Free Aunt Dimity and the Duke by Nancy Atherton

I’m just an ordinary backyard gardener.”
    Kate’s brow furrowed. “But the Pyms sent you, didn’t they?”
    Emma explained patiently that she hardly knew the Pyms. “I only met them the day before yesterday. We spent the afternoon at Bransley Manor, gossiping about gardens.”
    “Ah,” said Kate, relaxing. “That would explain it. They’ve known for months that Grayson’s been searching for someone to work on Grandmother’s garden. As for your qualifications ...” Tilting her head to one side, she asked, “Did you talk for a long time with Ruth and Louise? Did they ask you a lot of questions?”
    Emma pursed her lips thoughtfully. Even at the time, she’d thought her conversation with the Pyms curiously one-sided. Replaying it in her mind, she realized that it had been a fairly thorough interrogation. She raised a hand to her glasses and asked doubtfully, “Are you telling me that my conversation with the Pyms was a ... a job interview?”
    Kate grinned. “I know how odd it must sound, but it’s exactly the sort of thing they’d do: select an out-of-the-way place like Bransley—the kind of place only a certain type of gardening enthusiast would visit—where they could lie in wait for a likely candidate, then run her through her paces.”
    Emma’s sidelong glance still expressed doubt, so Kate tried another tack. “What line of work are you in?” she asked.
    “I’m a project manager at CompuTech Corporation, in Boston,” Emma replied. “I work with computers.”
    “All right, then, who’s the most brilliant computer scientist in Boston?”
    “Professor Layton, at MIT,” Emma replied without hesitation. “He taught me everything I know, at any rate.”
    Kate gave her a quizzical look. “If Professor Layton at MIT recommended someone for a job at your company, you’d hire that person, wouldn’t you?” Smiling reassuringly, she went on. “Ruth and Louise may not be professionals, like your Professor Layton, but they’ve been gardening since before you and I were born. I think we can trust their judgment.”
    Emma took a deep breath, then let it out slowly before speaking. She was accustomed to thinking in straight lines. If you needed a gardener, you looked in the phone book. You didn’t sit in the middle of a hedge maze, waiting for the right one to come along. And you certainly didn’t hire someone selected by such a random process. Did you?
    Perhaps you did, at Penford Hall, where no one seemed to think in straight lines. The gatekeeper thought he was Che Guevara, the footman thought he was Dickens, the maid thought she was the next Chanel, and the duke seemed to think he was Father Christmas, showering the villagers with new roads and flying doctors, his servants with laptops and cellular phones. Emma’s own way of thinking was beginning to bend under the influence. For a moment there in the garden, she’d thought she was Marilyn Monroe, ready to do battle with the delectable Ashers for the blue-eyed Derek of her dreams. She might as well pretend to be Gertrude Jekyll for the summer. Who would notice?
    I would, thought Emma, sheepishly. I’m no more a femme fatale than I am a long-dead gardening genius, and I can’t work in the chapel garden as an impostor. If I stay on at Penford Hall, she decided, it won’t be under false pretenses. She vowed silently to tell the duke the truth about herself at the earliest opportunity.
    “Oh, and one other thing,” Kate added, as Emma walked her to the door. “Mattie’s only been here for a few months and, unlike her grandfather, she can be a bit overdramatic about Penford Hall’s ... colorful past. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what she says about that pop singer, if I were you.”
    Emma’s understanding smile faded as soon as Kate had left the room. Great, she thought. Here I am, without a car, in a Gothic heap full of loonies, being warned off the subject of Lex Rex. What have the Pyms gotten me into?

    Thanks to Crowley,