“What about me?”
I didn’t let his curt response deter me. “Do you make jewelry, Master —?”
For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. That he wouldn’t even tell me his name. He seemed to consider his options very carefully before saying, “Smythson. Alan Smythson.”
Smythe & Sons. The shop belonged to Alan’s family, but the primary smith was Master Powell. In a place like Skorsa, where shops were passed down in families for generations, there was likely an interesting story behind that dichotomy. And still, I had heard nothing about Master Powell or Alan.
Alan was looking at the floor once more.
I repeated my question. “Do you make jewelry, Master Smythson?”
He shrugged. “I enjoy doing intricate work, but I don’t have the materials to make jewelry. Nor is there enough of a demand to take the time away from other projects.”
“But if you had the materials, could you do anything with them?” I cocked my head to the side, trying to figure Alan out. Not quite nervous. Not quite diffident. More like he had learned to throttle his own emotions. Not hide them, like I so often did at court, but force them down.
His eyes narrowed.
I tried to radiate encouragement and optimism, not sure what I could say to reassure him that this wasn’t an elaborate joke at his expense. I wanted to hear his answer. At the very least, this was a smith who recognized quality—or a lack thereof—when he saw it. Perhaps he could also do what Powell could not.
Alan walked back to the cabinet filled with a waste of gold. He reached above it, behind the finial, and grabbed something.
I went up on tiptoe instinctively, trying to see the object. I saw nothing until he turned and lowered his arm. With a flick of his wrist, a coil of copper wire unfurled. No, not wire. The copper had been formed into a delicate chain.
I stepped closer, lifting the chain to my eye level, even while Alan kept one end pinched between two fingers.
Each link of the chain came in a unique shape: some oblong, some round, others square. A few twisted instead of laying flat. A smattering of links interwove with two neighboring links, others laced through three or four other rings. Together, they formed an elegant, distinctive piece.
It was exactly the type of intricate, sophisticated, yet still understated style I wanted for a present for Eliza Wrison. I looked up at Alan, noticing all at once how close we stood. I swallowed, but didn’t step back. “You made this?”
He tugged the chain, sliding it off my hand, and sighed. “Yes.”
“Perfect!” I wondered at his fatalism. I hadn’t been able to hide my surprise, which had nothing to do with him creating the chain, but rather with the existence of such an exquisite piece at all. Still, I would have expected him to bristle at my surprise. Most men our age would have reacted poorly. Most older men, too. If a master jeweler in Haiwella had showed me that chain, I would have been just as shocked, but he would have puffed out his chest and started enumerating his experience and qualifications.
I reached into the pocket of my dark blue skirt. “Could you make another if I gave you the material?”
Alan frowned.
I pulled the necklace I had bought in Haiwella out of my pocket and unwrapped the handkerchief folded around it.
A seemingly solid band of gold and rose gold, the necklace followed the latest court trend. It resembled a wide collar that circled the base of the neck and extended over the collarbone for the width of three fingers. In the center, four seed-sized sapphires lay embedded in the gold in a diamond pattern.
I had brought gifts for all three members of the Wrison household as a thank you for hosting me while I visited Skorsa. I had intended to give the necklace to Eliza, my supposed aunt, at the end of my stay. Less than a week into living with Magistrate Wrison, his wife,and their son, and I already knew the necklace did not suit Eliza at all.
If I gave her the stylish—by city standards—necklace, Eliza would thank me profusely, then place it in a safe place, never to be worn. Even after the fashion trickled down from court and less expensive variations traveled from Haiwella to become popular in the village, she would feel silly wearing such a showy piece.
I had avoided picking a necklace with the large gemstones favored by most of the women at court, knowing that such a gift would be impractical. But surrounded by the ostentation of ladies dripping with jewels, it hadn’t occurred to me that even without a thumbnail-sized gem, the necklace still called attention to itself. There were some women in Skorsa who would love such a present. Eliza Wrison wasn’t one of them.
Alan’s jaw dropped when I unwrapped the necklace. His hand drifted toward it, but he pulled back. I held it out closer to him, trying to get him to take it. “Can you make a chain by melting this one down?”
He reached for the necklace again, stopping when his fingers brushed the metal and looking up to check my reaction. When I just smiled, he picked it up and brought it closer. “Melt it down?”
“Or do the two types of gold make that a silly idea?”
He flipped the necklace over and traced one of the nearly invisible seams where gold and rose gold met.
I wasn’t sure he had even heard me. “Can you melt this down and use the material to make a chain like the copper one? I want a necklace for Aunt Eliza, something that suits her better than this. Maybe you could alternate between the two golds in the chain, then have the sapphires hang from the chain one after another?”
He flipped the necklace back to the front. “Keeping the sapphires together in the diamond arrangement would look better. They are too small to stand on their own. I could make a pendant out of part of the gold and embed the stones in that.”
