The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,147

to grab me, but even as I dodged behind the table, the door suddenly burst open, sending Wayne flying past me and Ned’s deep voice demanded, ‘What on earth are you doing here, Marnie? And why does Treena think you need urgently rescuing?’

‘Oh, Ned!’ I exclaimed thankfully, casting myself into his arms and clinging to him. ‘Don’t let Saul feed me to the pigs!’

‘Feed you to the pigs?’ he repeated incredulously.

‘It’s to stop me claiming any rights to the farm,’ I babbled. ‘I don’t want them, but he didn’t believe me.’

‘It was only a joke,’ Wayne said quickly. ‘And our Marnie was just visiting.’

‘Your Marnie?’ Ned said slowly.

‘She’s my late sister’s daughter, out of wedlock,’ Saul said, as if the words scalded his mouth. ‘I knew as soon as I saw her, even if she was sneaking around under another name, seeing what the pickings were.’

‘Ellwood is the name of the family who adopted me and I wasn’t sneaking round, I came here to work. Mum told me never to come anywhere near you and I didn’t intend to.’

I was still shaking, but though Ned kept an arm around me, he held me away slightly so he could see my face.

‘You’re a Vane?’

‘My mother was – Martha Vane, the girl that Elf told you about. But I don’t want anything to do with them or their precious pig farm.’ I shuddered.

‘Looks like you got rid of one Vane and hired another,’ said Wayne, grinning. ‘Only she didn’t tell you that, did she?’

Ned looked down at me again, an unusually bleak expression on his face. ‘No, she didn’t.’

Then he seemed to come back from whichever bit of inner Antarctica he’d been visiting and snapped, ‘Come on, Marnie, we’re leaving.’

He swept me off into the darkness, one arm clamped almost painfully around me, half-supporting me as I stumbled over the uneven flags of the yard and back down the rutted track.

Treena’s car had vanished and there was only Ned’s Jeep in the layby.

‘Where’s Treena?’ I asked. I couldn’t seem to stop shaking, and my voice wobbled. ‘What were you doing here?’

‘Luckily, I spotted her in the layby and stopped to see if she’d broken down. She said you’d gone to visit the farm but it was dangerous and since she seemed to be panicking because you hadn’t come back, I said I’d fetch you. She’s gone to the pub to find Luke. You’d better tell her you’re OK.’

‘I … I’m not sure I am OK,’ I said, ‘just very glad you came when you did.’

‘Your relatives didn’t look exactly friendly, but you didn’t really believe Saul was going to feed you to the pigs, did you?’

‘Not at first,’ I agreed. ‘But then Saul suddenly seemed to make his mind up to do it, and he was just trying to grab me, when you got there!’

‘But probably not to feed you to the pigs,’ he said, opening the door for me to get in.

‘Wayne thought he was serious, too,’ I said, fumbling my seatbelt so badly he had to lean across and fasten it for me. ‘He was trying to stop him.’

‘Saul’s a forceful personality; you both let him scare you,’ he said, turning the car expertly in the narrow lane and heading back to the village.

We were silent for a minute, except for the faint sound of my teeth chattering. Something skittered off into the hedge – possibly the remains of my courage.

‘So you’re the daughter of Saul’s sister, Martha?’ he said evenly.

‘Yes. She died when I was twelve and the Ellwoods adopted me – you know that.’

‘True, though you somehow forgot to mention who your mother was, or that you had any connection with Jericho’s End.’

‘I did mean to tell you, only at first we got off on the wrong foot because of that resignation letter. And then,’ I swallowed hard, ‘I wanted to tell you, but the longer I left it, the harder it became, especially once I’d realized how much you disliked the Vanes.’

‘I thought we trusted each other,’ he said, staring straight ahead over the steering wheel. ‘Yet all the time, you were keeping this secret from me. I suppose it was what Wayne was hinting about the other day … gloating over.’

‘I think so,’ I agreed miserably.

‘So no, you couldn’t expect me to be pleased to find you and Wayne were first cousins.’

He slammed the gears and shot over the bridge, then halted so suddenly outside the café that I jerked forward like a rag doll. He