Page 17 of The Cottage at Brambleton Hall

It offered Nate. He was coming up the path carrying a basket, eyes down, pace steady. She dashed outside. As he reached her, he held out the basket, managing not to look at her while doing it. ‘From the garden. I wasn’t sure what you had.’

‘Great,’ she said, stepping closer and peering in. ‘Lovely. Very . . . green.’

He let go quickly, shifting his weight back a fraction.

She picked up a pale, bulbous purple vegetable, turning it in her hands, as if there might be a helpful label stuck somewhere. ‘This is . . . ?’

‘Kohlrabi.’

She screwed up her eyes. ‘Kohl . . . what?’

‘Kohlrabi.’

‘Right, Kohlrabi,’ she said, stretching the word while she replaced the strange vegetable back with exaggerated care. ‘Now what’s that one?’ She lifted a cluster of short, slightly wild-looking stems with tiny white florets, holding it up between them.

‘Romanesco.’

She peered at it, then up at him. ‘That looks like it’s escaped from somewhere.’

He edged back, his gaze slipping past her shoulder. ‘It’s meant to look like that.’

‘Good,’ she said lightly, watching him now more than the vegetable. ‘Is it a failed

cauliflower?’

‘It’s basically a failure of curd determinacy – the plant keeps initiating meristems on the same spiral programme, so you end up seeing the phyllotaxis instead of hiding it.’

It was by far the longest sentence he’d uttered to her – and she hadn’t followed a word.

‘Right. Obviously.’

She lowered the Romanesco and set the basket on the ground between them. ‘What would you do with that one then?’

‘Eat it.’

She huffed a laugh. ‘Yes, I’ve grasped the concept of eating. I meant . . . how . . . in what exactly?’

‘Depends.’

‘On . . . ?’ she said, her eyebrows lifting, trying to coax him.

‘On what you want.’

She held his gaze for a second longer than he seemed to want. ‘You’re not helping much, are you then?’ she said, softening it at the last moment with a quick, disarming smile.

He didn’t react.

‘You could help me,’ she said. ‘Just a little. How do I cook this?’ She pointed at the kohlrabi, hesitating over the word, before giving it a go. ‘Kohlrabi . . . what would you do with it?’

He glanced at it, then past her again, already turning his shoulders away. ‘You’re cooking,’ he said. ‘You decide.’

‘Right. Empowering. Slightly terrifying.’ She tucked her hair back, and tried again, this time lighter. ‘We mostly did carrots and peas at the school. I don’t reckon I’d be able to persuade a kiddy to eat either of these . . . How long have you worked here then?’

‘A while.’

Her mouth twitched. ‘You don’t do detail, do you?’ then she added quickly, glancing at the basket, ‘Unless it’s about plants.’

‘No.’