Page 4 of Bookshop Cinderella

“A cousin or two.” Delia’s brows drew together in an effort of memory. “Her aunt’s second husband is a baron—Lord Merrivale, if I’ve got it right. But there’s some animosity there. He demanded she sell the shop and she refused, and he rather washed his hands of her—something like that. And Evie’s proud as the devil, so I doubt she’d ask him for help even if she were destitute.”

“Either way, she sounds like a capable enough young woman. You don’t think she can manage Escoffier on her own, despite the language barrier?”

“Auguste? He wouldn’t have the patience to hear her saybonjourbefore he tossed her out.”

“My French isn’t much better, I daresay.”

“Ah, but it’s different for you,” she purred. “You’re a duke. You’re also a member of the Epicurean Club. And you know the prince and have dined with him countless times. Who better than you to help Auguste plan this party? Ah,” she added, glancing past him, “there’s my maid, at last. I must be off.”

She stood up, and when he followed suit, she rose on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Max. I should be back in about a month. In the meantime, do write to me in Rome and let me know how the banquet pans out. And if I read about your engagement in some Italian paper before you’ve told me, I shall be quite put out.”

“But where do I find this Harlow woman?” he asked as Delia turned away and started across the foyer toward the dour-faced woman in black and the Savoy bellman who were waiting for her by the exit doors with a pile of trunks and suitcases. “Where am I to go?”

“Harlow’s Bookshop,” she called back over her shoulder without pausing. “Straight across the Strand and two blocks down Wellington Street. Tiny little place, but I expect you’ll find it without too much trouble. Ta-ra.”

Max stared after her in bemusement as she sauntered through the plate glass exit door held open for her by the liveried doorman, and he could only hope that doing this favor for Delia wouldn’t have the same result as the last one. A bloody nose and a black eye were not a stellar way for any man to start the season, especially not when his goal was to win the most desired woman in London.

2

Anyone who knew Evangeline Harlow would probably have used the wordshardworkingandsensibleto describe her. Evie, after all, had managed to pay off her father’s many debts and keep the little bookshop she’d inherited from him out of the hands of creditors, something that no woman without a willingness to work and plenty of good sense could ever have accomplished.

Harlow’s had never been much patronized, particularly by the smart set, but left with few options after her father’s death, Evie had known it was her only way to earn a living, and she’d spent many hours working to gain it a favorable reputation among collectors. The financial rewards during the seven years of her stewardship had been meager—as Cousin Margery insisted upon reminding her at every opportunity—but Evie was proud of the fact that anyone who wanted an obscure title or a rare first edition knew Harlow’s was the place they were most likely to find it.

Lately, however, Evie’s innate good sense and staunch work ethic had developed the unfortunate tendency to desert her, at least on certain very specific occasions.

“Evie,” her young assistant, Clarence, whispered beside her. “You’ve already put heaps of sugar in that cup.”

“Yes,” Evie agreed absently as she dropped another crystalline chunk into the teacup before her. Setting aside the sugar tongs, she reached for a spoon and began to stir the tea as she leaned back from the counter to peer through the open doorway of the shop’s pantry, a move that gave her a clear view of the young man perusing the bookshelves along the center aisle of the shop.

Rory Callahan. Who would have thought the gangly boy she’d known all her life would transform into such a devastatingly attractive man during his years abroad? Was there something magical in the waters of Europe?

Born a few months apart in side-by-side houses, she and Rory had become close friends in childhood. She’d loaned him books, and he’d shared with her the violet creams he pinched from his father’s confectionery shop when the old man wasn’t looking. Evie had helped him with his schoolwork, and in return, he had confided to her his secret dreams to change the world. They’d had affection and camaraderie, but despite the matchmaking efforts of their fathers, there had never been anything remotely romantic between them.

Both of them had gone away to school, and upon graduating, Evie had returned to assist her father in the bookshop, and Rory had gone to Munich to study politics at the university there. Upon his father’s death two years later, he’d come home only long enough to sell the confectionery shop to Clarence’s widowed mother before returning to Germany. He hadn’t remained at university very long, however, before deciding it wasn’t for him, and he’d taken off to see the world.

During the next seven years, they’d kept up a steady and affectionate correspondence, but though she’d thoroughly enjoyed his descriptions of Viennese palaces, Swiss mountains, and the villas of the French Riviera, if anyone had ever asked Evie to describe her feelings for Rory, she’d have said he was like a brother.

And then, two weeks ago, he’d come home.

The moment he’d walked into Harlow’s for the first time in over a decade, carrying a box of violet creams under one arm and looking as handsome as a prince in a fairy tale, everything had changed, and during the half dozen visits he’d made to her shop since then, any notion that he was like a brother had vanished from her mind. His hair, nearly white when he was a youth, had darkened to a golden color that even in the mellow dimness of the shop seemed shot with sunlight. His eyes seemed bluer than she remembered—as blue as the summer sky—and for the first time since she was a young girl, Evie had begun to dream of romance and what it might be like to fall in love.

“But, Evie,” Clarence said, his insistent whisper once again breaking into her thoughts, “you don’t take sugar in your tea anymore. Too expensive, you said.”

Evie made a face at the unpleasant reminder of her perpetually low bank balance. “That’s because you put enough sugar in yours for both of us,” she replied with a good-natured nudge in the boy’s ribs. “I ought to have Anna give me free sugar from her stores in compensation.”

“If you do, Mum will only make me work more hours in the confectionery to make up for it. Between her, you, and school, I’ve not a moment to call my own.”

“Yes, your life is so hard.” She leaned back, peering again through the doorway to find that Rory was still surveying the bookshelves. “And anyway,” she added before he could reply, “this tea isn’t for me. It’s for Rory.”

“Even worse, then, since you like him so much!”

Evie felt a pang of alarm at those words. Were her feelings really so obvious? She straightened with a jerk, a move that forced Rory out of her line of vision. “What nonsense you talk,” she told Clarence. “Of course I like him. I’ve known him forever. And he likes sugar in his tea.”

“I hope he does, for your sake.”

Evie didn’t know what the boy meant by that, and she didn’t have time to find out. She poured a second cup of inky black tea for herself, but as she moved to add it to the tray she was assembling, Clarence—for some unaccountable reason—grabbed her arm. “Evie, wait,” he implored, jostling the cup and causing the contents to slosh over the rim, splashing not only Evie’s hand, but also her right cuff and the left side of her white blouse.

She groaned. “Now look what you’ve done.”

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