Chapter 33 #2
She smiled at the knowledge that this cup had never touched Storr’s hands any more than those other pieces. This stunning masterpiece was created decades before Storr began working.
‘Yes, he was a family favourite.’
As Tim walked off with the magnificent cup – her cup, the one she’d hidden, guarded, lied about – Christina felt the knot in her stomach twist tighter.
Unless Percy could prove the cup was a protected asset, it would be auctioned off.
But that didn’t mean Ernest had won. Her crafty wording should be enough to attract competitive bidders and prevent him from becoming the legal owner for a fraction of its real value.
Just thinking about his plan made her want to weep. Ernest and Frank – who had made their fortunes peddling fakes, coaxing stories out of nothing, weaving lies into lacquer and gilding – were expecting to make their biggest profit from something genuine.
Turning to rejoin the throng by the side table, Christina groaned inwardly, noticing the crowd now included Frank.
‘Tim has the cup,’ she said.
‘And it’s going in the auction?’ asked Hugo.
‘Yes,’ replied Christina.
Frank didn’t mince his words. ‘What’s the estimate?’
‘Seven fifty.’
‘With three zeros?’ asked Amy, her eyes bulging.
Hugo opened and closed his mouth like a hooked fish. Amy gave a loud tut. ‘It all seems a bit rushed to me, why not wait and put it into a specialist auction, with photos in a catalogue . . .’
Wanting to reassure Amy, Christina spoke confidently. ‘Tim’s trying to drum up some interest for us. He’s sending an email to his buyers list to draw attention to the late addition.’
Frank and Ernest exchanged a glance. Ernest’s eyes narrowed. ‘Saying what exactly?’
‘Describing the lot. I’ve attributed the cup as “possibly by Paul Storr”.’
Amy screwed up her face. ‘Why “possibly”?’
‘It’s safer for the auction house, and for us.
We’re not claiming it’s by the famous silversmith, so no one can return it as incorrectly advertised after they buy it.
’ Christina explained. Not that anyone would.
Complaining it wasn’t by Paul Storr would be like sending back Wagyu beef when you’d ordered McDonald’s.
Ernest’s smile slipped. ‘Bold of you. Reckless, really.’
Frank swore, low and vicious, his cheeks flushing pink, and then hissed.
‘You shouldnae have done that lassy.’ He stood up straight, and she saw his face had darkened from pink to plum, his eyes bloodshot, jaw clenched.
‘That’s other people’s money you’re playing with,’ he said, his voice low. ‘But I suppose you’re used to that.’
Christina froze.
His words drifted, toxic and heavy. Amy turned sharply. Hugo went still. Ernest, for the first time, seemed lost for words.
‘All high and mighty, aren’t you, the great silver expert?’ snarled Frank. ‘You’re real confident for someone standing on a landmine,’ Frank growled. ‘You keep flappin’ your gums, but you’re gonna wish you’d shut it, real soon.’
‘Frank,’ Ernest hissed.
Frank’s voice cracked like a whip; his anger came out in a thick native tongue. ‘Naw. Get tae – I’m no puttin’ up wi’ this shite.’
It must have been the strong Scottish accent that did it.
Suddenly Christina was back in her final year at St Andrews, a few days after she’d sat her last exam.
Red sandstone cloisters. That high, cold Scottish light.
A shopkeeper with a Glaswegian accent had just sold her two bacon rolls.
Outside the shop, Hamish was standing awkwardly, holding out a lopsided bouquet of roses and a picnic basket containing a bottle of Champagne.
‘It’s gallant,’ she had said, proffering her soggy bacon rolls in return, ‘but I can’t reciprocate. It’s taken my mum’s savings simply to keep me here.’
He grinned. ‘Well, it’s not like my lot have any left. Our family fortune vanished over ten years ago – we invested in a dodgy bank which collapsed. Wexley like a guillotine’s blade falling.
Hugo was the first to speak. ‘You used our money to pay for your education . . . forcing Ma to sell land, the first Pemberton to do that in 700 years . . .to pay for Hamish’s!’
The blood drained from Christina’s face. She opened her mouth, but no words came. She wished she’d told Hamish. But it was too late. It was all too late.
Ernest turned to Frank, venom in his voice. ‘You idiot.’
Amy cleared her throat with faux innocence ‘So, what you’re saying is . . . she’s the daughter of that Miller? Robert Miller? Well, well.’ She gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘I always knew you were grubby, but this is impressive even for you.’
Around them, auctioneers finished their preparations. Red lot stickers bloomed like wounds on furniture that had witnessed generations of secrets.
Hugo sniffed. ‘You do realise your father virtually bankrupted us? Our way of life gone. All of it.’ His voice rose. ‘And now you’re swanning in with your expert opinions and your fake bloody modesty, like butter wouldn’t melt. Now I understand why you always know the value of things.’
Christina took a shaky breath. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘You never once belonged,’ Amy interrupted, her smile thin and venomous. ‘You didn’t even play the part convincingly. A grifter’s child in silk, thinking pearls and manners could buy you class. But class isn’t something you steal, you know. It’s bred.’
Christina absorbed the words without flinching. The room fell into a dense, expectant quiet, heavy with the satisfaction of a truth finally spoken aloud. No one contradicted Amy. No one needed to. This was the family’s judgment, and it had been waiting for her all along.
She let it settle. Not because it wounded her, but because it clarified what she had always known and refused to name.
Proximity was not belonging. Civility was not acceptance.
The rules she had learned so carefully were never meant to admit her – only to measure how convincingly she could imitate them.
Fine.
If this was the limit of what they could offer – blood and breeding passed off as virtue – then she was finished asking to be let in. The verdict was theirs. What she made of it would not be.
Only then did the deeper recognition arrive.
Not the insult, but the inheritance. She had become what she had tried to escape: her father’s daughter in more than blood.
He had forged trust the way she forged silver, playing the benevolent banker while stealing in plain sight.
She had done the same – hammering herself into a shape that gleamed convincingly enough to pass.
A forgery, yes. But a pure dead brilliant one.
And suddenly their contempt rang hollow. These custodians of a crumbling grandeur, preening over treasures they had not earned, mistaking inheritance for merit. She had mistaken their approval for something worth wanting. That error, at least, would not survive the day.
Hugo’s voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried more menace than his shouting. ‘Does Hamish know that your family ruined ours?’
Christina’s spine stiffened, but her vision blurred. The ballroom seemed to tilt – the floor beneath her feet suddenly uneven, the ceiling with its cornicing spinning. For a moment, she couldn’t move. Her body felt rooted and burning, every nerve exposed like silver wire under flame.
Then, somewhere in the distance a door slammed shut, and the crack seemed to shatter something inside her chest. Christina turned, walked. Then fled.
Her heels clicked frantically against the floorboards, then muffled on the Persian runner in the hallway.
Past the grandfather clock marking time she’d never have again, past the faded oil paintings of ancestors who would never claim her, past the vases of tulips and tree peonies, plants she would never again tend in the grounds of the Manor, out of the front door where the cold hit her, almost winding her.
She ran until her lungs burned, until the house was behind her and the sea air scoured her throat raw.
Only when she slowed, when the noise of the house finally fell away, did she turn her thoughts to Hamish – pacing the worn floorboards of a lecture hall at St Andrews, gesturing with one hand, his notes forgotten on the desk behind him.
Then it came: the taste of salt and truth, and beneath it the metallic tang of fear. Not for herself. For him. For Elspeth.
Finally, she had done what Hamish had urged her to do: stood up for herself, by writing that crafty description of the late lot.
And it had exploded in her face. ‘The Great Matter’ was now out in the open.
Hamish was about to discover that his wife’s life was a web of lies as elaborate as any silver forgery.
And he would never look at her the same way again.