Gingerbread Books

“Browsing among the stalls, the sisters feasted on hand-sized pork pies, leek pasties, apples and pears, and to the girls’ delight, “gingerbread husbands.” The gingerbread had been pressed into wooden man-shaped molds, baked and gilded. The baker at the stall assured them that every unmarried maiden must eat a gingerbread husband for luck, if she wanted to catch the real thing someday.
A laughing mock argument sprang up between Amelia and the baker as she flatly refused one for herself, saying she had no wish to marry.
“But of course you do!” the baker declared with a sly grin. “It’s what every woman hopes for.”
Amelia smiled and passed the gingerbread men to her sisters. “How much for three, sir?”
“A farthing each.” He attempted to hand her a fourth. “And this for no charge. It would be a sad waste for a lovely blue-eyed lady to go without a husband.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Amelia protested. “Thank you, but I don’t—”
A new voice came from behind her. “She’ll take it.”
Discomfiture and pleasure seethed low in her body, and Amelia saw a dark masculine hand reaching out, dropping a silver piece into the baker’s upturned palm.
Hearing her sisters’ giggling exclamations, Amelia turned and looked up into a pair of bright hazel eyes.
“You need the luck,” Cam Rohan said, pushing the gingerbread husband into her reluctant hands. “Have some.”
She obeyed, deliberately biting off the head, and he laughed.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Mine Till Midnight