Page 43 of Rough Around the Hedges

“You may not, but I also don’t want you climbing my fence and crushing my plants, so I don’t suppose I have much choice. Also,” I said, staring at him. “You’re too close. Please take a step back.”

He waited for a moment, still smiling at me, then did as I asked.

Slowly.

Painfully slowly.

Never mind making his life a living nightmare—it was going to happen to me, wasn’t it? Was this that bitch called karma?

I unlocked the gate and tugged it open, promptly turning my back on Oliver. I didn’t want to see him, so if I didn’t look at him, it was problem solved.

Mostly.

Kind of.

I was just gaslighting myself at this point.

I peered back over my shoulder to see Oliver looking around my plot. There was a spark of interest in his eyes. “Are you enjoying looking at my vegetables? I’m sorry I’mmerelygrowing them on such valuable land.”

“I’m not sure you’re growing them as much as they are just growing wildly.” He pointed to my pumpkin plant. “That thing is like something out of a horror movie.”

“That thing is a pumpkin plant, you uneducated swine.”

“Uneducated swine? I went to boarding school, you know.”

“And you still can’t recognise a pumpkin plant? What a waste of money,” I retorted. “Not that it matters. It probably won’t ripen in time for me to harvest it before you rip this place out from under our feet.”

He sighed.

“Don’t harass me into letting you in here just to sigh at me. I told you I didn’t want to see you. I’m not going to be nice to you, especially not here.” I turned my attention back to where I was working with my tomato plants before he showed up. “So, feel free to do your little bogus inspection, then go and torment someone else.”

“Ah, I only torment you.”

“Probably. Your very existence is a painful thing for me, after all.”

“Rose! You can’t talk to the duke like that,” Susan said, her face suddenly appearing on the other side of my tomato plants. “Have some manners.”

I blinked at her. “No. Go and look after your melons, Susan, or you’ll never get a chance to show them to George in the calendar.”

She opened her mouth but quickly froze, her cheeks flushing.

Ah-ha!

“What calendar?” Oliver asked.

“Oh, Your Grace! Good afternoon!” Susan regained her composure. “Have you ever seen the film,Calendar Girls?”

“I can’t say I’ve watched it, but I know of it. They create a tasteful nude calendar, don’t they?”

“Yes! Well, some plot holders got together and made a similar calendar last year, but with our produce covering our wobbly bits. We raised funds for the Youth Farmers’ group to go on atrip to North Wales this summer. They’re off in a few weeks, actually,” Susan explained. “And we’re planning to do it again.”

“But obviously, it’ll be our last one, since someone is shutting down the place we grow said produce. I guess the Youth Farmers will have to make do with a day out to the local park for a picnic instead,” I said, pinching out a runaway sucker from my cherry tomato plant.

Oliver crouched down next to me and looked at me. “That’s petty of you, Rose.”

“Is it? Good.” I turned to face him and tickled his cheek with the tiny leaves of the sucker stalk. “You mention it like I should care.”

“I was merely pointing it out.”

---