“For now I’ve brought these.”Jewel began handing out rectangular packages, all wrapped in bright fabrics and tied with pretty ribbons.“You may open my gifts all at once, since they’re nearly the same.That will save time and make Uncle Jason happy.”
Kendra’s daughter Diana accepted her present with a soft smile.She’d always looked up to Jewel, her eldest, most grown-up cousin.“Not yet!”Diana admonished her two younger brothers, who were already untying the ribbons on their gifts.“You have to wait till we all have them!”
When they each had a package, Diana counted—“One, two, three, go!”—and ribbons and fabric went flying.
“A glass box!”she exclaimed.“So pretty!I will treasure it always.”
A smile transformed Jewel’s face, which Amy thought had looked much too serious lately.“I haven’t made leaded-glass boxes since I was a child.I’m so glad you like yours, Diana.”
“I shall keep my new galant in it,” her older sister, Elspeth, declared.“How did you remember that pink is my favorite color?”
Amy’s box featured purple flowers, Cait’s had green ones, and the blooms on Kendra’s were blue.“She remembered everyone’s favorite color,” Amy said with a proud grin.Rather than flowers, the men’s and boys’ boxes featured geometrical designs, also in their favorite colors.
When everyone was finished oohing and aahing over their stained-glass boxes, Amy’s son Aidan approached her with a gift.“For you, Mama.”
The package was small and wrapped in paper, not fabric.She untied the slim ribbon and slowly unfolded the paper, revealing a little wooden box.As she opened the lid, she sucked in a breath.“Aidan, these are exquisite!”
The parure of jewels sparkled: a pendant and matching earrings, intended to be worn together.Each piece featured a large oval amethyst surrounded by two dozen round, pear, and marquise-shaped diamonds, arranged in a complicated pattern that managed to look classic and yet thoroughly modern all at once.
For a moment she could only gaze at them.She’d never seen anything like them before.The three matched jewels were gorgeous and unique, in the same way Aidan’s talent was unique.
Amy’s great-grandpapa had been a master jeweler—her father had always claimed no family member would ever surpass the man’s genius and workmanship.Your talent came from him, you know,she remembered Papa telling her.Through the generations.A gift—and an obligation.
Aidan had inherited that gift.Had he also inherited the obligation?
No.
She quite suddenly knew, with naught but the slimmest thread of guilt-induced doubt: the correct answer wasno.
Her papa had been wrong, for a gift was a thing given freely, out of love and generosity.It ought never to be a burden.If she wanted Aidan to find joy in his glorious gift, she had to unburden him.
“I love these,” she told him.“I absolutely adore them, and I shall treasure them forever.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”She watched his jaw set, watched his eyes—so like her own—fill with hostility.“Because they are the last jewels I will ever make.”
She let that statement sit there for a moment.
He was clearly expecting a battle.
She was so tired of being defensive.
She’d vowed to her father that Goldsmith & Sons wouldn’t die.The Goldsmith curse,she’d once called that, so long ago, before any of her children were born.And what had wise Aunt Elizabeth said to her back then?
For God’s sake, child, how can you let a promise to a dead man stand in the way of your happiness?
Amy’s gaze flicked to her husband.Colin’s expression was neither encouraging nor disheartening.He would support her decision either way.After all their months of disagreement, that, in itself, felt like a victory.
Slowly, she sucked in a breath and blew it back out.
“I believe you’re a born jeweler,” she finally told Aidan gravely.“At only fifteen, a master already, your workmanship unparalleled.There’s no telling how far such genius might take you.But it’s your life, your choice.Do with it what you wish.”
A collective gasp sounded in the room.
Ignoring it, she smiled and reached to give her son the hug he so deserved.
And when her daughter slipped away nearly unnoticed, she didn’t give that a second thought.
Thirty-Two
