Chapter 3
I drew the first anniversary ring from the pitch and checked the setting under my lamp. The prongs stood even around the sapphire, each one cut low enough to hold the stone without hiding it. I had six more rings waiting in wax and twelve finished bands lined beside my file.
Thomas, my husband, unlocked the workshop door with his own key. Rebecca, my husband’s childhood friend, followed him to my bench and looped the showcase ribbon around one finger.
“She needs to see where the mark goes,” Thomas said.
I kept the ring under the lamp. “She needs to leave my bench.”
Rebecca pulled the ribbon free. “I came to learn.”
“You came to be photographed hitting metal. You already did that.”
Thomas brushed a thread from his cuff. “The orders placed last night have to carry the registered name. Rebecca cannot represent the work if she doesn’t know how it is finished.”
“She doesn’t finish it.”
“That is why you’re teaching her.”
I took the ring between my tweezers and showed him the clean inside curve. One bad blow could stretch the band, shift the setting, or drive an edge into the customer’s skin. My mother had taught me to strike only after the stone was protected and the metal fully supported.
I reached across Rebecca and closed the shallow drawer that held my mother’s hand-cut steel punch.
Thomas opened it again.
“Put the ring on the block,” he said.
“No.”
The word left no space for him to soften it. I slid the ring into the leather pocket of my apron.
Thomas rested the drawer against his hip. “Your mother wanted this house to prosper.”
“My mother wanted her work identified.”
“She gave the mark to the family business.”
“She left it to me.”
Rebecca lifted the tool and tested its weight. “I’m not trying to take your mother from you, Audrey.”
I removed the steel block from her reach. “Then stop putting your name over hers.”
Thomas drew my mother’s sketchbook from beneath the order sheets. He opened it to a page of clasp designs, where my corrections crowded the margins and small cuts in the paper showed where my compass had slipped through.
“She drew for this house,” he said. “She trained you for this house. Do you think she did all that so you could stop production because your pride was hurt?”
I took the sketchbook from him and shut it around his finger. He pulled free before the cover closed.
“You used what she built to put Rebecca on a stage,” I said. “Do not tell me what she intended.”
“I’m telling you what the business requires.”
“The business requires rings that aren’t damaged.”
Rebecca placed the first production ring on the block before I could return it to my apron. She held it against the flat with two fingertips and raised the hammer.
“Not there,” I said.
She struck.
The blow drove the mark deep into the inside curve. The band kicked sideways, and one rim of the impression rose like a sharp lip. Rebecca dropped the hammer onto the leather mat.
“I barely hit it.”
“You hit it too hard, without support, beside the setting.”
Thomas picked up the ring and ran his thumb over the damage. “Can it be sold?”
“Not like that.”
“Then fix it.”
“To remove her mark, I’d have to thin the band past the order weight.”
“Don’t remove it.”
I locked the ring in my clamp. The raised edge caught my file on the first pass. Gold dust gathered against the teeth, each stroke taking away metal I had measured to the tenth of a millimeter. Rebecca watched the damaged curve flatten while Thomas checked the row of unfinished bands.
When the edge no longer cut my fingertip, the impression still sat too deep. I weighed the ring. It had fallen below the specification written in my own hand.
“It needs to be remade,” I said.
Thomas placed the next ring beside Rebecca.
“It leaves today.”
“I won’t put my work under a false name.”
He pushed the hammer toward her and looked at the remaining orders.
“You will make every piece, and Rebecca will sign every piece.”