Page 75 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
Cress had arrived last, flustered and apologizing. ‘Mummy got terribly cross and upset while I was out at the riding school this afternoon! Wayne turned up unexpectedly and when Mummy went out to see what he was doing, he called her Auntie Audrey and was very familiar!’
‘Auntie Audrey?’ repeated Gerald, rather blankly.
‘He said he’d been reading your book, Elf, and now he knew he was related to the Lordly-Graces. Of course, Mummy knows about that ancient scandal, but it was yonks ago and I mean, it’shistory! Of course, Mummy was furious and gave him a good telling-offandfired him, so now I’m going to have to persuade her to let him come back, because there isn’t anyone else to do the garden.’
Her large and beautiful light grey eyes rested on me and she brightened. ‘Unless you, Marnie, could—’
‘Marnie’s got her hands full with the Grace Garden already,’ Ned interrupted firmly.
‘It’ll have to be Wayne again, then,’ she said gloomily.
‘Of course there is a whole chapter on the old scandal in the book,’ Elf said. ‘But I’d have thought the Vanes would have known all about it already.’
‘I expect they expunged her name from the family Bible and never spoke of her again, after she ran off,’ suggested Myfy. ‘Wayne probably had no idea.’
‘Have you read that bit, dear?’ Elf asked me, and I nodded.
‘Yes – the young Vane girl who was a servant at Risings running off with the younger son of the family.’
‘Then being cast off by both her own family and the Lordly-Graces, when she came back pregnant after her lover was killed,’ Myfy finished. ‘Like a Victorian morality tale, though this one took place in the early Regency.’
‘Andhad a happier ending, because Richard Grace took her in, then eventually married her and adopted the child, a boy, as his heir.’
‘When you think that that makes the Vanes very distantly related tome, too, it sort of takes the edge off the romance,’ said Ned.
‘It’s all too long ago to be worth bothering about,’ Elf said. ‘Now he’s found out about it, Wayne’s just making mischief, as usual.’
‘He’d better not try calling me “Cousin Ned” or anything like that, or he’ll be sorry,’ he said grimly.
I thought it was a pity someone had told Wayne his family were mentioned in Elf’s book. He’d seemed over-interested in the idea of hidden treasure, too.
But Cress was now asking us what charity the money raised by the Easter egg hunt would go to this year and we’d moved on.
And Istilldidn’t know how I’d been roped in to don that damned bunny suit!
But I couldn’t lie there in bed any longer, because it was now getting light and I wanted to make an early start on the top of the rose garden … though first, somehow, I found my feet taking me to the little folly, instead.
It was very pleasant, sitting on the steps with the early sunshine reaching in to run a Midas finger around the top of the marble urn. A blackbird was singing sweetly and a robin sat companionably on a nearby branch, watching me with bright, dark eyes that reminded me of Elf. I mentally gave it a turquoise wig, then grinned: I didn’t think that one would make the cut for a Christmas card.
When I finally got up, my bottom somewhat chilled and numb from the marble step, and went to fetch my tools, I met Ned in the courtyard, firmly closing the office door behind him on a loudly ringing phone.
‘Thereyou are!’ he said, as if I’d been having a long lie-in and it was now midday. ‘James and Gert are already here.’
‘They’re in early,’ I said and then added, pointedly, ‘And so am I!’
But it went over his head, because he continued, ‘James is in the Potting Shed, working on the new plant stand, and Gert said somethingabout neglecting her vegetables and wanting to pot up more seedlings for the shop.’
‘I can see you have your staff under firm control,’ I said, and he gave me a blank look, before suddenly grinning.
‘I’ve got something I want you to do before you get back to the roses,’ he said. ‘And when Charlie gets here I need him to help me put in the rest of the signboards.’
‘I think you’ll probably need a Private sign in front of the office, too,’ I said. ‘People are bound to try and look in.’
‘Maybe I should have a row of pots along the front to keep them at a distance.’
‘I suspect you’ve ordered enough scented geraniums to fill a hundred pots and several stone troughs, once James has potted them up and grown them on.’
‘That’ll take time, though. I need a quicker fix.’
