Page 59 of Double Cut

Her eyes narrowed.

“What I cannot live with is you being dishonored or hurt.”

And doesn’t that just make my heart melt?“Fine.”

“What questions do you have?” Sarus asked.

Evangeline swiveled to face him and her expression fell. “I don’t know anymore. I just don’t know.”

He stroked her head in a tender gesture. “We protect you, little flame. Do not resent us for it.”

“I don’t need to be protected,” she said. “Until I came to Ahn’hudin, I did a pretty darned good job of taking care of myself.”

“But you no longer need to shoulder that responsibility. You have us now, and we are honored by that duty.”

And doesn’t that make my heart melt even more?

“Fine.”

Evangeline didn’t remember what she ate, not that she knew what it was called or how it was cooked or the seasonings used to give it flavor.

Chapter19

“I’ve got it!” Evangeline crowed.

With Sarus working on something elsewhere in the castle, no one but Rosie witnessed her triumph.

She looked at the small box of seed packets placed next to her desk. With renewed enthusiasm after dozens of attempts to spark life in the strangely dead Ahn’hudin soil, she brushed a fingertip over the tiny green seedlings sprouting from the small tray of amended soil.

“Grass. We havegrass.”

She double and triple checked her records. “Rosie! Look!”

“Acknowledged.”

She pointed to a map. “I want this one hundred acre plot, as shown on my map here, tilled, amended to the specifications noted on page four hundred thirty-two of my journal, and irrigated to an optimum moisture content of sixteen-point-five percent. When the soil is prepared, spread sixty-two pounds of the pasture seed per acre evenly over the field.”

“Acknowledged.”

Evangeline suspected the Ahn’hudi government would be more likely to continue supporting her work if she focused on the indigenous population’s dietary needs first. Acquiring the tons of seed she ordered had required more than one lengthy meeting with the science master general.

“Oh! I need to contact him!” She took a breath and said, “Rosie, place a call to the science master general.”

“Commander Sarus has been summoned.”

She glanced at the robot. “Really?”

“Lady Evangeline Antonia Donal is not permitted to engage in unsupervised social congress with any male.”

“This is stupid,” she muttered. “It’s not like he can reach through the video screen and molest me.”

“And that is to your benefit,” Sarus commented as he entered her laboratory. His keen eyes caught sight of the green fuzz poking through the moist soil contained in a tray. “What is that?”

She grinned at him. “That is proof that Ahn’hudin can reclaim its depleted soil.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s grass, specifically a mix of orchard grass, timothy, clover and alfalfa—those two are actually legumes—and Kentucky bluegrass.”

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