“Max,” she gasped.
The puppy yipped and darted forward, pulling on the leash.
“I have to go,” she said. “I’m busy—”
“—caroling,” he supplied. “With the rest of us.”
“Yes. Very busy. You should marry my cousin. Come along, Max. Gertie needs us.”
Gertie was on a front step, accepting a fresh mug of steaming wassail from another happy Cressmouth resident.
Cynthia bowled through the crowd like a skittle-ball knocking down all ten pins at once.
“Wassail,” she said to the cobbler’s wife. “Please.”
Cynthia handed Gertie Max’s leash in order to wrap both mittens around the warm ceramic mug.
Gertie tilted her head. “Perhaps you’d make a better match with him than I would.”
“What? No! Why would you—” Cynthia took a long gulp of wassail, which was much hotter than she expected it to be, leading to noises not unlike a cat coughing up a hair ball.
Cynthia’s family were the only people who took her seriously.
They trusted her with Gertie, and Gertie’s future.
Cynthia could not let them down.
“Nottingvale and I do not suit,” she said firmly. “He’s looking for someone like you. You happen to beexactlylike you. It’s a match made in heaven.”
“All of the other young ladies are just like me, too.”
“But they’renotyou,” Cynthia pointed out. “That’s their fatal flaw.”
Gertie wrinkled her pert nose. “That’s something someone who loves me would say.”
Cynthia couldn’t think of an appropriate rebuttal to that logic.
“Make certain no one else is his match first,” Gertie said.
“What?”
“If you can promise me that the duke and I areobjectivelythe best suited of everyone else here, then I...” Gertie picked up Max and cuddled him to her chest. “Then I’ll promise to do whatever you say to win him.”
Cynthia stared at her cousin. “What scale are we using? Imperial? Metric? How am I supposed to objectively ascertain the duke’s compatibility with two dozen other women?”
Gertie lifted a shoulder. “Help him try.”
Of all the…
“You want me to purposely attempt to matchmake the duke to everyone else at the party, in the hopes that I fail, leaving him no choice but to choose you?”
Gertie nodded. “You’re the best matchmaker in England. My sisters areveryhappy. You’ll only be able to matchmake him to the person who’s meant to be his bride.”
“It better be you,” Cynthia warned. “If he hasn’t made his selection by Twelfth Night, I’m tossing you straight into his lap. If we return home without your betrothal to Nottingvale, your father will force you to marry that dreadful crusty viscount.”
“You won’t let that happen,” Gertie said confidently. “You’ll eliminate all of the others before Twelfth Night, thereby proving to me, Nottingvale,andour respective parents that ours is a perfect match.”
Cynthia narrowed her eyes. “Is this an elaborate trick to stall for time, whilst you spend the next eleven days hiding in your bed with pots of hot chocolate and a burlap sack?”
