His smile returned. ‘Good lass.’ Ernest’s smile widened, and she recognized the trap she’d stepped into the moment she opened the door. Still, Chase Lodge would be worth it. A chance to rescue her marriage and finally get her in-laws to accept her.
She clutched her loupe as if it were a rosary. ‘What do you want me to do first?’
‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is the right question.’
Five
The winter wind cut through Christina’s jacket as she knelt beside the camellia bed, her knees sinking into the cold, waterlogged earth. The damp seeped through her jeans – she’d given up on staying dry hours ago – yet she barely felt it. Gardening always seemed to insulate her from the worst of the outside world. Somewhere behind the yew hedge, she could hear Lady Flora’s voice carrying across the frost-brittle lawn: ‘Christina? The drawing room vases won’t fill themselves.’
She rolled her eyes and reached for a camellia bloom, its petals the colour of clotted cream against waxy dark leaves. The flower came away with a soft snap, releasing a faint perfume – subtle, almost medicinal, like cold camphor mixed with tea. She laid it carefully in the willow trug beside her, where it joined others she’d already gathered: shell-pink, white, one the deep crimson of an old bloodstain.
‘Mind the espalier when you prune back the jasmine, Tom,’ she called to the trainee gardener. He was attacking the plant with more enthusiasm than precision, his breath clouding white in the cold air. ‘Lady Flora wants it to frame the library windows; she doesn’t want it knee high.’
‘Right you are, Mrs Pemberton,’ said Tom.
Christina stood, hoisting the half-filled trug onto her hip. The smell of crushed stems and turned soil clung to her clothes, her hair, her skin, the scent so strong that it stopped her mid-step. Suddenly, she was six, standing in a garden in Glasgow surrounded by soot-stained walls instead of honey-coloured stone. Her father’s large hand was guiding her small one, pressing a tulip bulb into the earth. ‘Like this, hen, pointy end up, or it won’t know which way to grow.’ His voice warm with laughter. The rich, coffee-dark smell of the peat he’d mixed into Glasgow’s thin soil. Her fingers, sticky with mud, found his. ‘Will it be red, Da?’ He kissed the top of her head, ‘We’ll need to wait and see, won’t we?’
Christina blinked hard, the memory dissolving like frost in the sun. This garden, these manicured acres with their clipped hedges and formal beds, was nothing like her father’s pride and joy – the sprawling borders behind their handsome Glasgow house, where he’d spent every spare hour coaxing life from the Scottish soil.
Yet there was a vocabulary to winter gardens that most people missed: the architecture of bare branches against grey sky, the bitter-bright smell of box hedge after rain, the secret life that persisted under frost and frozen ground. Her father had taught her to read it.
Christina snipped a few more stems until the trug was full, then started back toward the house. Through the window, she could see Lady Flora had reached the flower room ahead of her, and was already arranging stems in a crystal vase, her movements quick and critical. Rearranging what Christina would bring her. Taking credit for what Christina grew, tended, knew.
For just a moment more, Christina let herself linger, imagining herself in her mother-in-law’s place, living in the Manor, stepping out each morning to deadhead the roses, plan new borders, watch the seasons turn. Yes, the house would be drafty, the heating bills enormous, but for a place this beautiful, with gardens like these, she’d gladly wear extra jumpers.
‘Christina! Do hurry up,’ Lady Flora’s voice called out again.The fantasy dissolved as quickly as it came. Lady Flora owned every inch of Brambleton Manor, and when she died, it would pass to her eldest son Hugo. Christina walked inside, willow trug heavy on her hip, with the flowers for someone else’s guests.
In the flower room, Lady Flora stood ramrod straight at the enormous stone sink. Christina had a sudden pang for her own mother. Dee. She could almost hear that beloved Scottish voice, gravelly from smoking too many cigarettes, reading her fairy stories while she snuggled on her lap. Dee had died six years ago, after a hard life. A single mother for half of Christina’s childhood, she had learned to bend in the face of life, rather than bestride it. Dee couldn’t have been more different from the confident, elegant Lady Flora, who was now arranging early rhododendrons with the precision of a general deploying troops. Where Dee had been short and plump, with soft, yielding arms, Flora was tall and fine-boned, her posture impossibly straight, as if slouching were something that happened to other people. Her silver-blonde hair was swept into a chignon that never seemed to loosen, and her pale blue eyes missed little.
The contrast of this room with Christina’s cramped cottage made her heart squeeze with longing. Even this utilitarian space spoke of faded elegance: purpose built shelves for vases, a marble-topped work surface that probably cost more than Christina’s entire kitchen; enough space to house a small family.
‘The Fortescue-Hamiltons are coming to tea, Christina,’ Flora announced, her voice carrying the inflection that always made Christina’s name sound like some kind of mistake. ‘You know, the ones whose ancestors fought for the crown in the Western Rising of 1549?’
Christina bit back a smile. Lady Flora was obsessed with heritage. She remembered her mother-in-law’s arched eyebrow when they’d first met, and she’d proudly explained she made silver jewellery. ‘Oh. How terribly ...modern,’ the woman hadsaid, delivering the word with the delicate distaste reserved for a chipped teacup ‘I don’t know any women in ...trade’.’ That arched eyebrow had stuck. A judgment, slicing right through her confidence. Lady Flora had pointedly started talking about a family heirloom – the Highland Pact Torque – that had been in the family for centuries and needed regular specialist care. It was evidently a much safer topic of conversation. Shortly afterwards Christina had switched from jewellery design into silver restoration.
Flora rumbled on, ‘Generations of proper breeding. The sort of family that appreciates what it means to preserve heritage.’ A delicate pause, to let the barb settle. ‘One does hope Elspeth will grow up understanding these things ‘
‘How could she fail to, with Hamish as her father?’ replied Christina. Eleven years of being reminded that she was the nobody who’d somehow ensnaredHamish. Never mind that Ernest’s creative business ventures and her skilful fingers held together the family’s genteel poverty.
But Flora hadn’t finished. ‘It might help if Hamish was living somewhere a bit more ... in keeping with our family’s standards, rather than ...’ She gestured vaguely toward the window, in the direction of the tiny cottage, though Christina knew the gesture encompassed far more than the view.
She passed the trug to Lady Flora, who began arranging the camelias by colour. A massive silver cup dominated the centre of the marble counter, catching the slant of morning light through the sash windows. Eighteen inches high, it had three arched handles, evenly spaced around its rounded body, a broad rim, and a weighty pedestal base. Once, it had been a Loving Cup – a shared vessel passed between guests at weddings and ceremonies, symbolising trust, unity, shared intent.
She watched as Flora’s gloved hands slipped stems into it, oblivious – or maybe indifferent – to its meaning. Christinawondered if that made any difference. Symbols didn’t need to be understood to keep their weight. And wasn’t that the trick? People raised the same cup, smiled over the same silver rim, whether or not they meant the toast they drank to. She had done the same in her own way. Lifted the cup. Played along. Just like her mother had done after her father disappeared. Christina had changed her voice, her clothes, smoothed her edges. All for Hamish and his family.
She looked out through the tall windows, and caught sight of Hugo, Hamish’s brother, dwarfed by the ancient oaks, strolling by the majestic lake with his yellow labrador Marmalade padding beside him. Hugo had never left the Manor. Officially, he was helping run the estate. But most mornings he seemed to be walking off a hangover.
She swivelled back to the Loving Cup, her eye tracing its lines – early Georgian, possibly 1720s, probably the work of a London silversmith when the capital was becoming the world’s centre for the craft. It had that subtle hue which clung to old silver like a secret.
The cup might have had a lid originally, probably lost decades ago. The silver needed polishing; she could see the beginnings of tarnish along the decorative scrollwork but mentioning it would only invite Flora to suggest her daughter-in-law polish the rest of the family silver too.
‘Christina, see to it that the bulbs in the greenhouse are sorted before they start to sprout ... and don’t forget the east border; I’d hate for sloppiness to ruin the spring display.’ She winced slightly as she reached for another stem, her hand moving automatically to the small of her back.
‘Is your sciatica troubling you again?’ Christina asked, genuine concern overriding her irritation at being addressed like a servant.
‘Nothing I can’t manage,’ Flora replied stiffly, though Christinanoticed the way she favoured her left side, the careful way she moved.
The flower room door banged open, and Ernest swept in like a stage magician making an entrance.
