A Surprise Christmas Proposal

CHAPTER TWO

I WAS late. It wasn’t my fault, okay? People had kept phoning me to see what I was doing to celebrate my birthday. No one had believed me when I’d said nothing. They’d just laughed and said, ‘No, really—what are you doing?’ and in the end I’d relented and promised I’d meet Tony down the pub at nine o’clock.

Then my mother had phoned from South Africa, wanting to tell me about everything she’d been doing—well, obviously not everything—and I could hardly say I had more important things to do, could I?

Anyway, it was hardly a matter of life or death. Dogs couldn’t tell the time and I didn’t have to rush off anywhere else. They’d get their hour. Start twenty minutes late; finish twenty minutes late. Sorted.

Gabriel York’s address proved to be a tall, elegant, terraced house in a quiet cul-de-sac untroubled by through traffic. Its glossy black front door was flanked by a pair of perfectly clipped bay trees which stood in reproduction Versailles boxes; no one in their right mind would leave the genuine lead antiques on their doorstep, even if it would take a crane to lift them. The brass door furniture had the well-worn look that only came from generations of domestics applying serious elbow grease—a fate, I reminded myself, that awaited me unless I gave some serious thought to my future.

The whole effect was just too depressingly perfect for words. Like something out of a costume drama, where no one was interested in the reality of the mud or the smell of nineteenth-century London.

This was a street made for designer chic and high, high heels, and I felt about as out of place as a lily on the proverbial dung heap.

My own fault, entirely.

I’d stupidly forgotten to ask what kind of dogs Mr York owned, and since there was no way I was going to call back and ask Miss Frosty to enlighten me I’d gone for the worst-case scenario, assuming something large and muscular, times two, and dressing accordingly. At home that would have meant one of the ancient waxed jackets that had been hanging in the mud room for as long as I could remember and a pair of equally venerable boots. The kind of clothes that my mother lived in.

Had lived in.

These days, as she’d told me at length, she was to be found stretched out poolside in a pair of shorts, a halter neck top and factor sixty sunblock. I didn’t blame her; she was undoubtedly entitled to a bit of fun after a lifetime of waiting hand, foot and finger on my father for no reward other than an occasional grunt.

I just didn’t want to be reminded of the difference between her life and my own, that was all.

Here in London it was doing something seasonal in the way of freezing drizzle, and although I’d stuffed my hair into a pull-on hat I hadn’t been able to find a pair of gloves; my fingers were beginning to feel decidedly numb.

Anyway, without the luxury of a help-yourself selection of old clothes to choose from, I’d had to make do with my least favourite jeans, a faux-fur jacket—a worn-once fashion disaster that I’d been meaning to take to the nearest charity shop—and a pair of old shoes that my sister had overlooked when she moved out. They were a bit on the big side, but with the help of a pair of socks they’d do. They’d have to. I wasn’t wearing my good boots to plough through the under-growth of Battersea Park.

Now I realised that I looked a total mess for no good reason. I needn’t even have bothered to change my shoes. I only had to take one look at those pom-pom bay trees to know that Mr York’s dogs would be a couple of pampered, shaved miniature poodles, with pom-pom tails to match. They’d undoubtedly consider a brisk trot as far as Sloane Square a serious workout.

So, I asked myself as I mounted the steps to his glossy front door, what kind of man would live in a house like this? My imagination, given free reign, decided that Mr York would be sleek and exquisitely barbered, with small white hands. He’d have a tiny beard, wear a bow tie and do something important in ‘the arts’. I admit to letting my prejudices run away with me here. I have a totally irrational dislike of clipped bay trees—and clipped poodles.

Poor things.

I rang the doorbell and waited to see just how well my imagination and reality coincided.

The dogs responded instantly to the doorbell—one with an excited bark, the other with a howl like a timber wolf in some old movie. One of them hurled itself at the door, hitting it with a thump so emphatic that it echoed distantly from the interior of the house and suggested I might have been a bit hasty in leaping to a judgement based on nothing more substantial than a prejudice against clipped bay trees.

If they were poodles they were the great big ones, with voices to match.

Unfortunately, the dogs were the only ones responding to the bell. The door remained firmly shut, with no human voice to command silence. No human footsteps to suggest that the door was about to be flung open.

Under normal circumstances I would have rung the bell a second time, but considering the racket the dogs were making my presence could hardly have gone unnoticed. So I waited.

And waited.

After a few moments the dog nearest the door stopped barking and the howl died down to a whimper, but apart from a scrabbling, scratching noise from the other side of the door as one of them tried to get at me that was it.

Seriously irritated—I wasn’t that late and the dogs still needed to be walked—I raised my hand to the bell to ring again, but then drew back at the last minute, my outstretched fingers curling back into my palm as annoyance was replaced by a faint stirring of unease.

‘Hello?’ I said, feeling pretty stupid talking to a dog through a door. The scrabbling grew more anxious and I bent down, pushed open the letterbox and found myself peering into a pair of liquid brown eyes set below the expressive brows of a cream silky hound.

‘Hello,’ I repeated, with rather more enthusiasm. ‘What’s your name?’

He twitched his brows and whined sorrowfully.

Okay, I admit it was a stupid question.

‘Is there anyone home besides you dogs?’ I asked, trying to see past him into the hallway.

The intelligent creature backed away from the door, giving me a better look at his sleek short coat, feathery ears and slender body, then he gave a short bark and looked behind him, as if to say, ‘Don’t look at me, you fool, look over there…’ And that was when I saw Gabriel York and realised I’d got it all wrong.

Twice over.

His dogs were not poodles and he wasn’t some dapper little gallery owner in a bow tie.

Gabriel York was six foot plus of dark-haired, muscular male. And the reason he hadn’t answered the door when I rang was because he was lying on the hall floor. Still. Unmoving.

I remembered the echoing thump. Had that been him, hitting the deck?

The second hound, lying at his side, lifted his head and looked at me for a long moment, before pushing his long nose against his master’s chin with an anxious little whine, as if trying to wake him up. When that didn’t have any effect he looked at me again, and the message he was sending came over loud and clear.

Do something!

Oh, crumbs. Yes. Absolutely. Right away.

I dug in my pocket, flipped open my cellphone and with shaking fingers punched in the number for the emergency services. I couldn’t believe how much information they wanted—none of which I had. Apart from the address and the fact that I had an unconscious man on the other side of the door.

How did I know if he’d hit his head? And what difference would it make if I told them? It wasn’t as if they could do anything about it until they got here…

Maybe I sounded a touch hysterical, because the woman in the control centre, in the same calming voice more commonly used to talk to skittish horses, over-excited dogs and total idiots, told me to stay right where I was. Someone would be with me directly.

The minute I hung up, of course, I realised that I should have told her the one thing I did know. That they wouldn’t be able to get in. I looked around in the vain hope that a passing knight errant—and I’d have been quite happy to pass on the gleaming armour and white horse—might leap to my rescue and offer to pick the lock, or break a window, or do some other totally clever thing that had completely eluded me and climb in.

The street—and the way my day was going I was not surprised by this—was deserted.

Actually, on second thoughts, maybe that was just as well. I wasn’t sure that anyone who could pick a lock at the drop of a hat would be a knight errant. Not unless he was a bona fide locksmith, anyway.

I looked through the letterbox again, hoping, in the way that you do, that Gabriel York had miraculously recovered while I’d been panicking on his doorstep. There was no discernible change. Was he actually breathing?

‘Mr York?’ It came out as little more than a whisper. ‘Mr York!’ I repeated more sharply.

The only response was from the dogs, who reprised the bark/howl chorus, presumably in the hope of rousing someone more useful.

Oh, help! I had to do something. But what? I didn’t have any hairpins about my person, and even if I had I couldn’t pick a lock to save my life. His life.

I looked over the railing down into the semi-basement. The only window down there was not just shut, it had security bars, too, so breaking it wouldn’t be much use.

I took a step back and looked up at the house. The ground-floor windows were all firmly fastened, but, blinking the drizzle out of my eyes, I could see that one of the sash cord windows on the floor above street level was open just a crack. It wasn’t that far, and there was a useful downpipe within easy reach. Well, easyish reach, anyway.

I stowed my phone and, catching hold of the iron railing that guarded the steps, pulled myself up. Then, from the vantage point of this precious perch, I grabbed the downpipe and hitched myself up until I was clinging, monkey-like, with my hands and feet. I didn’t pause to gather my breath. I was very much afraid that if I paused to do anything I’d lose my nerve. Instead I clung with my knees, reached up with my hands, pushed with my feet. The cast iron was cold, damp and slippery—and a lot harder to climb than I’d anticipated.

I hadn’t got very far when the muscles in my upper arms began to burn, reminding me that I hadn’t been to the gym in a while. Actually, I really should make the most of it before my membership expired, I thought, and slipped, banging my chin and biting my lip in the process.

Concentrate, you silly cow…

Quite. I gritted my teeth and, telling myself not to be such a wimp, hauled myself up. Things didn’t improve when I finally got level with the window, which was rather further from the pipe than it had looked from the ground. Just a bit more of a stretch. Excellent from a security point of view, but an unnervingly sickening distance to span from mine.

It was perhaps fortunate that the biggest spider I’d ever seen decided to investigate the bipedal blundering that had disturbed whatever it was that spiders do when they lurk behind downpipes—and frankly I’d rather not know—thus confirming the fact that I would rather risk the fall into a stone basement area than endure a face-to-face encounter with eight horribly long though undoubtedly harmless legs.

Idiotic, no doubt, but as a force for overcoming inertia arachnophobia takes some beating.

Have you ever wished you hadn’t started something? Just wished you’d never got out of bed that morning?

It was my birthday. I was twenty-five years old and everyone was telling me that it was time to grow up. As if I hadn’t done that the day I’d realised that love was no competition for money.

But, clinging to Gabriel York’s windowsill by my fingernails, I had a moment of truth. Reality. Let me live through this, I promised whatever unfortunate deity had been given the task of looking after total idiots, and I will embrace maturity. I’ll even get to grips with my dislike of technology and sign up for a computer course.

In the meantime I dug in and hauled myself up, trying not to think about my expensive manicure—probably the last one I’d ever be able to afford—as my nails grated against stone and, with my knee on the sill, I managed to grab hold of the window and push it upwards.

Someone must have been listening to my plea for help because, unlike the sash cord windows of my family home, which stuck like glue in damp weather, Mr York kept his well oiled and perfectly balanced. In response to a shove with the full force of my bodyweight behind it the window shot up and I fell in, landing in a painful heap on a polished oak floor, closely followed by a spindly table and something fragile that shattered noisily very close to my ear.

Make that half listening. Bumped chin, bitten lip, wrecked nails, and now I had a throbbing shoulder to add to the tally. And my knees hurt. This job definitely came under the heading ‘life-changing’. Whether I’d survive it was yet to be proved.

I opened my eyes and was confronted by the ruin of what might have been a Dresden shepherdess. And something told me that this wasn’t a replica. It was the real thing.

I blamed its total destruction on the latest craze for ripping up carpets and polishing original wooden floors. If there had been a draught-stopping fitted carpet, with a thick cushion underlay, the shepherdess would have still been in one piece and I wouldn’t have bruised my knees. And, of the two, it was my knees I was more bothered about. The shepherdess would undoubtedly be insured for replacement value. My knees were unique.

Not that I had any time to lie there and feel sorry for myself. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sound of a siren—hopefully that of the ambulance I’d summoned. I had to get to the front door and let in the paramedics…

I got up and pulled down the window, leaving grubby fingermarks. I rubbed my hands down the front of my jeans before I left them on anything else, and headed for the door. Not before noting that the room, like the Dresden shepherdess, did not quite fit the glimpse I’d got of Gabriel York. It was a thoroughly feminine room. Presumably the territory of Mrs York. I blamed her for the bay trees while I was at it.

And where was she when her husband needed her to walk his dogs? Pick him up off the floor? Call an ambulance…?

The nearest dog—clearly an adolescent—leapt on me in his excitement as I ran down the stairs, nearly knocking me off my feet again.

‘Get off, you stupid hound,’ I said, pushing him away, trying not to look too closely at my employer as I stepped over him—if he’d fallen downstairs and broken his neck I’d rather not know—and went to open the door.

I looked out. No ambulance… Well, it was building up to the rush hour, so it would undoubtedly have to battle its way through the traffic, like the rest of London.

It was down to me, then. I left the door ajar, so that they could get in when they arrived, and turned back to face the man who lay supine and unmoving, taking up most of the floor.

And I got a reprise of the ‘do something’ look from the dog lying protectively at his side.

Deep breath, Sophie. You can do this…

‘Mr York…’ I knelt down beside him and it didn’t take a genius to see that even when he was on his feet Gabriel York wasn’t going to look terribly well. His skin had a yellowish pallor and his face was drawn-out and haggard with the sharply attenuated features of someone who’s lost a great deal of weight without any of the tiresome bother of going on a diet. He was wearing a black dressing gown over a pair of cotton pyjama pants—which, considering it was late afternoon, suggested that it wasn’t simply idleness that had stopped him from walking his dogs.

He might, of course, have slipped on the stairs—his feet were bare—as he’d come down to answer the door. Or one of the dogs might have got underfoot in its excitement and unbalanced him.

But, looking at him, I would have gambled that he’d just passed out. At least I hoped that was all he’d done; I gingerly touched his throat, seeking a pulse.

I couldn’t find one.

The hound who’d been guarding him, but who had shifted slightly to let me get closer, licked my hand encouragingly. I patted him absently, swallowing as I attempted to dislodge a great big rock that suddenly seemed to be stuck in my throat.

How long had he been lying there? Was it too late for the kiss of life?

How long had it been since I’d rung the bell and heard that distant thump that I was now certain had been Gabriel York hitting the floor? He was still warm to the touch, but then my own hands were freezing. I rubbed them together, trying to get the feeling back into them.

I’d never actually given anyone the kiss the life, but I’d seen a demonstration once, years ago in the village hall, at a first aid course organised by my mother. You covered the victim’s mouth and blew. No, there was more to it than that. Think, think… I put my hand beneath his neck and tilted it back to clear the airway. I remembered that much.

As I looked down into his face, forcing myself to take steady, even breaths—I hadn’t realised until then that my heart was beating rather too fast for comfort—it occurred to me that even in extremis Gabriel York had an austere beauty, that his wide, sensual mouth was the kind a girl might enjoy kissing under less trying circumstances. At least she would if she was into kissing and all the messy stuff that inevitably followed.

Heartbreak, pain…

I forced myself to concentrate, cupping his chin in my hand and placing my lips over his to seal off the air.

His unshaven chin was bristly against my palm, my fingers. His mouth was cool, but not cold…

I forced myself to concentrate and blew steadily into his mouth.

At this point I nearly passed out myself from lack of oxygen. I’d been concentrating so hard on remembering what to do that I’d missed out the vital step of taking a breath first. Okay. I’d got it now. Breath in, mouth to mouth, blow. And again.

How long was I supposed to keep this up? As if in answer, I heard that long-ago demonstrator sternly warning that once you began CPR you had to continue until relieved…

How much longer was the ambulance going to be?

I paused for another breath, and this time when I looked at him he seemed to have regained a little colour. Encouraged, I tried again.

There was a definite change—the kind of response that if I didn’t know better would have given me the distinct impression that I was being—well, kissed back. No, definitely kissed back…

Oh, sugar…

I opened my eyes—that level of concentration had required my eyes to be tightly shut—and discovered that I was not imagining things. Clearly I had this kiss of life thing down to a fine art, because Gabriel York had his eyes open, too. Black, glittering behind quite scandalously thick lashes, and dangerously over-heated. Quite suddenly, I was the one in need of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.