‘It is good...yes?’ Alex’s aunt was saying, her voice softer and more gentle as she recognised what Beth was feeling.
Beth looked up at her and saw in her eyes the same love that she herself always felt for a thing of such outstanding beauty.
‘It is very good,’ she agreed simply, blinking back the emotional tears that had filled her eyes.
‘Ah, yes, now I see why Alex has chosen you,’ she heard his aunt telling her. ‘Now I see that you are one of us. This is my own design, adapted from an original, of course. I think that the vine and the grapes are a truly authentic touch for a glass designed for wine. My cousins feel it is perhaps a little too modern, but I have brought for you also some much more traditional baroque designs. You will love them all.’
‘I will love them all,’ Beth confirmed shakily, ‘but I cannot possibly keep them. I can’t afford...’
‘I have to go. I am to have dinner with Alex’s parents this evening...’
‘Please,’ Beth begged her. ‘I cannot accept this order. I must ask you to take it away.’ As she saw the look of incomprehension darken Alex’s aunt’s eyes, Beth spread her hands helplessly and told her shakily, ‘I would love to keep it, but I simply cannot afford to pay for such an order...’
‘Did I not explain?’ the older woman asked her, frowning. ‘There is to be no question of payment.’ She added firmly, ‘This is a gift.’
‘A gift!’ Beth stared at her, the colour leaving her face, her chin lifting as pride stiffened her body. ‘That is very generous of you but I simply could not accept. For you to give me such a gift is...’
‘Oh, but it is not from me. I am a businesswoman,’ she told Beth sturdily. ‘Not even to my own family would I make such a gesture. My finest glass—and my order books and workforce totally disrupted to do it. No...it is Alex who makes the gif
t to you. I told him that he must love you very much indeed. I know he is not poor—his grandfather was a wealthy man, who prospered here in his adoptive country—but Alex is an academic who will never earn himself a fortune. But who can set a price on love? Although at first I was inclined to tell him that what he asked for was impossible, when he explained to me that without this order you would lose your business, which you love so very much, I could see that your pain would be his and I gave in to the sentimental side of my nature. I am sorry, but I really must go. And remember, you are not to open my gift to you until you are together with Alex. You and he will know the right time...’
The glass was a gift from Alex. Alex had paid for all of this... As Alex’s aunt left the shop and headed for her Mercedes Beth stared around herself.
It was impossible for her to accept, of course. Even more so now that she knew Alex had paid for everything out of his own pocket.
Her heart started to race and thud erratically as she dwelt on the implications of what he had done.
His aunt had seemed to assume that their feelings for one another were an acknowledged and established thing. Had Alex told her that? ‘He loves you,’ she had told Beth. ‘It is very much a tradition that the men of our family fall in love at first sight.’
What if she was right? What if Alex had, as he had claimed, fallen in love with her...? She had been wrong about his motivation in trying to dissuade her from buying via the gypsies; she knew that now. What if she had been wrong in other ways as well? What if...?
The doorbell rang, alerting her to the fact that she was no longer alone. As she turned round she started to smile in welcome relief as she saw that her visitor was her godmother, Anna.
‘My goodness, this looks very exciting!’ Anna exclaimed curiously as she closed the shop door behind her. ‘Ward and I were just on our way back from Yorkshire and I saw that the shop lights were on so I got him to drop me off.’
Anna and her husband Ward were looking for a new house in the area, and in the meantime they were spending their time between Ward’s house in Yorkshire and Anna’s existing home in Rye-on-Averton.
‘Come and sit down,’ Beth advised her godmother affectionately as she saw the way Anna was rubbing her side. She and Ward were expecting their first baby and Beth looked a little enviously at her, noting how well pregnancy suited her. Of course, it helped having a husband who idolised and adored you, and who thought you were the cleverest person in the whole world simply because you were carrying his child.
‘That’s what happens when you get to be first-time parents at our age,’ Anna laughed whenever people remarked on how thrilled Ward was about their coming baby.
‘Of course I’m pleased,’ Ward had announced promptly once in Beth’s hearing when someone had raised the subject. ‘But no matter how much I shall love our daughter or our son, once he or she arrives, I couldn’t possibly love them anywhere near as much as I do Anna...’
For a normally slightly dour man it had been an extremely open and emotional thing to say, and at the time she had heard it Beth hadn’t been able to help reflecting on how wonderful it must be to know that one was so deeply and sincerely loved. She had gone home that night and had wept a little in the lonely secrecy of her bed, still denying to herself that Alex had meant anything to her.
‘Your order has arrived, then,’ Anna commented, and then caught her breath on a sharp exclamation of pleasure as she saw the glass that Beth had already unpacked.
‘Oh, Beth, it’s beautiful,’ she half whispered in awe. ‘I must confess when you told us about it I couldn’t imagine...I didn’t imagine just how wonderful it would actually be. This is exquisite...’
‘Exquisite, expensive and not actually my order,’ Beth told her ruefully.
‘Oh?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Beth protested, shaking her head a little in denial of the questioning look she could see in her godmother’s eyes.
‘I’ve got time—plenty of time,’ Anna assured her.
It would be a relief to tell someone exactly what had happened, Beth admitted, especially if that someone was her loving, gently non-judgemental godmother.