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I shook my head. “No, thank you, Arthur. Would you mind terribly seeing if you could find Aunt Catherine? She appears to have disappeared into nowhere and I was hoping she’d have materialised by now.”
He bowed his head. “I’ll see what I can do. I expect she went into the village. I’ll make a few calls and see what I can do.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it. Would you make a pot of tea for when we return? It looks chilly out there.”
“Of course, milady.” He hesitated. “Maybe you’d prefer a coat.”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you.” I closed the door behind me and shivered. There really was a chill in the air, and I wrapped my cardigan around me, crossing my arms to keep it in place. A peek up at the sky told me it was going to rain soon enough, and I hoped the rain would hold off until I was back inside. It was unlikely because, well, England, but it was always worth a little hope.
Bloody hell.
Arthur was right. I would have indeed preferred a coat.
Ah, well. It was too late.
The gardens were now closed to the public, so I was able to take the quickest route through the rose garden to where I’d left Alex and Miles to rebuild the fence. I could hear laughter coming from that direction, so I tiptoed across the gravel toward them.
I stopped every few steps to pull out weeds. Not because I wanted to help Miles in any way, but because I both hated weeds and I found it therapeutic.
It was like ripping off their invasive little heads.
Yep.
I needed some help.
Miles’ steel wheelbarrow was still out, so I threw the weeds into it so they could have a party with the ones he’d been pulling up earlier. I took a deep breath and reveled in the silence for a moment—this was one of my favourite times to be outside in the garden, right as dusk was approaching.
As long as it didn’t rain.
Even then, it was quite nice when it was that horrid misty rain that got everything drenched despite it being little more than a spray.
Resisting the urge to take a huge detour and go through the vegetable garden and see if there was anything I could sneak away from the plants and hide under my cardigan, I finished my trek toward the farm where Alex and Miles were laughing together.
All right.
Apparently, he wasn’t grumpy with everyone.
Just me.
I was going to start taking this personally if it continued. What had I ever done to him?
Fine, okay, sure, I could be a little annoying sometimes asking him questions, but I was just interested. Besides, it wasn’t like I was a five-year-old who asked the same thing over and over and over. I was asking intelligent, informed questions that would help me on my quest to getting my qualifications.
It wasn’t my fault if he didn’t like them.
Was it?
“Oh, Gabi, there you are.” Alexander wiped his shirt across his brow. “What took you so long?”
“I didn’t want to come back out,” I said slowly. “I also searched for Aunt Cat but she’s still not home.”
He frowned. “Where has she gone?”
“I don’t know, but wherever it is, she’s probably causing trouble. I’ve asked Arthur to see if he can use his skills to track her down.” I hugged my cardigan tighter around me. “Are you done? It’s getting late and the light is waning. It looks like rain, too.”
“Yeah, we’re done. Caleb came by to feed the goats and got them all locked up in the barn. He said he’d talk to Aunt Cat about getting this fence heightened and reinforced if she doesn’t want them to be on a stake.”
If the goats kept escaping, I rather feared my father would turn them into a steak.
“Mm,” I said, peering over the fence. As he’d said, Caleb had locked them into their barn and barricaded the stable door, if the pile of heavy stone blocks in front of it was anything to go by.
Caleb was the farmhand my father had demanded we hire after Aunt Cat went on her little farm animal shopping spree. He knew there was no way she was going to clean them out or even keep up with the most basic of chores, so he agreed that she could keep them if she kept them enclosed and hired someone.
Twenty-four-year-old Caleb had once worked for a local restaurant, but his grandfather had been a farmer. He’d always wanted to follow in his footsteps but after his grandfather had sold the farm in hard times, he’d given up his dreams of inheriting it. As far as he was concerned, this was the next best thing.
He also saved my father a lot of work by tending to his horses, and Dad loved him so much I once thought he was going to try and set us up.
