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F reddie leaned against the trunk of a tree and watched Miss Hawkins scurry out of sight.

She was so clever and learned, the exact opposite of him.

She dressed to perfection with not a hair out of place and she looked at his attire as if she couldn’t fathom ever being so scruffy.

Not that Freddie dressed badly; it was just he never bothered making sure everything was crisp and perfect, not like Miss Uptight-Prim-and-Proper Hawkins.

Miss Hawkins never broke the rules, never did anything improper and he teased her for it whenever he got the chance, which wasn’t often because she went out of her way to avoid him.

Two good reasons why it had been a real shock to see her sitting in the duke’s garden, amongst the flowers, completely absorbed in her book.

He could have left her—a true gentleman would have pretended not to have noticed and stepped away—but he couldn’t help needling her.

There was something so pleasurable in the way she glared at him.

How she loathed him! It was amusing to watch her try to be polite toward him whenever they were out in Society.

She’d get a slight squinty look in her wide, hazel-coloured eyes as she forced out a pleasantry and it would take everything in him not to grin back at her.

It was always a highlight of any social event, one he only ever allowed himself to indulge in once an evening.

His brothers might tell him he was uncouth for such behaviour, but they would never know, so he wasn’t worried about that.

Miss Hawkins had no such qualms about being polite towards him if they ever happened to bump into one another when there was no one else around to witness their interaction.

He would throw out something, some remark designed to get a reaction, and he loved nothing more than when the normally perfectly put-together, polite, demure Miss Perfect scowled at him.

She was a burr under his skin, a menace, and someone who viewed him with utter contempt.

It would be better for both of them if he could leave her alone completely.

It was a real shame for his mind that his body seemed to adore her.

While he found the way her nose turned up at the sight of him irritatingly amusing, his body seemed to sit up like an eager puppy whenever she was in the vicinity.

While his mind told him to stay the hell away from her, his body craved her undivided attention.

It was his body which strode across a ballroom with the express purpose of getting a terse set-down from her, all the while his mind shouting at him that he should keep well away.

This morning, while he’d been busy rejoicing at finding the impeccable Miss Hawkins doing something wrong and becoming flustered, his fingertips had tingled, desperate to smooth the little wrinkle between her eyebrows.

It was a good job she only looked at him with disdain; he would be sunk if she gave him the attention he seemed to crave.

It would be a work of nothing for her to turn him into a mindless follower.

Freddie never let anyone get close enough to him to know him properly.

All the people with whom he spent time saw only the person he had created, the laughing lackadaisical joker he had become to hide the truth.

He didn’t want anyone to know the details of his many failings, but it would be a thousand times more awful if Miss Hawkins found them out.

He let no one have control of his mind. No one would ever be able to hurt him like his awful guardian and he had a horrible feeling that Miss Hawkins would be able to do far worse damage if he let her.

As it was, he spent far too long staring at the space into which she’d disappeared until his body finally got the message she was not coming back.

His brain reminded him that this was a good thing because if they were discovered together, he would be obliged to marry her and while his body got very excited by the idea, he knew that would be a disaster.

They would kill one another within weeks.

He slowly returned to the house, his footsteps dragging as the austere building came closer.

It had been strange coming back to live here, moving his belongings into one of the many empty bedrooms in Glanmore House.

It was lavishly decorated but was as welcoming as an ice-covered lake.

It must have been decorated by his late mother, because he could not imagine Tobias doing any such thing, and it had been kept in pristine condition ever since.

It should make him feel closer to his long-deceased parent, but it didn’t.

Both his parents were a distant memory; they probably hadn’t given much attention to him and his brothers before they’d died, but he had the vague feeling they’d been slightly more pleasant than his aunt whose mantra had been to assume they were always doing something wrong, even when they were just sitting still.

Her punishments had been creative for a woman who had very little imagination: keeping the brothers divided and not allowing them to form an alliance.

It had been a staggering relief when Tobias had finally gained his majority and turfed her out of the London home, relocating her to a vast property deep in the countryside.

By then it had been too late; the ties that should have bonded the five brothers together had been worn too thin and they were not friends.

Freddie had never been sure how Tobias could stand to live at Glanmore House full time.

Although the dukedom came with many properties, Tobias seemed to prefer the London home whereas Freddie could happily have never stepped back inside the place.

It was only because of his niece that he had returned.

He wasn’t quite a prisoner but he also wasn’t free to leave, not unless he wanted to be the reason his niece was sent to live in a version of hell.

He came to a stop outside one of the entrances to the house, but his body refused to take him over the threshold.

Instead, he veered to the left, wending his way around the more manicured part of the garden until he reached the shed.

Tom, Glanmore’s head gardener, was rearranging pots on a wide, rickety table.

Freddie watched and waited. Tom was not a man to be rushed.

Not that Freddie minded. He loved the quietness of the wooden shelter, the smell of earth mixed with wax.

Nobody made demands of him when he was in here.

Tom had been the one to inspire Freddie’s interest in gardens and it was Tom who had shown him that he could have a future that didn’t involve the need for books.

Written words were Freddie’s greatest enemy.

‘Freddie,’ Tom grunted, when he finally caught sight of him.

‘The wall is down towards the bottom of the garden.’

Tom shot Freddie a look he couldn’t read.

Freddie rubbed his chin, uncomfortable for some reason. ‘I think we should leave it as is.’

A long silence stretched out. Freddie shifted on his feet, waiting for Tom to question his directive; not that he’d have a clue what he would say in response.

He had no idea why he would allow Emily Hawkins to cross into the garden whenever she wanted.

Well, he had some idea, he wasn’t an idiot no matter what some people thought, but he didn’t want to dwell on his decision because it made no sense.

It wasn’t as if she was suddenly going to like him because she enjoyed the way the trees he’d had planted there years ago let the light through in a certain part of his brother’s garden or because she glimpsed a pretty flower amongst the foliage.

She would never know that it had been his idea to grow that secluded area, trying to bring a little bit of the country to the barren landscape of London.

That Emily liked it for the same reason he did was neither here nor there.

‘Does Glanmore know ‘bout the wall?’ asked Tom.

‘Er, no. At least, I doubt it. I have not seen him in the garden since I have been back.’ Tobias kept to his study as far as Freddie could tell. Freddie had been eating alone since he had returned to live at Glanmore House, which was what he was used to and he did not mind being by himself.

Tom nodded. ‘Very well.’ He turned back to his pots without any further comment on the wall, leaving Freddie unsure as to whether he would leave it down or not.

Labouring the point would only lead to questions Freddie didn’t want to answer, even to himself.

‘You going to stand there like a lummox or are you going to help?’ added Tom.

Freddie snorted. He doubted Tom spoke to any of his brothers like that, certainly no other retainer spoke to him like Tom did, but Freddie didn’t mind the blunt speech.

Tom was more like a father to him than the real one had ever been.

He showed far more interest in what Freddie was up to than anyone else ever had and the large garden at the ducal residence had been Freddie’s sanctuary long before he’d understood what the word meant.

He began to roll up his sleeves. ‘What are we potting?’