As I walked alongside the stream, I spotted a high wall, built from small red and cream bricks that looked warm in the sunshine. Curious, I left the stream and crossed a wide stretch of ankle-height grass to follow the wall. When I reached a wooden gate set into the brickwork, I remembered Archer had told me to feel free to explore, and I pushed it open and stepped inside.
Beyond the gate, the wall enclosed a beautiful, old-fashioned kitchen garden. Neat beds of fruit and vegetables were intersected by gravel paths, and trees bursting with blossom had been trained to stretch their branches horizontally along the inside of the wall. Unlike the neglected gardens I’d walked through, this was evidently the result of ongoing hard work.
Spotting someone digging on the far side, I hesitated. Tim’s red hair shone in the sunshine, and I remembered how fast and how fiercely he’d come at me yesterday. But I was a dragon, even though my dragon needed a poke to become riled by anything, and I could defend myself if I needed to.
Still, I called out to him when I was some way off. “Hey, Tim.”
He glanced up, eyebrows drawing down exactly the way Archer’s did.
“What doyouwant?”Definitelya family resemblance.
“Just having a look around,” I said. “I’m Ollie, by the way. Shaw, from Tunbridge Wells. This garden is amazing. Are those fruit trees? How on earth did you train them like that?”
The fierceness faded and he shrugged. “If you start them young enough, they don’t know how to grow any differently.”
Determinedly ignoring the metaphor, I ambled around, finding flowering redcurrant plants climbing canes, and cabbages, carrots, onions—enough to feed a family. The beds were edged with neatly trimmed box hedging.
“Can I give you a hand with anything?” It would keep me warm, and it would give me something to do. I didn’t mind wandering around exploring today, but after that? I couldn’t spend the next three months walking in the garden or sitting in the house. This place was awesome, but I’d expected to be stayinginWinchester, not marooned too far outside the city to be able to walk there.
He looked me up and down. “You’re not exactly dressed for gardening.”
“I need to go shopping and get some clothes before much longer.” Today, if I wasn’t to run out of underwear and socks.
His eyebrows raised. “How come you’ve turned up here without anything?”
“Because I was only supposed to be going to the moot, but when it was decided—”Shit.I should leave it to Archer to tell his family how much or little he wanted. “Anyway, I didn’t expect to be here.”
He frowned. “Don’t youwantto be here? Has Archerforcedyou?”
“No!” I was offended on Archer’s behalf. He was stern and growly, but he wasn’tmean.He certainly wasn’t a psycho, kidnapping me. And for his own brother to think he would…I paused. His brother knew him better than I did. Perhaps I should be cautious rather than drooling over him and thinking he was perfect because I wanted to bang him.
“Is there something I can do from the path until I get some jeans and trainers?” I asked.
He set me to work weeding the edges of some of the beds, and I tried not to call him over too often to identify what were weeds and what were plants. I helped my parents with their allotment sometimes, and I recognised the plants that they had, but anything else was a mystery to me. I got into the rhythm of it after a while, and it was actually really nice in the warm sunshine, with doves cooing somewhere in the distance.
As we worked, we moved closer. “What’s the tower?” I asked, once we were close enough for conversation. “The one that looks like the rest of the castle went out for milk and forgot to come back.”
“Folly,” he said, and for an instant, I thought he’d said my name. “One of our ancestors had more money than sense and had it built. It’s no earthly use to anyone.”
Except a big black dragon. Archer had looked so comfortable up there that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was his usual roost.
“How old is the house?” I asked, and the rest of the morning passed as I learned more about Talbot Court. Now that Tim’s suspicion had disappeared, he was good company. Not as talkative as Mia, but a lot more so than his brother.
My stomach growled, and I looked at my phone to find it was heading for one o’clock. “Lunch?” I suggested hopefully. “Archer said it was at one. He’s taking me to meet the rest of the family this afternoon.”
He pulled a face. “I may come in later, when Archer’s not there.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. “You don’t get on?” I ventured at last, concentrating on a stubborn dandelion that had roots all the way down to Australia. It finally came up with a rush, flinging soil into my face.
“He’s overbearing, bossy, and a pain in the arse,” Tim said, stabbing his fork into some innocent ground. “He always has to control everything.”
I eyed the fork before saying mildly, “Heishead of the family. I think bossy goes with the title.”
“How wouldyoulike it if your brother was head of your family, to the point where they stopped being your brother and all they cared about was their status?”
I thought about it as I wiped soil off my face. About how Jack had changed while we’d been at the moot. He’d only been the next in line, not the real head.
“It’s difficult,” I said at last. And because for some stupid reason I couldn’t stop pining after Archer, I added, “They do have a lot of responsibility, though. I wouldn’t want the job.” Archer was very young to head his family and I wondered what had happened to make it that way. Knowing it couldn’t be anything good, I didn’t ask.
