Hannah glanced down at her coffee mug. Empty. And she didn’t even remember drinking it. If she showered and dressed right now, before she was fully awake, the lure of a second mug of coffee would make her hurry.

Before the second hand on her apple-shaped wall clock had made twelve complete revolutions, Hannah was back in the kitchen. Instead of her robe, she was wearing jeans and a dark green pullover sweater. Her feet were encased in fur-lined, moosehide boots to stave off the chill of the first cold week in December, and her towel-dried hair was already springing up into a riot of red curls.

“Coffee,” Hannah breath, pouring a mug, inhaling the fragrance and taking the first steaming sip, “is almost as good as … “ but before she could decide exactly what it was almost as good as, the phone rang.

“Mother!” Hannah muttered in the same tone she used when she stubbed her toe, but she reached for the phone. To let the answer machine get it would only delay the inevitable. Delores Swensen was relentless. If she wanted to talk to her eldest daughter, she’d keep on calling until she was successful.

“Good morning, Mother,” Hannah forced a cheery note into her voice and sank down in a chair. Conversations with Delores had been known to last as long as an hour.

“Good morning, dear. You sound like you got up on the right side of the bed,” Delores replied, matching Hannah’s cheery tone and raising her a cliché. “I know this Christmas potluck has been a lot of work for you and I called to see if there was anything I could do to help.”

Warning bells went off in Hannah’s head. When Delores tried to be this helpful, she had an ulterior motive. “That’s nice of you, Mother, but I think I’ve got everything covered.”

“I thought so. You’re so organized, dear. Did I tell you that Luanne found an antique silver cake knife with a provenance that dates back to the Regency period?”

“No, you didn’t,” Hannah said, getting up to pour more coffee and stretching out the hone cord to within an inch of its life. Luanne Hanks was Delores and Carrie’s assistant at Granny’s Attic, the antique store they’d opened right next to Hannah’s bakery, and she was a genius at finding valuable antiques at estate auctions.

“I thought you might want to use it tonight. It was a lovely old-fashioned Christmas tree on the handle.”

“Didn’t you say it was Regency?”

“That’s right, dear.”

“But I didn’t think they had Christmas trees in Regency England.”

“They didn’t. But don’t forget that the Regent’s family was German. And since this particular knife was used at court, it’s decorated with a German Christmas tree.”

“I’d love to use it,” Hannah said. “It’ll fit in perfectly.”

“That’s what I thought. When I showed it to Winthrop last night, he thought it would be appropriate to cut a cake from the period.”