AMY BIT her lip and added another crumpled ball to the small mountain of paper that was growing on the gilt dressing table in her bedchamber.
Why couldn’t she get this right?
She flexed her hand. Though the blisters had healed, sometimes it still hurt if she overused it. One more try. She dipped her quill in the ink.
26 September 1666
Dear Robert,
Perhaps you already know that I lost Papa and the shop in the fire. I am devastated. I’ve lost everything. My entire life has changed, and I’m afraid yours as well. Please forgive me, but I cannot marry you—
“May I come in, Lady Amy?” Small fingers tapped on Amy’s shoulder.
She looked up to see big blue eyes in an angelic face framed by golden curls. “I think you already have come in, Mary.” Smiling, she set down her quill and let the child climb into her lap. “But I’m not a lady. Plain Amy will do.”
“You look like a lady.”
“But that’s only because I’m wearing Lady Kendra’s dress.”
Mary squirmed out of Amy’s lap almost immediately and flounced away to the bed.
Growing up, Amy had never spent much time with small children—at least not since she was one herself. She watched as the little girl mounted the bed steps, stretched out her arms and, with a whoop of delight, flung herself facedown on the costly brocade counterpane.
Mary was a peculiar little thing.
“I’m wearing Lady Kendra’s dress, too,” Mary declared, the words muffled against the golden fabric.
“And so you are!” The dress hung loose on her small frame and was hopelessly out of style. But she was thrilled with her new wardrobe. Kendra had found an old trunk filled with her childhood gowns, and Mary had worn a different one every day since her arrival. “And a lovely dress it is. Are you a lady then, Mary?”
“Nay.” Mary giggled and sat up. “Are you sure you’re not a lady? You live in this fancy place.”
“Not really.” Amy’s gaze swept the gorgeous gilt chamber. “Before the fire, I lived all my life in London.”
“Like me?” Mary pointed her thumb—a thumb that looked recently sucked—at her own chest.
“Just like you. In Cheapside.”
“My house was in…” Her little face scrunched up as she thought. “Ludgate.”
“Ludgate Hill? Then see, we were almost neighbors.”
Mary’s feet swung back and forth off the end of the bed. “And your mama and papa are dead like mine.”
Suppressing a familiar twinge of sorrow, Amy nodded patiently. An eavesdropper would never guess they’d had this conversation at least a dozen times already. “Yes, my mama and papa are gone as well.”
“And they’re never coming back.”
“No.” She bit her lip. “They’re never coming back. But I think about them all the time, so their memory lives on.”
Mary jumped off the bed. “How many days has it been?” One little hand reached up to the marble-topped dressing table and snagged a silver comb. “How many days since the fire?”
“How many days was it yesterday, Mary?”
“Um…” Her tiny fingers traced the fine-etched roses on the comb’s grip. “Twenty-something?”
“Twenty-one.” Amy took the comb from her and faced Mary away so she could untangle her golden ringlets. “So today, how many days has it been since the fire?”
The girl raised one short finger, then popped up another. “Two. Twenty-two.” Her voice was full of pride.
“Very good, twenty-two days.” The comb made a pleasant swishing sound as Amy drew it through Mary’s hair again and again.
“My mama died of the plague. How many days since that?”
“Oh, sweetheart, I couldn’t tell you.” Amy sighed. “A lot.”
“More than a hundred?”
“More than three hundred.”
Mary’s eyes widened in the mirror. “That is a lot.”
“Surely it is.” Finished, Amy turned her back around. “And inside, it hurts a little bit less every day, does it not?”
“Maybe. A little bit.” Mary’s chin trembled for a second, then she picked up Amy’s letter and stared at it uncomprehendingly. “Who’re you writin’ to?”
“Someone I knew in London.” Amy set the comb back in place. “In fact, I think I’m finished.”
She took the letter from Mary. It would have to do. It was blunt, but she couldn’t seem to get the words right no matter how hard she tried.
Perhaps Robert would be relieved. He might think that her promised value as a bride had been reduced by the loss of the shop. He’d be free to wed elsewhere, free to find someone who could be the sort of wife he wanted.
That is, if he could find another eligible heiress in the jewelry trade…which might prove difficult. But Amy had enough difficulties of her own to be getting on with.
She lifted her quill, dipped it in the ink, and put a period after the last word she’d written. Please forgive me, but I cannot marry you. Mary’s thumb went into her mouth as she watched Amy sign her name: Amethyst Goldsmith, very neat and formal.
After blotting the ink with sand, Amy folded the letter. She wrote Robert’s name and his father’s address on the back, then set it aside, adding no return address.
There, it was done.
And Robert wouldn’t be able to find her.
“How about this one?” The thumb popped out and jabbed at another letter. “Who is this one to?”
“My aunt in Paris. I’m going to move there and live with her soon. But not too very soon, I’m hoping.” Amy smiled at Mary’s wet thumbprint on her letter. “I like it here with you.”
“I like it here, too.” Mary’s rosy lips pouted. “But I wish I had a mama.”
“Lord Cainewood is going to find you a new mama very soon. He promised, remember?”
The girl nodded.
“A Chase promise is not given lightly.”
“What?” Her small brow creased.
“He always keeps his promises.”
Apparently that was good enough for Mary. She jabbed the letter again. “What did you say to your aunt?”
“I told her how sad I am about my father.” Amy rose from the dressing table and wandered to the diamond-paned window. Below, a servant hurried across the quadrangle, carrying a basket of laundry, leaving footprints in the damp grass. “Sometimes it helps you feel better to write a letter about your sadness.”
“Like if I wrote a letter to Mama?”
Beside the window hung a gilt-framed painting of a woman. Colin’s grandmother, perhaps. Or great-grandmother. Her clothes looked to Amy like they belonged in the previous century. “You surely could write a letter to your mama. It might make you feel better.” Neither she nor Mary had paintings to remember their ancestors by.
“I cannot write.”
Amy turned to the girl. “Would you like me to write your letter for you?”
She nodded, her eyes shining.
They seated themselves together at the dressing table and Amy set a sheet of foolscap on the marble surface. “What would you like to say?”
Mary stared at the blank sheet. “Dear Mama, I love you, Mama. I miss you, Mama.”
Amy dipped her quill and wrote, her throat closing painfully as the words scrolled onto the page. She swallowed hard. “Anything else?”
“That’s all I can think of,” the little girl said gravely.
“It’s a perfect letter. Would you like to sign your name?” She handed Mary the quill. With a look of utter disbelief on her face, Mary thrust it joyfully into the ink, splattering the page, then scribbled something that Amy took for a signature. For good measure, she added a very crooked heart and a pair of stick-people that might have been Mary and her mother, holding hands. Amy was afraid to ask.
In fact, she was afraid to speak at all. When she did, her voice came out raspy. “Here, sweetheart, you can fold it.”
Mary folded, and if the edges didn’t line up, well, it certainly didn’t matter. “Will Mama get it in heaven?” she asked.
“If you give it a kiss, she’ll get it right away.”
Her rosy little lips puckered and kissed the letter gently, leaving a tiny wet mark. Amy imagined it was exactly the way Mary used to kiss her mother. Tears pricked her eyes. She found her arms wrapping themselves around the girl and squeezing tight.
“Did Mama get my letter?”
“Surely she did.”
“Even though it’s still here?”
“Even though. There is special mail delivery to heaven.”
Mary nodded. Children were so trusting. “Will Mama write me back?”
“In your dreams, sweetheart,” Amy promised, needing to believe it. “When you go to sleep tonight, your mama will visit your dreams and remind you how much she loves you.”