Lady Meets Her Match by Gina Conkle Page B

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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œSecurity.”
    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.
    â€œ Take care of them ,” his father would always say.
    â€œBut 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.
    â€œReally, Cyrus,” she chided. “It’s no secret she was your lady-bird. I did just turn twenty-three. I’m not a babe anymore.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œA 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.”
    â€œToday 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