A Diamond In The Snow. Kate Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ wasn’t really Victoria’s, either. Even though her father had sorted out the entail years ago, so the house would pass to her rather than to some distant male relative, she wasn’t a Hamilton by birth. Her parents loved her dearly, just as she loved them; but she was still very aware that their real daughter lay in the churchyard next door. And right now Victoria felt as if she’d let them all down. She was supposed to be taking care of her parents and the house, for Lizzie’s sake, and she’d failed.

      Actually seeing the damage made it feel worse.

      Without the mirror over the mantelpiece to reflect light back from the windows opposite, the room seemed darker and smaller. And when Felicity turned off the overhead light and shone her UV torch on the wall, the mould growth glowed luminescent.

      ‘The hangings from that whole wall are going to have to come down,’ Felicity said. ‘With polythene sheeting over it, to stop the spores spreading.’

      ‘And everyone needs to be wearing protective equipment while they do it,’ Victoria said. ‘And we’ll have to measure the mould spores in the air. If it’s bad, then we’ll have to keep visitors out of the room completely.’

      Felicity patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get this fixed so the ballroom shines again.’

      Victoria was prepared to do whatever it took. Fill out endless forms, beg every institution going for a loan. Or find a millionaire and talk him into marrying her and saving the ballroom. After her ex had been so forthcoming about where she fell short, Victoria was under no illusions that she was attractive enough for an ordinary man, let alone a millionaire who could have his pick of women; but she knew from past experience that the house was a real draw for potential suitors. All she needed was a millionaire instead of a gold-digger to fall in love with it. Which kind of made her a gold-digger, but she’d live with that. She’d be the perfect wife, for the house’s sake.

      When Felicity and her team had left for the day, Victoria walked up and down the Long Gallery with her dog at her heels, just as countless Hamilton women had done over the centuries, not seeing the ancient oil paintings or the view over the formal knot gardens. All she could think about was what a mess she’d made. She wasn’t a coward—she’d tell her parents the news today—but she wasn’t going to tell them until she’d worked out a solution.

      Pacing cleared her head enough for her to spend half an hour on the Internet, checking things. And finally she went to her parents’ apartment.

      ‘Hello, darling. You’re late tonight. Are you eating with us? I’ve made chicken cacciatore—your favourite,’ her mother said.

      ‘You might not want to feed me when you hear the news,’ Victoria said with a sigh. She wasn’t sure she was up to eating, either. She still felt too sick. ‘Felicity found a problem.’

      ‘Bad?’ Patrick Hamilton asked.

      She nodded. ‘Mould in the ballroom, behind the mirror. They found it when they were checking the gilt. Best-case scenario, they’ll take the hangings down on that wall, dry them out, remove the mould and put backing on the weak areas of silk. Worst-case, we’ll have to get reproduction hangings made for that whole wall. We won’t know until the hangings come down.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘Hopefully we can get a heritage grant. If they turn us down because they’ve already allocated the funds for the year, then we’ll have to raise the money ourselves. We’ll have to raise a bit of it in any case.’ And she had ideas about that. It’d be a lot of work, but she didn’t mind.

      ‘Firstly,’ Patrick said, ‘you can stop beating yourself up, darling.’

      ‘But I should ha—’ she began.

      ‘It was behind the mirror, you said, so nobody would’ve known it was there until it reached the edge,’ Patrick pointed out gently. ‘If I’d still been running the house, the mould would still have been there.’ He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘You’re too hard on yourself, Victoria. You’re doing a brilliant job. This year has been our best ever for visitor numbers, and your mother and I are incredibly proud of you.’ She could hear the worry and the warmth in her father’s voice and she knew he meant what he said. But why couldn’t she let herself believe it? Why couldn’t she feel as if she was enough? ‘Lizzie would be proud of you, too,’ Patrick continued.

      At the mention of her little sister, Victoria’s throat felt thick and her eyes prickled with tears.

      ‘It’ll work out, darling,’ Diana said, enveloping her in a hug. ‘These things always do.’

      ‘I’ve been thinking about how we can raise the money. I know we usually close from half-term so we have a chance to do the conservation work before the visitor season starts again, but maybe we could open the house at Christmas this year. Just some of the rooms,’ Victoria said. ‘We could trim them up for Christmas as it would’ve been in Regency times, and hold workshops teaching people how to make Christmas wreaths and stained-glass ornaments and old-fashioned confectionery. And we could hold a proper Regency ball, with everyone in Regency dress and supper served exactly as it would’ve been two hundred years ago.’

      ‘Just like you and Lizzie used to pretend, when you were little and you’d just discovered Jane Austen.’ Diana ruffled her hair. ‘That’s a splendid idea. But it’ll be a lot of extra work, darling.’

      ‘I don’t mind.’ It wasn’t a job to her: she loved what she did. It was her life.

      ‘We can hire in some help to support you,’ Patrick said.

      Victoria shook her head. ‘We can’t afford it, Dad. The cost of fixing the ballroom is going to be astronomical.’

      ‘Then we can try and find a volunteer to help you,’ Patrick said.

      ‘Yes—I can ask around,’ Diana added. ‘There’s bound to be someone we know whose son or daughter is taking a gap year and would leap at the chance to get experience like this. We could offer bed and board here, if that would help.’

      ‘Maybe this could be the start of a new Chiverton tradition,’ Patrick said. ‘The annual Christmas ball. In years to come, your grandchildren will still be talking about how you saved the ballroom.’

       Grandchildren.

      Victoria knew how much her parents wanted grandchildren—and she knew she was letting them down there, too.

      The problem was, she’d never met the man who made her want to get married, much less have children. Her relationships had all fizzled out—mainly when she’d discovered that the men she’d dated hadn’t wanted her, they’d wanted the house and the lifestyle they thought went with it. Once they’d discovered the lifestyle didn’t match their dreams, she hadn’t seen them for dust. And she’d been stupid enough to be fooled three times, now. Never again.

      She’d fallen back on the excuse of being too busy to date, which meant her parents had taken to inviting eligible men over for dinner. Every couple of weeks they’d surprise her with someone who’d just dropped in to say hello. It drove her crazy; but how could she complain when she was so hopeless and couldn’t seem to find someone for herself?

      Maybe the one good thing about the ballroom restoration was that it might distract her parents from matchmaking. Just for a little while.

      ‘A new tradition sounds lovely,’ she said, and forced herself to smile.

      ‘That’s СКАЧАТЬ