The jeweler laid the bracelet back down upon the silk-covered pillow on the counter, straightening the links with the tip of one finger into a neat line.
“She won’t take the bracelet, your grace,” he said definitively. “Not Miss Penny, nor her sisters, either. They won’t accept gifts from this shop from any of my gentlemen. They claim their position won’t permit it.”
“Hah, that’s nonsense, Robitaille,” scoffed Guilford. “I’ve seen how she decks herself out every night at the club, sparkling like a queen. She didn’t get diamonds and sapphires like those from her papa in the vicarage.”
Robitaille sniffed with disdain. “They’re all paste, your grace. I’ve seen her myself, from afar. Good paste, from Paris, but paste nonetheless.”
Guilford frowned a bit, unable to accept this. To him, genuine or paste looked much the same, but he did believe in the value of quality, and in paying for it, too. “Why the devil would she wear paste, when she could have the real thing?”
“Charity, your grace,” said Robitaille with a fatalist’s resignation. “She wants nothing for herself, nor did her sisters. I cannot tell you how many pieces have been sent to the ladies of Penny House, your grace, and exactly the same number have been returned.”
“But they haven’t been sent by me,” Guilford said, his confidence unshaken. “Miss Penny and I have always gotten on famously. You’ll see. This bracelet won’t come back.”
But the jeweler’s doleful face showed no such conviction. “As you say, your grace,” he said with the most obsequious of bows. “Thank you for your custom, your grace. I’ll have it taken to the lady directly.”
“Good.” And as Guilford turned away from the counter, he realized his pride had just made another, unspoken wager with Robitaille: that his bracelet would be the first accepted and displayed upon the lovely pale wrist of Amariah Penny.
It was the muted rattle of the dishes on the breakfast tray that first woke Amariah, followed by her maid Deborah’s tentative whisper.
“Good morning, Miss Penny,” Deborah said as she set the tray down on the table at the end of the bed. “Miss Penny? Are you awake, Miss Penny?”
Amariah rolled over in bed, shoving her hair from her eyes as she squinted at the face of the little brass clock on the table beside her head. She felt as if she’d only just fallen into bed, her head so thick and her eyes as scratchy as if she hadn’t slept at all. Surely Deborah had come too soon; surely it couldn’t be time to wake already.
“What time is it?” she asked, her voice scratchy and squeaky with sleep.
“Half past noon, miss,” the maid answered apologetically. “I know you must still be dreadful weary after the wedding and all, but Mr. Pratt said you’d have his head if he let you sleep any later.”
“Pratt’s right.” Groggy, Amariah kept her face still pressed into her pillow for another second more. It was time she woke; she usually rose at eleven, and now she’d lost that hour and a half of usefulness forever, never to be recaptured. “I would have his head.”
Somehow she found the will to push herself upright just as Deborah drew back the curtains to the window, letting the bright noonday sun flood the room, and with a groan Amariah flopped back onto the pillow, her arm flung over her eyes.
“Forgive me, miss, but Mr. Pratt said it’s the only way to—”
“I know what Mr. Pratt said,” said Amariah, marshaling herself for another attempt, “though knowing he is right doesn’t make it any more agreeable.”
“Forgive me for being forward, miss, but everything will be more agreeable after a nice dish of tea.” Deborah lifted the small silver pot and poured the steaming tea into one of the little porcelain cups, adding sugar and lemon. Then she tipped the fragrant liquid into the deep-bottomed dish and handed it to Amariah. “Your favorite pekoe, miss.”
“Thank you, Deborah.” Carefully Amariah took the saucer, her fingers balancing the worn, gold-rimmed edge. Painted with purple irises, the tea set was one of the few things the sisters had had from their mother, and for Amariah, using the delicate porcelain each morning was a small, comforting way to remind herself of her long-past childhood in Sussex.
Deborah shifted the tray to the bed, reaching behind Amariah to plump her pillows higher. “You see, miss, that Mrs. Todd cooked your eggs just the way that Miss Bethany—I mean, Lady Callaway—did for you, with them little grilled onions on the side.”
“Shallots,” Amariah said wistfully as she looked down at her plate. “They’re a special breed of onions called shallots.”
Deborah beamed. “See now, miss, isn’t that just like Mrs. Todd, knowing the difference, and knowing you’d know, too?”
Amariah smiled in return, but without any joy. Mrs. Todd, Bethany’s assistant in the kitchen and a master cook in her own right, had made an exact copy of one of her sister’s best breakfasts, but it wasn’t the same. It never could be, not without Cassia and Bethany to share it. Breakfast had always been the one meal the sisters had together, sitting in their nightclothes before the fire to laugh and gossip and plan their day before their work began in earnest.
Now Bethany and Cassia must be taking breakfast with their husbands, pouring their tea and buttering their toast, while she would be here at Penny House, with only—
“Miss Penny, miss?” The scullery maid standing before her was very young and very new, her hands twisting knots in her skirts and her face so pinched with anxiety that Amariah feared she might cry. “Miss?”
“What are you doing here, Sally?” Deborah scolded. “You’ve no business coming upstairs and bothering Miss Penny! Go, away with you, back where you belong!”
The girl’s eyes instantly filled with terrified tears. “But Mr. Pratt said—”
“What did Mr. Pratt say, lass?” Amariah asked gently, preferring to earn her staff’s loyalty through kindness, not threats. “Is something wrong?”
“No, Miss Penny. That is, it be this, Miss Penny.” Sally made a stiff-legged curtsy before she darted forward, a folded letter in her hand. “I was sweepin’ th’ front steps, Miss Penny, an’ found this there, up against th’ door, an’ Mr. Pratt said I must bring it to you at once.”
“Thank you for your promptness. You did exactly the right thing.” Amariah took the letter from the girl, her heart making a small, irrational flutter of hope.
Why would Guilford leave her a letter by the door, instead of handing it to a servant? Why, really, would he write to her at all?
“You’re new, aren’t you?” she said. “What is your name?”
“Yes, miss,” she said with another curtsy. “I’m Sally, miss.”
“Then thank you, Sally,” Amariah said, forcing herself to pause, and keep her curiosity about the letter at bay. “Continue to be so obedient, and you’re sure to prosper here. You may go.”
“Yes, Miss Penny.” The girl fled with obvious relief, leaving Amariah alone with the letter in her hands. Though the stock was thick and creamy, the highest quality made for the wealthiest custom, there was no watermark or seal to reveal the sender. That alone was proof enough that it hadn’t come from the duke, and enough to silence her foolish expectations; Guilford loved his title far too much ever to be anonymous by choice.
Still, the letter itself remained a puzzle. Only her name was printed across the front, in large, blockish letters written with an intentional crudeness to disguise the writer’s true hand.
“That’s a