Chapter 12
Twelve
Caithren
THE SKIES HAD cleared and the snow had ceased, leaving a fresh, soft blanket outdoors.
The sounds of shouts and laughter drifted inside, making Caithren smile.
Her two older sons had organized a snowball fight in the dark, by moonlight, with Jewel, Jewel’s brothers, and Kendra’s daughters.
It was lads against lasses, and it seemed to Cait that the lasses were winning, even though they were outnumbered.
The Chases bred strong, clever women.
In the long dining room, the younger cousins were playing blowpoint: firing tiny paper balls through a peashooter, aiming toward a chalk target drawn on the wooden floor. Cait’s son James was keeping score. “Twelve points!” she heard him crow. “That’s forty-two for you, Marc.”
Warm and cozy by the fire in the vast drawing room, Ford and Jason were playing backgammon while the rest of the family chatted about food, the weather, their children, the future of the monarchy, and life in general.
The conversation was pleasant but banal.
Feeling restless, Caithren rose and wandered into the adjacent kitchen.
Amy followed her with a candle and began lighting the lamps on the stone walls. “What are you after, Cait? More mulled wine?”
“Oh, I’m just having a wee look around.” Cait hadn’t been sure what she was after when she headed in here, but suddenly she knew.
“Wheesht, scratch that. I’m looking for plum pudding.
I’ve been craving it for days—I can think of nothing else.
I know it’s not Christmas Eve yet, but I must have plum pudding. ”
“It’s the child, you know.” Amy chuckled as she drew a large pewter platter from the rack and set it on the wooden table in the center of the kitchen. “Your growing daughter is craving plum pudding.”
“My daughter, aye?” Cait snorted. “The more you say that, the less I believe it. Where’s the pudding?”
“I’m not hiding it, I swear.” Amy crossed to a cupboard and fetched a large bowl while Cait found a spoon and took a plate from the freshly washed stack.
Kendra and Violet drifted in.
“What are you two doing in here?” Violet asked.
“Cait wants plum pudding.” Amy uncovered the bowl and upended the pudding onto the platter. “She must have some. Or rather, her burgeoning babe must have some.”
“It does look good.” Always ready for a sweet, Kendra licked her lips. “It’s glistening. It looks perfect this year, Amy.”
“Well, it won’t be perfect anymore,” Cait declared. And with that, she grabbed a large knife and used it to carve a slice off the top of the domed pudding.
Violet gasped. “It was so pretty!”
“I’ll fix it,” Cait promised, plopping the slice onto the plate.
Kendra stared at the pudding in horror. “How?”
“I don’t know.” Cait spooned moist, delicious pudding into her mouth and sighed in pleasure.
Why did she usually avoid plum pudding? What was wrong with her when she wasn’t pregnant?
“Maybe I’ll decorate the top? There has to be some way to make it look like nothing was taken. Somehow, I’ll fix it.”
It was Amy’s turn to snort. “It will be flaming when it’s carried into the dining room, then taken away to be cut and served with the hard sauce I brought. No one will notice you had a pudding crisis, I assure you. What did Jason say when you told him?”
“I haven’t. I’m a feartie.”
Violet cocked her head. “A what?”
“A feartie—a coward. Oops!” Cait spit a small silver object into her hand. “I forgot there would be tokens in here.”
“The wishbone, a sign of good luck.” Taking it from her, Amy walked over to rinse it off under the innovative taps Ford had installed in his kitchen. “Maybe tonight you’ll have better luck telling Jason.”
Kendra watched Cait swallow the last bite. “Why haven’t you told Jason?”
“I tried to, but…” Cait eyed the pudding. Sadly, another slice off the top would ruin it more obviously. She set down the spoon. “He was so happy, planning our journey to Scotland, imagining our days without children. I didn’t want to disappoint him.”
“He won’t be disappointed.” Amy carefully pushed the clean charm back inside the pudding for another family member to find. “Cait, you have to tell him.” She covered the pudding and returned it to the cupboard. “Tonight.”
“I will,” Cait said. “Tonight. Can we talk about you now?”
Amy closed the cupboard and whirled to face her. “Me? Why should we talk about me?”
Caithren met her gaze straight on. “Because your son cannot sleep.”
Amy narrowed her eyes as though she didn’t understand. Then she blinked. “Aidan, you mean? You’re talking about Aidan? Who told you he cannot sleep?”
“That doesn’t signify.” Cait didn’t want to put Colin in the middle of this. “What matters is that he’s having nightmares because he’s so worried about being sent away. Or maybe terrified is a more accurate word than worried. You’re not being fair to him.”
Amy crossed her arms. “Life isn’t fair. That shouldn’t be news to anyone inhabiting this world.
And he may be terrified now, but once he’s apprenticed, he’ll learn it’s the life he’s always been destined for.
Aidan is such a talented goldsmith; I am certain this pursuit will make him happy once he embraces it.
” She paused for a breath. “And besides all of that, I vowed to my father that Goldsmith & Sons would not die with me. And Colin promised me it wouldn’t. ”
“What Colin promised is beside the point. Aidan’s life belongs to—”
“May I?” Kendra interrupted.
Since Amy didn’t seem the least bit swayed, Cait was glad to nod her assent.
“Amy,” Kendra said gently. “Will you listen to me for a moment? Really listen?”
“I’m listening,”Amy all but snapped.
“Remember a long time ago, before the Great Fire of London?”
“Marry come up! Of course I remember. What of it?”
“I remember you telling me about your life with your father back then. How he loved you, but he didn’t understand you. How he insisted you wed—what was his name? That apprentice?”
“Robert Stanley.” Amy’s lips quirked, making her look a tad less impatient. “You punched him in the face.”
“That I did,” Kendra recalled with a faint smile. “Anyhow, I remember you telling me how unfair it was, that your father was forcing you to marry a man you didn’t like—a man you despised. How unfair it was that he was dictating your life instead of letting you live it.”
Kendra paused for a moment, apparently waiting for Amy to respond.
But Amy didn’t.
“Amy.” Kendra reached to touch her arm. “Please listen. What your father did to you, well…you’re doing the same thing to your own child—”
A sudden commotion erupted in the drawing room.
“The pond is frozen!” Caithren’s middle son cried, having burst back into the house with his cousins. “It’s so cold out there now! Can we go ice skating?”
“Now? It’s nearly bedtime!” Hard put to keep from laughing, Cait emerged from the kitchen. “I think not.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Did you ask anyone to pack your skates, Adam?”
“Oh.” He looked so crestfallen, one might think his dog had died. “I didn’t.”
“Well, I didn’t tell anyone to pack your skates, either. So it seems there will be no ice skating, aye?”
“Oh, yes, there will be.”
Everyone turned to look at Ford.
“I was going to save this surprise for Christmas Eve, but…” Leaving that sentence unfinished, he bolted up the stairs and out of sight.
“Aunty Violet, what did Uncle Ford mean?” Pol asked.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said blithely.
Too blithely. Cait suspected Violet knew exactly what Ford was up to.
They all held their collective breaths until he returned, carrying a huge basket filled with what looked to be oddly shaped gifts, all wrapped in bright-colored fabrics and tied with ribbons in every color of the rainbow. Violet’s handiwork, if Cait didn’t miss her guess.
“They’re various different sizes.” Ford set the basket in the middle of the drawing room and stepped back. “I suggest you each unwrap one and then swap to find a set that fits.”
The cousins all converged in a rush. In no time, the floor was littered with scraps of fabric and ribbons, and they were all admiring their new skates and handing the larger pairs to the men.
“How do they work?” Cait asked, bemused. “These don’t look like the skates we have at home. And why does each pair come with a key? What is that for?”
“The key is used to tighten the clamps, which attach the skate firmly to your shoes,” Ford explained. “I think the clamps will work better than straps alone. At least, I hope they will.”
“A brilliant invention, don’t you think?” Behind their lenses, Violet’s brown eyes danced. “As brilliant as the spectacles he made for me so many years ago!”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to patent this,” Ford said with a half-groan.
Cait laughed, remembering when Ford had designed a new watch, and Violet had patented it before they’d even wed.
“No, darling,” Violet said indulgently. “This time I’ll leave that up to you.”
“Which means it will never be patented,” Kendra predicted. “Od’s fish, I cannot remember ever being so tired. Thanks to smelly cheese, I missed my nap. I’m going to bed.”
“I want to skate!” her daughter Diana protested.
“Tomorrow,” Trick told her, already following his wife. “I’m off to bed, too.”
“Good night,” Violet called after them.
“But I want to skate!”
“Think, Diana.” Her older sister Elspeth shook her head. “Use your brain. Do you really believe our parents will allow us to skate now, in the dark, at the pond out of view of the house? Let’s go to our bedchamber and tell ghost stories.”
The girls’ “bedchamber” consisted of pallets on the floor of Violet’s library. “Good idea!” Rebecca said. “Jewel, will you come, too?”
“For a while.” Jewel rose and followed her younger cousins from the drawing room, appearing rather listless.
Cait frowned, wondering if something was bothering her niece. Jewel was usually much more lively.
Everyone else began scattering. Most of the boys trooped upstairs, but Kendra’s twins had been conferring. Pol looked to where the girls had disappeared. “We want to hear ghost stories!”
“No boys allowed!” came a voice from the library.
“Not fair,” Cas said, looking sulky. Even his blond hair seemed to droop.
“I can tell you a ghost story,” Cait offered. “A real one. It happened in Newark-on-Trent—”
“Are you not coming upstairs?” Jason asked.
Crivvens, she had to tell him about the bairn.
She had to. Tonight.
“In a minute,” she said, stalling. “Go on up.”