Page 96

Mrs. Hart sighed. “Bakers,” she said quietly. “Master bakers’ orphans. But not only. It is Wyndale’s new scheme.”

Wyndale.

The name dropped into Pepper’s chest like a stone into cream, disappearing and curdling things in its wake.

“I see,” she said, which was a lie; she saw far too much. She turned toward the window, staring out at the polite stretch of lawn. “Then you must be very busy. I’ll leave you to—”

Aunt Florence rustled among the papers. “Oh, do stop being noble,” she said, and slid something across the table with two fingers.

A small square of newsprint, roughly cut from a larger sheet. The ink had smudged a little at the edges. Pepper recognized the front page: The Morning Chronicle.

She didn’t want to pick it up. Her fingers disobeyed.

REVISION OF THE WYNDALE CIRCULAR, the headline announced in important, self-satisfied letters. NEW SAFEGUARDS FOR SMALL BAKERIES.

She read.

Noon payments. Dock oversight. Limits on how much could be held back in times of scarcity. Direct language about hoarders fined and prosecuted. The sort of phrases she’d scribbled in fury in the margins of draft letters and sent before she knew who Wyndale was.

“He…repealed it?” she asked. “Completely?”

“He altered it entirely,” Mrs. Hart said. “In all the ways that matter. Noon payments. Dock oversight. A heel to the throat of hoarders and the largest establishments like hotels.”

Pepper’s fingers tightened on the paper. Of course, he had gone and become the sort of man she’d hoped Wyndale might be—after she had left him in the road looking heartbreakingly disheveled and red-faced. Utterly kissable. Irresistible. Which was why she’d forced herself to resist.

And now, in black ink, he was doing everything she’d begged an invisible duke to consider long before she’d known the shape of his mouth.

“How long have you known?” she asked, not sure whether she meant about the Society or about the change.

“Two days,” Aunt Florence said. “They sent notice to subscribers. Your mother…has been occupied.”

“She finds it difficult to admit when the Flour Duke does something admirable,” Mrs. Hart added dryly. “We are working around her pride.”

“She is not the only one,” Pepper muttered.

Because this wasn’t fair. He had lied by omission, yes. He had hurt her. But he had also listened. Changed a law. Filled a nursery with orphaned girls, if the Society papers were to be believed. Every day she tried to be more furious than she was impressed, and every day the balance shifted a little.

Dr. Fernando’s calm voice slipped through the muddle: Risk, not certainty. You are not faulty goods, Lady Barbara.

Apparently, Wyndale had gone to war with certainty too.

Footsteps sounded in the hall. The butler’s knock came, two measured raps, followed by his unruffled voice.

“Lady Erica’s compliments, my lady,” he said through the door, addressing the room at large. “Her guest has arrived. She requests your presence in the dining room.”

Pepper’s stomach swooped. “Which guest?” she asked. “Do we know?”

The butler’s expression didn’t flicker. “Lady Erica said now.”

Not helpful. Pepper smoothed her skirt with damp palms. “Very well,” she said. “We mustn’t keep Mother waiting. She’s liable to reorder the furniture if left alone with a visitor.”

Aunt Florence gathered the papers into an untidy stack. “Come along, then,” she said. “Let us see which great personage has sent the whole house into a panic. If it is another dowager with opinions about your ankle, I shall feign a fit.”

Pepper followed her into the hall. Mrs. Hart came too, though she hung back a half-step, as if unsure she belonged on the front lines of whatever this was.

The door to the dining room stood open. Voices floated out—Mother’s, bright and polished; a deeper one, familiar and not. Pepper’s hand tightened on Mrs. Hart’s sleeve without her meaning it to.

They stepped inside.