The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,134

between us, then put anything irrelevant to the garden back in the boxes as we went.

‘I’ll start with the oldest-looking pile and put my rejects in the trunk, and you put yours in the box. How about that?’

‘Sounds reasonable to me,’ I agreed, and we settled down to it, finding a few gems of information, but occasionally side-tracked by something irrelevant but interesting, like the contents of an ancient will.

Wills, marriage lines, inventories, lists, stray letters – the task seemed endless … as did Caspar’s bubbling snores from his favourite armchair.

Ned had just come back with mugs of coffee to keep us awake, when I discovered a long brown envelope that looked quite new and had somehow found itself sandwiched between a bill for the refitting of a merchant ship and ‘A Sovereign remedy for girth galls and Spavins’, which didn’t sound like a lot of fun.

‘Listen to this, Ned,’ I said as he put the coffee cups down. ‘It looks like your uncle Theo’s writing again and it says, “An account written by Elizabeth Grace, née Vane, to be given to her son, Thomas Grace, explaining the circumstances surrounding his birth.”’

I passed it across. ‘That’s definitely Theo’s writing,’ he said, opening the end of the envelope to reveal another, older one, inside. ‘I hope this isn’t going to be like pass-the-parcel, with ever-smaller and older envelopes.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘And that must be the Elizabeth Vane in Elf’s book, who ran off with a Lordly-Grace and then ended up married to your ancestor, mustn’t it?’

The dreaded Vane connection had reared its ugly head again.

‘I expect so. I can only think she must have had a charm about her that all the Vanes I’ve ever met have entirely lacked.’

I said nothing and he began to read what it said on the inner envelope.

I found this letter among the papers in my mother’s desk after her death. I saw fit to keep it for posterity, who I hope will not judge her conduct harshly. My mother was the sweetest and kindest of women and her sins were only those of youth and folly.

Thomas Grace

‘It’s dated 1849,’ he added, then gave me a quizzical look. ‘I don’t think I can resist reading this now, even if it’s not relevant to the garden, can you? Elf will be cross that we found it after she’d finished writing her book!’

‘It’s irresistible,’ I agreed, though little did he know I had a personal interest in it …

There were several stiff, crackling yellowed pages inside the inner envelope, closely written on both sides and not very easy to make out, especially when I was leaning over Ned’s shoulder.

‘Why did she use such tiny writing?’ he complained, spreading them out on the table under the lamp.

‘Have you seen the little books the Brontës wrote when they were children?’ I asked. ‘The writing is minute!’

He pulled out a pair of narrow, gold-rimmed glasses from his pocket and put them on: he looked a very learned lion now.

‘I didn’t know you wore specs?’

‘Only for reading fine print, but I forget them half the time.’

‘You should wear them more often; they make you look almost intelligent.’

‘Gee, thanks! Now, perhaps you’d like to get out of my light and sit down, and I’ll read it out aloud?’

He pushed the glasses up his broad nose, cleared his throat slightly self-consciously, and began:

I, Elizabeth Grace, once Lizzie Vane, have decided to set out this account of my life, which I will leave for my beloved son, Thomas, to read when I am gone.

I have survived my dear, kind husband by many years and only now, when I feel myself fading like the last rose of summer in the garden he created for me, do I feel this need to speak the truth.

My son is aware of my past misfortunes, but has never questioned me on the subject of this and the rift it led to with the rest of the family, the Lordly-Graces – and, indeed, the lasting estrangement from my own family at Cross Ways Farm. I have been as one dead to them since my elopement so many years ago.

I would like to tell the whole tale now, painful as it is, for I have known both the worst and the best of men, and would set the record straight. My husband, Richard Grace, knew the whole story and yet bestowed a lasting love upon me that I felt unworthy of.

Ned looked up. ‘The plot thickens,’ he said. ‘But it