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“Lady Barbara—” Mrs. Hart’s voice, low and firm in her ear, cut through the roaring in Pepper’s head. A hand caught her elbow; another braced at her back. “Breathe, my girl. Up you come,” she cooed just like she had when Pepper was a girl.

Pepper tried. Heat burned up her neck, over her cheeks, into her scalp. Her ankle screamed. Her dignity lay somewhere on the carpet with a crushed fern frond.

From the corner of her eye she saw him move. Chester—no, Wyndale— Argh! Half out of his chair, fingers white on the back of it, as though some instinct had thrown him to his feet before title and protocol could drag him down again. Another step and he was there, reaching for her free arm, the familiar warmth of his hand closing around her through silk.

“Pepper—” he breathed.

The sound of her name on his lips in this room, after everything, was worse than the fall.

She flinched, the words hitting with all the force of a slap.

“Don’t,” she choked, and wrenched away. Mrs. Hart had her; she did not need him. She could not bear him. Her shoulder smacked his hand aside. He staggered half a step, hurt flashing nakedly across his face before his expression snapped back into something smooth and ducal.

A collective inhale shivered around the table. A lady refusing a duke’s assistance was spectacle enough; refusing this duke, in front of the prince’s steward and at the Pavilion with half the Board, was practically theatre. The ton would know in no time.

“Oh,” said the Dowager, with a little tilt of her head that made the crystals in her diamond earrings catch the light. “A tumble and a temper. It is difficult to balance in boots, I suppose.”

The words were soft, almost indulgent. They stung all the more for it. Pepper was suddenly, painfully aware of the leather hugging her ankles beneath the layers of silk, the practical soles that had carried her across Brighton and up Harley Street while other girls floated about in satin slippers.

“I find,” Aunt Florence said pleasantly, in the tone she used when about to cut someone to ribbons with a compliment, “that boots are most useful for ladies who intend to keep standing, Your Grace. Even when the ground is not as steady as it pretends to be.”

A small, scandalized little hush ran through the nearest circle. Someone turned a laugh into a cough. The Dowager’s fan opened with a soft snap, a paper shield between her expression and the room.

“Enough,” Mother said, very quietly. Her fingers dug into Pepper’s other arm, not quite hard enough to bruise. Up close, her voice shook, but her jaw did not. “You have had quite sufficient attention for one afternoon.”

“Erica,” Aunt Florence murmured, sharp with warning. “She has done nothing that—”

“Nothing?” Mother’s breath hitched. “She has baked in secret shops and walked the streets behind my back, and now she throws away a duke’s hand.” Her tone was no louder, but Pepper could feel the words like blows against her skin. “We are going.”

She marched Pepper toward the door. Eau de cologne and orange-flower water and roasting sugar swirled around her as they passed; a murmur followed them like a wake.

Pepper kept her eyes on the floor. If she looked up, she might see the prince’s polite concern, the Board’s curiosity, Chester’s—Wyndale’s—face. She could not risk any of them.

The doorframe loomed. Her ankle wobbled again, traitorous. For a moment she was sure she would go down a second time. A shadow fell across her; a hand reached for her shoulder.

“Allow me,” he said, low and desperate—Chester’s voice in Wyndale’s mouth.

She did not even think. Pepper jerked away as if his touch burned. “Do not,” she said, each word carved out of what little pride she had left. “Touch. Me.”

He stopped, the moment catching him like a needle to the spine. His hand fell to his side. He did not move to block her path, did not speak again. Only his eyes followed her, and that was almost worse.

The door to the tasting room swung open ahead of her and then closed behind with a thick, blessed thud, cutting off the music and the murmur in one stroke.

The sea air outside hit Pepper like a slap, sharp and cold after the scented warmth of the Pavilion. Lanterns burned along the Parade; the domes glowed against the dusk like something out of a story. Behind them, music was already rising again, as if nothing of importance had happened at all.

Mother pressed her lips together until the color fled them. She did not speak as they climbed into the waiting carriage. Neither did Pepper. Her own breath sounded too loud in the closed space, too ragged. She fixed her gaze on the opposite squab and tried not to think of lemon on his mouth, of his hands at her waist, of the way his eyes had looked when he said judge me by the man and neglected to mention the title.

“We will go home tomorrow,” Mother said at last, in a voice as flat as the sea in a dead calm. “Not to the rented house. To London.”

Aunt Florence made a soft sound. “Erica—”

“To London,” Mother repeated. “If my daughter insists on entangling herself with bakers and dukes, I will at least have her under my own roof while she ruins herself.”

Pepper swallowed. London meant Harley Street. Harley Street meant Papa. And between Papa and Mother stood a duke she had kissed in a corridor and the truth she had never spoken aloud.

She nodded, because she could not seem to manage speech. Mrs. Hart’s gloved hand brushed the back of hers for the briefest moment, a wordless, steady touch.

Pepper clung to that, and to the jolt and sway of the carriage, and to the single, absurd fact that the custard had not curdled, even if everything else had.