“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 sheet 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,
