He lifted a torsade of pearls. “Still, you must wed, Amy. With these jewels you could buy a title—”
“And marry a nobleman?” The topaz ring fell from her hand to the bed, and her eyes burned into his. “No. I’d never be able to reestablish Goldsmith and Sons.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t.” Absently, he fingered the heavy twisted ropes of pearls. “But you’ll be in France, not London.”
“I’ll open a shop there. Not right away, but eventually.”
“But you’re a—”
“No buts, Colin.” She smiled at her use of his words, then turned serious. “Yes, I’m a girl. But I’m also a jeweler, and I promised my father I wouldn’t let Goldsmith and Sons die with me. No, it was more than a promise—a vow. And our last real conversation.”
Colin could see the subject was closed. Consumed by disturbing thoughts, he toyed with the necklace, admiring the way the creamy colors matched and the pearl sizes graduated along the strands. The little clicks of the pearls sounded loud in the silence.
“This must be worth a fortune,” he said at last.
She nodded her head. “Pearls have doubled in price in my lifetime, and they’re still rising. Would you like it? The clasp is beautiful, but I don’t know who made it, so it has no particular value to me.”
Colin glanced at the clasp, delicate filigree encrusted with sapphires and diamonds. He wanted nothing except the cameo. “I wouldn’t dream of taking this from you. I know King Charles and his cronies drape themselves in such jewels, but no man in my family would be caught dead wearing ropes of pearls.”
He couldn’t give it to Priscilla—he’d never feel right giving her anything he’d taken from Amy.
“Besides, you’ll need to sell it to open your shop. Such an undertaking will be quite expensive—”
She shrugged. “I have the gold.”
“The gold?”
“In the bottom.” She waved at the trunk. “My family has been accumulating coins forever. It was”—she hesitated—“a secret. There. Now you know.” Her sudden disarming smile enchanted him. “It’s why my father never worried when business fell off during the Commonwealth. There are a few gold bars as well—for fabrication, you understand. We never melted coins.”
Surreptitiously, he hoped, Colin nudged aside some of the jewelry in the trunk, revealing a pile of gold coins, many of them old and pitted; he glimpsed one dated 1537. Gauging the thickness of the trunk’s walls, he came to the conclusion there was a fortune in gold coins there. A vast, unbelievable fortune.
He was shocked speechless. Why, Amy was rich! Richer even than Priscilla, or at the very least richer than Priscilla would be until the death of her very healthy father.
His gaze swept to Amy wrapping her jewelry, calmly making a pile of white-blanketed bundles, surrounded by gold, diamonds…riches beyond his comprehension. But what he felt for her had nothing to do with wealth or position, and everything to do with the way just looking at her made his whole body feel warm…
Stop. He clamped down on the thoughts, cast them aside. They were emotional. Dangerous.
He resumed helping her, full speed. The trunk should be locked and hidden. Although he’d been raised surrounded by beautiful, expensive things, because of the war his family had never had much in the way of coinage. This much gold, exposed, made him uncomfortable.
They placed the last pieces on top, and Amy retrieved the fitted tray and set it in place with a flourish. Then she reached for a small wooden casket that she’d apparently tossed halfway under the bed.
“The stones,” she said, in answer to his unasked question. She flipped open the box’s cover to reveal neat rows of paper packets. Pulling one out, she opened the precisely folded paper and placed the contents in his hand.
He marveled at the two loose, matched gems. “Diamonds?” he guessed.
“Yes. Waiting to be made into something wonderful. Earrings, perhaps.” She took back the diamonds, her fingers flying as she refolded the paper in a complicated pattern. Even having seen her do it, Colin doubted he could make such a packet from a plain rectangle of paper.
Amy slipped the packet back and pulled out another, opening it to reveal hundreds of tiny diamonds. “Melee, they’re called,” she explained. “About five carats worth, averaging fifty stones to the carat.” The pile of stones glimmered in their paper, and Colin leaned forward to look. Instead of handing them to him, though, she refolded the packet. “If they spilled, we’d never find them all in this carpet,” she explained apologetically.
She replaced the packet and flipped through a dozen or more. On the fronts, Colin glimpsed nonsensical numbers in tiny, precise handwriting. With a smile and a nod, she finally pulled out one and unfolded it, revealing an enormous blood-red ruby.
Spellbinding, it shone with a life of its own. Colin was no gem connoisseur, but he was certain he’d never beheld such perfection before. He reached for it.
“My father was working on a design for this when he”—she swallowed hard—“when he died. He meant to make it the centerpiece of a necklace. There are twenty carats of matched diamonds in here that he’d planned to set with it.”
“It’s beautiful,” Colin responded gently. He examined the ruby, holding it up to the light before setting it back on the paper in her palm. “These gems must be worth an enormous amount.” His vision clouded as he tried to imagine how one young woman could have so much in her possession.
“I’ll warrant they’re valuable,” she admitted, “although I never think about it, really. You cannot easily use them to buy anything, like the gold.” She folded the paper and returned it to the box. “They were always just there. Some of them have been in my family, waiting for the perfect mounting, for more than a hundred years.”
Removing another packet, she spilled the contents into Colin’s open hand.
He walked to the window, moving his palm so the twenty-odd diamonds
