All of it—a miracle.
She held her wailing babe snug to her chest, afraid to crush him, but afraid to let him go. Ever.
She gazed into Colin’s eyes, fresh tears of joy flowing from her own. “Would you mind very much,” she said tremulously, “if we called him Hugh, after my father?”
The warm sound of Colin’s laughter brought a smile to her lips. “If it’s very important to you, we will, love,” he choked out, “but I’m afraid the other little girls might tease her.”
“The other little girls?” She blinked, confused. “It’s a girl? A girl? Impossible.” She opened the blanket a bit, slipping Colin a sidelong glance. “It would be just like you to play a practical joke like this.”
But there she was, pink-toed and perfect. Amy tore off the blankets and cradled her sniffling daughter against her own skin, rocking her instinctively.
“How could I ever have thought she was a boy?” she wondered of a sudden. “She’s been a girl all along. This infinitely precious girl is mine.”
Her daughter quieted then, cuddled against Amy’s familiar body, her ear on Amy’s chest, listening to the heartbeat that had sustained her for nine long months.
Aunt Elizabeth beckoned to Lydia, and they slipped from the room.
“I can teach her to make jewelry?” Amy asked, gazing up at Colin.
His answer was in his eyes. They bore into hers, unblinking.
“Will it not appear…unseemly?”
He smiled, that old mischievous smile that made her heart turn over. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “It’s just…too good to be true. Papa said I couldn’t have everything, but I do. I have everything.”
Just then, their daughter opened her eyes to gaze unfocused at her parents for the very first time.
Her emerald eyes mirrored Colin’s own. He reached out to touch one little hand, his heart in his eyes as her tiny fingers wrapped around his big one.
“What a precious jewel,” he murmured.
Amy met his gaze, her heart swelling in the shared moment. He was right. Of all the jewels she’d ever made, their daughter was the most precious.
“Jewel,” they whispered together.
EPILOGUE
Six years later
JEWEL CLIMBED down the ladder and set it against the wall. Quietly, so her mother wouldn’t hear. Then she squeezed through the door—carefully, carefully—since it was open only a tiny bit, just enough for a slip of a six-year-old pixie to fit through.
She skipped through the kitchen, pausing to grab a warm tart from a fresh-baked pile, then across the great hall and down the corridor to the study. Hesitating, she wiped the crumbs from her rosebud mouth and swept the disheveled ebony hair back from her heart-shaped face. Then she placed a delicate hand on the latch and pushed, bursting into the chamber.
“Papa, come quick! Mama’s burned herself!”
Papa jumped up from behind his desk. “The workshop?” he called out as he darted past her, and Jewel nodded, then retraced her steps, this time at a run at her father’s heels. She hurried to keep up.
“Let it not be bad,” Colin whispered. The blast furnace in the workshop could rise to such incredibly high temperatures. “Please let it not be bad.”
The workshop door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open—scrape, bang—and a deluge of frigid water poured down on him.
Behind him, Jewel dissolved into hysterical giggles. Colin’s wife turned around from her workbench, a knife and wax ring model in her hands.
“She got you,” Amy said. “Again.” Seeing Colin standing there, drenched, his hair plastered to his head and hanging to his shoulders in thick wet tendrils, she burst into laughter.
Colin reached back to pull his still-giggling daughter into the room. With a violent shake of his head, he sprayed droplets of cold water onto her small head and shoulders. “Jewel Edith Chase,” he said with mock severity, “this is getting way out of hand.”
“I owed you. For the lemonade.”
The previous week, Colin had promised Jewel a cool mug of lemonade after a vigorous fencing lesson, but the concoction he’d given her had been double-strength, no sugar. The pucker on her face had been priceless.
He chuckled now, savoring the memory. “That was for the hay,” he protested. “How did you do that hay thing, anyway?”
“I’m not telling. We’re even now.”
“Oh, no, we’re not.” Colin smiled to himself, then narrowed his eyes at Jewel. “Is it not past your bedtime, young lady?”
“Mama said I could cast my ring tonight.”
Amy laughed. “Good try, Jewel, but you spent the evening balancing a bucket of water.”
Colin knelt and hugged his daughter to his side. “You can cast your ring tomorrow.”
“If I go to bed now, will you tell me a story?”
Colin groaned. “What is this, a negotiation?”
“What’s a negotayshun?”
He ruffled her hair. “A negotiation is when—”
“It’s when you bat your pretty eyes at your father”—Amy’s own eyes glittered with mischief—“and he gives you what you want.”
“Amy!” Colin protested.
“Tell me a story, please,” Jewel begged, her eyes sparkling with hope. Those emerald eyes that were exactly like his. Amy was right; he could never deny his daughter when she gazed at him like that. “Please, Papa. Tell me the one about when you were in France for the king, and your coach was stopped by hackneymen.”
“Highwaymen.”
“Whatever. Tell me, please.”
Those eyes. “As you wish. Go get ready for bed, and I’ll come up in a while and tell you the story.”
“Can Hugh hear it, too?”
Jewel’s brother Hugh was a strapping boy of four who followed his father around like a shadow. The next Earl of Greystone.
And then, of course, there was Aidan. Colin glanced at the sleeping child snuggled in the corner of the workshop. At six months, he still needed Amy near. And he would learn his trade here; his future was here.
“Papa…” His gaze moved from the cradle back to Jewel. “Please, Papa. Hugh loves your stories—you know he does.”
“Very well, sweetheart.” Emerald eyes sparkled again, and
