Lady Meets Her Match (15 page)

His mouth's hard line softened with her painful revelation. Did he understand the push-pull of being part of one stratum while existing in another? Repeating the old news stung her less, but not so the truth she gained from it.

Her false smile thinned. “I will not seek the companionship of a man of position.”

Square shouldered, his arms made solid lines at his side. “But I'm a commoner.”

“You are the King of Commerce, an uncommon commoner, a man who seeks high places.” With heavy hands, she tied her cloak under her chin. “Your wealth will get you there.”

And she needed to get back to her life, her accomplishments, and her problems—all of them, from the notes due, to Nate…if she could ever locate him.

“I'd be obliged if you had one of your men fetch a hack for me. Then I can leave almost as quietly as I came.” She grinned, trying for a spark of humor again, but the flare didn't catch.

Cyrus stayed shuttered and distant. Her shoulders drooped with lagging spirits. She had been wrung dry on this wet day.

“I'll have one of my carriages take you,” he said, pulling a bell rope beside the mantel.

A footman came and Cyrus ordered a carriage brought around to the front. Ever the gentleman, he gave her his arm and she rested her fingertips there, tentative and light. If she was thrown off kilter by the day, Cyrus was equally affected. He brooded beside her, large and silent, his well-shod feet leading the two of them slowly through his house to the front door.

Another footman pulled open the door, facing forward in the unseeing way footmen mastered. Outside, rain showered the earth, no longer a tempest but not yet a sprinkle. The carriage trundled over the drive, coming to a halt before the gray stone steps. Cyrus placed his hand over hers and led her down the steps. She didn't expect him to go out in the rain. She had a cloak; he didn't.

His water-splattered profile could be etched on some historic coin as a ruler of men. Strength exuded from him. Everyone looked bedraggled in the rain. Not Cyrus. The heavenly showers touched his strong cheeks with glistening drops, rolling gently away. If not for the downward curve of his mouth, she'd believe the King of Commerce unaffected by his last audience where an upstart woman refused his appeal for carnal connection.

She wanted badly to smooth away the tension around his mouth. Instead, another footman pulled open the carriage door and waited.

Time she left.

Cyrus surprised her again, dismissing the servant. He helped her up the step and helped her get settled inside, laying a wool carriage blanket over her knees with the utmost care.

“You need to keep as warm and dry as possible,” he admonished above the patter of rain.

He tarried outside the open door, bracing one hand on the carriage's door frame. Cyrus looked to the ground a second and then his hand, palm up, reached for her. She scooted to the seat's edge, slipping her hand in his. Rain spotted his coat, deepening the fabric's hue. Droplets streamed down his granite-hewn face, but Cyrus held her fingers with care, the way a gentleman would a fine lady's.

“Promise me you'll stay inside your shop and not seek Nate.” He spoke above the rain. “I give you my word, I'll do everything I can to find him.”

Alarmed, she pushed back her hood. “I won't bring charges against him.”

“I didn't expect you would.” His mouth curved in a half smile, raindrops darkening his lashes.

His deep, knowing voice calmed her, but then he bowed over their joined hands and his lips opened on the tops of her fingers, stealing one more slow, salacious kiss.

How could a woman's hand become a territory of hot sensuality?

Her stays rubbed sensitive skin, her body agitated from the burden of too many clothes. Cyrus had turned what should have been a chaste good-bye into something fleshly and endearing all at once.

He stood upright, the rain darkening his brown hair. His smile quirked sideways, and he held her fingers another imprudent second. Strands of hair came loose from his tidy queue, turning Cyrus Ryland into a windswept, intrepid hero. Her hero. And her heart ached.

She wasn't sure what touched her more: his promise to find Nate or his tender farewell despite her rejection.

He released her fingers and stepped back to shut the door. He nodded for the carriage to proceed. She leaned her forehead against ice-cold glass, needing to see him. Cyrus was surety in an unsure world, standing there in a wide-legged stance, one hand behind his back. He followed the carriage's departure from the bottom step, a strong gust blowing his coattails.

Nothing could knock him to the ground.

Her palm flattened on the window. She stayed on the edge of the seat until he was no longer in sight, her soul sagging from the loss.

But Cyrus wasn't the last face she saw at Ryland House.

The carriage rolled past the study window where a man stood in full view, his sharp-eyed stare burning with malice. At her. Claire jerked back, scalded.

It was the Duke of Marlborough.

Why
did
he
glare
at
her
with
such
hate?

I know that's a secret, for it's whispered everywhere.

William Congreve,
Love for Love

What was an independent woman to do when she found herself stuck? Her options were limited, looking as murky as London's fog outside her shop. The dark of night was here, and she needed a way out. Fast.

“Rent's due in two days.” Annie peered into the modest till. “What are you going to do?”

“I don't know.” Claire dropped meager coins into Annie's outstretched hand.

Above stairs, notes due needed tallying, but her quick math told her the news was dismal. The numbers outweighed the paltry pence in her possession.

Annie's work-worn hands tied her cloak shut. “You could go back to Greenwich. Find a nice man in your home village and get married.”

Claire's mouth pursed at the standard advice. Why was a man considered the answer to a woman's problems?

Of course, Annie had her best interest at heart. Nor was she the first to render the same guidance. Mr. Cogsworth and his quick mind pieced together Nate's absence and Claire's harried demeanor. He asked a few pointed questions, and she spilled her troubles. Then the dear man issued the same gentle suggestion.

Go home. Get married.

That wasn't a palatable option right now. Was marriage the only path to security? To give up would be a white flag of surrender or worse, failure.

In the end, the choice to stay or go might not be hers, with time ticking onward and her funds dwindling.

Another day had passed, and business had been bleak today.

“I'd write to Edward—” Claire stopped her flow of words as she walked to the door with Annie. “I mean, Lord Edward, Earl of Greenwich. He's a friend from childhood. I know he'd help me, but he's in Scotland right now. There's not enough time.”

Lord Edward Greenwich, Jonathan's younger brother, had sworn his steadfast friendship and help if she was ever in need. No one else had the means to help her, and she wasn't about to beg a loan from Mr. Ryland. To be in his debt would be far too precarious.

Annie looped the last tie under her chin, her freckled face a study in pained sympathy. “I can stay with you, you know. Tonight. I don't have to leave.”

Claire lifted the key dangling from her wrist. Her cook had stayed late claiming the need to scour the already-sparkling kitchen.

“You've done enough already.” Her voice was small inside the quiet shop. “You're welcome to stay if you feel it's best not to be on the streets at this hour.”

“Ah, Miss Mayhew, midtown's not bad.” Annie's crooked smile was sweet. Compared to Stepney, this part of midtown was paradise.

Annie's room was in a women's boardinghouse an alley two thoroughfares past Cornhill. Her friends, a pair of milliner's assistants, shared a garret with her. They'd be expecting her, ready to pore over a broadsheet and share some gossip before falling asleep.

Claire slid the key home in the door's lock and opened the door wide for Annie to pass. Cold air gusted greedily. A dull ache struck her midsection, the pang blossoming beneath her breastbone. She rubbed her palm across the spot, to no avail.

The shop was too quiet behind her, the lonely kind of quiet.

Right as her cook was about to step through the door, Claire pulled Annie into a hug.

“Thank you, Annie,” she whispered.

Her cook was stiff under her woolen cloak, but she softened, returning the embrace.

The best surprise from making her way in London was discovering the friendships of women. Doxies she'd come to know, coarse with her when she first ventured down to the wharfs midday, but a basket of fresh-baked biscuits warmed their hearts and soon those hardened women winked greetings to “the coffee shop girl.”

And there were the Sauveterre sisters, both godsends with their wit and friendship. They moved on the same path of respectable business as her, facing similar struggles. Then there were the Annies of midtown, working women who made a silent force within London's wheels of commerce.

Men may have cobbled London together, but women formed it, careful sculptors adding the beautiful finishing touches to Town life.

If she had to leave, she'd miss these women.

Annie pulled away, her russet brows working. “Sure you don't want me to stay, Miss Mayhew? Won't bother me none.”

Claire squeezed Annie's hand. “Go on. See your friends. I'll be here in the morning.”

She locked the door behind her. For the first time since venturing out on her own, she was awash in cheerless silence. Adrift. There'd be no chocolate with Juliette. Her friend had stayed in to finish a rush order for a new gown complete with shot silk undergarments.

She smiled. Shot silk undergarments spelled sensuality. Somewhere in midtown, a woman of sober character was destined to wear seduction under her sedate day gown.

And then her smile faded. There'd been no sign of Cyrus Ryland, not even a note to follow up on his promise to find Nate. Or his kisses. Claire curled her fingers around the iron key and smoothed back wisps falling around her face. And why not? She'd closed that door on him.

What went between them was lust not love or affection.

But lust could certainly warm a body well.

“And come at a price, Claire Mayhew,” she chided herself.

She blew out the last sconce candles hanging on the brick walls. Had she traded a chance at true love…for this? All her grand plans wrapped up in this narrow shop, and she was alone.

Claire pulled her shawl tighter about her shoulders. She moved on leaden feet upstairs, lifting the iron candle holder to light her way. Her hip knocked shut the narrow door to the outside world. Unadorned brick walls, as long as the shop below but confined by the timbered roof's imposing slant, lined the space she called home.

Why had she never taken the time to make this place a home?

Tired hands unpinned her mobcap and dropped the white linen atop the chest beside her bed. Wooden hairpins came next, clattering on the hard surface. The foot of her rope bed stretched toward the fire grate, but even her feet missed its mean warmth most nights.

The unbidden picture of large, male hands cosseting her was a luxury.

Cyrus's bed would be large and warm and made of goose down. And he'd be in it.

A naughty tremor played over her flesh.

She walked to the fire grate, running her hands through her hair. With her tresses sprung free, a pleasuring tingle swept over her scalp. The notion of falling into a soft bed with a hard man who could heat up her chilled body tempted her. She laughed sweetly at the image, adding more black lumps of coal to the puny inferno. Her hands spread over the flaring orange.

“And that's all the heat this proprietress gets tonight.”

Claire set her lone candle on the table by the window. She gathered the scattered notes with their unforgiving numbers and went through each one. She wrote the amount due in a column on her freshly opened ledger. Her hand was poised to count a stingy pile of coins when a spray of pebbles hit her window. A voice yelled from the fog below.

“Miss Mayhew, are ye there?”

Not any voice.
Nate?

She touched the glass. Gloomy air made the silhouette fuzzy, but he raised a candle lantern high, shining tepid light on his face. She grabbed her key and ran downstairs and through the shop.

Nate pressed his face close to the door's square window, hefting a rusted candle lantern for a better look inside. Under his Dutch cap, the lad's black forelock hung over sheepish eyes. He pulled back into the shadows, lowering the lamp when he saw her.

Unsteady fingers jiggled the key in the lock. She flung the door open and pulled Nate into a tight hug.

“I've been so worried about you.” Her cheek smashed into his coat, the coarse fabric smelling of streets and mildew.

Her eyes watered, the wetness clinging to her lashes. The notion struck her: twice in one night, she'd wrapped her arms around people who mattered a great deal to her. With Nate at her door, at least one heavy weight lifted from her shoulders.

She stepped back, holding his shoulders at arm's length to examine him from head to toe. It was a motherly thing to do, but the lad needed someone to look after him. His clothes were begrimed, his hair unkempt, and a fist-sized, red-and-purple bruise mottled the side of his mouth. He looked too thin. Had he eaten?

“What happened to you?” She didn't wait for an answer, tugging his arm. “Come inside.”

“We don't have long, miss.” He stopped, resisting her pull to go in the shop.

And he said
we
.

Her shawl slid to the crook of her elbows, a blast of cold sharpening her senses. Excitement at seeing Nate alive and well wilted. She adjusted her wrap, yanking the cloth higher with this new chill stealing over her.

“What do you mean?” She crossed her arms, her gaze skimming the awful swelling of his lower lip.

Nate moved in front of the door, a subtle gentleman's move to absorb the draught for her. The candle lantern hung low from one hand. Tension vibrated off his thin frame. His eyes, bloodshot and weary, looked a decade older.

“Miss Mayhew, I need ye to get every last coin ye have and come with me. Right now.” He spoke in measured tones. “I need ye to trust me.”

“All my money?” she blustered. “See here, Nate Fin—”

“I'm tryin' to save yer shop.” His words snapped with urgency. “I'll explain about yer necklace on the way. I've been tryin' to get it back, but we've got to go. Now. Or we'll be too late.”

Too
late
for
what?
Her brow furrowed something fierce. Nate's feet shifted and he cast a harried glance out the door.

“Will ye come with me?” he pleaded. “Please.”

She squinted at London's thick, unwelcome fog beyond her window. He needed her to trust him as badly as she needed money and explanations.

Why all her money now? Couldn't this errand be done in the light of day? She wanted to demand he explain himself, but trust didn't work that way. Trust grew strongest from the weakest places. The virtue wanted to wrench a body dry until all that was left was a belief in the goodness someone offered…perilous ground for a woman like her to stand on.

Only this wasn't the same as standing on something solid.

This was like hanging from a tree branch. She had to let go before finding firm ground.

Claire sucked in a deep breath and turned from the window to Nate's open face.

“I'll get my cloak and pattens. Give me a second to pin my hair up—”

“No.” He eyed the cascade of hair falling about her shoulders. “Please leave it down. There's no time.”

She walked briskly to the stairs, his voice calling after her, “Every last farthing, miss.”

Upstairs, she whipped her cloak from its peg and donned her pattens with an eye to her humble cache of coins. At the table, her hand hovered over the bits of copper and silver, all the money she possessed.

Trust demanded her due in full tonight; she could only hope the reward would be worthwhile. In one swipe, her hand brushed every last coin into her small money pouch.

Nate tarried by the open door, looking out into the fog-filled street. He turned around when her wooden pattens clunked loudly on the floor. When she drew close, he held out his hand, eyeing her coin pouch.

“Ye'll want me to carry that.”

She looked at Nate's outstretched hand. The sense of unmooring the last rope before setting sail into parts unknown struck her.

If she was to embark on this evening's journey, then she'd go all the way. She handed over the coin bag. Nate jammed the small leather bag inside his coat, where another pouch bulged from his pocket.

She locked the door behind them and tucked the key into the safest place—her cleavage. Nate stepped onto Cornhill, his lantern raised high in ghostly, swirling air.

“Stick close,” he said.

They sped down Cornhill, moving east. She hoisted her skirts high, the rain-soaked road grabbing her pattens. Then they turned onto Gracechurch, which quickly narrowed into New Fish Street, where the rank odor of fish offal clogged her mouth. Her nape prickled from the pitch-dark alleys rendering strange noises of man or beast, she couldn't say.

Nate kept a rapid pace, his long legs eating up the distance, splashing through puddles ahead of her. What happened to his promise to explain himself? But something in his bearing tensed with urgency.

Whatever the plan to get her necklace back, they dare not be late.

They crossed over Thames Street, closer to the docks where fog hung the thickest. She was about to demand Nate stop and explain himself when a noise banged to her right, a persistent clunk of wood that didn't stop. She turned to look.

Her mouth flopped open. Standing still as she was, her feet sunk deeper in the mire.

A man rutted a woman from behind, her body folded face down on a barrel. With her skirts yanked up behind her, the doxy stared into the darkness, gripping the barrel's rim. The frizz-haired harlot turned her face toward the street, her head jerking in time with the barrel's thump.

The woman's flat-eyed stare brought to mind holes in moth-eaten cloth.

The urge to run made Claire speed up to Nate, her breaths a salvo in the night. Most dangerous of all, every last pence she claimed in the world trotted out of reach.

“Nate,” she called. “I'm not going another step until you explain yourself.”

She sought support on a brick and flint stone wall. He stopped short, his shoes squishing as he circled back.

“Shhh.” Nate raised a quieting finger near his lips. “Come on, Miss Mayhew. We're close. Best to keep moving.”

She shook her head, gasping at air that tasted of mildew and muck. A stitch in her side had started, jabbing worse than a broken whalebone stay.