Lady Meets Her Match by Gina Conkle Page A

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.
    â€œThink of the War Widows Betterment Society. That’s why I’m bringing you with me today.”
    â€œNo 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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œPerhaps 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.
    â€œOf 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?”
    â€œOf 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.”
    â€œWhy don’t you marry into the aristocracy, since it matters so much?”
    â€œI 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