“Oh, that’s enough.” I was going to have to bleach my flipping ears now. “I was hoping you’d say it was for philanthropic purposes. Hell, I’d take a PR relationship over whatever else it is you think.”

His laughter continued as we walked through the garden. “Show me what you’ve been working on. How’s the rose garden?”

“How do you know about the rose garden?”

“I used to cut them with scissors and give them to my mum.”

I stifled a laugh. I did, too. “How did I never know?”

“Because Margaret let me,” he replied, referring to our old gardener. “I used to bring her her favourite hard-boiled sweets in exchange for a few roses every time we visited.”

“Rude. She used to chase me out with her garden hoe every time she caught me in there!” I ducked under the archway that was filled with rose buds ready to bloom and fill the pathway with their gorgeous, sweet scent. “Mind you, I’m allowed to cut some roses now, and the current gardener chases me off anyway. Or he would if he had a hoe to hand.”

“What are you doing to him?”

“Nothing. Why does everyone assume it’s always my fault? Could it not be that he’s simply grumpy and rude?” I sniffed. “I am a delight, thank you very much.”

“Going around calling people grumpy and rude isn’t a delight.”

“I wouldn’t have to call people grumpy and rude if they weren’t grumpy and rude.”

“Fair point.” He stepped ahead of me and opened the gate, motioning for me to go ahead first.

I sighed.

Why couldn’t all men be more like my cousin?

You know.

Polite.

The rose garden was one of my favorite places. It straddled the line between private and public—the roses bloomed in two separate flushes, with the second almost always being bigger and brighter and better than the first. We kept the path to it closed during the first flush so we could enjoy them ourselves, then opened it during the second.

The rose garden was a labour of love for the Hastings family. For four generations, we’d planted roses that meant something to us. Each one was named after a departed member of our family, and after a few years of searching for the right one, I’d finally found the one to plant to commemorate Uncle Arthur.

Alexander had no idea.

He took a deep breath as the sweet scents of the first flush of the endless bushes here swirled around us. “I love this place. I need one at Bentley Manor. We just have a pretty sad looking climbing one leading to the koi pond.”

I grinned at him. “Convince Daddy to let me fully go to school for horticulture and I’ll create you one.”

“Done and done.”

Laughing, I traced the path towards the Arthur Bell rose. “No way. He’ll never agree. I fear I’ll have to bargain with him.”

“If he lets you get the qualifications you want you have to marry a future king?”