I even skipped a little.
Once I’d left the cobblestones behind, of course. Anyone with half a brain cell knew you didn’t skip on those. Walking was hard enough at the best of times. Unless you were a child—then you beelined for them because it was fun.
I smiled at a little girl who was doing just that on a cobbled section just to the side of the carpark and got in my car. Was Dad home yet? If he was, I wondered if he would have ten minutes for me to talk to him about my course.
I had to get it over and done with as soon as possible.
The drive back to Arrowwood Estate was quick and easy. That was one of the perks of living in the country—the only things likely to hold you up were tractors or livestock. It wasn’t unusual to see a road full of cows or sheep being ushered along by a farmer on a quad bike with his collies keeping them all together. Neither of those things had happened today, thankfully.
After I’d parked in the barn we’d converted into a garage when we’d opened a portion of the house to the public, I made my way to the house, clutching my keys tightly. The metal cut into my palm, but that only made me grip it harder.
“Dad? Are you home?”
Nothing.
“Aunt Cat? Dad? Alex?”
“In the library,” Aunt Cat said, passing me with two books tucked under her arm. When she noticed me looking at them, she shrugged and said, “I want to take up plumbing.”
I wasn’t going to ask.
“You do that.” I watched as she passed me on her way to the sweeping staircase and trotted up them, already opening the top book.
Plumbing?
You do you, Aunt Cat. You do you.
I walked into the library where my father was sitting in front of the fireplace reading a newspaper with his reading glasses balanced on the end of his nose. “Hi, Daddy.” I bent over the back of the sofa and kissed his cheek. “How was your trip?”
“Busy,” he replied, not looking up from his paper. “How are Adelaide and Evangeline?”
I wasn’t going to ask how he knew. “It was nice. We’ve all been busy lately, so it was nice to catch up.”
“I’m sure. How is Victoria?”
“She’s well,” I answered. “I’ll pass on your best next time we talk.”
“Please do.”
“When did you get back?”
“About half an hour ago.” He licked his finger and turned the page, tilting his head to read the top corner. “You had a phone call while I was out.”
I frowned. “I did?”
“Yes.” He finally looked up at me, and there was a coolness in his gaze that made me freeze in place. “From a…”
There was a scrap of paper on the table in front of him that I hadn’t noticed until now when he picked it up.
“Oh, yes. A Matthew Hornby. He said he’s your horticulture tutor.”
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
I was in so much trouble.
“Daddy—”
“He wanted me to pass on that you’d left one of your textbooks and your umbrella behind after your class this week.” He adjusted his glasses and pulled the note closer. “And if I would be so kind as to pass on that he hopes you’re doing well with your current assignment, and he’s looking forward to seeing the final outcome.”
“I can explain—”
“I don’t wish for you to explain, Gabriella.” He tossed the note down on the table and turned back to his paper. “What I would like is for you to leave me alone so that I can read my paper.”
My heart had sunk so far it wasn’t even in my body yet. It’d gone right through my feet, the floor, the surface of the Earth.
This wasn’t how he was supposed to find out.
“I understand,” I said in a small voice. I felt as though I was six years old again and I’d been caught smuggling biscuits out of the biscuit tin under my t-shirt. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
He didn’t respond, so I left him to his newspaper. I wrapped my arms around myself and went upstairs, almost falling backwards when I saw Aunt Cat standing there, hugging her books about plumbing.
“He’s so mad at you he didn’t even yell about the goats,” she said morosely. “I almost contemplated letting them out to annoy him, but I thought I might give him an aneurysm.”
I forced a weak smile.
“And let’s face it. Your brother wouldn’t know how to run this estate unless we wrote the instructions on the back of a vodka bottle.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I replied. “Do you think he’ll be angry for long?”
“Probably. Don’t worry, it’ll only be twenty-four hours before I do something to piss him off and then you’ll be off the hook.”
“I’m not rounding those goats up again.”
“You won’t have to, dear. I’m picking up the ducks tomorrow, and he still has no idea.” She winked at me, leaving me standing alone at the top of the staircase.
I sighed.
I hoped she was right. Surely he couldn’t be mad at me forever… could he?
CHAPTER FIVE
Forever was a stretch, but twenty-four hours was not.
My father had steadfastly ignored me for a little over a day. He’d made sure not to enter a room I was in and in the one instance I did see him, he did an abrupt turn and went outside.
I didn’t know he could hold a grudge like that.
I wished it had a purpose—I was still trying and failing to make progress on the assignment, but it was more to do with the fact he wasn’t talking to me than anything else.
I hated it when he didn’t talk to me.
There was nothing worse than my dad being mad at me. Even though I hadn’t meant to hurt him by keeping this a secret, I had, and it was eating at me to the point there was only one thing I could do right now to keep my mind occupied.
I had to garden.
I didn’t even care if Mr. Grumpy was out there doing his job. I would stay out of his way and pick weeds. I didn’t care. I just needed to be outside in the fresh air surrounded by the greenery, and maybe I’d get enough confidence to hunt Dad down and speak to him.
I pulled my hair to once side and plaited it as I walked down the stairs, then secured it with a hairband. I saw nobody except Emily, the housekeeper, as I made my way out. She ignored me on account of the fact we didn’t particularly get along anyway, so that was no skin off my nose.
Secretly, I hoped Aunt Cat would fire her.
But I was a petty cow, so there was that.
I slipped my Muck Boots on and gently closed the mudroom door behind me. I had no idea where Miles would be, so I went to the old horse barns we used for storage with every intention of getting a small wheelbarrow to throw the weeds into for the compost, but I pulled up short when I caught sight of a little pink one in the corner.
That was mine.
I leaned back against the cold stone wall. I remembered it, just about. It was my fifth birthday present from my darling grandmother, who was the Duchess of Bath at the time. I used to follow her around, helping her do everything from picking weeds to plucking dandelions for her tonics to harvesting fruit from the trees in the orchard.
Then she died.