“Can we discuss something else?”she asked, adding two splashes of milk to her big mixing bowl.“It’s Stir-Up Sunday.”
“Certainly,” Hugh said flippantly, emboldened by the liquor.“Shall we discuss Stir-Up Sunday itself?If you ask me, that’s a stupid name for a holy day.”
His older sister, Jewel, looked up from the loaf of sugar she was grating.“Nobody asked you,” she teased, flicking sugar at her brother.
“It isn’t a holy day, Hugh.”Amy added a portion of ground cinnamon to the bowl.“Merely the last Sunday in the Church Year.And the name comes from the opening words of this day’s main prayer, which begins, ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord—’”
“Balderdash!”Finished with the grating, Jewel licked sugar dust from her fingertips.“It’s called Stir-Up Sunday because this is the day we all stir the Christmas plum pudding.”
“Of course,” Colin confirmed with a grin.
Enjoying their good-natured banter, Amy smiled to herself as she added the sugar.She consulted the splattered sheet of paper on the table.“Aunt Elizabeth says that next we add half a jack of good-quality brandy.”
“This isfinebrandy, which is much better than good-quality,” Colin informed her, pouring another splash into his goblet.
Or maybe two or three splashes.Amy wasn’t sure how much liquid comprised a proper splash.While Aunt Elizabeth had specified a number of splashes for various ingredients, she’d failed to define the size of one.
Amy could only hope she’d added the right amount of everything.
It wasn’t easy making good plum pudding.She’d been tweaking this recipe for nearly twenty years, since she’d first found it tucked into a book in Greystone’s ancient library.This year she’d asked Aunt Elizabeth to give her advice on each ingredient’s proportions, because the original recipe had listed only what went into the pudding, without any suggested measurements.The vast majority of receipt books failed to include that vital information.
Which was exactly why Amy usually kept out of the kitchen.
She preferred staying in her workshop, where everything made sense.Eighteen karat gold was eighteen parts gold to three parts copper and three parts silver—every jeweler knew that.In her workshop, she didn’t have to puzzle over the size of a splash.
“Half a jack.”Jewel cocked her head.“How big is a jack?”
“Eight big spoonfuls.”Amy was grateful that Aunt Elizabeth had explained that, at least, in the notes she’d sent from France.“So we need four big spoonfuls of this brandy.”She reached for the decanter.
“Not yet.”Hugh snatched it up.“I want some more first.”
“Hmm,” Colin mused.“Perhaps I should fetch somegood-quality brandy, so we can keep drinking this fine stuff.”
“You were invited in here to stir,” Amy protested.“Not to drink.”Belying her words, she made some notations on the paper and let Hugh refill his goblet before she took the decanter.“Jewel, will you go see if Aidan has finished making the charms?Adding the brandy is the final step before the stirring.”
She poured four spoonfuls of the brandy into the plum pudding mixture while Jewel went next door to the workshop.
At twenty-one, Amy’s first-born was a lovely young lady.With her wavy dark hair and her father’s emerald eyes, Jewel was pretty, pixieish, and full of life.She was also an accomplished stained-glass artist, which made her parents very proud.
What Jewel wasn’t, though, was in love.For a while now, Amy had been wondering if her eldest would ever consent to wed anyone.While she adored her daughter’s company and would never wish her away, she couldn’t help hoping Jewel would head her own household someday—for Jewel’s sake.
Just recently, however, Jewel had begun keeping company with a fine young viscount named Henry Breckenridge.Had Amy detected a new sparkle in her daughter’s eyes, or was that only wishful thinking?By this time next year, she thought, Jewel might be wed and on her way to motherhood.
Her fingers were secretly crossed.
Amy’s middle child had gone off to Oxford at seventeen, exactly on schedule, as befitted an earl in the making.At nineteen, Hugh was learning how to manage the earldom during the weeks between terms.Though she hoped many more years would pass before Hugh needed to take over, Amy had no doubt he would excel at following in his father’s footsteps.
But her youngest, Aidan, worried her.
Jewel returned with fifteen-year-old Aidan in tow.“Yes, yes, I finished the charms,” he grumbled.“Here.”
Walking closer, he opened his hand.The silver charms tumbled onto the table, knocking into the silver penny Amy had already set there.A tiny ring, a tiny thimble, a tiny wishbone, and a tiny anchor.
“They’re beautiful!”she exclaimed enthusiastically.“Exquisite little works of art!We will surely have the most lovely pudding tokens in all of England.”
Aidan just grunted, which wasn’t unexpected.But it was troubling.
It made Amy’s heart drop to her knees and her mind go spinning back in time.
