Chapter 17
Seventeen
Some time later, as they were helping each other tidy their appearances (Claire’s hair was an especially tricky puzzle, as was Jonathan’s cravat), 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 strains of Hark the Herald wafted down the corridor from the drawing room.
Someone 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 brandied eggnog and made to stay and have a wonderful time.
Caroling was followed by charades and then snap-dragon, an unaccountably popular game of snatching raisins from a bowl of flaming brandy.
While the others singed their fingers, Jonathan and Claire (protesting she suffered 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.
As 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, as the evening wore on and she remained stubbornly aloof—and eventually quit the room entirely—Jonathan could not help but wonder 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 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 in Rachael 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 coaxed her away to calm down, her two remaining 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 cause, its impacts persisted 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 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.”
“And then there’s the problem of the vicar,” Claire put in. “Last year he made his views on Christmas Day weddings quite plain. I don’t see how we’re to search out another cleric so quickly—”
“Leave the vicar to me,” Rachael declared, her spirits suddenly improved. “I can manage him. And you”—she turned 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. “I suppose I could rouse him from his bed…”
“But you think it too great an imposition?” Claire guessed.
Jonathan grimaced. “The notion does rankle me,” he had to admit. “Though knowing young Wilson, he won’t object if the reward is handsome.”
Griffin touched his wife’s hand. “Is it worth all this 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, glaring at 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.”
“As you wish.”
She fluttered her lashes. “If you mean it, I have one more wish: 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 some delay.”
“La,” she said with a playful nudge, “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. Did some small part of her still harbor doubts?
The thought of disappointing her again made Jonathan grind his teeth. He drained the last of his eggnog, plonked down the mug, and resolved to do everything in his power to see this wedding through.
“I’ll bid you good night,” he said loudly, taking Claire’s hands. Then in a lower tone laced with meaning: “For now.”
“For now,” she agreed, a glint of promise in her eyes. “You’re off to rouse young Wilson?”
Jonathan nodded. “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,” he raised his voice to add.
“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. “How dreadful am I? I’m sure it looked wonderful on your grandmother, but it’s just not at all suited to my taste—”
“Oh!” Jonathan interrupted with a sudden realization. “Was this the ‘crusty old ring’ you wrote of in your diary?”
She winced. “I’m so sorry! I was in a towering rage when I wrote that—but, 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’d rather wear a new ring you’ve made, I haven’t the slightest objection.”
His hands still around her wrists, he felt her relax. “Really?”
“Really. May I see it?”
“Right now?” She twisted her wrists from his grasp and squeezed his hands with hers. “I’d love to show it to you, but we’d have to go to my workshop.”
Jonathan glanced at the longcase clock and did some mental math. “I could let Wilson sleep a little longer.”
They bid the remaining revelers good night and departed the drawing room, hand in hand, heading down a long corridor and passing by the kitchen stores to enter her workshop.
Jonathan had only come here a couple of times before.
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.
Jonathan recognized the gold-work 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 tried the ring on his pinky finger; it only went over the first knuckle. “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 simply making 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—”