Page 7 of Rough Around the Hedges

“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.

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