Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 117740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
“Oh, you’re really not.” Tasha grinned. “She’s trying to get your attention. I’ll take your mug, if you’re done.”
I looked in Rose’s direction, and she was right, so I handed the empty mug over. “Thanks. I’ll go and see what she wants me to haul about now.”
I left Tasha laughing and crossed the garden to where Rose was sitting cross-legged on the soft bark flooring with four kids.
“Oh, you’re here. Good.” She got up and handed me a seed packet. “Can you sow these seeds with the kids? I need to make sure Roy isn’t massacring the strawberry runners over there.”
I blinked at the seed packet. “Do I look like I sow seeds, Rose?”
“Are you or are you not compensating me right now, oh great Duke of Hanbury?”
“I am.”
“So, sit yourself down and sow some seeds with the kids. Just read the instructions on the back, and you’ll be fine. I’m sure even a city slicker like yourself can manage it just this once.” She patted my arm. “Kids, make sure Mister Oliver doesn’t waste all the seeds, okay?”
A little girl with bright red glasses and pigtail plaits nodded vigorously. “Juss a couple seeds, right, Miss Rose?”
“Exactly right, Daisy.” Rose gently touched the top of her head. “Don’t forget your labels, either, or you’ll mix up your flowers.”
“Wight here,” a little boy with a plaster on his forehead said. “Daisies, mawigolds, sunfwowers, and nastytums.”
Nastytums?
“Nuh-stir-schums,” Rose said gently.“Das what I said. Nastytums,” the little boy repeated.
She gave him a thumb up. “Nailed it, Danny. Nailed it.”
He held his dirt-covered fist out and returned her gesture, accompanying his with a big, cheesy smile.
Rose turned to me and pointed at her vacated spot. “You. Sit.”
I had no choice. I was going to have to plant these seeds with these kids. Was this even legal? Didn’t you need police checks to work or volunteer with children?
Sigh.
I sat down between the kids she called Daisy and Danny and stared at the spread in front of us. It was all flowers, and each kid seemed to have been assigned a specific flower.
All right.
I could do this.
It was just planting seeds with a bunch of five-year-olds. How hard could it be?
“No, mister,” Daisy said, leaning over. “You hafta poke a hole, like this.” She stuck her pointer finger in the middle of my little pot until her knuckle was buried in the soil. “Then you put seeds in.” She then proceeded to steal my sunflower seed and drop it into that same hole before covering it up. “Ta-dah!”
“Oh, thank you,” I said, taking the sunflower marker Danny handed me and putting it in the pot before I was told off about that, too.
“Mister,” the other little girl with a ponytail said. “What’s a shitty slicker?”
I blinked at her. “A shi—city slicker?”
“Miss Rose called you it.”
Ah. What she’d said just now. “It’s a… slightly mean way to refer to someone who lives in a big city.”
The little girl tilted her head to the side. “Don’t you live here?”
“I just moved here from London.”
Daisy gasped. “That’s where the King lives! And the pwincesses!”
“It is.”
“Mister, do you know him? The King?”
Ah. “Uh… I do know him, yes.”
Danny narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t beweive you,” he said, leaning in closely. “How do you know him? I wanted to ask him to make chocowate buttons free, but my daddy said you can’t just meet the King because he’s vewy busy and vewy important.”
“That’s true, most people can’t,” I said, planting another sunflower seed. “But some people can, and I’m one of them.”
The ponytail girl stared at me. “Is dat ’cause you’re a duke? Das what Miss Rose called you a mimmit ago.”
“It is. I’m the Duke of Hanbury.”
“Nuh-uh,” Danny said. “He’s old. As old as my grandpa! I’ve seent him!”
“That’s the previous duke. He’s actually my grandpa, and he’s in heaven now,” I explained.
“Is he an angel?” Daisy asked.
Debatable.
Not that I would drag these poor, innocent kids into that.
“He is. My daddy is, too, so that’s why I’m the duke now.”
“Oh, no. Are you sad, mister?” She gripped my arm, looking at me with earnest eyes. “Do you need a hug? Mummy says you should gib hugs to sad people.”
“I’m okay, but that’s very sweet of you to offer, Daisy,” I replied, softly patting her head.
She beamed.
“You’re nice, mister.”
I looked across at the little boy with spiky ginger hair who’d just spoken. “Thank you.”
“I don’t fink you’re the duke,” he continued. “You’re nice, and Mummy said the duke is a wotten bastard.”
Ah.
This was going well.
“You shouldn’t say—”
“Wyan!” Danny gasped. “You can’t say that word!”
Ryan blinked at him. “What word?”
“The last one—”
“Wotten!” Danny said, speaking over me. “It’s a mean word. My sister said so.”
Ryan looked at us all. “I fink that’s what Mummy meant, though. She said lotsa mean fins about the duke. Like, um, a wotten bastard, a wittle shi—”