The Secret Life Of Lady Gabriella

The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella

Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to every woman

who ever picked up a duster or fell off a stepladder.

Especially if she fell on the man of her dreams.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

COMING NEXT MONTH

CHAPTER ONE

‘LADY MARCH?’

Ellie’s tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. This was such a mistake. She wasn’t a ‘lady’. She shouldn’t be here. She should own up right now…

‘I apologise for keeping you waiting,’ Jennifer Cochrane continued, ‘but there was a crisis at the printers I had to deal with.’

Unable to speak, Ellie attempted an answering smile. Even in her borrowed clothes, hair swirled up in a sophisticated style and wearing more make-up than she’d normally wear in a month, she’d been expecting someone to point a finger at her, shout ‘impostor’ the moment she’d stepped within the hushed portals of the offices of Milady magazine.

She’d never meant to take it this far.

Never expected to get this far.

Wouldn’t be here if the idea of her contributing saleable copy to a magazine aimed directly at ladies who, in between chauffeuring their offspring about in top-of-the-range 4x4s, lunched, gossiped and shopped hadn’t produced such howls of mirth at her writers’ group.

She’d set out to show them—show herself, maybe—that while she might miss the magazine’s target audience by a mile, she was professional enough to write whatever was required.

And she’d done it.

She’d read a dozen or so back copies of the magazine, looked for a gap that she could fill, and ‘Lady Gabriella’s Journal’ had been the result.

Written in the crisp, upper-class style of the magazine, she’d offered the jottings of the ‘perfect’ reader. Highlights in the life of a woman with three children, several well-bred and perfectly behaved dogs, and all the time in the world to devote to interior design, her garden, entertaining and sitting on worthy committees. ‘Lady Gabriella’ was, of course, married to a man with the means to pay for it all.

She’d actually enjoyed writing it, vicariously living a completely different life if only on paper. Having no trouble at all imagining herself the ‘lady of the house’ rather than simply caretaking the place during the owner’s absence.

Then, since she’d done the work, she’d submitted it to the magazine, enclosing some of her doodly drawings as an afterthought—an impression of the gothic turret that adorned one end of the house, the cat sitting in the deep embrasure of an arched window, a toddler (Lady G’s youngest)—expecting a swift thanks-but-no-thanks return in the self-addressed envelope provided for the purpose. She’d had enough of them to know the form. But if you didn’t try, if you didn’t pursue a dream, hunt it down until there was no breath left in your body, let chances slip by, then what was the point?

The letter, addressed to Lady Gabriella March, inviting her for a ‘chat’, should have been enough. She would show it to the writers’ group and take a bow, point proved. Except it wasn’t.

This was a never-to-be-repeated chance to talk to the editor of a famous, if fading, magazine—which was why she was here, in the office of Jennifer Cochrane, a woman of advanced years but formidable character, who had the style, diction and classic wardrobe—including the mandatory double row of pearls—of one of the minor royals. One of the seriously scary ones.

Transformed by her disapproving sister, Stacey, into Lady Gabriella March for the day, it took all her concentration to put down the cup she was holding without spilling the contents over the designer suit that Stacey—another formidable woman—had lent her for the occasion. To then stand up and cross the inches-deep carpet in precariously high heels—also her sister’s—without falling flat on her face.

Having left it too late to cut and run, she had no choice but follow through. Breathe…Concentrate, she told herself. One foot in front of the other, the walk functional rather than flirty. Sedate duchess rather than saucy domestic…

Having managed to negotiate the coffee cup and carpet without disaster, she offered her hand and said, ‘How d’you do, Mrs Cochrane?’

She was convinced she looked, and sounded, exactly like Eliza Doolittle at Ascot—just before she let slip the expletive…

Mrs Cochrane, however, appeared to notice nothing amiss in this performance, and offered her an unexpectedly warm smile, waving her away from the desk towards the more informal sofa.

‘We’re both busy women, Lady March, so I’m not going to waste time. I enjoyed the diary pieces you sent me. And the drawings you used to illustrate them.’

‘Really?’Oh, that wasn’t cool. But she’d never been face to face with an editor before, let alone had a ‘chat’ with one. She tried to restrain the idiotic grin, slow the heart-rate to something more stately. ‘Thank you.’

‘The drawings have a delightful spontaneity, as if you’d just doodled your thoughts.’

‘Oh, I did,’ she exclaimed, then inwardly groaned as Mrs Cochrane smiled. This was definitely not the way to do it…Then, in an effort to recover the situation, ‘I did plan to go to art school…’

Which was true. But common sense ran like a seam of iron ore through her family genes, and she’d seen the value of a good solid degree and a teaching qualification. Something practical that she could use all her life. Would fit around married life, children.

She shrugged—then wondered if a ‘Lady’, one with a capital L, would shrug—and left Mrs Cochrane to draw her own conclusions.

‘Clearly you chose marriage and children instead,’ Mrs Cochrane filled in for her, nodding and smiling with obvious approval. ‘Most young women seem to be leaving it so late these days.’

Fortunately she was looking at the drawings, spread across the low table in front of them, giving Ellie a moment to recover.

She picked one that was no more than a few lines suggesting the upraised bottom, the chubby legs of an infant almost ready to stand up and take her first steps.

‘This is Chloe? Your youngest child?’

Ellie looked at the picture. It was the daughter of one of the women she worked for in her ‘day’ job, drawn from memory without a thought.

How could she have done that?

‘Charming,’ Mrs Cochrane said, without waiting for an answer. Then, ‘I’m going to be frank with you, Lady March—’

‘Gabriella, please.’

‘Gabriella. I’ve been looking for someone who can write a regular lifestyle column for some time. It has been extraordinarily difficult to find a writer capable of finding just the tone our readers appreciate.’

Ellie was not entirely surprised to hear that; no one born since 1950 wrote that way.

‘There was always just a suggestion of the pastiche. A lack of sincerity.’ She smiled. ‘Sincerity is essential.’

‘Absolutely,’ she managed, wishing the floor would open up and swallow her. Right now.

‘Of course I’m not interested in the rather dated diary format.’

Which was the sole reason she’d chosen it. And, from a point where she had been praying to whatever saint was supposed to be looking after the interests of neophyte writers to get on with sorting out that hole for her to disappear into, she was suddenly indignant. Why bring her all the way up to London for a ‘chat’ about her work, then tell her that it wasn’t what was wanted?

‘I’m looking for something less formal—something that will appeal to the younger generation of women we need to attract. Your writing has a lively freshness, a touch of irreverence that is quite striking.’

All the things she’d done her absolute best to suppress…‘What I’d like to suggest to you is a regular contribution based on your own experiences of entertaining, household management, the small oddities of family life. Not a diary as such, more a conversation with the reader. A chat over coffee, or lunch with a friend.’

Everything about that sounded perfect—if she ignored the fact that she didn’t have a partner, let alone a husband and the charmingly precocious children she’d invented were an amalgam of those she’d encountered in her ‘day’ job—or at least their mothers’ sadly mistaken assessment of them. As for entertaining, the only effort she put into that was to call out for a pizza.

And what the heck was ‘household management’ when it was at home?

‘My proposal is this. An initial contract for six months at our usual rate, and then, if the readers respond as favourably as I anticipate, we’ll talk again. Does that interest you?’

This, Ellie decided, was about as close to her worst nightmare as it was possible to get. She’d finally got her first breakthrough, her first real recognition as a writer, and it was all based on lies.

She couldn’t do it.

‘I expect you’d like a little time to consider it?’ Mrs Cochrane said, when she didn’t immediately answer.

Could she?

‘Maybe you’d like to talk it over with your husband?’ she pressed.

‘My husband?’To hear the words, spoken so casually, left her momentarily floundering. ‘No,’ she finally managed. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

Sean, wherever he was, would be grinning like an idiot, cheering her on, saying, ‘You show them, Ellie. Take the balloon ride…’

Mrs Cochrane really liked what she’d written. She’d be doing the woman a favour if she said yes. And she’d be getting paid for writing on a regular basis—proof for her parents, her sister, that she wasn’t just chasing some will-o’-the-wisp daydream. She’d have something to show an agent, too. And she’d only be writing under a pseudonym of sorts, after all. People did that all the time.

Actually, maybe she wouldn’t even have to do that…

‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘younger readers would be put off by the title? Maybe I should just write as Gabriella March?’

Please, please, please…

The other woman considered her suggestion for all of ten seconds before she shook her head. ‘Lady Gabriella has a touch of class.’ Then, ‘Is it your husband’s title, or a courtesy one?’

‘A courtesy one,’ she said, seizing on this. If it was just a courtesy title, it wouldn’t mean anything. Except that Mrs Cochrane was looking at her as if she expected more, and Ellie suddenly had the feeling that she’d just made a huge mistake, somehow given the wrong answer. But it was too late now, and having made the mental leap from ‘no way can I do this’ to ‘what’s the problem?’ she tuned out the voice of sanity.

Chances like this were once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and no one knew better than she did that they had to be grabbed with both hands.

She’d worry about the children and the household management later. There were books. The internet…

As for her ‘husband’…

For a moment Ellie was assailed by such an ache of loneliness, loss. How could she do this…? Pretend…

‘Well, to business,’ Mrs Cochrane said, when it was clear she wasn’t going to add anything on the subject of her ‘title’, and by the time she’d explained the technicalities of a monthly column, the needs of word count, copy dates, etc, Ellie had recovered.

‘We’d like you to send two or three illustrations with each month’s column. Can you manage that?’

Illustrations were the least of her problems. She drew as she breathed—always had done—without even thinking about it.

‘We may not use them all, but it will give the art director a choice. Those will be paid for separately, of course.’

They would?

‘In fact, for your masthead, rather than a photograph of you, I’d like to use this drawing of your house.’

Her house.

That would be one she was house-sitting, for an absent aging academic who was studying some long-lost language in foreign parts.

‘That’s not a problem for you? Clearly you’ll want to keep a measure of privacy?’

‘No,’ she said. A problem would have been if Mrs Cochrane had wanted a photograph of her. That would have blown her cover on day one, and she doubted Mrs Cochrane would be amused to discover that Lady Gabriella, far from being a lady of leisure, was Ellie March, a very hardworking cleaning lady.

Her drawing, on the other hand, was no more than an impression. The turret, a window or two, a terrace. It could be anywhere.

‘I think that’s a great idea.’

‘Well?’ Stacey demanded, when she returned her suit and shoes. ‘What did she want?’

‘To offer me a contract to write a monthly lifestyle column for the magazine.’

Ellie took great satisfaction in watching her clever, successful older sister’s jaw drop.

It didn’t take her long to recover.

‘You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?’ Then, perhaps realising that was a little harsh, ‘I mean, it’s ridiculous. You don’t have a lifestyle. Let’s face it, you don’t even have a life.’

‘True,’ Ellie said, keeping her face straight with the greatest difficulty. ‘But you’re missing the point. I write fiction. I’ll make it up.’

‘Good book?’

A deep, velvety voice penetrated the cold, swirling mists of the Yorkshire Moors, jerking Ellie back into the twenty-first century.

Not an entirely bad thing.

She’d started the afternoon with the intention of giving the study a thorough bottoming. Keeping on top of the dust in the rambling old house she was ‘sitting’ while its owner was away was not onerous, but it did require a schedule or she lost track; today it was the study’s turn. Unfortunately, her attention had been grabbed by the unexpected discovery of a top-shelf cache of gothic romances, and she’d forgotten all about the dust.

But, then again, it was not entirely good, either.

Being startled while perched on top of a ladder was always going be risky. On a library ladder with an inclination to take off on its tracks at the slightest provocation, it was just asking for trouble. And trouble was what Ellie got.

Twice.

Losing her balance six feet above ground was bad enough, but her attempt to recover it proved disastrous as the ladder shifted sideways, taking her feet with it.

Too busy attempting to defy the laws of gravity to yell at the fool who’d caused the problem, she dropped her duster and made a desperate grab for the bookshelf with one hand—while clinging tightly to the precious leather-bound volume she’d been reading in the other.

For a moment, as her fingertips made contact with the shelf, she thought it was going to be all right.

She quickly discovered that she’d been over-optimistic, and that in lunging for the shelf—the laws of physics being what they were—she’d only made things worse.

Her body went one way; her feet went the other.

Fingers and shelf parted company.

Happily—or not, depending upon your point of view—the author of her misfortune took the full force of her fall.

If she’d been the waif-like heroine of one of those top-shelf romances—or indeed of her own growing pile of unpublished manuscripts—Ellie would, at this point, have dropped tidily into his arms and the fool, having taken one look, would have fallen instantly and madly in love with her. Of course there would have to be several hundred pages of misunderstandings and confusion before he finally admitted it, either to himself or to her, since men tended to be a bit dense when it came to romance.

Since this was reality, and she was built on rather more substantial lines than the average heroine of a romance—who wasn’t?—she fell on him like the proverbial ton of bricks, and they went down in a heap of tangled limbs.

And Emily Brontë gave him a cuff round the ear with her leather binding for good measure.

‘Idiot!’ she finally managed. But she was winded by her fall, and the word lacked force. Ellie sucked in some air and tried again. ‘Idiot!’—much better—‘You might have killed me!’ Then, because he’d somehow managed to walk through locked doors into a house she was caretaking—as in ‘taking care of’—she demanded, ‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’

Then, as her brain finally caught up with her mouth—and because burglars rarely stopped to exchange must-read titles with their victims—the answer hit her with almost as much force as she’d landed on him with.

There was only one person he could be.

Dr Benedict Faulkner.

The Dr Benedict Faulkner whose house she was sitting.

The Dr Benedict Faulkner who was supposed to be on the other side of the world, up to his eyes in ancient tribal split infinitives.

The Dr Benedict Faulkner who wasn’t due back for another nine months.

Now she had time for a closer look, it was obvious that he was an older incarnation of the lovely youth in a faded black and white photograph on the piano in the drawing room. The one she always gave an extra rub with the duster.

Older, but definitely not ‘aging’.

She’d somehow got this picture of him wearing tweeds and glasses, with the stooped and withered shoulders of someone whose life was spent poring over ancient manuscripts.

Not so.

It would seem that he had been either a very late surprise for his mother, or the offspring of a second, younger wife—because while he was wearing a tweed jacket, that was as far as the cliché went.

The man lying beneath her, it had to be said, could have stepped right out of the pages of one of her own romances. The ones that her own sister insisted on referring to as ‘fairy tales for grown-ups’.

She was being condescending—a little unkind, even. Stacey, a high-flying corporate lawyer, was so utterly practical and businesslike that it sometimes seemed impossible that they could be sisters—but Ellie was delighted with the description. Only dull, unimaginative people grew out of fairy tales. Didn’t they?

And falling on a man of such hero potential was pure fairy tale—although surely in the fairy tales it didn’t hurt quite so much?

Whatever.

Opportunities like this didn’t come her way often—make that never—which was why she should be making the most of it. Purely for research purposes. But typically, instead of lying dazed in his arms, her cheek pressed firmly against his accommodating chest, listening to his heart skip a beat as he appreciated the colour of her hair, the softness of her ivory skin, the subtle scent of the lavender furniture polish with which she’d been tending his furniture, she’d berated him like a fishwife.

She groaned and let her head sink back to his chest while she recovered her breath along with her wits.

This was no time to let her wits go wandering. It was a disaster! If he was home, he wouldn’t need her to house-sit; she wouldn’t have anywhere to live.

Worse.

She wouldn’t have his house to fire her imagination on a monthly basis for Milady.

Then, realising somewhat belatedly that he hadn’t responded to her less than ladylike reaction, or to her demand for identification, she took a closer look at him—no point pretending to swoon; even if he’d been conscious she’d completely messed up the fainting-violet moment—and the swirling confusion of thoughts and impressions coalesced into a single feeling.

Concern.

‘Dr Faulkner? Are you okay?’

He didn’t look okay.

His eyes were closed and he looked somewhat yellow. As if his colour had drained away under a light tan.

She knew she hadn’t killed him. Under her hand—which had somehow found its way inside his jacket, to lie flat against his chest—his heartbeat was as steady as a rock. It was, however, entirely possible that she, or more likely Emily’s solid leather-bound spine, had knocked him out cold.

‘Dr Faulkner?’

His mouth moved, which was encouraging, but no sound emerged. Which was not.

Fully prepared, despite her own close call—and a growing awareness of pain in various bits of her body—to leap heroically into Florence Nightingale mode, Ellie lifted her head to take a better look.

‘Where does it hurt?’

His response was little more than a grunt.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.’

‘I said,’ he repeated, eyes still closed, teeth tightly gritted, ‘that you don’t want to know.’

She frowned.

‘Just move your damned knee…’

‘What?’ Ellie leaned back, provoking a very audible gasp of pain. Belatedly realising exactly where her knee was lodged, she swiftly lifted herself clear, provoking another grunt as she levered herself up off his chest with her hands. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘But it was that or the…’ She managed to stop her runaway mouth before it reminded him about the knee.

Obviously at this point any fictional heroine worth her salt would have picked up her injured hero’s hand and held it clasped against her bosom as she stroked back the lick of dark honey-coloured hair that had tumbled over his high brow. Or maybe administered the kiss of life…

Confronted by reality, Ellie didn’t need telling that none of the above would be either appropriate or welcome, and so she confined herself to a brisk, ‘Is there anything I can do?’

The second the words were out of her mouth she regretted them, but Dr Faulkner manfully resisted the opportunity to invite her to kiss it better. Or maybe it was just that he needed all his breath to ease himself into a sitting position. He certainly took his time about it, as if fearing that any injudicious move might prove fatal.

She watched him, ready to leap to his aid should the need arise. It wasn’t exactly a strain. Looking at him.

He was—local damage excepted—far from doddery. Or old. On the contrary, Dr Benedict Faulkner’s thick, shaggy sun-streaked hair didn’t have a single grey hair, and she was prepared to bet that under normal circumstances his pared-to-the-bone features lacked the library pallor of the dedicated academic. As for the exquisitely cut fine tweed jacket he was wearing—and it did look very fine indeed, over a T-shirt and jeans worn soft with use that clung like a second skin to his thighs—it was moulded to a pair of shoulders that would not have been out of place in a rugby scrum, or stroking an oar in the university eight.

And, to go with the great hair and the great body, Dr Faulkner possessed a pair of spectacularly heroic blue eyes. Ellie—again from a purely professional stand-point—considered appropriate adjectives. Periwinkle? No, too girly. Cerulean? Oh, please…Flax? Not bad. Flax had a solid, masculine ring to it—but was it the right blue…?

‘What about you?’Dr Faulkner asked, breaking into her thoughts.

‘What about me?’ Ellie responded, as for the second time that day she was yanked back to reality.

‘Who the hell are you?’

So, he hadn’t been unconscious, then. Just in too much pain to move.

‘I’m Gabriella March. I work for your sister. Adele,’ she added. Who knew what damage she’d done? ‘She asked me to house-sit for you while she was away, since she wouldn’t be around to take care of things.’

‘House-sit? How long for?’

‘Twelve months.’

He responded with a word that suggested he was not noticeably impressed by his sibling’s thoughtfulness.

‘She expected you to be away for that long.’ Then, in case he took that as a criticism, ‘I’m sure you had a good reason for coming back early.’

‘Will a civil war suffice?’ Then, ‘If she’s away, why didn’t she ask you to house-sit for her?’

‘Oh, Adele let her flat. Those new places down on the Quay are snapped up by companies looking for accommodation for senior staff moving into the area. They’re so convenient…’ Then, because he didn’t look especially impressed by the inevitable comparison with his own inconveniently rambling house, she said, ‘Since she wouldn’t be around to keep an eye on this place and I was having landlord trouble, we did each other a favour.’