‘I didn’t turn out so badly.’
‘I didn’t say you did.’
The silence that followed was heavy and familiar.
Outside, a gate clattered shut in the wind, as if sounding a warning.
Hamish shifted his weight. ‘What do wedo?’
Christina stared at the polishing cloth as if it might give her the answer to the problem. ‘I’d like to talk to her favourite teacher, the drama mistress, Mrs Henderson.’
Her words appeared not to register. ‘She might do better if she was further away,’ mused Hamish, ‘learn how to be independent. What about sending her to Scotland, back to her roots?’
‘Better for who?’ Certainly not Elspeth. ‘Anyway, your ancestors left Scotland in the nineteenth century. Her roots are here in Devon. And she’s in thebestschool,’ she said, ‘small classes. Extra attention. A drama department she loves. We’re lucky the scholarship pays half of it.’
His brows rose. ‘You think she’s lucky? To be underachieving and confused?’
‘Better than scared and invisible,’ Christina said before she could stop herself. For a few silent moments, he looked at her as if digesting her words. Then, softly, she added, ‘You know, men made most of the silver; women kept it gleaming. That’s why I like what I do. It’s a quiet kind of power, restoring historywithout rewriting it.’
Hamish didn’t reply. She turned back to her work. But the quote felt wrong on her tongue now. Because shewasrewriting history. With Ernest. One forgery at a time.
She swallowed. ‘All this,’ she said, gesturing vaguely to the room, ‘is me. And sometimes I think it’s the only part of me you still see.’
His eyes flicked to her, suddenly sharper. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Isn’t it?’
She gulped down her simmering anger. Chirstina didn’t think their marriage could sustain another row, not after that dreadful one two years ago, where he had called her a social climber, and she had called him a spineless snob. The one that had created a distance between them that was so great she wasn’t sure how to bridge it. Now looking at the man she still loved despite it all, desperate to avoid the confrontation she felt blooming between them, she pivoted. ‘I’ve been thinking it might be time for us to buy a proper house. Get out of our leaky cottage. What about Chase Lodge. You know the derelict one in the valley?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘That place? It’s a glorified ruin. Anyway, Ma won’t sell any more land.’
She didn’t look up, just kept moving the polishing cloth in slow, tight circles, watching how the light caught the engraving, making it shimmer. She didn’t have to look at him to know his jaw was probably set the way it always was when talk drifted too close to recent family history and their lost fortune. His hand brushed the edge of the workbench, lingered, then withdrew.
‘Ernest said she might sell,’ Christina murmured, noncommittal, as if his words had stirred nothing at all. ‘After all, it’s not land, just a derelict house, and she’d be selling to someone in the family.’
He tilted his head. ‘If that will make you happy.’
She smiled, tight-lipped. ‘It might.’
Anyway, she wasn’t doing it for happiness. Not really. She was doing it for Hamish. To win him back with a house with history, one that they could restore together – a shared project – bricks and floor plans. She wouldearnher future, inch by inch. Not by shouting – that would only confirm their worst suspicions about her breeding – but by finally becoming the woman her mother-in-law expected her to be, even if it killed the woman she’d once been.
‘I’ll go and see it,’ she said, mostly to herself. ‘Have a look through the windows, try and see what sort of work it needs.’
Hamish nodded, but his eyes had wandered again, unfocused and ancient. ‘You know, Bess of Hardwick built Chatsworth with her fourth husband’s money.’
‘Did she now?’
‘Formidable woman. Didn’t bend to anyone.’
Christina smiled without warmth. ‘Lucky her.’She didn’t have lady Flora as a mother-in-law either.
He left, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Nine
Ernest looked up from his workbench, his face lighting up with genuine pleasure. ‘Christina darling! Perfect timing. Look Frank, here’s the marvellous silver lady.’
Frank stood near the window, arms folded, his stocky frame blocking the weak morning light. She could feel his presence like a weight in the room.
