Lady Meets Her Match (8 page)

“You've known about her long?” Cyrus asked Bowles.

“Awhile. Saw her open shop one morning. Hadn't put her mobcap on yet. Hair that color's rare. Then I saw the old Tottenham sign come down and strolled in for a coffee.” The former soldier's voice dropped with suggestion. “And who can forget her mouth, her form…though she tries to hide the goods.”

Bowles knew her whereabouts and kept the news to himself. Cyrus's jaw ticked as much from that knowledge as the miscreant's provocative words. A decade ago, he would've reacted in a bad way, but not now. Time had tempered him, and he'd not give the man the satisfaction of witnessing his agitation.

Bowles chuckled, a hoarse sound from too little sleep and too much liquor. “Planning on the shopgirl replacing Lady Isabella Foster? A real step down for you, going West End to midtown.”

“You speak as if these women are commodities he trades…one for another,” North said.

“Isn't that what he does? Moves things and people around to suit his purpose?” Bowles answered, his bloodshot stare sweeping from his brother to Cyrus. “Seems to me there was a lot of effort to find one woman.”

“So he wanted to know what she was about…her sneaking into his home and running off the way she did. Can't blame a man for wanting an attractive woman.”

“There's wanting a woman and then there's remembering a woman.” Bowles's head lolled against the chair. “Question is which one applies to Cyrus and his shopgirl?”

Breath snagged in Cyrus's chest.
His
shopgirl
.

He turned his attention to the window, his muscles tensing with the want to strike. He tolerated the scoundrel because he was North's younger brother. This time, Bowles went too far.

“The shopgirl has a name,” Cyrus insisted. “Miss Mayhew. You would do well to remember it, though I doubt you've tarried long enough with any woman to learn her name.”

Nor did he want the miscreant tarrying with Miss Mayhew.

“A coffee shop, not your usual haunt,” North said to his brother.

Bowles withdrew a tarnished metal flagon from inside his coat. “Man cannot live by ale and tavern wenches alone. Coffee and the company of an upstanding woman could be what a degenerate like me needs.” He grinned at Cyrus, something wolfish and sly. “Former housekeepers must know how to clean a man's nook and crannies. I wonder about her thighs—”

“Marcus…” North cautioned.

Cyrus's back came off the leather.

“Stay away from her,” he snapped. “There's enough
other
women's thighs in London. Or have you exhausted the Town supply of lightskirts?”

Murmuring ceased nearby. Two heads turned their way, a middle-aged baron in an oversized wig and the footman attending him. One look at Cyrus's scowl and the two averted their attention.

“Touchy about this one, aren't you?” Bowles took a quick swig.

“If you know what's best, you'll leave her alone.” The scoundrel's bloodshot eyes opened wider.

“So that's how it is?” Bowles rubbed his jaw, heavy with whiskers. “Then you must like them hard to get, Cy. Because if I read things right in the shop, the pretty blond doesn't want anything to do with you.” He raised his flask in mock salute. “Here's to your merry chase.”

Bowles took another quick draught and returned the flask to his inside pocket. He pushed off the chair, saying something about seeing a friend across the room.

The familiar rush of attack filled Cyrus's veins. He looked at his lap where his fist ground into his thigh. His reaction was as startling as it was defining. Miss Mayhew was of particularly powerful interest. At the same time, he couldn't help but think the sly Lord Marcus did some neat scouting with his provoking words.

North's gaze beetled from his brother's retreating back to Cyrus.

“Rare is the day I agree with my brother, but have you asked yourself why you're so focused on this one woman? Is this because you want her in some carnal way and she doesn't want you?”

Forbidden
fruit
.

Cyrus smiled at nothing in particular, recalling his innuendo about wanting to see her accounts in full and the pretty flush that had colored her cheeks.

“This is about business. About what's best for a woman alone in London.” Cyrus crossed his arms loosely over his chest, satisfied with that sliver of truth. “I feel a sense of responsibility.”

Was his interest in Miss Mayhew purely about the age-old pursuit? He didn't understand all the facets, but he wouldn't reveal any more about her, especially her forgery. Such dangerous information would stay between him and Miss Mayhew, because he wanted to…protect her.

From men who'd prey on her like Bowles?

Or from
himself
?

Equally vexing was Bowles's accurate observation:
The
pretty
blond
doesn't want anything to do with you.

What was he going to do about that?

Wit must be foiled with wit; cut a diamond with a diamond.

William Congreve,
The Double Dealer

A few days later…

“Women go positively weak kneed over a few things in life.” Lucinda stretched forward for an eyeful of the wooden box on his lap. “At least I'm guessing the receiver is a woman by the rather large and pretty red bow.”

Cyrus set his hand over the incriminating box. His other hand kept time against his knee, as though he could tap the distance to their destination and make the carriage go faster. All morning, his body had itched with the want to be in motion. The contents of the box put him on a cliff of uncalculated risk, an uneasy place for a man to be when matters pertained to a woman.

His sister sighed loudly. Lucinda wanted to wrench secrets from him as much as she wanted his full attention, and normally he would have lavished attention on her, but today was different… All because of a flaxen-haired woman who had left her shoe on his front steps.

“In my estimation, a surprise gift tops the list of ways to capture a woman's heart,” she said, intruding on his thoughts.

Capture
her
heart?

Cyrus slid a finger inside his neckline, tugging on his cravat. Capturing Miss Mayhew's heart wasn't top on his list of wants.

Was it?

Lucinda fidgeted on the seat, her dark brows arching. “It is a surprise, isn't it?”

“The box is none of your concern, Luce.” The words came out with regrettable sharpness.

Her eyes rounded with feigned shock. “So that's the way it is?”

She bounced back against the squabs, but her impish smile told him she wasn't put off in the slightest. Lucinda had fished all morning for information since he had told her to cancel her plans and then been vague about his.

He kept words at a minimum where Miss Mayhew was concerned, wanting no poking or prodding as to his intent. Let events unfold as they will. The proprietress had haunted him body and soul since he last visited her shop.

The bold idea in his lap had struck last evening, a decidedly harmless way to walk into the New Union Coffeehouse as patron rather than landlord, but the exposed parts of the suggestive red ribbon taunted him.

Not
completely
harmless.

The secretive package containing provocative contents had left him pushing his breakfast around his plate. The audacious red bow might've been too much, but his carriage sped toward Cornhill with all the inevitable force of a storm. His course was set. Too late to turn back now.

He had one goal in mind today: smooth things over with Miss Mayhew. He hadn't left under the best of circumstances after his first visit to her coffee shop days ago. One glance at his sister, and he shifted the box on his lap. If the gift failed him, Lucinda wouldn't. She unwittingly played into his strategy this morning. Time he laid some of the groundwork.

“Think of the War Widows Betterment Society. That's why I'm bringing you with me today.”

“No you're not.” She laughed, her chestnut curls bouncing. “You hardly give my work a second thought. You're up to something. That overbearing tone of yours gives you away.” Her mischievous gape lit on the package. “
And
the box with a shiny red bow.”

His sister crossed her hands in her lap, looking like a satisfied schoolgirl who had stumbled on the answer to a vexing riddle ahead of other students.

“You want something, Cyrus.” Her thin lips worked to restrain a smile. “Badly, I think.”

His breath caught on her last words. He was a man in his third decade, well beyond the years of a youth mooning over a maid. Yet Lucinda's simply stated truth proved sharp, cutting to the heart of a matter. He lifted his hand, hoping he hadn't crushed the bow. Too late. Faint wrinkles marred the glossy ribbon.

“Perhaps I'm mending my ways.” One finger tugged a red coil back to life. “About your work, I mean.”

She snorted a very unfeminine kind of sound. Lucinda had gone through years of instruction to gain her current comportment and polish, but part of their modest roots stayed in her bones. The same was true for him.

“Of course you are…a leopard changing his spots all of a sudden.” She smiled, but then her brightness dimmed. “Wait a minute. You're not trying to force the Marquis of Northampton on me again? I'll marry when I'm good and ready to a man of my choosing. And it
won't
be a business arrangement to a friend of yours.”

Cyrus smiled benignly, acknowledging her upset at the debacle with North. His youngest sister
would
marry well, but next time, matters needed finessing.

Her shoulders slumped under her velvet cloak. “You haven't dropped your plans to marry me off to some title, have you?”

“Of course not. A Ryland will marry a peer of the realm. And since you're the only unmarried sister I have, you're the logical candidate.”

“Why don't
you
marry into the aristocracy, since it matters so much?”

“I will. Someday,” he said, breathing easy. “But it's not the same for me. A man doesn't gain a title by marriage, as you well know. A woman can. If even one of us makes that kind of connection, all of our family, our sisters and their husbands, and our nieces and nephews will benefit.”

His sister sat across from him in all her finery, a beautiful purple gown, her favorite color. Her cheeks boasted healthy color now. In years past, those same cheeks had worn a sickly pallor. Too often he'd held a young Lucinda wheezing for breath, seized by coughing fits, attacks he was helpless to stop. Everything changed when he could afford the exotic, bitter yellow tea that gave her blessed relief.

“I don't understand.” Lucinda flounced on the seat, looking equal parts spoiled and sweet. “Why do you press so much?”

Pictures of the past spun before him, particular moments reminding him that, through will or wealth, he would provide one thing without fail for his sisters and their families.

“Security.”

His shoulders squared, ready to carry any burden for the ones he loved. Lucinda was not so old that their days as freehold farmers escaped her memory, a time when he was not yet a man trying to be a man at the head of their farm. After his father's death, Cyrus failed miserably at the task.

At the untried age of sixteen, he'd struggled wearing the mantle of authority, looking to the care of his mother and sisters. The costly mistakes he made sometimes left the larder bare and caused his long-suffering mother to take in laundry among a mountain of other labors she did. The memory of one hungry season hung heavy, causing Cyrus's mouth to harden as he stared out the carriage window at nothing in particular.

No man delighted in reliving his failure, no matter how youthful the error.

Lucinda plucked the yellow trim on her velvet skirt. “I'm sorry, Cyrus.”

Her small-voiced apology wrenched him. “No need to apologize, minx.”

He was supposed to be the solver of all problems, provider of all things necessary to his sisters and his mother, when she'd been alive. This was the stamp his father had impressed on him since he had strapped on his first pair of boots, the way of a man with the weaker sex.

“
Take
care
of
them
,” his father would always say.

“But this meeting today, we aren't going to see Lady Foster, are we?” Lucinda's brows pressed in a dark line. “I thought your…connection with her was done.”

He frowned at her choice of words, but she waved off the disapproval. His sister was an interesting jumble of innocence and burgeoning awareness. Lucinda tolerated the self-assured, sharp-tongued Isabella in part because Cyrus spent time with the lady and because the lady lent a generous hand to Lucinda's newly formed War Widows Betterment Society.

“Really, Cyrus,” she chided. “It's no secret she was your lady-bird. I did just turn twenty-three. I'm not a babe anymore.”

“I won't ask where you acquired such a colorful phrase as
lady-bird
, but you
will
refrain from using it in the future.”

She gave a mutinous shrug and stared out her window. Cyrus guessed the war widows she'd begun to help in recent months were more than forthcoming with information to Lucinda's boundless, inquisitive nature. But the carriage rolling to a stop prevented reminders of decorum.

“A coffee shop.” Her brown eyes glinted with a troublemaker's light. “You're taking me to a coffee shop? Rather daring of you with my reputation, since proper West End ladies don't visit them.”

“Today we make an exception, all for the war widows. The pastries here'd make an excellent addition to your next luncheon.”

They exited the carriage, tasting fall's late-morning fog. Gray skies and the Thames's metallic, briny aroma hung heavy. The change of season—autumn's quarterly rents were due in five days.

Would
Miss
Mayhew
meet
the
first
requirement?

Overhead, the shop's new sign boasted bright blue letters carved in relief with a mug and curling steam at the bottom, all outlined in fresh black paint…a costly choice. Many sturdy midtown shingles honored the tried-and-true flat standard, keeping to traditions of the business name with a simple picture of what the shop purveyed.

Between the fine stencils on her mugs and the showy signage, Miss Mayhew was a tad flashy for a woman fond of staid gray broadcloth and matronly mobcaps. Did she exhibit such daring in other places?

He dismissed the carriage and the rest of midtown came into view. Laborers toiled up and down Cornhill, slower of purpose this cold morning.

“Pastries for the War Widows Betterment Society?” His sister folded demure hands against her skirt. “We're here for no other reason?”

Of course, she would figure out the lay of things soon enough, but no need to present all the facts yet.

“And to meet Mr. Pentree,” he said, searching one side of the street for his employee. “He's providing a report on a damaged cistern from a property on Lombard Street.”

“Mr. Pentree. He's your new employee. The one with the spectacles. He's meeting us here?”

She glanced at the shop's facade, her cheeks staining red. Nate, the raven-haired lad, stood out front cleaning the window. The shop boy nodded his greeting, his hand slowing its rotation on the glass.

“Good morning, sir, miss.”

The young man focused on Cyrus with keen interest. They exchanged morning pleasantries, and Lucinda pinched her skirts, moving into the shop. He followed his sister and was about to step through the doorway when a few choice words stopped him cold.

“I know who ye are,” Nate called out. “Ye're the Stretford—”

He gave the shop boy a hard look, sufficient to make the lad clamp his mouth shut. The East Ender had figured him out, had he? Cyrus turned casually around, holding the box in one hand. The young man glanced at the fluttering red ribbon, his smile sly beyond his years.

“And I know why ye're here,” he said, crossing his arms over his thin chest. “Ye think ye're the only one to go sniffin' around Miss Mayhew? May as well get in line if ye want her to give ye the time o' day.”

Cyrus stepped closer to Nate, but his boots could have been filled with lead.

How
much
did the lad know?

Moments like these, small intersections in a man's life, tested his character. A man's secrets never truly left him alone. Nate's youthful, bewhiskered jaw worked—likely he was near bursting with certain knowledge about Cyrus and his past.

Beside them, midtown's music played. Harnesses clinked. Horse hooves trotted on hard-packed earth, adding to the daily rhythm that was Cornhill.

“What's your name?” he asked quietly. “Your full name.”

“Nathaniel Fincher.” His black forelock fell across one eye. “What's it to ye?”

Mr. Fincher's sullenness returned, part of the armor that must've saved his hide more than once. Cyrus grasped full well the youth's position. Hadn't he been there before?

“Because when I meet a good man, I want to know his name.”

Nate's jaw dropped. The grind of a young man scraping to survive in an unforgiving place wrote
survivor
all over the lad. The East Ender must've clawed his way out of some hellacious hole, landing in the respectable, midtown employ of one pretty, kindhearted Miss Mayhew. Not a bad spot to be.

He glared at Cyrus. “Why'd ye say that?”

“Because a good man looks after a woman, takes care of her, be that woman his mother, sister, wife”—Cyrus looked to the mullioned window—“or his employer. We are their protectors.
That's
the measure of a real man.”

Nate brushed back unruly hair, his brows pressing together. Behind Cyrus, Lucinda's voice beckoned from the shop doorway.

“Cyrus, aren't you coming?”

“In a minute,” he said over his shoulder, keeping a careful eye on Nate. “Go ahead to the counter. Take a look at the pastries.”

He waited until the rustle of her skirts faded. Through the wavy, diamond-shaped panes, he spied her moving through the shop. Satisfied she was out of earshot, Cyrus tucked the box under his arm.

“Let me give you some advice.”

Mr. Fincher clamped his arms across his chest again, fingers gripping his biceps. The conversation couldn't be going as he'd expected, a fact that pleased Cyrus. His father had been dead a few years by the time he was Nate's age. He remembered the daily mix of fear and bravado when forced to navigate life without an older, wiser man offering guidance. Was the lad adrift without family?

Nate cocked his head. “Go ahead.”

“The mark of a good man”—Cyrus slipped his hand inside his coat pocket—“his word is gold.”