The courtyard was full of trucks and vans as Waverly approached the manor. Workers sat grouped together under tents, eating lunch and shooting the shit. They ignored her as she entered the manor, wondering where the kitchen was located.
As if on cue, a curvy woman of Asian heritage wearing a plain white button-up blouse and flare-legged blue jeans descended the stairs, clutching a laptop. Her black hair was tied up in a messy bun and a pair of pencils were stuck into it. Colorful tattoos covered one arm, the designs disappearing beneath the sleeve of her blouse.
"Can I help you?" she asked in a Welsh accent as Waverly waited for her at the bottom of the stairs.
"Could you direct me to the kitchen? Ms Mi kindly put my lunch bag in there."
The woman studied Waverly with a critical eye, then she broke into a grin. "You're Waverly Harris, the gardener."
"I am."
"Nice to meet you. I'm Willow Sung, the baron's comptroller. Kyung-Jin is my wife." Holding onto the laptop with her left arm, Willow stuck out her right hand.
This bubbly, pleasant woman was the housekeeper's wife? Well, opposites definitely attracted, Waverly thought. "I'm a little dirty at the moment," she explained, flashing her fingers as Willow's gesture hung in the air.
"Not a problem," Willow replied with a smile, wrapping both hands around her laptop. "Let me show you the kitchen. Watch your feet."
Tarps lined the hallway next to the staircase and empty light sockets hung from the wall, capped wires dangling against aged green floral wallpaper. Waverly moved carefully along the tarps, sneaking a quick glance down a hall beneath the sweeping staircase. Small tables covered in sheets and more hanging wires were all she could see in the dimly lit corridor.
The heavenly scent of chicken and lemons filled the air as they approached the kitchen. Like the rest of the manor, it was in a state of construction. In the center of the white-tiled room was a massive butcher block island stacked with boxes overflowing with pots and pans. A small steel sink rested up against the back wall next to a green refrigerator that was straight out of the 1960s. Capped piping jutted up from the floor and out of the wall; this area was covered in tarp and littered with plumbers' tools. To the right was a large, gaping hole that may have once been a door to the outside. Through the hole, Waverly could see giant boxes sitting on weed-choked cobblestone.
In the midst of all this chaos, two women stood clustered together in a small area of the kitchen, one of whom was cooking over a two-burner electric hot plate and grumbling in French. Waverly hung back as Willow went straight to the fridge and pulled out her lunch bag.
"Lynn, Jillian, this is Waverly, the gardener."
Waverly remembered Jillian as the young woman who escorted her and Frederick from the grounds. She was tall, slightly skinny, with a plain oval face covered in a smattering of dark freckles, big, expressive blue eyes, and long, dark auburn hair that was braided and wound into a bun. The other woman, Lynn, appeared to be around Waverly's age. She was short and curvy, with warm, russet-brown skin, and medium-length platinum blonde hair tied up in a high ponytail. A dozen gold hoops pierced both ears.
Jillian waved and Lynn merely nodded as she flipped a chicken breast in its pan. Willow gestured to a large table in an alcove at the back end of the kitchen. Six chairs were arranged haphazardly around it. "You can eat here."
Waverly hesitated. "Oh, that's very kind of you. But I can eat outside."
Willow opened her mouth, but Lynn let out a loud scoffing sound—one that carried above the pop and sizzle of food cooking. "There is one of you and many of them. Sit, sit," she ordered in a light French accent. She jabbed a spatula at a chair.
Helpless, Waverly turned to the baron's comptroller. Willow smiled and shrugged. "It was already cleared with His—the baron. Go on."
Faced with the prospect of getting beaten with a spatula covered in boiling chicken grease, Waverly set her bag on the table and asked where she could wash her hands. Willow directed her to a bathroom off the kitchen. When Waverly returned, Willow was seated at the table with someone else—Dean, the young man who had stopped by the walled garden to fetch the baron.
While Willow sat in the middle with her laptop, Dean placed himself right next to Waverly's bag.
Waverly pursed her lips. There was plenty of room on the other side; why did he have to sit there? Maybe it was "his" spot, she decided, smoothing out her features. She didn't want to appear sullen in front of the baron's staff. "Excuse me," Waverly said quietly, picking up her bag and moving to the opposite side of the table.
Dean looked up; his eyes widened, then he grinned. "Hey there," he greeted, deepening his tone.
So strange, Waverly noted with a slight shake of her head. "Hi," she replied automatically, sitting down and pulling out a salad, a cup of raspberry vinaigrette dressing, and a bottle of raspberry-flavored water.
There was a clatter from the stovetop as Lynn plated the chicken, along with an arugula salad topped with some sort of cheese crumble. "Voici," she said, setting it on a small tray. Jillian nodded and placed a small pitcher of what looked like iced tea and a tall, thin glass on the tray before leaving through the main kitchen door.
Waverly watched what she assumed to be the baron's lunch disappear from view before turning her attention to her own meal. The delicious smells in the kitchen were making her positively ravenous.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Dean opening his mouth, but the comptroller cut him off.
"So, Waverly," Willow said, accepting a glass of iced tea from the cook. "I understand that you worked for a greenhouse. Did you also do landscaping there?"
Waverly swallowed a mouthful of salad before answering. "Not really. We had several decorative areas all over the place," she explained. "Little sections with large watering cans or old oak barrels to make everything look nice, you know. I was in charge of setting up the displays every year. " It was stressful, but fun. She tried her best not to repeat displays, but it inevitably happened. At least Mrs Hollerstein didn't mind.
God, she missed the farm.
"But nothing of this magnitude, I'd suspect?"
Waverly chuckled softly. "No. I'm honestly surprised the baron offered me the job at all."
A little jingle went off and Willow looked at her smart watch. "Excuse me, but I've got to go." She drained her glass and stood up, collecting her laptop. "We'll talk again soon." After putting her glass in the sink, the baron's comptroller left.
Nice lady, Waverly mused, pulling out her phone. There was a scrape of chair legs on the tile and before she knew it, Dean was sitting next to her. She wasn't anti-social, but Waverly had always used her lunch hour to decompress and recharge. All the farm workers knew to let her be and talk to her later. Maybe if she really concentrated on Twitter, Dean would get the hint.
"American, huh?" he asked, dragging the chair closer to the table.
No such luck.
"Yup," she replied, hoping that one-word answers would suffice.
"And a witch, too?" Dean pressed on. "What sort of tricks can you do?"
Tricks? Really? "I can't do any 'tricks'," she told him, shoving another forkful of salad into her mouth.
"Really? I thought all witches could do stuff."
Not this witch, she thought darkly. Maybe she was still rankled from her aborted "date" with Aidan Byrne, but this guy was rubbing her the wrong way. This time, she wasn't going to keep quiet. Waverly carefully set her fork down and stared the younger man in the eye. "I'd rather not talk. I just want to eat my lunch."
"Dean," the cook called out sharply, looking over her shoulder at him from the sink. "Leave the poor woman alone."
"But—" Dean protested, gesturing at Waverly. "I'm just trying to get to know her. Can I not do that?" He turned to Waverly, brown eyes widening in an almost puppy-like expression.
It wasn't endearing. It was actually a little sad if she was honest. He was trying too hard.
"I want to eat," Waverly repeated.
Dean blinked. "Oh. Well, uhm, maybe we could meet later—at that pub in town?"
"No, thank you." She twisted the cap off her flavored water and took a long drink. Definitely not.
"Dean," Lynn warned, shaking a dripping sponge at him.
The younger man's mouth twisted and he suddenly shot to his feet. "Fine," he grumbled and left the kitchen.
Lynn sighed and shook her head. "I'm sorry about that," the cook told Waverly. "He's new and he just tries too hard to impress."
"I get it," Waverly replied. And she really did, but there was a difference between trying to impress your boss and trying to impress a woman. She wondered how Dean got this job in the first place.
"Well, if he bothers you again, let Kyung-Jin know."
"I will."
Lynn nodded and went back to scrubbing pots. Waverly ate in silence for a while, scrolling through Twitter. Jillian returned and Lynn handed over the washing-up duties to her while she began cooking again.
Not long after that, two men entered the kitchen and began talking with the cooks. One was an older man in his early fifties, grey-haired and bearded. He wore a plain green polo shirt and tan slacks. The other man was younger, around Waverly's age; his black hair was tied back in a short queue and he wore dusty brown overalls over a red shirt. Lynn handed the man in overalls a covered container and he immediately left. The older man stood by the stove and spoke quietly while the cook answered now and then.
"Who's this?" the man asked, raising his voice slightly, his accent refined and quintessentially British.
"The gardener," Lynn explained.
Waverly looked up and acknowledged the man with a nod.
"Oh?" The older man chuckled softly. "He's finally hiring more help?"
"It's only temporary," Waverly told him.
The man studied her curiously. "Ah. Well, we can certainly use all the help we can get," he said, giving Lynn a very pointed look.
Lynn pursed her lips, but the older man simply chuckled louder and left.
That was odd, Waverly mused, polishing off the last of her salad. She expected this place to have more staff, even though she knew that most of the old nobility had slimmed down over the years. Many had even taken to selling off estates that had been in their families for centuries due to the extreme cost of upkeep. But she was certain that even they had more than seven employees. Especially for a place like this.
Well, as she told the older man, the job was temporary.
And she had to get back to it.