Pockets.

Real ones.

Big enough for snacks.

“I was just passing,” I said, shifting from one foot to the other. “Is that the pumpkin patch?”

He turned his head and peered at me out of the corner of his eye. “It’s the potato bed, Lady Hastings.”

Oh.

Right. Of course. There were no tell-tale monstrous leaves of a pumpkin plant.

“Gabriella,” I replied quickly.

“I’m sorry?”

“Gabriella.” I shifted my weight to the other foot again. “My name.”

He turned back to his weeding. “You’re my employer.”

“But my name is Gabriella. And there’s no need to use the title unless it’s in a formal setting. You weeding the potatoes while I attempt to hide from my father’s matchmaking attempts isn’t a formal setting.”

Miles grunted. “Traumatic, I’m sure.”

Actually, it was.

“Sorry, I’m busy. I don’t have time to talk.”

“Right. Of course.” I swallowed and looked down. “I’ll just leave you to it, then.”

He nodded, fully focused on what he was doing, and tossed a weed into his wheelbarrow. “You do that.”

I backed up away from the archway that led into the vegetable garden and turned, heading in the direction of the secret garden.

See?

Grumpy as hell.

CHAPTER TWO

“I quite like the gardener.”

Me and my cousin, Alexander, looked up at Aunt Cat’s random proclamation.

“You called him a ten-year-old yesterday,” I pointed out. “How can you have suddenly changed your mind?”

“Ah-ha. I said he was ten years old, not that he was a ten-year-old.”

Alexander blinked at her. “That’s the same thing.”

“It is not.” She wiggled her finger at him. “Don’t you have anything better to do than lounge around here playing chess? Do you not have a child who needs tending to?”

“Here we go,” I muttered.

“Olympia is at school, where all good ten-year-old children should be on a Tuesday afternoon in May,” Alexander said, moving his bishop and taking out my rook.

Bloody hell.

I sucked at this game, and he was essentially a grandmaster.

He would have been, too, if not for his birth right.

“Hmph.” Aunt Cat joined us at the table, scanned the board, and tutted. “No wonder you never win, Gabriella. You’re simply dreadful at this.”

“I know,” I lamented. “But nobody else will play with him because they always lose. Even Arthur, who actually enjoys chess, respectfully declined. I almost sacked him on the spot for subjecting me to this.”

“Do you realise that you’re losing, dear?”

“Yes, but I’m awful at it, so it doesn’t really matter in the end.” I moved a knight to cover my king. “And Alexander is apparently banned from the local chess club.”

He sniffed. “It’s not my fault I beat the champion. He’s lucky I didn’t punch him.”

“What did you say?” Aunt Cat deadpanned.

“I didn’t say anything!” He made his move. “He told me that it wasn’t right that a toff like me could play because I’d done nothing my entire life except go to Eton, learn chess, and learn how to fleece the working class man. I told him to shut up unless he wanted to see how hard a toff could punch. Check.”