It wasn’t that many customers didn’t, in fact, buy tray upon tray of her plain treacle toffee. Yet she’d always assumed they hadn’t really tasted or considered the perfectly delicious combination of toffee and chocolate. In any case, she wasn’t about to ask him if he were positive of his decision or debate the matter.
Guessing at the quantity, she placed the bag on the scale, added another piece, then folded the top over to close it. Her mother liked them to tie each sack with blue satin ribbon, but she didn’t think this particular customer would care. Unless...
“Is this a gift? For a female perhaps?”
He raised an eyebrow at her question, and she could practically read his thoughts. He was wondering if she were trying to determine his availability. Again, she rolled her eyes.
“If so, I shall add a ribbon,” Beatrice explained, her tone flat. Tying on the ribbons were a nuisance.
He grinned — crookedly, she noted. “No ribbon needed, ma’am.”
She assumed that meant the toffee was for himself. Placing the bag on the counter, she told him the price. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a collection of coins.
“Gracious!” she exclaimed when she saw what he had. Not only ha'pennies, farthings, and groats, as expected, but a fair number of shillings and crowns, as well as —hard to believe— half-sovereigns and sovereigns!
She stared at the coins in the large palm of his hand. The man was decidedly well off.
“Have I got enough?” he asked, sounding innocent of the goodly sum he was carrying.
“Yes, unless you wish to buy everything in the shop and perhaps a few things in the store next door.”
He chuckled. “Are these that much?” He jostled the coins in his hand.
For the first time, she smiled, too. “No, not really, but those are gold sovereigns,” she pointed out.
“Like a dollar, I take it.”
She shrugged. “I am not sure about that. I’ve only just realized you’re an American.”
He seemed to stand a little straighter as he nodded. “I am, indeed. From the great state of New York.”
Unimpressed by such a declaration, she took a few of the small copper coins, her fingertips grazing his bare palm, and put them in the till, or thecashboxas her mother called it, to pay for the toffee. Next, she pointed her finger at one of the half-sovereigns before looking him in the eye.
“A couple can have a really bang-up meal with liquor and a pudding course, what you call dessert, for that one coin.”
“Really?” He looked down at his hand. Picking out one of the gold coins, he placed it in front of her on the counter, precisely as the shop bell tinkled again. “There you go, then. I want you and your beau to have a — what did you call it? — a bang-up meal.”
In the space of a heartbeat, blazing anger roared a trail through Beatrice’s slender body, and she slammed her hand down upon the coin, ready to hurl it at the stranger’s head.
How dare he!
