Chapter Four
Rosine couldn’t help her curiosity. A hush gathered in the nearest room, the way steam gathers on glass.
Lamps shone on a single chessboard, reflecting so she could even see it from a distance.
A man leaned over the squares, jaw set; opposite him sat Sander, composed as if the hour were noon and the air not thick with wagers.
“Playing for Mrs. Dove-Lyon again, hm?” the man called, too loud for comfort.
“Pembroke, he’s just one of the house wolves,” another man said. Pembroke—as in Count Pembroke, who was Sander’s opponent? The staff had murmured his name before. He was one of the few patrons who played chess at the Lyon’s Den. “For the House? How does a man play like that?” the count hissed.
A murmur skipped the edges of the crowd, and Rosine couldn’t help but stare. Sander did not look up. His fingers—unhurried—lifted a knight and set it down with a click that sounded like certainty.
“I am engaged by the House, my lord,” he said, courteous as a bow. “But I play the board before me.”
“It is as if you anticipated my every move,” Pembroke snapped, color high. “I came to bring money home, not lose another month’s income to your Den.”
She should not have been on the gaming floor. Bakers were meant to breathe ovens, not velvet. Rosine tucked herself behind the curtain with her tray as a shield—do not be caught—and risked a look.
Sander’s hands were steady on the pieces.
She saw it—the mate sitting on the board like a pocket, like a coin waiting to be spent—and how he held it back, three small moves, courtesy buying the earl pride and the house its spectacle.
It thrilled and irritated her in the same heartbeat: that grace, that patience, that mind.
Hopes and hazards tangled—if he asked, her answer must never cost the bakery she meant to build.
She wasn’t supposed to watch, yet she could not seem to breathe anywhere else. Titan would send her downstairs if he saw; Mrs. Dove-Lyon would arch a brow, and Rosine would deserve it. Still, she kept to the velvet’s edge and prayed Sander would not glance up—no, please do—just once.
He tilted his head a fraction, the smallest turn toward the curtain as if her warmth had reached him first. Heat curled low; her bodice felt too tight. She lifted the tray to hide her foolish mouth.
His queen slid into the square; the soft click ran along the inside of her wrists.
Pride and relief together—win now, before I’m found—and she tightened her hold to keep from swaying.
“Checkmate,” he said—low, precise—and the word brushed her mouth like a touch, leaving her breath late and her knees soft when the room seemed in awe of Sander.
Silence, then the low rustle of notes being counted—no triumph shouted, only the quiet that follows precision. The other wolves closed an easy ring to keep order; Sander rose, turned aside, and came toward the door.
They were in league, Rosine realized. Wolves and the queen, Mrs. Dove-Lyon.
She stalled behind the velvet curtain, breath held, buns bright beneath linen, with Sander already in her path.
Yes, she’d wanted to see him play again.
It was rare, she knew, but when Sander played for the House, the floors trembled with excitement.
And titled men paid to sit at a board with the House’s player, the stakes swelling a public purse—wagers for show.
This game of wits seemed still but stirred the Lyon’s Den more than wagers over snakes and eating fire did.
How could she not want to see him in action?
The board’s last click still rang in her ribs. She eased back into shadow, the velvet warm against her shoulder, the scent of cardamom from the tray rising like courage. Sander stopped as if he’d felt her heat through the curtain.
Her lips flattened. “Are you going to escort me back to the kitchen now?” She still crouched behind him, hidden, his back to hers. But she knew his voice and didn’t need to see him to have a conversation.
“Rosine,” he said quietly, without turning. “What are you doing here?”
“Choosing the right moment to speak to Mrs. Dove-Lyon,” she murmured, the linen warming under her palms. There was an odd matter with the sugar she should indeed address with Mrs. Dove-Lyon. But it wasn’t why she’d been caught, and there was nobody she’d rather be caught with than Sander.
He looked up, and Rosine followed his gaze to the landing at the top of the staircase.
Mrs. Dove-Lyon had watched the spectacle and surely saw Rosine.
It was just like all that time ago when she’d first met Sander and Mrs. Dove-Lyon had sent her to him.
The Black Widow of Whitehall saw everything, didn’t she?
He shifted a fraction, enough that his sleeve brushed the curtain. “I’ll take you to her.”
She drew a breath—lemon, sugar, but beyond the tray it was Sander’s scent, a mix of fresh tea and clean soap—and stepped out, tray steady, as the wolves thinned the crowd and the gambling room behind the door found its hum again.
He stepped back—not touching her but taking up all the space between her and the world. “The gambling floor is not your place.”
“And yet, you’re taking up all of my space.” Not that she’d mind being close to him, she just didn’t want him to block her view.
“This is not your floor, Rosine.” He nodded again, and Mrs. Dove-Lyon seemed to retreat beyond the view of the balcony. The move had been made, and Sander obeyed without hesitation.
“Where is my floor? Downstairs, in the kitchen?” she snapped.
“Yes.”
That stung more than it should have. “I know my place,” she said sharply. But I want to make my own place—my own bakery—on my terms.
“It’s safer in the kitchen, Rosine,” Sander said, still blocking her view as if her sensitivity could be harmed by the goings on the gambling floor.
“Ah, yes, I’m useful there. Women belong tucked to the back of the lower floors, hm?”
“That’s not what I said,” Sander said so calmly that it was even more infuriating.
How dare he send me into my compartment as if my life couldn’t unfold outside of the kitchen?
“My place is next to the ovens. Not because I’m told, but because I carved it out.
” And without sugar, I can’t carve anything.
That’s why she ought to speak to Mrs. Dove-Lyon, but Sander irritated her so, she nearly forgot the way.
His gaze didn’t waver. “Stop trying to trade your safety for this.” He nodded in the direction of the gambling hall behind him and squared his shoulders to occlude Rosine’s view at the same time. Sander’s insufferably strong torso was blocking her way!
He shouldn’t look so handsome when I’m upset with him; it must not be allowed.
“Rosine, please allow me to keep you safe,” he pleaded.
Right, he was, because gambling was risky, and so were the patrons as the night waned to morning.
She shouldn’t trade her kitchen and oven for anything, especially not this.
This meant him because he wasn’t gambling; he was a master at the chessboard.
And yet she wanted him in ways that she knew were not wise.
Her throat tightened.
He’s right, and I wish he weren’t.
She had to get some air.
The sugar and Mrs. Dove-Lyon had to wait.
She turned sharply on her heel, her shoes clicking too loudly on the tile as she stormed away. She didn’t look back—wouldn’t give him the satisfaction even if he looked past the curtain.
Within minutes, the kitchen swallowed her in heat and spice. Steam coiled up her arms like a rebuke. She snatched her apron off the hook and yanked it into place, fingers stiff with annoyance.
“Got turned around, did you?” Marta called, emerging from the pantry, half-laughing and clearly oblivious to what had occurred beyond the fact that the girls from the kitchen weren’t allowed on the floor above.
Rosine didn’t answer. Her buns had risen—perfectly, naturally, like they always did.
Soft, golden, obedient.
Unlike her.
I don’t want to worry about buns now. It was Sander who occupied her mind.
Soft, shining dough sat in obedient ranks—neat rows, familiar curves.
The sight curdled a thought: let no one look at me and see the same thing.
Neat. Golden. Obedient. A shape braided to suit another’s hands.
All but mine. She was not dough; she was heat—strength in the wrists, will in the rise.
She rose because she willed it, never because she was told.
And yet, she still felt his breath behind her ear as if Sander’s presence was a constant companion. Stop trying to trade it for this.
She wasn’t. She would never trade her work—the dough in her hands, her future.
But perhaps—just perhaps—she had wanted to see who lived on the other side of the velvet curtains.
Not to leave the kitchen. Just to know she could.
Could she truly escape a life in the kitchen, though?
The thought would not loosen. Even an hour later, sleep would not come to the servants’ rooms.
Near midnight, when the moon hung high and heavy over London, she slipped to the alley for air, the cobbles turned silver, soft as sifted sugar.
The Lyon’s Den sat so close to St. James and its guarded palace gates that even the side streets kept themselves neat.
Through the mews arch and along the service lane, a side gate sagged into the Countess Pembroke’s long-neglected garden—a little wedge between the Den and Green Park, hedges by day for hiding, shadows by night for breathing.
She carried only a small satchel of kitchen scraps wrapped in paper—dripping-soaked crust, a heel of cheese, a strip of roasted chicken skin—never grapes or never raisins because they were expensive and could make dogs sick, so perhaps also foxes.