Page 173 of Rough Around the Hedges

He laughed and took my head, lacing our fingers together. “I’ll print you a map. You’re here enough, after all.”

What could I say? Eleanor bought the good bread from the bakery. “Please do.”

“I just don’t understand how the logistics will work,” I said, zipping my coat up a little further before returning to my sunflower heads. “What are you going to do to exchange rings? Neither of you can hop the fences at your age, and you can hardly walk down your allotments and pop through my gate, can you?”

George mapped the process out in the air with his finger. “Don’t see why not.”

“I told him it won’t work,” Susan said. “But he’s adamant. Besides, can the allotments even hold a wedding here?”

“No. Why would we have a wedding license? It’s an allotment site, not a bloody pub.”

“See, George? I told you.”

George returned to scratching Hades on the back of the head at his displeased mewl. “What about the party here?”

“What if it rains? Are we all going to sit in our sheds and greenhouses and communicate on walkie talkies?” I asked. “Besides, there’s no real community space here.”

Susan cocked her head to one side. “What about asking your nice gentleman for a bit more space temporarily?”

“He already gave us another two acres,” I reminded her. “Although thanks to our little market festival thing this summer, we seem to have an insane amount of interest, and I’m trying to decide how to break them all up.”

“What do you want from me now?” Oliver asked, leaning on my fence. “Susan, you’re not trying to extort things out of my wife again, are you?”

“I’m not your wife,” I replied.

“You sure act like it,” George muttered.

I flicked a sunflower seed at him. He caught it and chomped down on it, and I shuddered.

I didn’t know how he could eat them like that.

What was he, a bird?

“We’re trying to figure out the wedding, dear,” she said to Oliver. “I don’t think we can make it work at the allotments like George wants.”

“Oh, for a minute, I thought you were talking about our wedding,” he replied.

“We’re not engaged,” I said.

“Yet.”

“Still not engaged.” I plucked the last seed from the sunflower head and put the head to the side before reaching for another dried one. “Got any ideas?”

He wrinkled up his nose. “You could use a garden at Hanbury House if you’re dead set on it being held outside.”

Susan perked up. “Really?”

“Yeah, we have a wedding venue license. Most big estates like ours do these days. It’s one of the reasons I was going to sell—” He stopped talking when he saw my dark look. “That I rearranged funding,” he reworded himself. “There’s a big gazebo-pergola type thing in one of the gardens, and it’s often hosted weddings.”

I tilted my head to the side. “I’ve never seen that.”

“You wouldn’t have. You hyperventilate whenever someone mentions the word ‘wedding’ and ‘Hanbury’ in the same sentence.”

This time, I flicked a sunflower seed at him. Thankfully, he didn’t share George’s fondness for them, and it fell to the ground… somewhere.

Guess we’d find out where next year.

“We have a few different places a ceremony can be held. There’s one that’s exclusive only to the direct members of the family, but the others are open for everyone. It’s an area I haven’t gotten around to dealing with yet, so we’ve not held any for a while, but we can probably figure something out.”

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