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One
Everyone has a weakness. Some people have a weakness for champagne cocktails. Or older men with French accents.
My weakness is old French champagne glasses. Preferably ones that have seen a bit of après-midnight action. Or English pub glasses with real Victorian air bubbles, or those 1950s Babycham glasses with the cute little faun.
Any kind of glasses, actually, they don’t have to match.
Old sunglasses too, come to think of it. Also, gloves (satin evening ones, especially), vintage wedding photos, fountain pens, trophies for long-forgotten tournaments, postcards ...
Okay, fine.
My name is Evie Nicholson, and I am addicted to The Past.
“A child’s teddy bear, circa 1935.” Pause. “Missing one eye. And left arm.”
Max looked up from the printout the auctioneer had enclosed with the delivery, and fixed me with his best withering gaze. It wasn’t the one he used to persuade rich Chelsea wives to buy chaise longues they didn’t strictly need. It was astonishing what Max could sell, simply by draping his lanky frame over it and flashing his Heathcliff eyes. Only now they were looking less Come to bed, Cathy and more I’m going to burn down your house and do something unspeakable to your puppy.
“Would you please explain why you bought a one-armed blind teddy, the stuff of pure childhood nightmares?” he inquired.
“He’s a Steiff, and he was going for a tenner,” I muttered, picking the bear out of the delivery box.
Up close, he was a bit . . . mangy. When I’d spotted him in a box in the salesroom, all I’d seen was his threadbare nose, the fur worn away by thousands of kisses from his sailor-suited owners. I’d seen T-strap shoes and nursery teas and nannies with starched aprons. This brave little bear had once had pride of place in a smart London nursery; I couldn’t stand seeing him waved around by some unfeeling porter, unwanted. He was worth one bid, surely?
“You paid a tenner,” repeated Max, “for something even the moths have moved out of?”
I tweaked the bear’s wonky limbs into an appealing hug. “Someone’s obviously loved him. He deserves a good retirement home.”
“Someone loved Adolf Hitler, but that doesn’t mean I’d be happy to fork out real money to sell him in my shop. With or without eyes.” Max shook the paper again, and it opened up to another three pages. He let out a strangled squeak of horror.
Three pages! I bit my lip, and propped the bear on a bookshelf. I didn’t remember buying quite so much. I’d gone in there with my catalogue strictly marked up and sat on my hands for loads of amazing bargains.
“Honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks,” I said. “I’ll pay for some of those myself. I can always eBay what—”
Max’s hands flew up as if he were warding off evil spirits. “Don’t say that word in this shop!” he roared.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“Oh, God.” He hunched his narrow shoulders and closed his eyes, squeezing his hand over his forehead in theatrical despair. “We’re going to have to have The Talk again, Evie. Where shall I begin? With the fact that one man’s junk is nearly always another man’s junk?”
“But—”
“There is a difference between collectibles, and dust collectors,” he began with vicarlike relish. “To succeed in antiques, you’ve got to ignore the item and focus on the person you can sell it to. . . .”
I clamped my lips shut. This was a major bone of contention between Max and me, but for the purpose of filling in the ten minutes until my sister, Alice, galloped to my rescue, I decided to let him do his routine. Antiques for me were all about the lives they’d once been part of. I loved the whispers of the past they carried, the proof that those period films had once been real life. Max, on the other hand, was all about the money. He obsessed about the covert movement of valuables from one wealthy family to another like someone studying the Premiership football-team transfer market, but with Sheraton dining sets instead of soccer players.
His shop in Chelsea, where I worked and he flounced about, provided a small taxable income, most of which was snapped up by his ex-wife, Tessa, but Max’s real work was discreetly acquiring treasures from the impoverished English aristocracy and finding new homes for them in Cheshire, New England, or the millionaires’ mansions on the outskirts of London. A bit like Robin Hood, except he was the only one who made any money, and I was the one who wore the tights.
“Your problem is that you only ever buy for yourself,” he droned on, “and you’re hardly the most discerning—”
“That’s not fair!” I protested. “I spotted some Chanel costume brooches for Mrs. Herriot-Scott. Big camellias, genuine, in an old biscuit tin—no one else bothered to check it.”
I didn’t add that I’d only opened it because I was a sucker for lockets concealing wartime sweethearts, and you only found those by trawling the depths of general house-clearance boxes. And biscuit tins.
Max ground to an abrupt halt at the mention of Mrs. Herriot-Scott, one of his favorite clients. We loved her, and her insatiable desire for expensive plastic.
“Ah, well, that’s different.” His black eyes glittered as he calculated the markup. “What about that Georgian card table Jassy de la Mara asked us to look at?”
I glanced at the door and surreptitiously checked my watch. Max was on the second page, when my bidding had got a bit . . . well, emotional.
“The card table wasn’t right. Reproduction. But I picked up some nice cranberry glass,” I said.
Max’s face was crumpling alarmingly as he read on.
“And I got some Weymss piggy banks,” I added, my voice rising. “For Valentine’s presents? It’s that time of year?”
“My God,” he said, his voice cracking with grief. “Are you trying to break me? Is Tessa paying you to destroy my credit rating as well as my credibility?”
Too late. He’d obviously reached the photo frames, my Achilles’ heel.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said in a small voice.
He thrust the list at me. “Evie, Evie, Evie, not wedding photographs again.” Max clapped a hand to his head. “Do I even have to look at them? What freaks have you snapped up this time?”
Damn, I thought. Max would choose this one afternoon to roll back in after lunch. The one afternoon Lots Road Auctions decided to deliver late. He never noticed half my purchases normally; I was an expert at buying, staging, and reselling before he even noticed the shop looked different.
“They’re good old frames!” I argued. “And if they’re already filled with wedding photos, it’ll give people looking for wedding presents the buying feeling!”
“Hello?! These freaks would put anyone off getting hitched!” Max reached into the box and shoved the top frame under my nose with such urgency that his leather jacket squeaked. “Four eyes and not one of them looking in the same direction!”
If I was being honest, the frames weren’t that special, but I felt so sorry for someone’s great-grandparents, dressed up in their finest and looking so happy, being sneered at and passed over. Chucked onto the unsold pile. What was twenty quid a go?
Plus hammer tax.
Plus VAT.
I swallowed, and wished Alice would hurry up. I had a bad feeling about where this was going.
Max regarded me with a mixture of frustration and despair. “I’m beginning to think I should start going to auctions myself.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed, before I could bite my tongue.
Max hadn’t been to an auction within fifty miles of the shop in five years, on account of his chaise-longue-lizard reputation going before him, and the prices rising accordingly as all the dealers in the room abandoned their bickering and clubbed together in order to see off Max Shacks, the Housewife’s Choice. That was the whole point of having an assistant to do his bidding. Literally.
“It’s all perfectly salable.” I swiped the list of out his hands before he got to the moth-eaten sampler that had made me go all Jane Austen. “If I wanted it, someone else will.”
“That’s the trouble, though, isn’t it? You’ve got more of my stock in your flat than I have in here.” He paused in his ranting and asked curiously, “Speaking of which, did you ever manage to get that knackered Chinese silk dressing screen up your stairs?”
“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. “It’s giving my boudoir a very Edwardian ambience.”
Max snorted. “You are still living in that sixties block of flats round the back of Fulham Palace football ground, aren’t you?”
“It’s not where you are, it’s . . . what you have around you. It makes me feel Edwardian.”
He sighed and looked down at the list. “Evie, this really isn’t the week to be filling the shop with tat because you feel sorry for it. I’ve got the accountant coming in—we’re living in hard times. . . .”
I’d heard this one before as well, and was easily distracted by the doorbell jangling. The deliveryman had returned. He was backing in under the weight of my final mercy buy, and when he turned round, giving me a full view of what I’d bought, I blanched.
“I know, I know. Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll make you some coffee?” I gabbled, hustling Max toward the tiny office in the back.
Too late. Hearing the bell jingle, Max turned round and staggered back against an Arts and Crafts bookcase in shock.
“Where’d you want this, mat...
Présentation de l'éditeur :
One
Everyone has a weakness. Some people have a weakness for champagne cocktails. Or older men with French accents.
My weakness is old French champagne glasses. Preferably ones that have seen a bit of après-midnight action. Or English pub glasses with real Victorian air bubbles, or those 1950s Babycham glasses with the cute little faun.
Any kind of glasses, actually, they don’t have to match.
Old sunglasses too, come to think of it. Also, gloves (satin evening ones, especially), vintage wedding photos, fountain pens, trophies for long-forgotten tournaments, postcards ...
Okay, fine.
My name is Evie Nicholson, and I am addicted to The Past.
“A child’s teddy bear, circa 1935.” Pause. “Missing one eye. And left arm.”
Max looked up from the printout the auctioneer had enclosed with the delivery, and fixed me with his best withering gaze. It wasn’t the one he used to persuade rich Chelsea wives to buy chaise longues they didn’t strictly need. It was astonishing what Max could sell, simply by draping his lanky frame over it and flashing his Heathcliff eyes. Only now they were looking less Come to bed, Cathy and more I’m going to burn down your house and do something unspeakable to your puppy.
“Would you please explain why you bought a one-armed blind teddy, the stuff of pure childhood nightmares?” he inquired.
“He’s a Steiff, and he was going for a tenner,” I muttered, picking the bear out of the delivery box.
Up close, he was a bit . . . mangy. When I’d spotted him in a box in the salesroom, all I’d seen was his threadbare nose, the fur worn away by thousands of kisses from his sailor-suited owners. I’d seen T-strap shoes and nursery teas and nannies with starched aprons. This brave little bear had once had pride of place in a smart London nursery; I couldn’t stand seeing him waved around by some unfeeling porter, unwanted. He was worth one bid, surely?
“You paid a tenner,” repeated Max, “for something even the moths have moved out of?”
I tweaked the bear’s wonky limbs into an appealing hug. “Someone’s obviously loved him. He deserves a good retirement home.”
“Someone loved Adolf Hitler, but that doesn’t mean I’d be happy to fork out real money to sell him in my shop. With or without eyes.” Max shook the paper again, and it opened up to another three pages. He let out a strangled squeak of horror.
Three pages! I bit my lip, and propped the bear on a bookshelf. I didn’t remember buying quite so much. I’d gone in there with my catalogue strictly marked up and sat on my hands for loads of amazing bargains.
“Honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks,” I said. “I’ll pay for some of those myself. I can always eBay what—”
Max’s hands flew up as if he were warding off evil spirits. “Don’t say that word in this shop!” he roared.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“Oh, God.” He hunched his narrow shoulders and closed his eyes, squeezing his hand over his forehead in theatrical despair. “We’re going to have to have The Talk again, Evie. Where shall I begin? With the fact that one man’s junk is nearly always another man’s junk?”
“But—”
“There is a difference between collectibles, and dust collectors,” he began with vicarlike relish. “To succeed in antiques, you’ve got to ignore the item and focus on the person you can sell it to. . . .”
I clamped my lips shut. This was a major bone of contention between Max and me, but for the purpose of filling in the ten minutes until my sister, Alice, galloped to my rescue, I decided to let him do his routine. Antiques for me were all about the lives they’d once been part of. I loved the whispers of the past they carried, the proof that those period films had once been real life. Max, on the other hand, was all about the money. He obsessed about the covert movement of valuables from one wealthy family to another like someone studying the Premiership football-team transfer market, but with Sheraton dining sets instead of soccer players.
His shop in Chelsea, where I worked and he flounced about, provided a small taxable income, most of which was snapped up by his ex-wife, Tessa, but Max’s real work was discreetly acquiring treasures from the impoverished English aristocracy and finding new homes for them in Cheshire, New England, or the millionaires’ mansions on the outskirts of London. A bit like Robin Hood, except he was the only one who made any money, and I was the one who wore the tights.
“Your problem is that you only ever buy for yourself,” he droned on, “and you’re hardly the most discerning—”
“That’s not fair!” I protested. “I spotted some Chanel costume brooches for Mrs. Herriot-Scott. Big camellias, genuine, in an old biscuit tin—no one else bothered to check it.”
I didn’t add that I’d only opened it because I was a sucker for lockets concealing wartime sweethearts, and you only found those by trawling the depths of general house-clearance boxes. And biscuit tins.
Max ground to an abrupt halt at the mention of Mrs. Herriot-Scott, one of his favorite clients. We loved her, and her insatiable desire for expensive plastic.
“Ah, well, that’s different.” His black eyes glittered as he calculated the markup. “What about that Georgian card table Jassy de la Mara asked us to look at?”
I glanced at the door and surreptitiously checked my watch. Max was on the second page, when my bidding had got a bit . . . well, emotional.
“The card table wasn’t right. Reproduction. But I picked up some nice cranberry glass,” I said.
Max’s face was crumpling alarmingly as he read on.
“And I got some Weymss piggy banks,” I added, my voice rising. “For Valentine’s presents? It’s that time of year?”
“My God,” he said, his voice cracking with grief. “Are you trying to break me? Is Tessa paying you to destroy my credit rating as well as my credibility?”
Too late. He’d obviously reached the photo frames, my Achilles’ heel.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said in a small voice.
He thrust the list at me. “Evie, Evie, Evie, not wedding photographs again.” Max clapped a hand to his head. “Do I even have to look at them? What freaks have you snapped up this time?”
Damn, I thought. Max would choose this one afternoon to roll back in after lunch. The one afternoon Lots Road Auctions decided to deliver late. He never noticed half my purchases normally; I was an expert at buying, staging, and reselling before he even noticed the shop looked different.
“They’re good old frames!” I argued. “And if they’re already filled with wedding photos, it’ll give people looking for wedding presents the buying feeling!”
“Hello?! These freaks would put anyone off getting hitched!” Max reached into the box and shoved the top frame under my nose with such urgency that his leather jacket squeaked. “Four eyes and not one of them looking in the same direction!”
If I was being honest, the frames weren’t that special, but I felt so sorry for someone’s great-grandparents, dressed up in their finest and looking so happy, being sneered at and passed over. Chucked onto the unsold pile. What was twenty quid a go?
Plus hammer tax.
Plus VAT.
I swallowed, and wished Alice would hurry up. I had a bad feeling about where this was going.
Max regarded me with a mixture of frustration and despair. “I’m beginning to think I should start going to auctions myself.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed, before I could bite my tongue.
Max hadn’t been to an auction within fifty miles of the shop in five years, on account of his chaise-longue-lizard reputation going before him, and the prices rising accordingly as all the dealers in the room abandoned their bickering and clubbed together in order to see off Max Shacks, the Housewife’s Choice. That was the whole point of having an assistant to do his bidding. Literally.
“It’s all perfectly salable.” I swiped the list of out his hands before he got to the moth-eaten sampler that had made me go all Jane Austen. “If I wanted it, someone else will.”
“That’s the trouble, though, isn’t it? You’ve got more of my stock in your flat than I have in here.” He paused in his ranting and asked curiously, “Speaking of which, did you ever manage to get that knackered Chinese silk dressing screen up your stairs?”
“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. “It’s giving my boudoir a very Edwardian ambience.”
Max snorted. “You are still living in that sixties block of flats round the back of Fulham Palace football ground, aren’t you?”
“It’s not where you are, it’s . . . what you have around you. It makes me feel Edwardian.”
He sighed and looked down at the list. “Evie, this really isn’t the week to be filling the shop with tat because you feel sorry for it. I’ve got the accountant coming in—we’re living in hard times. . . .”
I’d heard this one before as well, and was easily distracted by the doorbell jangling. The deliveryman had returned. He was backing in under the weight of my final mercy buy, and when he turned round, giving me a full view of what I’d bought, I blanched.
“I know, I know. Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll make you some coffee?” I gabbled, hustling Max toward the tiny office in the back.
Too late. Hearing the bell jingle, Max turned round and staggered back against an Arts and Crafts bookcase in shock.
“Where’d you want this, mat...
The steps of a charmingly complex dance—Scotland’s famous reel—are at the heart of Hester Browne’s enchanting contemporary novel of two very different sisters whose dreams may come true at a romantic Scottish ball.
Evie Nicholson is in love . . . with the past. An antiques appraiser in a London shop, Evie spins fanciful attachments to Victorian picture frames, French champagne glasses, satin evening gloves, and tattered teddy bears—regardless of their monetary value.
Alice Nicholson is in love . . . with Fraser Graham, a dashing Scotsman whom Evie secretly desires. As crisply neat and stylish as Evie is cheerfully cluttered, Alice is a professional organizer determined to pull her sister out of her comfort zone—and who presents her with an irresistible offer.
As a favor to friends of Fraser’s family, Evie jumps at the chance to appraise a Scottish castle full of artifacts and heirlooms. What could be more thrilling than roaming the halls of Kettlesheer and uncovering the McAndrews’ family treasures—and dusty secrets?
But crossing paths with moody heir Robert McAndrew has Evie assessing what she wants the most . . . and at an upcoming candlelight gala, a traditional dance will set her heart reeling.
Evie Nicholson is in love . . . with the past. An antiques appraiser in a London shop, Evie spins fanciful attachments to Victorian picture frames, French champagne glasses, satin evening gloves, and tattered teddy bears—regardless of their monetary value.
Alice Nicholson is in love . . . with Fraser Graham, a dashing Scotsman whom Evie secretly desires. As crisply neat and stylish as Evie is cheerfully cluttered, Alice is a professional organizer determined to pull her sister out of her comfort zone—and who presents her with an irresistible offer.
As a favor to friends of Fraser’s family, Evie jumps at the chance to appraise a Scottish castle full of artifacts and heirlooms. What could be more thrilling than roaming the halls of Kettlesheer and uncovering the McAndrews’ family treasures—and dusty secrets?
But crossing paths with moody heir Robert McAndrew has Evie assessing what she wants the most . . . and at an upcoming candlelight gala, a traditional dance will set her heart reeling.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
- ÉditeurQuercus
- Date d'édition2014
- ISBN 10 1782065652
- ISBN 13 9781782065654
- ReliureBroché
- Nombre de pages368
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Description du livre Paperback. Etat : new. Paperback. 'What a delicious, witty story, I loved it!' Sophie KinsellaThe last thing Evie expects to find in the Scottish Highlands is love . . .When Evie Nicholson is asked to visit Kettlesheer Castle in Scotland to archive the family heirlooms, she jumps at the chance. Evie's passion for antiques means that, for her, the castle is a treasure trove of mysteries just waiting to be uncovered.But in each heirloom lies a story, and in the course of her investigations Evie stumbles upon some long-buried family secrets. Add handsome, gloomy heir Robert McAndrew and a traditional candlelit gala to the mix, and Evie's heart is sent reeling with an enthusiasm that may just extend beyond the Kettlesheer silver . . .'Deliciously addictive, feel-good comedy' Cosmopolitan'Funny and flirty, we guarantee you'll devour this book in one sitting' GlamourWHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE VINTAGE GIRL'I am off to buy more from Hester Browne!' *****'A sweeping romance that will have you laughing out loud' *****'A must for all romantic history lovers' *****'Funny, sweet, romantic' *****'Couldn't ask for more!' ***** A laugh-out-loud romp set in the romantic Scottish Highlands, perfect for fans of Jo Thomas and Holly Martin. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. N° de réf. du vendeur 9781782065654
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