"Yes. The, ah, the earth. In which things grow."
The farmer stared at him as if he'd sprouted a second head. "I use the soil that's in my field, Your Grace. Same as everyone."
"Right. Naturally. I wasn't suggesting…" Frederick stopped, took a breath and started again. "I apologise. I'm not very good at this."
"At what, Your Grace?"
"Talking to people. About vegetables." He gestured helplessly at the stall. "I don't actually know anything about farming. I have tenants who farm, and I review their yields in ledgers, but I've never…I don't know how any of this actually works. The growing. The harvesting. The..." He waved vaguely, "the vegetable parts."
The farmer's expression shifted; not quite softening, but losing some of its defensive edge. "The vegetable parts, Your Grace?"
"I realise that's not a technical term."
"No, Your Grace. It's not." But there was something that might have been amusement in his voice now. "Would you like to buy some carrots?"
"Yes. Please. However many is normal."
"A bunch is normal, Your Grace. That's tuppence."
Frederick handed over a shilling. "Keep the change. As an apology for the interrogation."
The farmer took the money, shaking his head. "You're a strange one, Your Grace. Not what I expected."
"I'm finding that's a common theme today."
He moved on, clutching his bunch of carrots and feeling marginally better about the interaction. That was progress. Little, awkward progress.
The feeling lasted approximately three minutes, until he tried to buy a meat pie from a stall run by a red-faced man with impressive muttonchops.
"How much for a pie?" Frederick asked.
"Sixpence, Your Grace."
Frederick reached for his purse and realised he only had pound notes and gold sovereigns, and felt his heart sink. "I'm afraid I don't have anything smaller than…"
"A sovereign?" The man's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. "For a pie?"
"I could take... several pies?"
"That's still not…Your Grace, I can't make change for a sovereign. I don't think anyone at this fair can give change for a sovereign."
Frederick looked at the golden coin in his hand, then at the pie, then at the growing line of customers behind him who were watching this exchange with varying degrees of impatience and amusement.
"Perhaps I could pay you later? Send the money?"
"You would send the money for a meat pie?" The vendor's tone suggested this was the most absurd thing he had ever heard. "Your Grace, just take the pie. Consider it a gift. Please. You're holding up the line."
"I can't simply take…"
"You can. You're a duke. Dukes take things. It's what you do."
The words landed like a slap. Frederick set down the sovereign on the counter, far too much, he knew, but he couldn't bear to take the pie for nothing, and retreated without his purchase, his face burning.
He complimented a farmer on his crops and somehow made it sound like an interrogation. He asked a child her name, and the child burst into tears, apparently convinced that any attention from the duke was a precursor to being thrown in a dungeon. Her mother scooped her up and hurried away, shooting Frederick a look of mingled fear and accusation that made him want to sink into the mud and disappear entirely.
By the time an hour passed, Frederick had managed to alienate approximately half the fair's population without meaning to alienate anyone at all.
He found himself standing at the edge of the green, near where his carriage waited, contemplating retreat. The coachman was watching him with carefully concealed curiosity. It would be so easy to climb back in, to return to the manor, to forget that this experiment had ever happened.
