“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
