Kendra shot him a look of patent disbelief. "You couldn't even afford this locket." She shook her bright head. "Something happened in that shop."
"Nothing happened," he said, although he knew very well something had. He'd noticed the way the girl's amethyst gaze had been drawn to his own. She'd felt it, too—that compelling, undeniable attraction. Remembering, he smiled to himself.
It made a man feel good, though nothing would ever come of it.
Unfortunately, his younger sister was observant as hell, a fact that could be deucedly inconvenient at times. "I just thought it was a beautiful piece of jewelry, and I wanted you to have it."
"Od's fish, Colin, you're the one always lecturing us about saving funds…"
He turned off her voice in his head, instead considering the possibility of landing that enticing little jeweler in his bed.
"…planning for the future…"
She was completely off limits, of course. Not a widow, not an actress, not a lightskirt, not a highborn member of King Charles's licentious court.
"And then you ordered a ring. You never wear jewelry!"
A sheltered young woman of the merchant class, she would never bed with any man outside of marriage. And Colin Chase, Earl of Greystone, had no intention of marrying beneath himself.
"I cannot believe you bought this locket in the first place."
Besides, he was already betrothed to the perfect woman.
"I do love it, though."
As they passed Goldsmith & Sons, he glanced out the window. He would never go back there. It had been a harmless flirtation, nothing more. He couldn't remember the last time he'd set foot in a jewelry shop, and…
No, he had no reason to ever return.
"Thank you, Colin. I truly do love it."
He blinked and looked at Kendra. She was sighing, gazing down at the locket and fingering it possessively.
What had she been saying?
Oh, she loved it.
"I'm glad. Shall we go buy our brother that telescope he's been hankering for?"
"Are you sure? Ford will be thrilled." Kendra bounced on the seat, then settled her skirts about her as though she'd just remembered she was grown up. "Can it be from me, too? Sometimes he drives me mad as a Bedlam wench with his scientific obsession, but he is my twin, and I love to see him happy."
Colin gave his sister a fond smile, hoping the man she finally consented to marry would have more energy than he did. "Yes, it can be from you, too. Now, where do you suppose we might find such a contraption?"
"Ring-a-ring o'roses
A pocket full of posies
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down."
"HOLD STILL, if you please."
Amy looked down to the seamstress who knelt at her feet, pinning up the hem of her wedding dress. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Cholmley," she said with a sniffle. A tear escaped and splashed on the older woman's hand.
Mrs. Cholmley glanced up, concern in her kind hazel eyes. "Reminds you of your poor mama, don't it? The children playing outside, I mean?"
Amy nodded, blinking back more tears. She concentrated on the gown's wide lavender lace skirt, counting the love knots—small satin bows sewn loosely all over, one for each wedding guest to tear off after the ceremony as a keepsake.
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine—
"It's only a game, dear. Do you think they even know what they're singing?" The seamstress reached absently for more pins, talking to herself, so far as Amy could tell. "Roses, the rash; posies to sweeten the putrid air. The ring is…the plague-token, of course." She sighed. "My Edgar had one—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."
With a sigh of her own, Amy obeyed. She stared out the window at the sky, gray with smoke from the incessant burning of sea-coal.
"And your mama? Did she suffer one?"
Her gaze dropped to Mrs. Cholmley's gray head. "Suffer what?"
"A plague-token."
Would this woman never stop chattering? Amy's fists clenched. "We don't know. At the first sign of fever, she begged us to go to Paris and stay with Aunt Elizabeth." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I was in Paris. I don't know what happened to her. I know only that she's gone."
"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!'" Mrs. Cholmley 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.
The heavy, sweet stench of decaying bodies had hung over London for weeks after Amy returned from Paris. 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 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 shifted to 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
