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Chapter 26

Not even an hour after the tasting…

They’d watched her break.

Chester would remember the catastrophe at the Pavilion in slices: the rip in the carpet catching her heel; the way her hand shot out for balance and met nothing; the small, awful sound that left her throat as she went down on one knee in a room full of people who’d just heard her admit she belonged to a shop.

A rustle of silk and sympathy that wasn’t sympathy at all.

Then the laughter—too quick, too bright; the kind people use when they smell blood and are afraid of their own.

He was on his feet before he knew he meant to be. The spoon hit the china with a sharp, accusing clink.

“Barbara—” Pepper— he was moving around the table, heedless of protocol, when her mother seized her elbow and hauled her up with brittle dignity.

“My daughter is unwell,” Lady Erica said into the rising murmur.

Pepper’s face had gone white beneath the flush. Her eyes met Chester’s across the table.

On Harley Street, she looked at him with challenge. On the beach, with wonder. Behind the curtain, with something that had felt dangerously like trust.

Now she looked at him, eyes narrowed with the wary distance reserved for liars and strangers alike.

The word liar wasn’t spoken. It did not need to be. He saw it in the flinch of her mouth when someone said, “Your Grace”. In the way she looked from him to the Dowager and back again, tallying title and circular and kissing and finding no way to reconcile them.

“Lady Barbara—” he tried again, but Lady Erica’s fingers were already tightening, steering her toward the door.

Pepper stumbled once more. This time it wasn’t the carpet. It was her heart.

“I beg you will excuse us,” Lady Erica said, chin high, to no one in particular and everyone at once.

They swept out together—mother, daughter, Lady Florence on their heels. The doors swallowed sea-green silk. The murmuring rose to a hum.

He felt the loss like someone had knocked the air out of him.

“Your Grace?” The prince’s butler, sweating slightly, appeared at his elbow as if conjured. “If I might—while the company composes itself—have a word? His Royal Highness’s household is prepared to make a decision.”

Of course they were. Custard and pastries did not wait for scandal.

Chester forced his attention to the man. “Very well, I’ll go speak to the prince.”

The steward drew him a little aside, lowering his voice. “It is His Royal Highness’s pleasure,” he said, “to grant the Pâtisserie de La Loire the warrant as supplier of certain desserts to his table. In particular, the crème brûlée we tasted today. If Your Grace is content to add your recommendation, we shall have the parchment prepared at once.”

Pepper’s recipe. Her father’s shop. Her cause.

“Yes,” Chester said, too quickly. He steadied his tone. “Yes. They have my full recommendation. Draw it up immediately. And when it is ready, I will see it delivered myself.”

The steward blinked. “Your Grace need not trouble. We can dispatch it by messenger when we return to Town.”

“I will deliver it,” Chester repeated. “In person.”

It came out harder than he’d intended; the steward ducked his head in reflex.

“As you wish, Your Grace.”

His mother’s voice slid into the gap like the edge of a knife. “Deliver it?” she repeated. “Personally? To a baker?”

“Pâtissier,” he said, more sharply than courtesy allowed. “And yes.”