The Earl's London Bride Read online

  “And then you ordered a ring. You never wear jewelry!”

  Which would suit him just fine, in truth—he wasn’t that sort of fellow anyhow. But well-suited though they might be, Colin Chase, Earl of Greystone, had no intention of marrying beneath himself.

  “I cannot believe you bought this locket in the first place.”

  Besides, he was already betrothed to the perfect girl.

  “I do love it, though.”

  As they passed Goldsmith & Sons, he glanced out the window. He would never go back there. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d set foot in a jewelry shop, and…

  No, he had no reason to ever return.

  “Thank you, Colin. I truly do love it.”

  He blinked and looked at Kendra. She was sighing, gazing down at the locket and touching it possessively.

  What had she been saying?

  Oh, she loved it.

  “I’m glad. Shall we go buy our brother that telescope he’s been prattling on about?”

  “Are you sure? Ford will be thrilled.” Kendra bounced on the seat, then settled her skirts about her as though she’d just remembered she was a grown-up sixteen. “Can it be from me, too? Much as I hate to encourage his scientific obsession, he is my twin, and I like to make him happy.”

  Colin gave his sister a tolerant smile, hoping the gentleman she married would have more energy than he did. “Yes, it can be from you, too. Now, where do you suppose we might find such a contraption?”

  THREE

  “Ring-a-ring o’roses

  A pocket full of posies

  A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

  We all fall down.”

  “RELAX YOUR shoulders, if you please.”

  Amy looked down to the seamstress who knelt at her feet, pinning up the hem of her wedding dress. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cholmley,” she said with a sniffle.

  Mrs. Cholmley glanced up, concern in her kind hazel eyes. “Reminds you of your poor mama, don’t it? The children playing outside, I mean?”

  Amy nodded, blinking back tears. She concentrated on the gown’s wide lavender lace skirt, counting the love knots—small satin bows sewn loosely all over, one for each wedding guest to tear off after the ceremony as a keepsake.

  Fifty-eight, fifty-nine…or had she already counted that one? No matter, the hot press behind her eyes was gone. Her shoulders relaxed.

  “It reminds me of my Edgar, too.” Mrs. Cholmley shook her head. “The song, I mean.”

  Amy’s shoulders tensed up again. “Perhaps it’s best not to dwell—”

  “Roses for the rash,” the seamstress went on, absently reaching for more pins. “Posies to sweeten the putrid air. The ring is…the plague-token, of course. Please, dear, try to relax.”

  “I’m sorry.” Amy had her gaze trained back on the love knots. Twenty-two, twenty-three—

  “My Edgar had a plague-token—not rosy, but black and filled with pus. He screamed so when the doctor cut into it. Lud, I still hear him in my dreams. Turn, please.”

  Amy obeyed, her stomach twisting into its own knot. She looked up to the window, staring at the sky, gray with the smoke from burning sea-coal.

  “And your mama? Did she suffer one?”

  Her gaze dropped to Mrs. Cholmley’s head, which was also gray. “Suffer what?”

  “A plague-token.”

  She bit back a groan. Would this woman never stop chattering? “We don’t know. At the first sign of fever, she begged us to go to Paris and stay with Aunt Elizabeth.” She rubbed her stomach, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I was in Paris. I don’t know what happened to her. I know only that she’s gone.”

  Mrs. Cholmley sighed. “Hard to believe a year has passed. It feels like yesterday they painted that red cross on my door. House after house marked for the quarantine and staffed with guards, all up and down the street. I thought I was like to meet my maker, right enough. And the death carts rattling by…‘Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!’” The woman shuddered and pinned. “My Edgar was buried in a plague pit. Your mother, as well?”

  Amy shut her eyes and bit a mark into her lower lip. “We think so. We’ve found no grave.” No place to bring flowers, nowhere to go talk to Mama, to tell her about the upcoming wedding and all her misgivings.

  When Amy returned from Paris, it was to the heavy, sweet stench of decaying bodies. The smell had hung over the city for weeks. She’d read in the London Gazette that one in five Londoners had died. But that had been months ago, and London had recovered its usual bustle.

  Mrs. Cholmley had apparently—mercifully—talked herself out. Beyond the window, the children’s voices faded, replaced by the ordinary sounds of busy London. Swiping the tears from her cheeks, Amy listened. Creaking wheels, animal snorts, the familiar din of grumbles, shouts, and the singsong chants of vendors.

  She opened her eyes. The remembered reek of decomposing corpses became the scent of new, starched fabric. At a gentle touch on her knee from Mrs. Cholmley, she turned again.

  Her fingers worked at the love knots on her dress. She wished she could tear the little bows off now—or better yet, tear the whole gown off and into shreds. Ten more days and she would be Robert’s wife.

  Ten days! It seemed impossible.

  For six months now, her father had gone about making wedding plans, and she’d done nothing to stop him. It had given him something to think about in the wake of his wife’s death, and Amy hadn’t found the strength to fight him. It had all seemed so very far away.

  But now her wedding day was almost here. Every morning she woke up wishing it were no more than a bad dream. She had to find the courage to call off this wedding before it was too late.

  Now.

  “Are you finished yet?” she asked, her voice sharper than she’d intended.

  Mrs. Cholmley sighed again and stood, flexing her arthritic joints. “All done,” she said, smiling in a sympathetic way that made Amy feel even more guilty. “You nervous brides.” Clucking good-naturedly, she drew off the wedding dress. Amy’s maid pulled her periwinkle gown from the wardrobe cabinet.

  Underskirt, overdress, laces, stomacher, stockings, shoes…dressing seemed to take forever. At last Amy went down the corridor toward her father’s room. The closer she got, the faster her heart beat and the slower her feet dragged.

  She paused in the doorway and stared at her father’s back, struck as always by how empty the room felt without her mother’s presence.

  “Papa?”

  Her father jerked, startled. He stood slowly and turned to face her. “What is it, poppet?”

  A familiar, dull pain briefly squeezed Amy’s heart as her gaze dropped to the miniature of her mother, its oval gold frame cradled between her father’s work-worn hands. “She was lovely, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, she was.” He smiled down at the picture. “You have her delicate chin and her beautiful amethyst eyes.”

  “And your unruly black hair.” Papa didn’t react to her gentle teasing tone. “Sometimes…sometimes I think that if you could wear out a painting by looking at it, Mama’s image would have disappeared from that canvas months ago.”

  He looked up, offering her a wan smile. “We shared a rare love, poppet.”

  It was a perfect opening; she couldn’t let her courage fail her again. She lifted her chin. “Papa, I…I always dreamed of a love—”

  “Have you seen those ruby earrings your mother wore to see Henry V the week before she—she—”

  Amy crossed her arms, sympathy and impatience warring within her. Impatience won. “Papa, I need to talk to you.”

  “I just want to see them,” he said gruffly.

  She knew his moods, and there was no arguing with his retreating back. Determined to say her piece, she picked up her skirts and followed him down the two flights of stairs and into the workshop.

  While he started unlocking their safe chest, she tied on an apron and sat at her workbench. More to calm herself than to accomplish anything, she unfolded the s
heet of paper Lord Greystone had sent her and smoothed it flat against the table. She squinted at the drawing while she steeled herself to broach the subject again.

  The last bolt clunked into place, and she heard Papa throw open the lid and begin removing trays to access his private collection in the bottom. She dragged a candle closer to study the Greystone crest, listening to the soft metallic sounds of her father sifting through centuries of treasures.

  She had to just say it. “Papa—”

  “Mmm…I’ve always loved this piece.”

  Exasperated, she turned to watch her father sit back on his heels and hold up a pendant. It sparkled in the lantern light.

  Drawn despite her low spirits, she rose and moved to him. “Let me see. Who made it?”

  “Your great-grandpapa, a master with enamel. Look.”

  “Ahh…” Amy studied the piece, a merman, his torso consisting of one huge baroque pearl. His tail was an enameled rainbow of colors set with cut gemstones. The merman wore a miniature necklace and bracelets and carried a tiny shield and saber. The entire, elaborate pendant was less than four inches tall, including three pearls that dangled from the bottom. “It’s exquisite. I remember it now.”

  “He was inspired by Erasmus Hornick’s design book.” Papa still had the treasured book, an ancient leather-bound volume from Nuremberg that Amy was almost afraid to touch. “But the workmanship was his own. He outdid himself with this one—in nearly a hundred years, no one in the family has ever been able to bring himself to sell it.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He replaced the piece and hunched over the chest, resuming his search for the ruby earrings. He was mellow, she thought. Maybe now…

  “Papa—”

  “Your talent came from him, you know. Through the generations. A gift—and an obligation.”

  She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Papa, I—”

  “I know what you’re going to say, Amy.” His knees creaked as he stood up. “You think I don’t know how you feel? It’s naught but nerves. Every bride has them.”

  Amy shot him a hurt look, shocked that he’d known all along that she wanted to call off the wedding, yet chose to do nothing about it. Her own father.

  She returned to her workbench and set Lord Greystone’s ring into a clamp attached to the table.

  “You bear a responsibility. Here, in this shop, our people have worked for generations, for you. You can do no less for your own children. And you cannot do so as a woman alone.”

  Amy heard her father’s footsteps, then a small clink as he placed the earrings on her work surface.

  The pear-shaped, blood-red rubies were bezel set and pavéd with diamonds on long, graceful drops. Amy’s heart clenched as she remembered how her mother had protested they were too fancy, but then held her head high that night at the theater, to show them to advantage.

  “Life is fragile, poppet.” Papa’s voice cracked. “I want to see you settled before something happens to me, too.”

  The rubies seemed to wink in the candlelight, a poignant reminder of her mother and her mother’s expectations. Her throat closed with emotion. She had to force the words out. “Nothing is happening to you, Papa.”

  Looking away from the earrings, she dug in a drawer for a stick of engravers’ wax and heated one end in the candle flame, then rubbed it over the top of the ring.

  “This family has hoarded gold, coins, and gems for centuries—centuries, Amy—making certain no Goldsmith will ever suffer a moment of insecurity. The shop sold almost nothing during the Commonwealth. Could we have lived through it as we did—with servants, and nice clothes, and good food on the table—without that legacy handed down from our ancestors?”

  She stilled, a sharp-tipped tool in her hand. “No.” The word was directed toward Lord Greystone’s ring, its hard-won shine dimmed by engravers’ wax and the blur of unshed tears.

  “And now that the good times have returned, we work every day to replace what we were forced to use. It’s my responsibility, and one day it will be yours.”

  With the quick, sure strokes of an artist, she traced a reverse image of the crest into the wax, then lifted the graver. The murmur of Robert assisting two customers came through the arch from the showroom, but the workshop’s silence grew tight with tension.

  Papa sighed. “These marriages—they’re the way our trade works. I want your word that Goldsmith and Sons will go on. I need your promise.”

  “Nothing is happening to Goldsmith and Sons.”

  Amy began engraving, meticulously carving tiny ribbons of gold from the signet’s top. She felt her father’s gaze on her and knew he wanted an answer, not a denial. An answer about Robert.

  The tool slowed as she focused on the ring—and the gentleman it was for. A hazy image of Lord Greystone’s beautiful face hovered in her mind. He’d just looked at her with his piercing emerald eyes, and she’d felt warm all over and known that it would never, just never, be that way with Robert.

  She hurried to finish, set down the graver and held the ring to the candle, studying the reverse crest for imperfections.

  “Promise me,” her father insisted. “You have a gift that cannot be wasted, an obligation in your blood. Promise me.”

  She dripped a shiny blob of red sealing wax onto the design sheet and pressed the ring into it. It made a perfect imprint of the Greystone coat of arms, but she didn’t feel her usual surge of satisfaction.

  Sighing, she turned to search her father’s concerned blue eyes. “It’s just Robert, Papa. He…he doesn’t understand me.”

  “He doesn’t have to understand you. You were promised to him years ago, and he knows his place. As a second son, he’s lucky—very lucky—to be marrying into a wealthy family, with his wife-to-be the sole heir. Without you, Robert has nothing. He knows that. He’s the right man for you—the right man for Goldsmith and Sons.”

  Her father didn’t understand her, either. “He scares me when he touches me.”

  “You know nothing of the marriage bed, poppet. It won’t scare you for long.”

  Amy’s cheeks heated even as tears stung the backs of her eyes. “He wants me to stop making jewelry.”

  A short, harsh bark of laughter followed that statement. “The boy is feeling impotent now. Once you’re wed—once he owns a share of the shop—he’ll feel differently. He won’t care to do without the income from your designs.”

  He reached for the ruby earrings and turned to put them away. She watched him gaze at the jewels, then kneel to tenderly place them in the bottom of the chest. Her fingers clenched tight around Lord Greystone’s ring as the tears that had been threatening welled up, and before she could stop herself, she dropped to her knees beside him.

  “Papa, look at me. Me!”

  She reached for his hands and grasped them in hers, the ring trapped somewhere amidst the tangle of their fingers.

  “Papa! Remember you told me I’d have a love, a love like yours and Mama’s? You promised, but it hasn’t happened! I don’t love Robert!” She felt a tear escape and roll down her cheek as her desperate eyes implored his pained ones. “If something happened to him, I wouldn’t gaze at his picture, I wouldn’t—”

  “Enough!” Papa stood so abruptly that Amy fell back. Never had he raised his voice to her. Now in his fear, his loneliness, he lashed out. “I loved your mother—I still do—and she’s gone! I cannot work—I stare at her painting—I loved her so! Better you and Robert think straight. Not like me!” His shoulders slumped, and his voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Not like me.”

  She watched him draw a shuddering breath as he reached a hand to pull her up. “I’m sorry, poppet.” His eyes fluttered closed and then open as he ran a shaky hand through the black tangles of his hair. “That it’s come to harsh words…I’m sorry. But there’s more to life than love. It will be better for you this way. You must see a bigger picture. Tradition, continuity…this is how our guild has survived for centuries.”

  The hard edges
of the heavy ring bit into Amy’s clenched fist. She blinked back the tears. Like the vast majority of betrothal agreements, hers was not binding until consummation. No money had yet changed hands. There must be another way for her that would still preserve the business. “Surely there’s another jeweler…”

  “Ours is a small industry. Others were apprenticed a decade ago. Many died in the plague. These matches are made for infants, and you’re seventeen. It’s time your future is cemented.” He moved to wrap an arm tight around Amy’s shoulders, as though willing her to understand, to accept the realities of her life. “Robert is a good goldsmith, a steady young man. You cannot have everything, Amy.”

  You cannot have everything.

  The words echoed in Amy’s head, summing up her destiny. She was stuck, as sure as an insect in amber.

  Shrugging out of her father’s grasp, she picked up a cloth embedded with reddish rouge powder and rubbed the ring absently, a final hand-polish to make it gleam. It felt solid in her hands, this thing she’d created from nothing more than raw metal and elusive inbred artistry. She could never give up making jewelry. She was born to it.

  Her gaze swept the cluttered workshop. Tools, hunks of discarded wax, and half-finished pieces of jewelry littered every available surface. A thin veil of the reddish rouge powder dusted the tabletops and stained her fingertips.

  This was where she belonged. And if her father said Robert belonged here as well, that was the way of it.

  The fire below the oven snapped, and she blinked, then knuckled the last trace of tears from her eyes.

  You cannot have everything.

  “Promise me, Amy. Promise me that Goldsmith and Sons won’t end with you.”

  “You have my promise.”

  “I love you, poppet,” Papa said quietly.

  He only wanted what was best for her. As she turned into his arms, the ring slipped from her fingers and clattered to the wooden floor.

  “I love you too, Papa,” she said.

  IT WAS A LONG time before she bent to pick up the ring, an even longer time before Robert came in to find her staring at it.