Page 9

“To Brighton, naturally. If you will not dance at Almack’s or sit for afternoon calls, we must try different air. There are men everywhere, Barbara.”

“Where in Brighton exactly do you plan to go?” Pepper asked even though her stomach turned with the dreaded potential answer.

“The Pavilion.” Mother took the diary with the doctor’s card. “You can come to the Assembly Rooms, and promenade, and hope for an invitation to the Pavilion with me or go to Cloverdale House until I return. One way or another, you’ll make progress this season. You cannot hide behind walks.”

Progress, in her mother’s lexicon, meant a ring, a title, and in due course a cradle—never mind whether the woman in the middle wanted or could bear any of it.

I am not hiding. I am working. I am holding a life steady with two hands and a good apron. Words crowded her throat and refused the door. “I cannot leave London,” she said at last, very calm. Mother couldn’t know about Papa, or else the neat story that made her Lady Barbara would crack straight through. No heroic lord dying abroad. No tragic young widow. Just Erica Beaumont who had married a baker in France when she was with child already and lied about it for twenty years, dragging the Hartleigh name—and Aunt Florence’s chances of a good match—through every drawing room in London. Pepper took a deep breath.

“You smell of outside,” Lady Erica said, faintly disapproving.

“Fresh air and respectable exercise,” Pepper answered.

“Fresh air and something rather like sugar,” Aunt Florence murmured, eyes kind. “Do stop frowning, Erica. If the girl comes to grief, it will not be from walking too briskly.”

“You need to think of your future,” her mother replied, the words brushed smooth of feeling. “You have had years of indulgence. It is time to think of what you’ll make of your life, unlike Aunt Florence.” Ah yes, Mother’s much younger sister, Lady Florence Beaumont—Aunt Florence to Pepper—a free and unmarried woman, independent and perfectly content as such. Society insisted on calling her a spinster and imagining her inconsolable for a husband she had never caught. No one outside the family knew that Florence had watched Grandpapa Hartleigh drag Erica away from the baker she loved in France, forbid all contact, and invent a dead lord to take his place—and had quietly decided she would rather stay unwed than marry under such terms. Mother did not mention the years she herself had spent refusing to think of the love she’d lost there.

The stairs creaked and she heard Mrs. Hart’s steps as she came down. “Ready, my dear?”

“You are too old to be trotting out with your governess every afternoon,” Mother said without looking up from her embroidery.

“She is not my governess,” Pepper said, folding her arms. “She is my companion. And even at twenty I am not to walk abroad without a chaperone, am I?” Mother knew as well as she did that Mrs. Hart was as much a second mother as anything else.

“Call me what you like,” Mrs. Hart said briskly, pulling her shawl tighter as she opened the door. “We shall still scandalize the neighborhood by speaking French in the street.” She threw Pepper a conspiratorial look. “Oh, quel merveilleux air frais aujourd’hui—what wonderful fresh air today!”

Pepper nearly let the laugh slip at Mrs. Hart’s grand declaration, considering the rather sooty fog in London today.

Mother was seething.

Pepper felt heat creep up her neck. She would not show it. She reached for her gloves, sliding each finger into place as if securing a promise. “I will go for my walk now.”

Mrs. Hart, silent at her shoulder, inclined her head once, implying permission and complicity.

Her mother’s voice followed, soft and sharp at once. “You cannot keep wandering, Barbara. One must be sensible about one’s prospects.”

Pepper met her gaze and smiled—polite, perfect, and not at all agreeable. “Sensible,” she repeated. I am the soul of it.

She turned. Measured steps. Not a storm—storms toppled weaker things. She chose boots over silk slippers and the bonnet with the widest brim, the new one that she’d set aside earlier that morning in case a certain Adonis in a navy blue coat came back for mille-feuille. She didn’t dare think he’d come back for her, of course, but at least she could be there to hand him a parcel of sweets if he did decide to pay the bakery a visit. For pastries, of course. No other reason.

Pepper felt heat rise to her cheeks.

Now, a hand to the doorframe for balance—habit, not apology—and then the hall, the front steps, the bright air.

Outside, the sun shone cleanly on the pavement. She breathed once, twice. Cloverdale House. Rehabilitation. As if a month or two could rewrite a body already taught to move with care. And her problem wasn’t a dance step but the cost of leaving the one place she belonged. No doctor there could promise what other physicians had once doubted: that her body would ever be safe for ballrooms and babies both.

Papa needed her. The shop needed her.

Mrs. Hart matched her step on the pavement; shawl drawn snug. They did not speak until the traffic thinned.

Pepper broke first. “You’ve always refused to answer this question since I was a little girl but I must know. How did you find him?” Her voice became lighter than it felt. “Papa. How did you know where to look? I must know.”

“The day they were wed and then separated in France.”

“You were Mother’s friend,” Pepper said carefully. “From school. From France. She trusted you. Were you not afraid she would discover you’d…betrayed her here in London?”

Mrs. Hart’s mouth tightened. “We were girls together before either of us married—two foolish creatures who thought love would be enough. Your grandfather dragged her home and ordered her to forget her baker. My own husband went to war and died that same summer.” She smoothed her skirt once, as if folding the years away. “When he died, I had a widow’s name and no home. Your grandfather offered stability if I would come to London as your governess and keep Erica’s secret. In return, he lent my story to her—my fallen officer became her fallen lord, and Society was told we had married brothers. That is how we became ‘sisters-in-law,’ so I might stay in the house without question.” She drew a breath. “When I found Monsieur Duval again and realized he had never even been told where his wife and child had gone, I was afraid of doing the wrong thing, yes. But more afraid of leaving it so. A child deserves two truths: a name, and hands that love her. So I helped him into your life as best I could. Tell me—are you sorry I did?”

“Never.” The word escaped before sense could shape it. Pepper steadied her weight on the next flagstone. “He’s the dearest man in my life. I only—” she could not ask Mother for an increase in her allowance to send Papa to Cloverdale without explaining why. Papa would rather cough himself raw than let Hartleigh coin cross his counter, even if I could find a way to send it. “I only worry,” she finished softly, “that he will cough and pretend he does not; that the ovens will need filling while I am in Brighton smiling at men I do not want; that the pâtisserie will falter when I could keep it breathing. And worse, that Papa could falter if the pâtisserie did.”