by Gina Conkle
Mr. Ryland’s stony stare roved the shop, finally landing on the kitchen’s entry. His gaze drifted up the narrow stairs, taut lines framing his mouth. She lived above those stairs.
“A husband, perhaps?”
She took a deep breath, her fingers fixing a messy corner. “I’m not married.”
Her shoulders were achingly rigid while finishing the cloth, a pristine square her final product. The cloth reflected order—order that failed to reach her jumbled senses. When she looked up, Mr. Ryland’s mouth curved into a cool, discerning smile.
“I see what this is about. You’re the letter writer. The one who pestered me for months to relax my rule requiring a man on the lease.”
She snapped straight another rag in want of a good folding, all the better to keep her from doing or saying the wrong thing.
“I am,” she admitted, her movement brittle.
Her hands made rapid progress, turning the cloth into a square identical to the first. Then, she grabbed a cheesecloth requiring order and whipped straight that linen, but erupting emotions bubbled higher, refusing to be bottled. Her ruin came in mere seconds—wasn’t that always the case for a woman?—when words spouted with a life of their own.
“I’ll have you know, I tried doing everything the right way”—she gave him a pointed look, the cheesecloth crumpling in her grip—“but you are impossible.”
“Is that so?”
“I find it hard to believe I’m the first woman to shed light on that particular corner of your character.”
She whipped the cheesecloth straight, and he moved off the counter, staying silent.
“I told Mr. Pentree I accosted you on the street outside your home and you signed the lease.”
“You…accosted me,” he repeated with some amusement.
“Yes. You may as well know I copied your signature that night in your study.” Her voice shook. “Your agent manages so many properties for you. I thought my shop would escape your notice.”
His eyes narrowed as facts must’ve settled in. She’d heard he was all about lists of numbers over lists of names.
“You mean you lied to Mr. Pentree.” A harsh, dry chuckle loosened him. “And since I signed no such document, we can add forgery to your list of crimes. Now I understand why you gave me a false name.”
“It was for a good end, I tell you.” She professed brave words, but her mouth went dry.
Swallowing became hard. Forgery of any kind guaranteed years of imprisonment but most often the offense won a quick trip to Tyburn gallows.
Surely he doesn’t want that?
Ryland set both hands far apart on her counter, gaining her full attention. He leaned forward, his unbuttoned coat flapping open.
“Forgery’s beyond Bow Street, miss. That’s a crime against the Crown, a ticket to Tyburn. Have you any idea the trouble you’d be in if you faced another man right now?” He lowered his voice. “Or what that man might demand of you?”
Her knees weakened, making the floor like shifting quicksand beneath her. She scrambled to digest all the pieces of information coming at her. He didn’t say he’d report the forgery, and he wasn’t any other man: he was Cyrus Ryland. And she was completely ensnared in a neat trap of her own making with nowhere to go and no way out.
“If you don’t report it, no one will know.”
“That was your plan?” His head jolted, eyes spreading wide. “Hope I’d stay silent?”
“I didn’t have a plan.” She inched closer, all the better to keep their conversation private. “I didn’t think I’d be caught. Merchants here told me you come to the Exchange once or twice a month, if that. They said you never set foot in Cornhill shops.”
“I did today, didn’t I?”
Her shoulders crumpled under an unseen weight. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Had Mr. Ryland wanted to see her again?
She checked the shop beyond him. No one noticed them save Nate, who was sweeping the doorway, and the marquis and his brother looking with keen interest from a table near the window. She clamped the white cloth in both hands, the very picture of a supplicant beginning her appeal.
“It’s in your best interest if I stay here. I’ll make more money for you, working to pay the rent.”
“That’s what this is about?” he snapped. “Money?”
A cold, ugly shiver touched her from her scalp to her feet. She never expected her actions would lead to disastrous consequences. Why would a man with so many properties stretching from the Midlands to London care about one little shop?
“Well, yes…isn’t that what impels you?” Claire blinked, pulling back more, needing some space. “I thought money’s what’s most important to you. You are a man of business after all.”
Ryland scowled at her, the faint lines around his mouth deepening. Somehow, she’d touched a raw nerve. Yet she couldn’t fathom why he’d be so bothered. He was England’s man of the moment, the King of Commerce. Whatever caused his odd turn, Mr. Ryland kept it a secret.
Claire shifted her feet, relieving some of the pressure. She’d been on them all day, but this was not the time to let down her guard and rest.
“Now you’ve found me out, sir. What can I do to convince you to let me be?”
The quiet question hung between them when Annie emerged from the kitchen with a tray of custard tarts. She was dressed like Claire, in a dove-gray dress, save the sticky smears of egg yolk and butter on her apron. Her pale blue eyes lit with delight at the dozen tempting delectables on the tray before her.
“Look, Claire, I did it.” Annie flashed a gleeful grin at Claire, then addressed Mr. Ryland. “After many burnt offerings, I finally master her recipe.”
“They look perfect.” Claire’s brows pressed with concern. “We’ve an hour or two to sell them before our doors close for the day, but I’m sure we will.”
This wasn’t the right time to tamp down the woman’s enthusiasm with worries over selling late-day goods. Her cook beamed, rosy cheeked from the baking victory; mastering the custard was a hard-won accomplishment for Annie.
With cloths in her grip to protect her hands, Annie levered the metal tray, sliding the fresh-baked pastries, dusted liberally with nutmeg, onto a display platter. She made a mental note to remind Annie to use a sparing hand with the costly spice. She’d say something tomorrow. Annie deserved this small victory today.
She checked Ryland’s reaction to Annie’s face. Pink marks mottled her cook’s skin where she healed from a terrible beating. One could surmise she had survived something horrid. Mr. Ryland kept his anger at bay and tipped his well-groomed head with thoughtful gentleman’s decorum to Annie.
“They look and smell excellent. I’ll buy three of them, one for my coachman and two for the footmen attending my carriage.”
Annie’s mouth flopped open. “Why that’s right kind of you, sir.” She winked at Claire and nudged her with an elbow. “Now, there’s a very nice man. I’d let him dawdle at the counter, if I was you.”
With a firm nod, Annie walked back into the kitchen, singing a bawdy tune. The corners of Mr. Ryland’s mouth curled with satisfaction, no doubt from her approving words. His pewter-colored stare ranged over Claire again.
“And do many men dawdle at your counter, Miss Mayhew?”
He asked the question, but his deep-Midlands accent turned the query into flirtation. She brushed her hands down her apron, meeting his bold perusal.
“A few,” she acknowledged and tipped her head at the fresh custards. “Did you mean it? About buying three tarts for the men attending you?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.” He eyed the display platter and waved a hand over the dozen. “In fact, I’ll take them all. I’d be obliged if you wrapped them for me.”
All dozen of them? Her jaw dropped
momentarily, but she recovered, silently placing plain brown paper on the counter, grateful for his generosity. How could one stay upset in the face of such thoughtfulness as to purchase pastries for the people attending him? She knew how to respond to the man who fit neatly into the brutish, intractable mold she had cast for him, but Mr. Ryland chipped away at those set notions.
She stacked the tarts, sneaking quick looks at him from under her mobcap’s ruffle. She couldn’t bring herself to fully trust this shift of charity. What was he up to?
Her landlord pulled out a considerable coin pouch from a pocket inside his coat. He stood stoic and businesslike, placing the bag on the counter. No, her being here wasn’t about money—his or anyone else’s. Her little shop was about much more than that. Surely a man with so much wouldn’t begrudge her the opportunity to make her own way in the world? But this wasn’t something to explain with tempers barely cooled.
Mr. Ryland kept one hand on the counter and twisted around, looking to his friends sitting by the window. Setting the last tart in place, she guessed him to be close to a decade older than her. Waning daylight and polished metal candle sconces brightened the shop, highlighting a few silver threads glinting in his brown hair.
The texture looked soft and touchable, not coarse and wiry or sparse and absent, like some men’s hair. A black silk ribbon wrapped around his queue’s length, the silk line trailing down the middle of his back. A silly flutter in her chest kept time with her visual exploration of Mr. Ryland’s wide shoulders.
Her lashes dropped low when he faced her again. “Thank you…about the custards,” she said, calm but wrung dry. “They’re a pence each.”
They were at a standstill. He could be naught more than a male patron lingering at her counter for friendly conversation—except for the heated words they’d exchanged earlier. The little interruptions of the messengers, other patrons, and Annie’s sweet praise had defused hot tempers, but Claire didn’t fool herself. Matters were far from resolved with Mr. Ryland.
She made quick business tying the wrapped tarts with twine and stretched out her hand to accept payment. He set two shillings in her hand, his fingertips brushing her palm. The brief touch tickled her skin. Claire hadn’t forgotten the play of attraction the night of the masked ball, but she was not that woman: neither a woman of pleasure nor a woman of substantial means with idle hours for flirting.
The mask and gown made a ruse; her gray broadcloth and apron were real. Best she left their sensual conversation, the midnight dance, and, yes, provocative flirtation behind. The coins dropped with a clink in the till box, and she rubbed her palms slowly down her apron as though she could wipe away his tantalizing touch.
“What do I need to do to convince you?” she asked. “About the shop?”
He tucked his coin pouch in his coat. “Meet me at Ryland House—”
“I’ll do no such thing,” she blurted.
His hand paused inside his coat, amused gray eyes pinning her. “—because I conduct business there with my secretaries. And I keep financial records in my study.”
“Oh.” Claire shut her eyes.
She wasn’t sure what mortified her most: that her mind pounced first on the idea of a sensual meeting, or that Mr. Ryland meant no such thing yet was amused by her lascivious presumption.
He laughed, a low and pleasant rumble, the first sound of genuine amusement since seeing her again.
“I don’t mix sex with business, Miss Mayhew.” His Midlands accent dropped to an intimate note. “But I’ll admit, I want to see your…accounts in full.”
Her gaze snapped open, meeting his. Sparks flew between them, hot and hard as a hammer hitting iron. Mr. Ryland leaned close, but his voice playing with those words messed with her senses. He sounded exactly the way he had in the study, when he had asked about her talents. With men.
“My accounts, sir, are private. And as such, will stay that way.”
Mirth faded from his eyes—eyes that glimmered dark and hot. “I’m not mistaken about our mutual interest the night of the ball, am I?”
Her skin tingled everywhere at the memory, and he knew very well the answer to his question. Never had she flirted as boldly with a man as she had with him at the masked ball. Of course, he wouldn’t know that. To reignite their mutual interest would be a dangerous path to tread with a man like him. A woman could lose herself and everything she wanted if she said yes to Mr. Ryland.
To what end? Mindless sensual pleasure?
What woman in her right mind would sacrifice independence for that?
She linked her fingers together, adopting the same prim stance she did with footmen who had made the unwise choice of flirting with her when she had been the housekeeper at Greenwich Park.
“You ask a question, Mr. Ryland, yet from you, it sounds curiously like a statement. This seems to be a habit of yours.”
“Then answer the question.” His voice could be iron wrapped in velvet.
“My answer.” She paused, resting her clasped hands on the counter.
Somehow facing him was nothing like taking an errant footman to task. Mr. Ryland was not a man a woman could easily bend to her bidding.
She took a measured breath. “That evening was a singular event, never to be repeated. We are landlord and proprietress. Ours is a business partnership, if you’ll allow it. Anything else would be most unsuitable…in fact, simply forbidden.”
“Like forbidden fruit?” He smiled at her, a tolerant turn of his lips. “But if you returned to your home in Greenwich Park and lived with your father—”
“Out of the question. I’m a grown woman of twenty-six. I’ll not hang on my father’s sleeve.” She spread her arms wide. “This is what I want. Is that so hard for you to imagine?”
Mr. Ryland stood up straight, his shoulders blocking her view of the shop—no, he filled her view. She couldn’t read his shuttered expression, but he nodded slow acknowledgment.
“Very well. I need to understand your finances then, before I take a risk and change my leasing rules. I have considerable doubts about a woman operating a business by herself, especially in London.” He frowned at the stairs. “Nor should a woman live alone in Town. It’s not safe.”
Her finances?
“My accounts are a stack of notes to pay and the till you saw me drop coins into. I pay Nate and Annie from the till.”
“You don’t keep any books? No record of income and expenses?”
She winced at the scattered mess of notes due at the end of next week, all jammed under the counter. Perhaps she shouldn’t have revealed so much information?
She wasn’t about to add more fuel to his argument that she was out of her depth running a business. She understood how to make appetizing pastries and how to create a warm, inviting shop, but she kept no account books—not yet anyway.
There’d been so much to do to open the New Union Coffeehouse. She worked alongside Nate and Annie, giving a hand to most tasks. Between roasting green coffee beans to the right shade of brown, tending her counter, and helping in the kitchen, her days had been filled with exhausting, but pleasurable, tasks. By evening, fiddling with columns of numbers had held the same appeal as cleaning chamber pots.
Thankfully, Nate approached just then with the broom in hand, saving her from having to respond.
“Everything all right, Miss Mayhew?”
The dear lad squared his shoulders, glowering at Mr. Ryland, but she couldn’t take another confrontation at her counter. She needed to sit down and figure her way through this muddle, something she couldn’t do with an imposing male examining her every move. Nate’s courage was contagious, heartening her.
“We’re fine, Nate.” She picked up the wrapped package and handed it to him. “Deliver this to Mr. Ryland’s carriage, if you please, and tell the coachman Mr. Ryland’s ready to leave.”
One eyebrow arched high
at her bold dismissal, but her oversized patron told Nate where to find the carriage. Her deft assertiveness met with quiet, gray-eyed assessment absent of male bluster and indignation. Interesting.
Mr. Ryland’s mouth curled with bemusement. “You and I have unfinished business.”
Claire’s body sparked with warmth. Under her plain garb, her stays teased sensitive skin, brushing her breasts with an agonizing reminder of how long it had been since a man last touched her. She wrapped a protective arm across her waist, not wanting to absorb the strong attraction simmering between them. Silence was her best ally.
“I’ll grant you this,” he said. “Want a chance to prove your mettle? Rents for this quarter are due end of next week. That’ll be your first test.”
She gave him the first easy smile since he had walked through her door. “I’ll make the rent. You can be sure of it.”
From under the counter, she pulled out a heavy, earthen jar. She removed the lid and the aroma of dark-roasted coffee swelled from the plain vessel, the most pleasant perfume.
“I may not keep excellent records,” she said, cheerfully scooping coffee beans. “But I have my own surety.”
Mr. Ryland crossed his arms, following her every move. Did he spy the aquamarine stones sparkling among the roasted beans? She couldn’t be sure. The heavy earthen jar provided the best hiding place for the necklace; she alone handled the coffee beans. The irony was she valued the savory coffee more than glittering jewels.
She dumped beans into the grinder on the counter. Going about her work, she tried to ignore him, but the effort was futile.
His presence made breathing a little harder. Or was that because she cranked the coffee grinder? She sneaked quick peeks at him under her lashes. He looked tired. Faint shadows fell under his eyes, and he rubbed his shoulder as though the spot ached. She wanted to ask him how he fared, enjoy small talk the same as when they had sat together in his study. But they couldn’t be two more different people. His garb alone could pay her rent for a year.
A large sapphire the size of a small egg pinned his shirt together high on his chest. The stone shined the same dark blue shade as his fine waistcoat, a garment embroidered with scarlet-and-gold threads, all marks of success.