The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,97

said much the same – but I’m not that young,’ I protested, but she simply smiled and said she’d see me there at seven, and it would be fun.

And you know, it was fun, even if I did somehow find myself agreeing to don a fluffy all-in-one rabbit suit and hide the chocolate eggs on Sunday.

I woke next morning after a nightmare in which I was buried in a strangely warm avalanche, only to find Caspar lying on my chest with his head tucked under my chin. He is one heavy cat, but when I pushed him off, he seemed to take it as a gesture of affection and just lay there next to me with his paws in the air, purring loudly.

It was not quite light yet and I lay there thinking about yesterday and especially the Friends of Jericho’s End meeting.

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’s history! Of course, Mummy was furious and gave him a good telling-off and fired 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.’

‘And had 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 to me, 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 I still didn’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.

‘There you are!’ he said, as if I’d been having a long lie-in and it was now midday. ‘James