Read Online Eden Falls by Jane Sanderson - Free Book Online

manner of exotics would be grown, but the countess – concentrating, finally, on the new scheme and flicking through a selection of colour plates – had pointed at gardenias, orchids, camellias and ferns. There would also have to be a stove house and another for propagation, but these technical details bored her. She was content, on the whole, to leave Daniel to his own devices; she barely glanced at his plans, meticulously drafted on sheets of paper, before approving them. He found he rather missed his regular skirmishes with her predecessor. The previous Lady Netherwood had always questioned everything he suggested, believing herself a horticultural visionary. She demanded the same from her gardens as she did from her gowns: flounce and flair, dash and glamour. What tended to happen, after each long negotiation, was that he would have his way, and she would take the credit: this was their unacknowledged arrangement. The present countess, whose home before she had come to Netherwood Hall had been a New York brownstone, took a different view. What was a head gardener for, if not for making all the decisions? All she knew was that she had a garden that was bigger than Central Park, and a capable fellow whose job it was to tend it. He could do as he wished. Demolish six plant houses and build a new one? Sure! The cost was never a consideration. Thea Hoyland might have grown up on a limited allowance, but she had quickly adapted to an unlimited one.
    However, the Edinburgh hothouse engineers Mr MacAlpine and Mr Moncur appeared to think they might have to fund the project themselves and were walking towards Daniel like a pair of pallbearers in search of a funeral. Angus and his snails hid behind his mother’s skirts at their approach.
    ‘Gentlemen?’ said Daniel.
    ‘Aye, quite an undertaking,’ said Mr Moncur sadly.
    ‘You’ll be needing a rain-water cistern in every one of the houses,’ said Mr MacAlpine.
    ‘Aye. Welsh slate, sixty gallons apiece,’ said Mr Moncur.
    ‘And eight rows of six-inch pipes all down the central corridor, four rows in your side houses, six rows in your stove house.’
    ‘And ventilation sashes throughout.’
    ‘Aye. And a new boiler house. Your existing one’s entirely inadequate.’
    ‘Aye. Three, maybe four, boilers in a new brick building away out of sight.’
    All of this they intoned as if breaking the worst possible news.
    ‘And when could you start?’
    This was Daniel, defiantly cheerful in the face of their gloom. The two engineers exchanged doleful looks.
    ‘You’d like to proceed?’ said Mr Moncur.
    ‘Of course,’ Daniel said. ‘We’re none of us here just for the good of our health.’
    ‘Only, you’ll be looking at something over four thousand pounds for a scheme of this magnitude,’ said Mr MacAlpine.
    ‘Not far short of five thousand, possibly,’ said Mr Moncur.
    ‘Well,’ said Daniel. ‘Let’s not stand here waiting for it to reach six. Put it in writing, gentlemen, and we’ll take it from there.’
    They nodded, then tipped their hats at Eve and made for their motorcar.
    ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you, that they’re being charged a guinea a smile,’ Eve said, watching them. She turned to Daniel. ‘It sounds like a proper upheaval, though. All that knocking down and building up again. Can’t you manage with what you ’ave?’
    He gave her a reproving look. ‘That’s rich coming from you, with your ever-expanding pork pie empire.’
    ‘Can I ’ave a pork pie?’ Angus asked.
    ‘Not right now, Gussy,’ said Eve. ‘I don’t carry them under my ’at.’
    The child’s face fell. Now he knew there were no pies, he felt hungry.
    ‘C’mon,’ Daniel said, holding out a hand. ‘Come and see my fruit wall. Peach now, pie later.’
    The Harrogate branch of Eve’s Puddings & Pies was the fourth in the chain: the fourth and probably the finest, housed in an elegant Regency building near the Pump Rooms. Like the other branches – in Netherwood,