actually, he hadn’t said anything of his name… he’d lead her to believe… I’m such a fool!
The steward scratched numbers into his ledger. Scores were assigned. There were more dishes—jellies and biscuits and a spun-sugar absurdity everyone cooed over—but they might as well have been sawdust for all Pepper tasted them. Her mouth still held the ghost of burnt sugar; her tongue refused anything else.
“Smile,” Aunt Florence breathed once, under cover of the general chatter. “You have already astonished them. No need to scandalize them as well.”
Pepper made her lips move. She was not entirely sure it resembled a smile, but the room seemed satisfied. Chester did not look at her again. Sensible man. Coward.
At last, the steward closed the book with a decisive snap. Chairs scraped; fans fluttered. The prince rose; the Dowager rose; everyone rose. Pepper got as far as pushing herself up before the room swayed.
She tried to put her weight on the sure foot.
It betrayed her.
Her heel caught the edge of the carpet; her bad ankle slid; for one hideous instant she was a child again, falling endlessly, limbs refusing to answer. The world tilted—chandeliers, faces, silver flashing—and then there was nothing between her and the polished floor.
She went down hard. Her hip hit first, then her hands, the impact jolting all the way up her arms. China rattled on the nearest side table. Somewhere, a spoon clinked against a plate in a discordant little chime.
Silence, for the space of a breath. Then the ripple of sound started: a gasp here, a hurried cough there, the soft rustle of fans fluttering faster.
