The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,89
time, which I didn’t like in the least.
‘You’re so dark, you could be foreign. Where you from?’
‘Merchester,’ I said coldly. ‘It’s noted for the dark Latin good looks of its inhabitants.’
He gave me another baffled look and abandoned this tack. If there were any brains left in the Vane family, he hadn’t inherited much of a share of them.
‘I got a copy of that book, though I’ve not read all of it yet – I don’t do much reading.’
‘You astonish me.’
I remembered what the shopkeeper had said when Treena bought hers and was dying to ask him if he’d paid for his copy or not. I had to clamp my lips together.
‘There’s a whole chapter on treasure that’s hidden in the valley, there for the taking, if you can find it,’ he said with more enthusiasm. ‘’Course, everyone knows those daft tales about fairy gold hidden up by the waterfall, but maybe there’s more to it.’
‘There wasn’t much more to the one about hidden gold at Sixpenny Cottage, though, was there? It was just a few silver sixpences and some old copper coins.’
‘Well, more fool them for thinking an old skinflint living in a hovel up in the woods would have any gold to hide,’ he said. ‘But these days, with metal detectors, people are turning up good stuff all the time. Me and my mates have got them, but we haven’t found much yet except rusty nails and the like. I might try those old ruins, before they start to dig it all up.’
‘The monastic ruins?’ I exclaimed, startled. ‘I really wouldn’t, because you’ll be caught and prosecuted. Anyway, the monks moved to another monastery after only a couple of years, so they’ll have taken anything of value with them.’
Wayne looked unconvinced, but said, ‘That pirate that bought Old Grace Hall probably came back dripping with treasure.’
‘I really don’t think so,’ I said dismissively. ‘But I’m sure the house has been searched several times over the centuries since, so anything hidden there would have been found.’
‘Unless he was cunning and it’s out in the garden somewhere,’ he suggested.
‘Not in the Grace Garden, it isn’t. That wasn’t created until the seventeenth century and this rose garden was where they kept the hens and pigs till long after that.’
He looked first dampened and then wary as James suddenly came round the curve of the path.
‘What are you doing skulking about there, young Wayne?’ he demanded.
‘Just talking to the new gardener, like. Warning her what a curmudgeonly old sod you are.’
‘I’ll have less of your sauce,’ James told him angrily. ‘Ned said he caught you messing about in the stables earlier.’
‘I’ve already told Ned I was only looking for a bit of chain for a gate.’
‘A likely story,’ said James. ‘I’d take yourself off, before Ned spots you.’
‘I got a right to walk up a public road, haven’t I?’ Wayne said belligerently, but he slouched off, all the same.
‘He’s a bad lot,’ said James. ‘The Vanes are a dour and bad-tempered family, but at least most of the rest of them are honest and hard-working.’
‘James!’ came a bellow from the direction of the Grace Garden and he started. ‘Forgot why I’d come for a minute! They just rang Ned’s mobile to say they were delivering the signs, but they’ve brought a van too big to go over the bridge, even though he warned them about the access. They’re unloading them on the other side, so we’ll have to carry them from there.’
We all trooped out and over the bridge, and Charlie came out of the pub to lend a hand, too.
‘If we don’t hang about, we can move them across before the café gets busy and people start getting in the way,’ Ned said. ‘Let’s stack them on the patio behind Lavender Cottage first – I’m sure Elf and Myfy won’t mind – then we can take our time shifting them from there.’
So we did that, Charlie and Ned taking the bigger ones and James guarding the slowly diminishing heap by the bridge, as if afraid sign thieves would hurtle down the one-way road and steal them.
I had barely got back to the pruning when I was summoned yet again, this time to help carry in a plant delivery, though actually it wasn’t just plants; there were small trees and shrubs, too. At least this time they’d arrived in an open-backed truck that had been able to be driven over the bridge and into the courtyard next to Old Grace Hall, where