Read Online Eden's Garden by Juliet Greenwood - Free Book Online Page A

was struggling to his feet, coffee forgotten. ‘He promised me he wouldn’t say anything. Not until I’d talked it over with you and we’d had a serious look at all the alternatives.’ Grabbing his stick, he hobbled rapidly through the open door of the sunroom, like a man with several hundred demons behind him.
    Rhiannon sighed, picked up the abandoned mug and followed him into a courtyard protected on each side by high stone walls. Along the borders beneath the walls, rosemary and oregano spread themselves beneath fragrant arches of clematis and sweet peas, and overhanging boughs from the neighbouring orchard.
    David was standing in the centre of the enclosed space, gazing down into the water trickling over a pebble-filled urn into a surrounding pond, filled with the rapid darting of goldfish.
    ‘Coffee,’ said Rhiannon firmly, placing the mug in his hands.
    ‘Thanks,’ he muttered, not quite meeting her eyes.
    ‘It’s not your fault, cariad .’
    ‘That Huw tried to make you feel guilty?’
    ‘I’m sure that wasn’t his intention,’ she lied.
    David swore under his breath. ‘Of course it was.’
    Rhiannon sipped her drink without replying. She could feel fear clenched hard like a ball in her belly. There was no disguising the fact that, whatever he might have promised David, Huw had been determined to get in there first when it came to talking to Auntie Rhiannon.
    As far as Huw was concerned, she had no claim on Plas Eden at all. She had seen the way her younger nephew regarded her if she ever mentioned her exhaustion during those last months of Nainie’s life. What had she to complain of? All she had to do was sit with an old lady, cook her meals and make sure she was comfortable. It wasn’t, his look would say, as if she had to work .
    Was that his opinion of her for all the time she had been at Plas Eden? Rhiannon hoped he was fair enough to acknowledge that after the accident she had walked away from a good career in the civil service in London, as well as her friends and her life there. As an adult, would it have crossed his mind that there could have been other – even more precious – parts of her previous existence that she had left behind?
    But even Angela, who adored her husband unquestioningly, had been heard to complain that he’d never done much with their two sons when they were little and seemed to have some idea that she sat around and did nothing all day. No she had to face it. In Huw’s mind, she was a middle-aged woman who had lived rent-free in Plas Eden for the past quarter of a century, occupying her plentiful free time with her little painting hobby.
    ‘We’ll work something out,’ said David, abruptly. He gave a wry grunt. ‘Bloody skiing, eh? If it hadn’t been for me stupidly trying to keep up with the others, none of this would have happened. I knew I should never have taken that holiday. Or at least just sat on a beach for a week.’
    Rhiannon smiled. ‘You’d never have sat on a beach for a week, cariad . That’s just not your style. You’d have been on the phone to me every five minutes or so to check the guests in the west wing were behaving themselves, and I’d never have had any peace.’ She eyed him seriously. ‘Anyhow, it was time you took some time off to be with your friends. You haven’t had a holiday in years.’
    ‘Not a skiing one, obviously,’ he returned ruefully.
    ‘It didn’t have to be skiing. It could have been anything. You could just as easily have been involved in a car crash on the way to a business meeting in London. At least you are alive, and you’re going to be okay. That’s what matters.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He smiled at her affectionately. ‘I couldn’t have done any of this, you know, unless you had been here to help me. And I don’t know what Nainie would have done without you all those years.’
    ‘You’d have hired a nurse,’ returned Rhiannon, stoutly.
    ‘It wouldn’t have been the same, and you know it.’