“For heaven’s sake. In exchange for your travel money, I’d like a menu update, within a few parameters, and a new vision for the lounge.”
“God! Morag! Are you being serious right now?” Edie had a thousand thoughts at once. “You know, if we’re getting into the lounge, I have an idea for—”
“Justthe menu and the lounge. There have been developers sniffing around for years. I spoke to a man at the tourism board meeting. It’s time I sold, and with your updates, the inn will fetch a better price.”
Edie’s flutter stilled, leaving a vaguely sick feeling behind. “What kind of developer?”
Morag’s mouth turned down at the corners. “An outfit that does real estate holdings. Avista? Avessa?”
“Avissa,” Cosima said with a tight nod. “They’ll be most interested in the land, not the hotel. Is the building listed on the National Register?”
“Grade II. He said it’s likely as not they’ll leave the inn to sit and build around it, but if it’s up to a ‘modern aesthetic standard’ he may be able to convince his management to put in a higher bid, perhaps even start off a bit of an auction.”
I was only kidding.That was what Edie wanted to say—that she hadn’t meant it when she’d asked Morag to put her to work, that she didn’t know how to clean out and redecorate the lounge, that she had no ideas for the menu and hadn’t been prowling all over this inn thinking up a hundred different ways to apply elbow grease and make it shine.
Edielikedthis inn, but she didn’t like it for Avissa, a namethat sounded like a snake’s hiss. She’d set herself up to be disappointed again. She’d imagined too many things that could never be true.
At least with Cosima she’d known her imagination had gotten away from her. Her feelings about the inn had snuck up on her. “Listen, Morag…” Her mouth was so dry. She felt a little sick.
“Please do it.” Cosima cleared her throat. “Let Morag hire you. I want to go, and it’s likely notrecommendedto treasure hunt alone. There were plenty of clues today we needed both of us to solve, not to mention what might have happened if you’d been alone with that ewe.”
“What ewe?” Morag interjected. “Did Bert’s sheep get after you girls?”
Edie wrapped her arms around herself. She knew what Cosima was doing. Cosima was a good person, fundamentally, who believed Edie wouldn’t disappoint her if she could help it, so Cosima was pretending to need Edie so that Edie could go.
Thank goodness Edie was also impulsive.
“Okay.”
Cosima looked at Morag, who raised her eyebrows. “Okay? As in, yes, we’re setting off tomorrow?”
“It looks like it.”
Cosima grinned. It was one of her genuine smiles, the kind that made creases at the downturned corners of her eyes, and Edie’s inconvenient flutter moved inconveniently lower and became more like a heavy pulse.
But she could ignore that. She could. She could politely refuse to think about what it would be like to rub her bottom lip against Cosima’s grin and how her curls would feel against her cheek while she was softly biting Cosima’s neck. She was a grown-up. Ish. She would figure out how to go on this treasurehunt and be around Cosima and not let it turn into reckless hope.
Cosima turned in her stool to face Morag. “There are a few matters to arrange and clarify.”
“Oh?” Morag had slipped her arms out of her wool coat and hung it on a tree by the door. Now, she moved to the Aga to retrieve the kettle and carry it to the sink.
“Yes. We’ve paid you room and board to stay here. You will be transferring a portion of Edie’s paid stay, of course, to apply to accommodations on this trip, with any overages taken care of by Edie using her expertise on behalf of the inn. However, in my case, I would be paying my own way on this hunt.”
“I can arrange for a refund.” Morag’s eyes were actually twinkling.
“No. There’s something I want in exchange for my unused room and board.”
“Which is?”
“Access to the garden and greenhouse. And an account at the garden center in Grantham.” Cosima crossed her arms.
“You’ve already been stomping about in my garden.” Morag said ‘my garden’ like it was a patch of zinnias and a few herbs instead of a vast, walled space of sentient botanical monsters.
“As a guest I have, but I want real access. Pruning and digging and repairing access.”
“Fine. Don’t move the roses or use power tools during quiet hours.”
Cosima bit back a smile, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip in a way that confirmed for Edie that her casual questions about Morag’s garden on the day they went on their hedgehog walk had not been casual at all. Cosima had a thing for gardens. She was a garden person, and if she’d come far enough to convert her yearning to poke at Morag’s crumbling relic ofa garden into a formal request, it meant that she was feeling better than the version of Cosima in an HP Sauce–stained robe whom Edie had been so determined to help.
