‘A word in private before you leave?’ It wasn’t a request. This was a royal decree which she, the trembling courtier, was meant to obey.
She followed him out of the room, down a windowless corridor. Her eyes landed on a large cardboard box resting on a side table. He picked it up.
‘Let’s maximize profits, eh?’ Ernest’s wink was conspiratorial, meant to draw her into his circle of shared mischief. ‘Make allthese saleable. New hallmarks, spot of cleaning. You’ve got a month to work your usual magic.’
‘Of course, I’ll handle it.’ she heard herself say, though her voice seemed to come from far away. She took the box. It was heavy. The flaps sagged open, and she leaned in to look, seeing silver loosely wrapped in tissue paper. Each piece bore the patina of generations – salt cellars, serving spoons, a pair of Georgian candlesticks that looked genuinely eighteenth century. And then, unexpectedly, she spotted the loving cup. She frowned, caught off guard. Christina was so used to seeing it full of flowers. It now wore its lid; the domed surface tarnished to the colour of old pewter.
‘The cup . . . but this is Flora’s favourite . . .’
‘Yes.’ Ernest’s voice was carefully neutral.
‘And you want me to add ...?’
‘Hester Bateman.’
The box seemed to grow heavier in her arms. Of course he’d chosen Hester. He knew exactly what that name meant to her – the woman who’d claimed her place in a world that said she didn’t belong.
She opened her mouth to fight once more, but Ernest stepped closer, his eyes boring into hers. ‘Just do it.’
Christina sat in her car with the box balanced on her knees like a confession waiting to be heard. Through the windscreen, she could see the daffodils nodding their weary heads along the garden wall, their stems buckling, the early flowering varieties shrivelling.
She lifted the loving cup from its nest of paper, feeling its substantial weight. In the spring sunshine, the silver seemed to come to life beneath the tarnish.It was breathtaking. Swirling rococo decoration flowed across its surface like frozen music, every curve and flourish executed with the confidence of amaster craftworker. Acanthus leaves seemed to dance around the bowl, while shells and scrollwork created a symphony of texture that caught and held the light. The handles – oh, the handles – were works of art in themselves, flowing seamlessly from the body of the cup as if they had grown there naturally. Even the lid was a marvel, its domed surface crowned with a finial that resembled an opening rosebud, complete with delicate petals that appeared almost translucent in their perfection.
Christina’s trained eye moved across every inch of the surface, cataloguing details that spoke of extraordinary skill. This wasn’t the work of a competent artisan or even a gifted one – this was the creation of a genius. The decoration wasn’t merely applied; it was integral to the piece, as if the maker had coaxed the silver into these impossible forms through some alchemical process that transcended mere technique.
Her fingers found the hallmarks at the base. She squinted. Without her loupe, she couldn’t be sure, but her pulse raced like a thoroughbred’s.
There – barely visible beneath decades of tarnish – was the unmistakable silhouette of a lion passant, the sterling standard mark that guaranteed the silver’s purity. Beside it, even more worn, she could just make out the ghostly impression of a Leopard’s Head, marking this as London silver. The date letter was almost obliterated. She screwed her eyes tighter, guessing at a Gothic letteri– if she was right, that would date the piece to 1744.
And then, she felt her pulse stumble. A smudged pair of letters – if they were letters at all – pressed into the silver, indistinct but enough to make her blood run cold.PL. The absolute master.
Paul de Lamerie.
The name hovered in her mind like an incantation. Born in the Netherlands in 1688 to French Huguenot parents who hadfled religious persecution, Lamerie had come to London and become the greatest silversmith England had ever known. His rococo work from the 1730s and 1740s was legendary – intricate, lavish, inventive pieces that pushed the boundaries of what was possible in silver – but few of them survived. A soup tureen of his had sold for £2.5 million. A pair of his candlesticks had fetched over a million. A wine cooler had sold for millions more because of its artistry and aristocratic provenance.
And here, in her hands, sat what might be one of his finest surviving pieces.
How had Ernest missed this work of art? Had he, like her, never looked at the cup properly, seeing instead his wife’s flower vase, and wrapped it up with the other silver pieces, keen just to find another piece of silver to fake a famous mark on?
She couldn’t desecrate this silver; if she was right, it belonged in a museum. If she stamped Hester Bateman’s mark over Lamerie’s signature, she would destroy an irreplaceable piece of history. She would commit an act of cultural vandalism that would haunt her forever.
And she couldn’t just return it after a quick polish. She couldn’t risk the auctioneers spotting Lamerie’s mark and then turning their expert attention to the rest of the silver, exposing all those pieces she had so carefully ‘enhanced’ over the past two years – forgeries that might land her in prison, tarnish Hamish’s career and confine her daughter to wear a cloak of scandal all her life.
Not her. The words echoed in her mind.Not Elspeth.
Her blood turned icy with terror. She had spent thirty years building walls around her past, creating a life so clean and respectable that nothing could taint it. Yet here she was, trapped by her own choices, watching those walls crumble. She would have laughed, if it hadn’t stung;in trying to protect everything she’d built, she’d become exactly what she’d sworn she would never be. A parent who put their child at risk. A parent whosecrimes could destroy their child’s future. Suddenly, she was nine years old again, barefoot on the stairs in her nightdress, staring as men in dark jackets emptied her father’s study into cardboard boxes. Her mother’s voice, brittle with fury. The yellow hazard tape flapping across the door like a warning.She’d pressed her face to the banister, heart thudding, knowing – even then – that something had broken which they wouldn’t be able to fix.
The pattern her father had set was repeating itself, and she was powerless to stop it. History had a way of coming full circle, no matter how far you ran.
The sun slanted through the windscreen, warming her face as she turned the cup in her hands. She replaced it in the box, her pulse racing. Every instinct told her to charge back to her workshop, to her loupe and reference books. But she had the meeting with Humphrey at Penelope’s.
A blackbird was singing somewhere in the apple trees, but today, she felt mocked by its cheerfulness. She’d been sitting here for twenty minutes, circling the same problem. Waiting for someone else to take the lead, to tell her what they needed from her.
But this time, no one else could make the choice.
Twenty-three
Lady Penelope’s drawing room was a masterpiece of understated perfection – the sort of space that murmured rather than shouted its credentials. Pale yellow silk curtains with elaborate fringes framed windows that offered views of pristine gardens, while Chinese porcelain and antique glassware decorated dust free mahogany shelves. Unobtrusive diffusers filled the air with a delicate rose scent. Someone had finely judged the flower arrangements: enough budding tulips mixed with open bloomsto suggest effortless abundance, not so many as to appear ostentatious.
