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“I suppose that’s true,” I replied. “Do you think he’ll be angry for long?”
“Probably. Don’t worry, it’ll only be twenty-four hours before I do something to piss him off and then you’ll be off the hook.”
“I’m not rounding those goats up again.”
“You won’t have to, dear. I’m picking up the ducks tomorrow, and he still has no idea.” She winked at me, leaving me standing alone at the top of the staircase.
I sighed.
I hoped she was right. Surely he couldn’t be mad at me forever… could he?
CHAPTER FIVE
Forever was a stretch, but twenty-four hours was not.
My father had steadfastly ignored me for a little over a day. He’d made sure not to enter a room I was in and in the one instance I did see him, he did an abrupt turn and went outside.
I didn’t know he could hold a grudge like that.
I wished it had a purpose—I was still trying and failing to make progress on the assignment, but it was more to do with the fact he wasn’t talking to me than anything else.
I hated it when he didn’t talk to me.
There was nothing worse than my dad being mad at me. Even though I hadn’t meant to hurt him by keeping this a secret, I had, and it was eating at me to the point there was only one thing I could do right now to keep my mind occupied.
I had to garden.
I didn’t even care if Mr. Grumpy was out there doing his job. I would stay out of his way and pick weeds. I didn’t care. I just needed to be outside in the fresh air surrounded by the greenery, and maybe I’d get enough confidence to hunt Dad down and speak to him.
I pulled my hair to once side and plaited it as I walked down the stairs, then secured it with a hairband. I saw nobody except Emily, the housekeeper, as I made my way out. She ignored me on account of the fact we didn’t particularly get along anyway, so that was no skin off my nose.
Secretly, I hoped Aunt Cat would fire her.
But I was a petty cow, so there was that.
I slipped my Muck Boots on and gently closed the mudroom door behind me. I had no idea where Miles would be, so I went to the old horse barns we used for storage with every intention of getting a small wheelbarrow to throw the weeds into for the compost, but I pulled up short when I caught sight of a little pink one in the corner.
That was mine.
I leaned back against the cold stone wall. I remembered it, just about. It was my fifth birthday present from my darling grandmother, who was the Duchess of Bath at the time. I used to follow her around, helping her do everything from picking weeds to plucking dandelions for her tonics to harvesting fruit from the trees in the orchard.
Then she died.
My grandfather, despite his visions, never had quite the green thumb she did, and it fell to my parents. My mum desperately tried to fill the hole in the house that she’d left, but Nanny had been larger than life in everything she did, and Dad had slowly taken over some of the gardening duties.
I pulled the old, child-size wheelbarrow from the corner and, wrinkling my face, swept out the cobwebs. It was filled with dust and debris that had accumulated over the years it’d been stored here, but I smiled at it.
Ridiculous, I knew.
But I was a grown woman and if I wanted to use a child-sized wheelbarrow to collect weeds, then by gosh, that was what I was going to do.
I put the wheel on the floor and laughed. In order to wheel it along I had to pretty much hold it upright, and that amused me the entire way to the part of the garden I’d dubbed the Dahlia Walk.
It was a gorgeous stone path with moss growing between each steppingstone, and either side of it were beds filled with different dahlias. Not many were in flower now, but the summer season was approaching, and the stalks that would eventually bud and bloom were creeping up through the foliage.
It was also a haven for slugs and weeds.
Why didn’t slugs ever eat the weeds?
Nanny’s voice flitted through my mind at that. “Weeds are just plants in the wrong place.”
She may have been right, but I still didn’t appreciate thistles trying to choke the dahlias.
I set my little pink wheelbarrow down and dropped to my knees. I should have brought a foam knee pad with me since I was wearing a dress and my knees were bare, but after a while, I became rather immune to the pressure I felt against them.
I knew I must have looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. At least I’d thought to grab my gardening gloves. There was nothing creeping about the spiny leaves of the thistle that had exploded everywhere, and while the Herb Robert was welcome in the wildflower meadow to do as it pleased, the same could not be said for the dahlia garden.
