Chapter Eleven – Oliver
OLIVER
Little Errand Boy
I f I’d known what she meant when she said those words, I never would have agreed.
To be honest, I’d genuinely considered the fact that Rose meant to make me her sexual sub, and I was momentarily baffled by the thought that I’d be all right with that. Her time constraints for weekends seemed a little wild, but so was our one-night stand, so maybe marathon sex was her thing.
But no.
Sadly.
Kind of.
As thrilling as the idea of Rose making me her sexual ‘bitch’ might have been for the few seconds I’d seriously considered it, the reality was far bleaker.
And, well. More realistic. As reality tended to be.
Which explained exactly why I was hauling two-hundred-litre bags of compost from her van to a nursery’s back garden as if I was some kind of delivery boy.
On the day where I’d agreed to her absurd compensation agreement, she immediately issued me with a one-week notice to help her out, after which she’d dropped off the face of the Earth.
If there was anything more terrifying than Rose Matthews running her mouth, it was Rose Matthews going ghost-mode.
My fear was not unfounded, given the first thing she’d told me to do today was take off my shirt and swap it for something easier to work in. I was woefully unprepared for manual labour, but in my defence, she’d hardly mentioned what she was going to have me do.
Now, I understood.
She wanted me to be her little errand boy.
“That’s it, Micky,” Rose said gently. “Be careful of the roots, okay?”
“The white fins?” Micky said, tilting his head and peering at the mess of roots on the plant in his hand. “Looks like a jellyfiss.”
Rose laughed—a soft, airy laugh that was unlike anything I’d heard come out of her mouth before. “It does look a bit like a jellyfish, doesn’t it? But they’re fragile, too, so you must be very careful not to hurt them.”
“Otay.” Micky nodded his head and tentatively put the plant down in the hole Rose was holding open. “Like this?”
“Just like that, then we carefully scoop the soil back into the hole.” Rose guided him to fill the hole back in. “You know how you give your grandpa’s old cat gentle pats on the head?”
Micky nodded.
“We must give the soil gentle pats too, just around the stem. Look at how nice Abby is tucking up her strawberry plant.”
Abby beamed. “I tuck in, Miss Rose!”
“It looks ever so cosy.” Rose wrinkled her nose up as she smiled at the little girl with pigtails. “You’re so good at this!”
“O’course. I wanna be juss like Miss Rose when I an adult!”
I wouldn’t suggest becoming Rose as a career path. She was a bit too whacky for it.
“Me, too! Me, too!” Micky said, grabbing Rose’s vest top with his dirt-covered hand. I expected her to brush it off, but instead she leant in and chucked him under the chin with her finger.
“She’s surprisingly gentle, isn’t she?”
I flinched.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Your Grace.” Tasha, the nursery manager, hid a chuckle behind her hand. “I didn’t mean to surprise you like that.”
“No, I just…”
“I understand.” She held out a mug with ‘World’s Best Teacher’ on it to me, and I quickly thanked her.
“A lot of people react this way when they see this side of her.” She peered over at where Rose had now shuffled down the line to one of the younger staff members and seemed to be explaining things.
“Her reputation for being the village wild child does tend to precede her, after all.”
“I wouldn’t know if it precedes her, per se, but I’ve experienced her prickly personality first hand more than once,” I replied, sipping the tea. “I was somewhat strongarmed into coming today, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
Tasha laughed. “You aren’t the first one. Sometimes it’s Shaun, sometimes it’s Jake, and sometimes she bypasses them entirely and convinces her fellow allotmenteers to volunteer their teens for a few hours. Work experience, she called it last time.”
“Who are Shaun and Jake?”
“Oh, I thought you might know them, Your Grace. Jake is Rose’s younger brother.”
Why was I relieved to hear that?
“And Shaun is her childhood best friend. They’re quite inseparable.”
Never mind.
“He’s a police officer and the one who usually keeps her out of trouble,” Tasha said with a grin. “So, of course, the kids doubly love it when he comes. He often brings his car—oh, with permission, of course.”
“I see,” I said coolly. “Well, Rose and I aren’t close enough for me to know about her acquaintances outside of our business together.”
She eyed me for a second before looking away once more.
I didn’t like that look. “What was that look for?”
“Nothing at all, Your Grace.”
I still wasn’t used to being called that. Would that ever happen?
“Mm,” I replied. “Does Rose often come and do this?”
“Garden with the children? Yes, about once a month, even during the winter. She refuses to accept payment for it, too. She says seeing the kids learn about the outdoors and get their hands dirty is payment enough.”
That… sounded a lot like the Rose I knew, actually.
I cast my gaze across the outdoor garden space. It was a relatively sizable, fenced area with raised beds, a small greenhouse, and various other coloured pots and planters. “It’s a lovely garden. It must have taken you a while to get it like this.”
“Oh, not really.” Tasha touched her hand to her cheek. “It was sponsored by the late duke and Rose, after all.”
I paused. “It was?”
“Gosh, didn’t you know?” She looked over at me. “Hmm, I suppose not. I did hear that you and your grandfather weren’t very close.”
“You heard correctly.”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t my place to say.”
I waved my hand dismissively. “It’s no secret that we didn’t always get along. Will you tell me about the garden?”
“Oh, yes, of course. We’re very indebted to your grandfather,” she said.
“It was about five years ago when one of the local factories closed down—not all the children here receive government funding as they should thanks to bureaucratic nonsense, and a lot of parents expressed that they would have to unenroll due to them losing jobs at the factory. When your grandfather found out, he offered to sponsor all those children for a minimum of six months. It meant there was little disruption to the lives of the children and their parents could seek work without worrying about childcare or schedules.”
“I had no idea. How did the garden come about?”
“We run an after-school club for kids between the ages of five and twelve, and every year, the local primary school sets their year five and six classes a challenge to plant and raise a small fruit or vegetable plant. They naturally ended up bringing them here, and it ended up becoming a project for us all, too, when the little ones got interested. Lawn and Order has done the general maintenance here for ages, but when Rose saw what we were doing, she… well, she went very… Rose .”
I didn’t know what it said about me that I perfectly understood that sentiment.
“Originally, it was just the vegetable beds. The shed was donated by a retiring allotmenteer, and many others donated old and excess pots and tubs. Your grandfather donated the greenhouse and sponsored the general build of the garden, including booking Rose’s company to get everything set up.
Just when we thought it was all over, Rose showed up with her van full of young plants and seeds and announced she’d spoken to the nursery director and would be going through the relevant checks so she could come by once a month to teach the children about gardening. ”
“And she’s done it ever since?”
“Every month, come rain or shine. Even in the colder months when there’s not much to be done outside, she has them growing things like onions and garlic that grow through the winter.
In really bad weather when she’s unable to reschedule, she’ll do indoor lessons.
” Tasha smiled softly as she looked at Rose getting dirt smeared on her face by a toddler.
“She’s a bit wild and weird, yes, but her heart is always in the right place.
She really does care. Which is why she’s waged war publicly on you and your plot to close the allotments. ”
Jesus. I couldn’t escape that, could I?
“Yes, I’m acquainted with the ‘wild and weird’ part of Rose,” I said dryly.
“Oh, you’re really not.” Tasha grinned. “She’s trying to get your attention. I’ll take your mug, if you’re done.”
I looked in Rose’s direction, and she was right, so I handed the empty mug over. “Thanks. I’ll go and see what she wants me to haul about now.”
I left Tasha laughing and crossed the garden to where Rose was sitting cross-legged on the soft bark flooring with four kids.
“Oh, you’re here. Good.” She got up and handed me a seed packet. “Can you sow these seeds with the kids? I need to make sure Roy isn’t massacring the strawberry runners over there.”
I blinked at the seed packet. “Do I look like I sow seeds, Rose?”
“Are you or are you not compensating me right now, oh great Duke of Hanbury?”
“I am.”
“So, sit yourself down and sow some seeds with the kids. Just read the instructions on the back, and you’ll be fine. I’m sure even a city slicker like yourself can manage it just this once.” She patted my arm. “Kids, make sure Mister Oliver doesn’t waste all the seeds, okay?”
A little girl with bright red glasses and pigtail plaits nodded vigorously. “Juss a couple seeds, right, Miss Rose?”
“Exactly right, Daisy.” Rose gently touched the top of her head. “Don’t forget your labels, either, or you’ll mix up your flowers.”
“Wight here,” a little boy with a plaster on his forehead said. “Daisies, mawigolds, sunfwowers, and nastytums.”
Nastytums?
“Nuh-stir-schums,” Rose said gently.“Das what I said. Nastytums,” the little boy repeated.
She gave him a thumb up. “Nailed it, Danny. Nailed it.”
He held his dirt-covered fist out and returned her gesture, accompanying his with a big, cheesy smile.
Rose turned to me and pointed at her vacated spot. “You. Sit.”
I had no choice. I was going to have to plant these seeds with these kids. Was this even legal? Didn’t you need police checks to work or volunteer with children?
Sigh.
I sat down between the kids she called Daisy and Danny and stared at the spread in front of us. It was all flowers, and each kid seemed to have been assigned a specific flower.
All right.
I could do this.
It was just planting seeds with a bunch of five-year-olds. How hard could it be?
“No, mister,” Daisy said, leaning over. “You hafta poke a hole, like this.” She stuck her pointer finger in the middle of my little pot until her knuckle was buried in the soil.
“Then you put seeds in.” She then proceeded to steal my sunflower seed and drop it into that same hole before covering it up. “Ta-dah!”
“Oh, thank you,” I said, taking the sunflower marker Danny handed me and putting it in the pot before I was told off about that, too.
“Mister,” the other little girl with a ponytail said. “What’s a shitty slicker?”
I blinked at her. “A shi—city slicker?”
“Miss Rose called you it.”
Ah. What she’d said just now. “It’s a… slightly mean way to refer to someone who lives in a big city.”
The little girl tilted her head to the side. “Don’t you live here?”
“I just moved here from London.”
Daisy gasped. “That’s where the King lives! And the pwincesses!”
“It is.”
“Mister, do you know him? The King?”
Ah. “Uh… I do know him, yes.”
Danny narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t beweive you,” he said, leaning in closely. “How do you know him? I wanted to ask him to make chocowate buttons free, but my daddy said you can’t just meet the King because he’s vewy busy and vewy important.”
“That’s true, most people can’t,” I said, planting another sunflower seed. “But some people can, and I’m one of them.”
The ponytail girl stared at me. “Is dat ’cause you’re a duke? Das what Miss Rose called you a mimmit ago.”
“It is. I’m the Duke of Hanbury.”
“Nuh-uh,” Danny said. “He’s old. As old as my grandpa! I’ve seent him!”
“That’s the previous duke. He’s actually my grandpa, and he’s in heaven now,” I explained.
“Is he an angel?” Daisy asked.
Debatable.
Not that I would drag these poor, innocent kids into that.
“He is. My daddy is, too, so that’s why I’m the duke now.”
“Oh, no. Are you sad, mister?” She gripped my arm, looking at me with earnest eyes. “Do you need a hug? Mummy says you should gib hugs to sad people.”
“I’m okay, but that’s very sweet of you to offer, Daisy,” I replied, softly patting her head.
She beamed.
“You’re nice, mister.”
I looked across at the little boy with spiky ginger hair who’d just spoken. “Thank you.”
“I don’t fink you’re the duke,” he continued. “You’re nice, and Mummy said the duke is a wotten bastard.”
Ah.
This was going well.
“You shouldn’t say—”
“Wyan!” Danny gasped. “You can’t say that word!”
Ryan blinked at him. “What word?”
“The last one—”
“Wotten!” Danny said, speaking over me. “It’s a mean word. My sister said so.”
Ryan looked at us all. “I fink that’s what Mummy meant, though. She said lotsa mean fins about the duke. Like, um, a wotten bastard, a wittle shi—”
“Maybe we should change the subject,” I said quickly. “And refrain from repeating adult words we hear at home.”
A loud cough came from a few feet away, and I looked in that direction to see Rose with her head dipped and her shoulders shaking.
She heard.
Every word.
And she was laughing.
All while I was being mildly harassed by five-year-olds.
How had my life come to this?