Chapter Two – Rose
ROSE
Nightmare Fuel
“ O kay, Mrs Graham,” I said, tucking my gardening gloves into my pocket. “Next time the wisteria needs pruning, please call me first. Preferably before you get on the ladder and sprain your wrist.”
The old woman giggled like a schoolgirl. “I’m sorry, Rose. I thought you were too busy.”
“I’m never too busy. Your wisteria is well under control, so it never takes long. I’m always happy to stop by on the way home.”
“Thank you, dear. How much do I owe you?”
I waved my hand. “Part of your monthly fee. It’s basic maintenance.”
“But you came by especially.”
“I was passing by anyway,” I lied, putting my pruning shears into my bag. “I won’t take any money, but if you happen to have any strawberry jam jarred when I come by to cut your grass next week…”
Mrs Graham chuckled. “The first big batch of berries will be ready this weekend. I’m sure I can save a jar or two for you, dear.”
“You’re a woman after my heart. If you weren’t already married, I’d marry you myself.”
“You’d have to be at least thirty-five years older for that, Rose.”
I clutched my chest. “Do you hear that? It’s the sound of my heart breaking.”
She laughed and waved me away. “Go on, now. I know you weren’t really passing by, and you shouldn’t be late for your next job.”
“Ah, nothing gets past you.” I grinned, picking my bag up from her front wall. “Don’t forget about my jam.”
“I’ll save you two jars before Bertie makes off with it.”
I wiggled my finger. “Tell that husband of yours I’m keeping my eye on him.”
Mrs Graham laughed, and I waved goodbye as I got into Ramona, my lovingly-named canary yellow van.
Well, it was bold of me to call it yellow. That was its colour in theory, but what it actually was, was mud-coloured with splashes of yellow peeking through.
Such was the life of a gardener in the countryside.
I only washed it to keep up appearances. It never stayed clean long with the mucky, pothole-ridden roads of our little village in North Devon.
Not that I was complaining. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Well.
Maybe the potholes.
There wasn’t a person in the world who wouldn’t unilaterally get rid of those car-wrecking little fucks.
My in-car concert was interrupted by the ringing of my phone through the van’s speakers, and I tapped the screen to accept the call. “What do you want?”
“Nice. Is that how you talk to your brother?” Jake’s scoff filled the van.
I thought that was me being nice, but whatever.
“It is when you call me in the middle of the day,” I replied. “Or just when you call in general.”
“Rose, you’re being a bitch.” He huffed, and the line crackled as the signal momentarily dropped. “Mum got a call from the Hanbury estate for you.”
“Hold on. Let me pull over.” I clenched my jaw as I scanned the road for a spot to pull in and tucked my van into a small layby. “What do those pompous pricks want?”
“She said they didn’t say exactly, but it looks like the new duke has finally moved in.”
“It’s so nice of him to grace us with his noble presence after six long months of pretending our village doesn’t exist.”
“Maybe you should have someone else contact them in your stead.”
“Nonsense. I can be professional,” I replied flatly. “As long as they don’t want to hire me. I’d rather let you cut my head off with my strimmer than work there.”
“That’s a tempting offer,” my brother said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
Ugh. This brat . “It’s probably about the allotment. I’m pretty sure I told Old Man Bruce that if his master ever tried to hire me again, I’d set his shed on fire.”
“Well, it’ll be about the allotment. Bruce knows you’re just about crazy enough to do it, so he wouldn’t dare.”
Maybe.
Despite his questionable choice of employer, I actually liked the old geezer, and we’d had a merry old time organising the naked allotment calendar last year. Also, I was a gardener, and my shed was my life.
I’d be extremely upset if I couldn’t make a cup of coffee at the allotment anymore.
“I need to talk to Bruce anyway, so I’ll call Hanbury House in a bit. Thanks for letting me know,” I said.
“No problem, sis.”
“By the way, did you call the vets?”
Jake’s silence told me everything I needed to know.
“Jake. Call the vets. Get Bongo’s balls off. Stray cats are enough of a problem without your idiotic cat getting out and infecting the rest of the population with his stupidity.”
“Don’t be so mean to Bongo. He’s just a little ditzy.”
“He doesn’t even have the one brain cell orange cats are rumoured to have. ‘A little ditzy’ is somewhat of an understatement,” I said dryly. “Call Isa. Now.”
“Yes, yes. I’m hanging up.”
He wasn’t going to call her.
He was never going to call her.
He was an idiot.
I could swear I wasn’t that much of a scatterbrained prat when I was nineteen.
I huffed as the radio came back to life. It was a shitty rap song that made me want to stab myself in the ears, but it was still somehow better than listening to my brother.
The Hanbury estate .
Hmm.
That call had been bound to come sooner or later. I was the head of the allotment committee, and the sitting Duke of Hanbury owned the land the allotments were situated on. Since the previous duke had died six months ago, I’d been waiting for his grandson—the new holder of the title—to contact me.
I hadn’t expected it to take this long, though.
I couldn’t believe he’d only just set foot in Hanbury.
Although from what little I knew of him, I didn’t know if it was right for me to be surprised it’d taken this long.
Everyone knew the late duke hadn’t been on the best terms with his grandson.
He hadn’t even come for the old man’s funeral, and there was no doubt he didn’t want to uproot his entire life just to manage the family estate.
Would he even stay here? Or was he going to go right back to London when he’d seen to business here?
Ugh. I didn’t want to meet with him. The late duke had complained enough about his ‘disobedient’ grandson for me to have an unfortunate idea of what kind of a person he was, and it had nothing to do with the fact they didn’t get along.
The late duke had barely gotten on with anyone—me included. We’d only ever spoken because we had to where the allotments were concerned.
Then again, he’d just been salty that my dearly departed grandmother had rejected him back in the day for his best friend.
After sleeping with them both.
In the same week.
Granny had known how to have a good time.
I also didn’t want to think about why she’d chosen my grandpa over the duke. I could appreciate her decision-making capabilities without thinking into them too much, lest I end up giving myself nightmares.
But the new duke… Ugh. It sounded like he’d been here for all of ten minutes, and I had a bad feeling about it.
I’d lived in Hanbury my whole life, and I’d never met him.
If we’d crossed paths as children, it wasn’t anything I had any recollection of.
All I knew about him was that his grandfather and father had fallen out when I was a child, and so they’d stopped coming.
The ins and outs weren’t my business, so I knew nothing about it.
Not that it mattered. Someone here would know why they fell out, what the late duke ate for breakfast, and what he did at nine-twenty-two a.m. on the thirteenth of June, nineteen-eighty-two.
Such was life in a tight-knit community.
Well, it didn’t affect me either way what the new duke did or where he lived. You couldn’t pay me to work at Hanbury House, so aside from dealing with allotment matters, there was little to no chance of our paths ever crossing.
That was perfectly fine by me. I could live more than happily if I never had to speak with a de Havilland ever again in my life, and the new duke would be no exception.
There was a time and a place to mingle with the aristocracy. I had no time for it, nor did I ever wish to be in a place where such a thing might occur.
Which meant the past six months had been very, very peaceful for me.
I doubted I would get that kind of peace again.
Which was somewhat ironic, given that I was a harbinger of chaos—at least according to my mother. I usually tried not to listen to her, but sometimes, some things were just undeniable.
I could do without the ‘harbinger of chaos’ being a comparison to a cat, though.
I pulled up outside the Hoopers’ cottage and grabbed my phone, quickly disconnecting it from the van’s Bluetooth. I dialled the number I had for Old Man Bruce at Hanbury House and tapped my fingers against the steering wheel.
“Good afternoon, you’ve reached the butler’s office at Hanbury House,” Bruce said smoothly. “How may I help you?”
“Bruce, it’s Rose.”
“Oh, Rosie. Your mum passed on the message, I presume?”
Ugh. “My name is still Rose, old man. Not Rosie. Rose ,” I replied. “And no, Jake did, so assume I know absolutely nothing other than the fact that you called.”
Bruce chuckled. “You never used to mind being called Rosie as a child.”
“I’m not a child,” I said dryly. “To what do I owe the horror of a call from the esteemed cesspit that is Hanbury House?”
“His Grace asked me to arrange a meeting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss the allotments.”
“In other words, I should make sure I’m available at his earliest convenience, is that right?”
Bruce paused. “His Grace is remarkably like his grandfather in temperament, yes.”
“Then stop piss-arsing around and tell me when he wants to meet me.”
“You have such a wonderful way with words, my dear.”
“Buh- ruuuuuuce .”
He cleared his throat. “He’d like to meet you first thing tomorrow morning.”
“I’d rather not start my day off so terribly,” I replied. “Please inform the duke that I’ll be at the allotment at four-thirty tomorrow, so he can come to my plot and see me then.”
“Are you trying to make my life difficult, Rose?”
“No, I’m trying to make mine easier. It’s not my fault if that happens to make yours harder.”
“That’s not very convincing.” Bruce sighed. “I’ll pass on the message.”
“Thanks, old man.” I smiled. “When are you free?”
“Rose, we’ve discussed this. You’re too young for me.”
“And our age difference is a heartbreak I shall never get over,” I quipped. “I want to talk about the calendar. Will you help me this year, too?”
He chuckled. “Of course. Are you free tomorrow evening?”
I narrowed my eyes. I knew what that meant. “I’ll come and find you at the pub and buy you a drink.” Or two.
Or three.
Probably four, knowing this bloke.
“That’s kind of you to offer,” he said as if he wasn’t expecting it.
It was fine.
There was a very high chance I would need more than one myself after meeting the new duke.
“As if you weren’t going to ask.” I glanced at the screen on my dashboard. “I’d love to talk to you for the rest of the afternoon, but Steve Hooper’s grass is calling, and I must go.”
Bruce laughed again. “I’ll pass your message on to His Grace and let you know what he says.”
That was cute.
We both knew I didn’t care.
At all.