Chapter 2
Two
Amy
The next day
The kitchen in Greystone Castle
AMETHYST, THE Countess of Greystone (more commonly called Amy), was incredible at her jeweler’s bench but incompetent in her kitchen. In consequence, she ventured into the massive stone chamber just one day each year, and today was that day.
As usual on this day, the last Sunday before the season of Advent, Amy found herself standing at the enormous wooden table in the center of the room, surrounded by bowls and spoons, cups and knives, an assortment of ingredients, and her family.
Well, most of her family, anyway.
Her youngest son, Aidan, had contrived to make himself scarce.
“I cannot believe William of Orange has finally invaded,” nineteen-year-old Hugh announced with a touch of dangerous glee in his voice. “May I have some of that brandy to celebrate?”
“I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any,” his father agreed in a wry tone.
Amy smiled as she watched Colin pour their eldest son a small goblet of the amber spirits.
With their emerald eyes and long, raven hair—Colin’s now attractively touched with silver at the temples—the two looked so alike that she sometimes found herself looking at Hugh and daydreaming about years gone past.
After refreshing his own goblet, Colin set down the decanter. “I wouldn’t call this an invasion, given that William’s plans have been public knowledge since September.”
“Well then, William has finally landed.” Hugh sipped, looking as though he felt he were very grown up. “And I’m prepared to go off to war.”
“Oh, no.” Colin’s goblet thudded to the scarred surface. “You’re not going anywhere but Oxford. I will not allow my heir to risk his life.”
“Your father is right.” Amy’s heart pounded at the mere thought of either of her sons engaged in battle. “And if you so much as mention this again, you won’t even return to university. I will throw you in the oubliette until William and Mary are crowned.”
Colin laughed. “There won’t be any need for such measures. King James’s support is dissolving already.”
“As it should,” Amy confirmed with a satisfied nod.
Her family wasn’t alone in condemning the king for overturning the religion, laws, and liberties of his realm by suspending Parliament and consolidating power.
Along with many others, the Chases had supported sending William of Orange an invitation that assured him the nobility and gentry were dissatisfied and would rally to his side.
And since then, they’d been working behind the scenes in hopes of accomplishing a smooth transition without undue bloodshed.
She didn’t, however, find this an uplifting subject for a day she looked forward to all year. Although she was glad to hear the ‘invasion’ was progressing with little loss of life, any chance of war, however slight, was unsettling.
“Can we discuss something else?” she asked, adding two splashes of milk to her big mixing bowl. “It’s Stir-Up Sunday.”
“Certainly,” Hugh said flippantly, emboldened by the liquor. “Shall we discuss Stir-Up Sunday itself? If you ask me, that’s a stupid name for a holy day.”
His older sister, Jewel, looked up from the loaf of sugar she was grating. “Nobody asked you,” she teased, flicking sugar at her brother.
“It isn’t a holy day, Hugh.” Amy added a portion of ground cinnamon to the bowl. “Merely the last Sunday in the Church Year. And the name comes from the opening words of this day’s main prayer, which begins, ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord—’”
“Balderdash!” Finished with the grating, Jewel licked sugar dust from her fingertips. “It’s called Stir-Up Sunday because this is the day we all stir the Christmas plum pudding.”
“Of course,” Colin confirmed with a grin.
Enjoying their good-natured banter, Amy smiled to herself as she added the sugar. She consulted the splattered sheet of paper on the table. “Aunt Elizabeth says that next we add half a jack of good-quality brandy.”
“This is fine brandy, which is much better than good-quality,” Colin informed her, pouring another splash into his goblet.
Or maybe two or three splashes. Amy wasn’t sure how much liquid comprised a proper splash. While Aunt Elizabeth had specified a number of splashes for various ingredients, she’d failed to define the size of one.
Amy could only hope she’d added the right amount of everything.
It wasn’t easy making good plum pudding.
She’d been tweaking this recipe for nearly twenty years, since she’d first found it tucked into a book in Greystone’s ancient library.
This year she’d asked Aunt Elizabeth to give her advice on each ingredient’s proportions, because the original recipe had listed only what went into the pudding, without any suggested measurements.
The vast majority of receipt books failed to include that vital information.
Which was exactly why Amy usually kept out of the kitchen.
She preferred staying in her workshop, where everything made sense. Eighteen karat gold was eighteen parts gold to three parts copper and three parts silver—every jeweler knew that. In her workshop, she didn’t have to puzzle over the size of a splash.
“Half a jack.” Jewel cocked her head. “How big is a jack?”
“Eight big spoonfuls.” Amy was grateful that Aunt Elizabeth had explained that, at least, in the notes she’d sent from France. “So we need four big spoonfuls of this brandy.” She reached for the decanter.
“Not yet.” Hugh snatched it up. “I want some more first.”
“Hmm,” Colin mused. “Perhaps I should fetch some good-quality brandy, so we can keep drinking this fine stuff.”
“You were invited in here to stir,” Amy protested.
“Not to drink.” Belying her words, she made some notations on the paper and let Hugh refill his goblet before she took the decanter.
“Jewel, will you go see if Aidan has finished making the charms? Adding the brandy is the final step before the stirring.”
She poured four spoonfuls of the brandy into the plum pudding mixture while Jewel went next door to the workshop.
At twenty-one, Amy’s first-born was a lovely young lady. With her wavy dark hair and her father’s emerald eyes, Jewel was pretty, pixieish, and full of life. She was also an accomplished stained-glass artist, which made her parents very proud.
What Jewel wasn’t, though, was in love. For a while now, Amy had been wondering if her eldest would ever consent to wed anyone. While she adored her daughter’s company and would never wish her away, she couldn’t help hoping Jewel would head her own household someday—for Jewel’s sake.
Just recently, however, Jewel had begun keeping company with a fine young viscount named Henry Breckenridge. Had Amy detected a new sparkle in her daughter’s eyes, or was that only wishful thinking? By this time next year, she thought, Jewel might be wed and on her way to motherhood.
Her fingers were secretly crossed.
Amy’s middle child had gone off to Oxford at seventeen, exactly on schedule, as befitted an earl in the making.
At nineteen, Hugh was learning how to manage the earldom during the weeks between terms. Though she hoped many more years would pass before Hugh needed to take over, Amy had no doubt he would excel at following in his father’s footsteps.
But her youngest, Aidan, worried her.
Jewel returned with fifteen-year-old Aidan in tow. “Yes, yes, I finished the charms,” he grumbled. “Here.”
Walking closer, he opened his hand. The silver charms tumbled onto the table, knocking into the silver penny Amy had already set there. A tiny ring, a tiny thimble, a tiny wishbone, and a tiny anchor.
“They’re beautiful!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “Exquisite little works of art! We will surely have the most lovely pudding tokens in all of England.”
Aidan just grunted, which wasn’t unexpected. But it was troubling.
It made Amy’s heart drop to her knees and her mind go spinning back in time.
Much had happened in her forty-four years, but a few memories remained as clear and vivid as the day they were formed, seared onto her very soul. One of them was the last conversation she ever had with her beloved father.
“Promise me, Amy,” he’d said just a day before he’d perished in the Great Fire of London. “You have a gift that cannot be wasted, an obligation in your blood. Promise me that Goldsmith I’ve certainly told you enough times.”
Years before he was born—before any of their children were born, in fact—Colin had promised Amy that their second son would fulfill her pledge to her father. It was the greatest gift Colin had ever given her, and she’d been waiting twenty-one years for that promise to come to fruition.
But her second son wasn’t cooperating.
And neither was his father.
In twenty-two years of marriage, Amy couldn’t remember ever having been quite this aggravated with Colin.
Aidan had turned fifteen half a year ago, at which point he should have been apprenticed to a jeweler to learn the trade—to acquire the skills he’d need to run a shop—in preparation for assuming his role. But he didn’t want to do that. And Colin was on his side.
“Our son should be able to go his own way,” Colin said now, for at least the tenth time. “Leave him alone.”
Trying her best to appear patient, Amy turned to her youngest for at least the tenth time as well. She decided to take a new tack. “What will you do instead?” she asked as reasonably as she could manage. “You’re a second son—you won’t inherit. Will you take up soldiering or preaching?”
Aidan’s jaw remained set. “I don’t know what I want to do. I only know what I don’t want to do.”
Amy released a gusty sigh. “Of all the stubborn, foolish—”
“Amy.” Colin sidled up to her and gently removed the spoon from her hand, his expression equal parts sympathy and strain. “Come with me,” he coaxed, drawing her out into the corridor.
Once there, he moved close. Very close. Amy inhaled his spicy scent, and her senses began to spin in an entirely too familiar way.
“Can we let this go?” he asked. “It’s Stir-Up Sunday. One of your favorite days of the year.” Leaning closer still, he pressed a soft kiss to Amy’s lips—a soft kiss that turned into more, no matter that their offspring doubtless knew exactly what they were doing in the corridor outside the kitchen.
Amy’s heart raced, same as ever—Colin knew how to calm her down.
Or maybe he knew how to stir her up, which was fitting for Stir-Up Sunday.
Fitting and thrilling and annoying, all at the same time.
But mostly thrilling, she couldn’t help thinking.
Twenty-two years married, and her husband could still make her blood sing through her veins.
In the thrall of such bliss, she had a hard time staying miffed with him.
Except for the small part of her that held back, the tiny voice that whispered in her head, reminding her he wasn’t taking her side.
It was easy to ignore that voice now, kissed and loved in Colin’s arms. Over the past few months, she’d become accustomed to ignoring it.
But it never quite went away.
“Very well,” she said, a mite breathless as she broke the kiss. “Let’s go back in and stir.”
When the two of them reentered the room, Jewel, Hugh, and Aidan all rolled their eyes—a habit they had picked up from their father. “It’s time to stir,” Colin said firmly.
Traditionally, every child gave the mixture a stir and made a wish while doing so. But Amy had changed the longstanding tradition years ago, to include everyone in her family, not just the children—who weren’t really children anymore, she realized with a little tug of her heart.
Her first Christmas as a Chase had been her first experience with tokens in the plum pudding as well—at that point, only a coin, a ring, and a thimble.
But as Amy and Colin had Jewel and then Hugh and then Aidan, she had added more charms over the years, so each member of their family could stir and make a wish.
Aidan’s tokens were truly beautiful, more detailed every year. That told her his heart was in goldsmithing, even if his head hadn’t caught up yet. But she wouldn’t push him again today. “Aidan?” she asked.
They always went from youngest to oldest.
Aidan’s soft smile reassured his mother that for now he was putting their disagreement behind him. Her heart sang with joy. “I choose the coin,” he said, picking the only charm he hadn’t made himself.
“A fortune in the offing,” Amy murmured, wondering if her youngest was hoping some unexpected fortune might save him from his destiny.
But that was silly, because the meanings were for the lucky people who found the charms in their portion on Christmas Eve, not for whoever stirred them into the pudding.
“Make a wish,” she reminded him, handing him the long wooden spoon.
“And stir from east to west, to honor the Magi and their journey in that direction.”
As he dropped the coin into the batter, Aidan closed his eyes. “I wish…” he whispered, stirring the mixture fiercely.
Amy feared he wished he wouldn’t have to become a jeweler’s apprentice. But she kept that to herself and turned to her other son. “Hugh?”
Hugh chose the anchor, which symbolized safe harbor. “I wish…”
Amy had no idea what he was wishing. But she hoped it was for a long and fruitful life. And not for a chance to go off to war. “Jewel?”
“I choose the wishbone,” Jewel declared. “For good luck for all of us!”
Amy had been hoping Jewel would choose the ring, a sign of marriage. So she chose the ring for herself, wishing her only daughter would soon find the love of her life.
“Colin?”
“All that’s left is the thimble,” he complained. “What on earth does that signify again?”
“A life of blessedness,” Amy reminded him.
And as he stirred the thimble into the plum pudding, she couldn’t help thinking they indeed lived a life of blessedness. Whatever troubles they had, they were blessed.
All five of them.