Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
JONATHAN AND Claire enjoyed a long, languid, and thoroughly delightful d?ner à deux, spent chiefly in catching one another up on the past year and how they’d each frittered it away in pining for the other.
They lingered over the final course, heedless of the poor footmen growing old at their posts, until a noise of distant revelry burst their private bubble.
When they quit the library, the sounds grew more distinct. Raucous laughter, clinking glassware, and off-key snatches of Hark the Herald wafted down the corridor, all emanating from the drawing room.
Somebody had left the door ajar, as though to set a trap.
When the two lovers were so foolish as to peep inside, they found themselves immediately seized and beset by hearty handshakes, hugs, kisses, and congratulations.
Then, before they could escape, they were furnished with eggnog and made to stay and have a wonderful time.
Caroling was followed by charades and then a call for snap-dragon, the unaccountably popular game of snatching raisins from a bowl of flaming brandy.
While the others singed their fingers, Jonathan and Claire (protesting she came by more than enough burns in her workshop) sat down to a nice, safe round of whist with the Cainewoods.
The two couples got on famously, and by the end of the set Jonathan was on Christian-name terms with Rachael and Griffin—who would soon be his siblings, he was elated to realize. All his life he’d wished for siblings.
But family relations were not always so easy, as Jonathan well knew.
Though the engagement was toasted again and again, one Chase made a point of excluding herself, declaring she would withhold her felicitations until the marriage was actually accomplished.
Though at first taking Elizabeth’s declaration in good humor, Jonathan could not but wonder—as the evening wore on and she remained stubbornly aloof—if her hostility toward him would fade, or if she might never accept him as a brother.
Noah, by contrast, seemed twice as thrilled as everyone else—even when, fortified by eggnog, Claire scolded him for hiding his correspondence with Jonathan.
“It was wrong of me, I know,” he admitted with a good grace. “I’m sorry for deceiving you, though at the time I imagined myself to be protecting you. I thought you needed space to heal, an interval to forget. Yet as time went by, and you both seemed more miserable, not less…”
She let him continue apologizing for a while, then brought Rachael in to heap on more abuse, before forgiving him at last.
But no sooner were Noah and Claire at peace than Rachael began to look troubled, even shedding a tear over the year Claire and Jonathan had lost. As Griffin led her away to calm down, her two siblings looked on in astonishment, then spent several minutes debating what had prompted such un-Rachael-like behavior.
Claire concluded she was feeling guilty for having gone off to Cainewood, leaving her hapless brother and sisters to muck about in their folly.
Noah concluded she was with child again.
Whatever the true cause, its effects were realized as the party began to break up.
When Rachael embraced her sister and wished her brother-to-be a good night, her eyes grew damp again.
“You two have been through so much,” she said tremulously, “and it’s all my fault!
If I’d been here to manage things properly…
” She sniffled. “But what’s done is done, as Griffin keeps telling me—”
“To very little effect.” Griffin offered her a handkerchief.
“—and you’re together now; that’s the important thing.” Rachael blew her nose. “I hope you won’t waste any more time. Not a single day! You plan to marry soon?”
“Very soon,” Claire said soothingly. “We’ve already got a new special license—”
“Have you, indeed? Then why not wed tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow!” Claire’s gaze flew to Jonathan’s. “I—well—I’ve no objection, but…”
“Nor have I!” Jonathan assured her. “Only I’m not sure it’s possible. The license is at Twineham Park, thirty miles away.”
“Unless it’s still on the road from Canterbury,” Claire reminded him. “And then there’s the problem of the vicar, who refused to marry us on Christmas Day last year—and it’s too late to find somebody else this time—“
“Leave all that to me,” Rachael said, her spirits suddenly improved. “I can manage the vicar. And you”—turning to Jonathan—“send your coachman to fetch the license. If he leaves now for Twineham, he should easily return by morning.”
“That’s true.” Jonathan hesitated. “But even so…”
Griffin touched his wife’s hand. “Is it worth the trouble, my love? Whether they marry tomorrow or next week, what’s the difference?”
Rachael drew herself up. “Not—a—single—day!” she repeated emphatically, imperious eyes rounding on her husband. “Now accompany me upstairs, for I need to be sick.”
With dignified haste she withdrew, Griffin following in her wake.
Jonathan raised his brows at Claire. “Do you suppose Noah was right?”
She lifted her chin. “I’d say we both were. But don’t tell him yet, if you please. He’ll be insufferable.”
“Your wish is my command.”
She looked pleased by the notion. “In that case, here’s my next command: Would you be a dear and humor my sister by sending for the license?”
“I will. Though I hope you won’t raise your hopes too much, in case there’s been some delay.”
“La,” she said, tossing her hair, “if we have to postpone it won’t be the first time.”
Though he knew she spoke in jest, her words still touched a nerve. The thought of disappointing her again made him grind his teeth. Draining the last of his eggnog and plonking down the mug, he resolved to do everything in his power to see this wedding through.
Starting now.
“I’ll bid you good night,” he said, taking Claire’s hands, “and be off to find my coachman.” Though he wasn’t superstitious, he was mentally crossing his fingers.
“You should get some sleep. Oh, we almost forgot about the ring! I must send along a note to authorize my butler’s opening the lockbox.
That’s easily done, at any rate.” He brushed a kiss over her knuckles before turning to go. “Sweet dreams, my love.”
“Jonathan,” she called after him, “about the ring…”
He looked back to her. “Yes?”
“I—” She glanced away, twisting a pearl ring on her finger. “Well, you know how very particular I am about jewelry, being as I am a jeweler, and all.”
He crossed his arms. “I do.”
“And I adore your grandmother’s ring! It’s lovely, and the family association is so special.”
“I’m glad.” He waited.
She bit her lip. “It’s just that—um, the diamonds are a…an old-fashioned rose cut—a-and the design—it’s not quite got the—um—”
“You hate it.”
“Yes, I hate it!” She hid her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry! How dreadful am I? It’s just not at all suited to my taste—though I’m sure it looked wonderful on your grandmother!—and well, the setting is really not—”
“Claire, stop!” Laughing heartily, he tugged on her wrists. “It’s all right. I don’t care what ring you wear, as long as you love wearing it. If you should like me to buy a replacement—or if you’d prefer to make one yourself—I’ll have not the slightest objection.”
“Actually...I’ve already made something.”
“Oh?” He raised a brow. “When did you have time for that?”
“In February,” she mumbled.
“Feb—? Oh, right! You spent January in bed,” he recalled, thinking back on their dinner conversation, “and February in your workshop. But you didn’t say what you were making in there! May I see it?”
“Yes, of course.” Bidding goodnight to the handful of remaining revelers, she led him from the drawing room and down a long corridor, passing by the kitchen stores to enter her workshop.
It was a spare room furnished with two large workbenches—one covered with the in-progress works of Elizabeth’s floral art, the other with Claire’s jewelry-making things—and myriad shelves stacked with supplies for a dozen other feminine crafts, all of which the Greystone ladies excelled at.
“Happy Christmas, Kippers,” Jonathan said, petting the tabby curled up on a stool by the door.
“Here it is.” Looking self-conscious, Claire placed a ring on his outstretched palm.
Jonathan raised it to eye level for a close examination.
A line of oval gemstones marched across the slender gold band, trimmed with astonishingly detailed and delicate gold-work, which Jonathan recognized as filigree (having learned all about such things from Claire last year). He gave a low whistle.
She smiled. “Does that mean you approve?”
“Wholeheartedly,” he said in reverent tones. “Makes Granny’s boring old ring look like a rusty screw-nut.”
“Jonathan!” She cuffed him on the shoulder.
“It does, though! I’ll never understand how you can make such teeny little designs—no, don’t explain it to me again!” he added quickly over her indrawn breath. “I just mean that you’re incredibly talented.”
She blushed prettily. “Thank you.”
Rotating the band to admire each stone, he remarked, “I don’t think I’ve seen a ring like this before, with every jewel a different color. It’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“In England, yes. It’s an acrostic ring, a new fashion from Paris. Each gemstone represents a letter, so that taken together they spell out a secret message.”
“That’s clever.” Jonathan had always been impressed by how much thought she put into her pieces. Never content ‘just’ to make a pretty trinket, she was constantly seeking out new techniques and innovations. “How do I decipher the message?”
“Nothing tricky—it’s just the initial of each stone. The first one is—”
“Don’t tell me!” he bid her. “I want to solve it myself.”
“Oh!” She made an apologetic face. “I fear you’ll find it difficult, since you won’t be familiar with several of them.”
“I may be familiar. Let’s see…a green stone comes first. Is it an emerald?”
“No.” Her eyes danced. “Do you give up?”
“Never!” He gave a lopsided grin. “But do give me just the first answer, please.”
“Chalcedony.”