She’d asked for more time, but her father had refused. According to the betrothal agreement that had been signed when she was born, Robert was now due a share of the shop—and Hugh Goldsmith wasn’t about to share his family’s hard-earned business with a man who wasn’t his son-in-law. So he’d set a date, and that had been that.
No matter that Robert thought his wife should stay upstairs and mend his clothes; no matter that he resented it when Amy’s designs sold faster and she received more custom orders than he did.
No matter that she didn’t love him. Not the way a wife should love a husband. Not the way it was in the French novels she smuggled into her bedchamber. Not the way she had felt, five years ago at the coronation procession, when that young nobleman’s emerald eyes had locked on hers.
Never mind that she’d been but a fanciful girl of twelve at the time—she’d felt something, and that feeling was something she’d never forgotten.
She would learn to love Robert, her father said. But it hadn’t happened—not yet, anyway. Not even close.
Amy sighed and lifted the plait off her neck, fanning the hot skin beneath. She’d set out to talk to her father dozens of times, to beg him to reconsider. But her courage always failed her. Since the death of her mother in last year’s Great Plague, it seemed she could take anything but her father’s disapproval.
When the casting was set, Amy plunged it into the tub of water by Robert’s workbench. She rubbed the mold’s gritty plaster surface, feeling it dissolve away in her hands, watching Robert’s knife send wax shavings flying as he sculpted a model.
She scowled at his curved back. “I believe I fancied you more as Lady Smythe.”
Robert turned and stared at her for a moment, then hunched over suddenly. His face transformed, taking on a Lady Smythe look. “Are you certain, madame?” he asked in that high, wavering tone. “I hear tell you’ve had dancing lessons and speak fluent French. Such pretensions. I don’t hold with women reckoning account books, you know. Not at all.” His voice deepened into his own. “Or making jewelry, either.”
Amy flinched. She pulled the casting from the water and carried it to her workbench to brush off the remaining bits of plaster.
He rose and came up behind her, tilting her head back with a hand beneath her chin. “Two more weeks, and a proper wife you’ll be,” he said and clamped his mouth on hers.
The faint scent of his breakfast had her squeezing her eyes shut and praying for the end to this torment.
“Part your lips, will you?” he said against her mouth.
She didn’t. She wished he’d use one of those newfangled little silver toothbrushes Aunt Elizabeth had sent from Paris.
Finally he raised his head. “Two weeks,” he repeated.
Her eyes snapped open and burned into his. “Papa will never allow you to keep me from making jewelry.” Looking down, she brushed at the casting harder.
He shrugged. “Your papa won’t be here forever.” His hand moved to grip her waist.
Amy’s gaze flickered toward the showroom in warning.
Sighing, he wrenched away and strode back to his workbench, back to his ale. “At least soon I’ll be allowed to touch you whenever I please.” Grinning, he lifted the tankard in a salute. “Two weeks.”
Amy had once thought his grins shy and engaging…but of late they only made her uneasy.
The bell on the outside door tinkled, giving Amy a start. She stood and whipped off her apron. “I’ll get it.”
“Your father is out there,” Robert reminded her. “He can handle it.”
Paying him no mind, she straightened her gown and smoothed back a few damp strands that had escaped her plait. She put a shopgirl smile on her face before heading through the swinging doors into the cool, bright showroom.
“A locket,” a girl at the far end of the L-shaped case was saying, smiling up at a tall gentleman with his back to Amy.
Deep red curls draped to the young lady’s rather scandalously bare shoulders; her lavish golden brocade gown had a wide, scooped neckline Amy’s father would never allow. Was she the gentleman’s mistress?
The gentleman addressed Papa. “My sister would like a locket.” He urged the girl—his sister, not his mistress—forward. “Go on, Kendra, see what you fancy.”
Though the gentleman seemed determined to work with her father, Amy stepped closer, poised to turn the corner and help close the sale. Papa glanced at her, then smiled. “Have you a style in mind, or a price, Lord…?”
“Greystone.” His back still to Amy, he waved an impatient hand. “Whatever she likes.”
Papa cleared his throat. “Perhaps my daughter can help you decide. Amethyst, please show Lord Greystone the lockets.”
She took a tray from the case and moved to set it before the gentleman’s sister instead.
“They’re all so pretty!” Lady Kendra exclaimed in delight. When she bent her head to look closer, her beautiful red curls shimmered to rival the glitter of jewels in the case.
Amy’s hand went reflexively to her own head, as though she could rearrange her hated black hair into something more fashionable than its serviceable plait. Resisting the urge to sigh, she lifted an oval locket with tiny engraved flowers.
“See the gold ribbons forming the bale?” As her father had taught her, her voice was sweet and confident, reflecting her certainty of both the quality of the piece and her ability to sell it. She snapped open the locket and extended it, looking from Lady Kendra to Lord Greystone. “It’s—”
Her voice failed her.
Her father nudged her, frowning. “Amy?”
“It-it’s quite feminine,” she stammered out, telling herself Lord Greystone couldn’t be the young nobleman she remembered.
But then his emerald green eyes locked on hers—as they’d done five years earlier.
It was him.
The nobleman from the coronation procession, the one she’d been unable to forget. Only now he was all
