The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,71
eye on you.’
‘Not to mention the press, as a grand finale,’ he said drily. ‘In retrospect, I feel stupid for letting it go on so long, too.’
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ I agreed, ‘but at least we’ve learned our lesson. We both realized we needed to go back to our roots and start again.’
‘True, and since we’re both gardeners, quite literally back to our roots!’ he said. ‘Here’s to us!’
We clinked glasses and his amber eyes were warm and friendly again, so that I was sure any last lingering doubt about me had long since vanished.
But deep inside, a little worm of guilt squirmed because there was something about me that, if he knew, might well bring back that look of mistrust …
I squashed it down: why should he ever find out? Why should anyone know?
We walked back over the bridge to the now familiar sound of the water rushing through its narrow channel and then cascading down into the pool.
Other than the occasional slam of a car door and an engine being started, or the distant plaintive bleat of a sheep, all was quiet. The sudden, silent, ghostly white swoop of a huge owl nearly sent me over the parapet, though, and Ned grabbed my arm.
‘Is that a lucky sign?’ I asked, slightly shakily.
‘I expect so. It’s lucky for you you didn’t go over.’
We parted in front of the café – asking him back for coffee might have sent him all the wrong messages, and undermined our newly forged relationship – and besides, I really wanted to read that chapter on the Lordly-Grace family scandal!
Ned strode off towards the Hall and I went round through the side gate to the back door and let myself in.
I discovered Caspar in the flat, curled up on Mum’s little velvet chair and he gave me a look and said: ‘Szkyckitpfit?’ Or something like that. It was clearly the cat equivalent of ‘What time of night do you call this?’
Before I went to bed I read all of that chapter, and the story was a familiarly Victorian melodrama of the ‘out into the cold, cold, snow and never darken my door again’ type.
Only this one happened to be true. It had all taken place during the early eighteen hundreds, when Lizzie Vane, youngest of a large family at Cross Ways Farm, went into service at Risings, as a sort of companion/maid to the daughter, Susanna, who had taken a fancy to her. Susanna had two older brothers and when Lizzie was almost sixteen, she ran away with the younger one, Neville, when he returned to his regiment, which was stationed near York. Neville’s regiment was then almost immediately posted to Portugal, where he was killed in battle towards the end of that year, leaving Lizzie expecting a baby and with no means of providing for herself and her child.
In desperation she’d returned to her family, who, being Strange Brethren, had turned her away and she’d had no other choice but to go to Risings. There, the master of the house, Horace Lordly-Grace, also would have had her thrown out into the snow, but his distant cousin, Richard Grace, happened to be dining there that night and, taking pity on her, had her taken to his home, Old Grace Hall. This sad story had a happier outcome than most Victorian morality tales, though, for Richard eventually married Lizzie and adopted the boy she bore as his heir. And he and Lizzie not only shared a love of the apothecary garden, but transformed the land between that and the row of cottages next to it into a rose garden.
That was interesting: my distant ancestor had not only loved the apothecary garden, but been instrumental in creating the rose garden I was working in now! I felt an unexpected sense of connection with her.
The family breach caused by this marriage appeared to have gone on for a very long time. In fact, it had sounded as if Audrey Lordly-Grace was still carrying it on.
I didn’t feel any sense of connection or affinity with her at all. She sounded very disagreeable.
I rang Treena after I’d read the story to tell her about it, and that I’d had a heart-to-heart with Ned that evening in the pub.
‘It sounds as if you understand each other now,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing like shared misfortune to bring people together.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. Then I asked her if she knew Cress, which she did, because Cress did teach at the same