The Secret Life Of Lady Gabriella
‘Are you one of her research students?’
‘What? Oh, no. I’m her cleaner. And yours, actually,’ she said. ‘At least I was before I moved in. It’s part of the deal now I’m living here. Adele is saving you money.’
‘What happened to Mrs Turner?’ he asked, apparently not impressed with the fiscal argument.
‘Nothing. At least, quite a lot—but nothing bad. She won the Lottery and decided that it was definitely going to change her life.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, good for her.’
Could the man be any more restrained?
‘Did you hurt yourself?’ he asked.
Hurt herself? Was he suffering from a memory lapse? Partial amnesia, perhaps? She had done nothing. The accident had been entirely his fault…
‘When you fell,’ he persisted, presumably in case she was too dim to understand. Not that he appeared to care very much. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t bring herself to blame him.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe you should check?’ he advised.
‘Good idea.’ Ellie hauled herself to her feet and discovered that her left knee did hurt quite a bit as she turned. She decided not to mention it. ‘How about you?’
Dr Faulkner winced a bit, too, as he finally made it to his feet, and she instinctively put out her hand to help him.
He didn’t exactly flinch, but it was a close-run thing, and she made a performance of testing her own limbs, flexing a wrist as if she hadn’t noticed the way he’d recoiled from her touch.
‘Maybe you should take a trip to Casualty?’ she suggested. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ Then, ‘So where is she? Adele.’
He sounded as if he might have a word or two to say to his sister about inviting someone he didn’t know to move into his house.
‘She’s bug-hunting. In Sarawak. Or was it Senegal? Or it could have been Sumatra…’ She shrugged. ‘Geography is not my strong point.’
‘Bug-hunting?’
Probably not quite precise enough for a philologist, Ellie thought, and, with a little shiver that she couldn’t quite contain, said, ‘She’s hunting for bugs.’ Which was quite enough discussion about that subject. ‘She’s away for six months.’ She made a gesture that took in their surroundings. ‘She wanted me to make the place look lived in. As a security measure,’ she added. ‘Turning lights on. Keeping the lawn cut. That sort of thing.’
‘And in return you get free accommodation?’
‘That’s a good deal. Most house-sitters expect not only to be paid, but provided with living expenses, too,’ she assured him, while trying out her legs to make sure they were in full working order, since she was going to need them later. The one with the twinge suggested that the evening was not going to be much fun. ‘And they don’t throw in cleaning for free.’
‘No, I’m sure they don’t.’ Then, having watched her gyrations and clearly come to the conclusion that she was a lunatic, ‘Will you live to dust another shelf, do you think?’
‘I appear to be in one piece,’ she told him, then gave another little shiver—and this time not because she was thinking of Adele Faulkner and her beloved bugs, or even because she was hoping to gain his sympathy, but at the realisation of how lightly she’d got off. How lightly they’d both got off. ‘What on earth did you think you were doing, creeping up on me like that?’ she demanded.
‘Creeping up on you? Madam, you were so wrapped up in the book you were reading I swear a herd of elephants could have stampeded unnoticed beneath you.’
Madam? Madam?
He bent and picked it up, holding it at a little distance, narrowing his eyes as he peered at the spine to see for himself what had held her in such thrall. ‘Wuthering Heights?’
His tone was as withering as any east wind blasting the Yorkshire Moors. Not content with practically killing her, he apparently felt entitled to criticise her taste in literature.
‘You can read?’ she enquired.
Ellie, rapidly tiring of his attitude, had aimed for polite incredulity. She’d clearly hit the bullseye—with the incredulity, if not the politeness—and as he turned his blue eyes on her she rapidly rethought the colour range.
Steel. Slate…
‘If someone helps me with the long words,’ he assured her, after the longest pause during which her knee, the good one, buckled slightly.
Then, realising what he’d said, it occurred to her that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he possessed a sense of humour, and she waited for the follow-up smile, fully prepared to forgive him and return it with interest, given the slightest encouragement. She wasn’t a woman to hold a grudge.
‘But I only bother if there’s some point to the exercise.’
No smile.
He patted his top pocket. ‘Did you notice what happened to my glasses?’he asked, handing her the book.
Ellie was sorely tempted to use it to biff him up the other side of his head, tell him to find his own damn glasses and leave him to it. But she liked living in this house. Actually, no. She loved living in this house. Especially when the owner was a long way away, out of the country, doing whatever it was that philologists did on research assignments.
There was something special about buffing up the oak handrail on banisters that had been polished by generations of hands. Cleaning a butler’s sink installed not as part of some trendy restoration project but when the house was new, wondering about all the poor women who’d stood in the same spot, up to their elbows in washing soda for a few shillings a week. Sleeping in the little round tower that some upwardly mobile Victorian merchant with delusions of grandeur had added to lend his house a touch of the stately homes.
What a pity Dr Faulkner hadn’t stayed wherever he’d been. Because, while his sister had been totally happy with the mutual benefits the arrangement offered, it was obvious that he was not exactly thrilled to be lumbered with a health hazard living under his feet. Or falling on top of him.
Maybe—please—he was on a flying visit. Here today, gone tomorrow.
Maybe—more likely—he wasn’t, and since the deal had been done on a handshake she didn’t have a contract, or a lease, or anything other than Adele’s word to save her from being thrown onto the street at a moment’s notice.
Belatedly, she held her tongue. And because it was easier—and probably wiser—than attempting to stare him down, she looked around for his glasses, spotting them beneath a library table stacked with academic journals.
They were the kind of ultra-modern spectacles that had no frame, just a few rivets through the lenses to hold them together, and as she scooped them up they fell to bits in her hand.
CHAPTER TWO
BENEDICT FAULKNER said nothing, but instead opened a drawer, extracted an identical pair and tossed them onto his desk.
Were broad shoulders and blue eyes enough? Ellie wondered. Could a man be a true hero if he didn’t possess a sense of humour?
It didn’t look good but, prepared to be fair—Emily B was not, after all, everyone’s cup of tea—she dropped the remains of his spectacles into her apron pocket and, bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt, said, ‘I realize that Emily Brontë is not everyone’s cup of tea.’
‘Heathcliff,’he assured her, confirming this, ‘is psychotic, and Catherine Earnshaw is dimmer than a low energy lightbulb.’
A little harsh, she thought. But, rather than argue with him, she said, ‘But the passion? What about the passion?’
‘He’s psychotically passionate and she’s passionately dim?’ he offered.
Realising that this was a conversation going nowhere, she didn’t bother to answer but turned her attention to the book itself, and in a belated attempt to prove herself a trustworthy and useful addition to his household said, ‘This is a fine early edition, Dr Faulkner. It could be quite valuable.’
He glanced up at the shelf she was supposed to have been dusting, then shrugged.
‘It probably belonged to my great-grandmother.’ He offered no hint as to whether he thought that would make it a treasured possession, or thought as little of his great-grandmother’s taste as he did of hers. ‘The one who ran away with a penniless poet.’
It was odd. While he kept saying things that were certainly meant to crush her, Ellie found herself not only not crushed, but positively stimulated.
‘Like Elizabeth Barrett?’ she enquired. After all, if his great-grandmother had run away from a comfortable home, she’d probably had very good reason. A husband who didn’t have sense of humour, perhaps?
‘Was Robert Browning penniless?’
‘Would it have mattered?’
‘What do you think?’
Oh. Right. He was a cynic.
‘I think that, judging by the depth of dust up there, your great-grandmother was probably the last person to take a duster to the top shelf.’
To prove her point, she opened the book and then banged it shut, producing a small cloud of the stuff. The choking fit was not intentional, but it did go a long way to proving her point.
Dr Faulkner made no move to ease her plight—none of that back-slapping, or rushing for a glass of water nonsense for him. On the contrary, he kept a safe distance, waiting until she’d recovered, before he picked up the duster she’d dropped as she’d vainly sought to save herself and offered it to her.
Ellie used it to give the leather binding a careful wipe.
‘Books,’ she assured him, having clearly demonstrated the necessity, ‘should be dusted at least once a year.’
‘Oh? Is that what you were doing?’
Did his face warm just a little? Not with anything as definite as a smile, but surely there was the slightest shifting of the facial muscles?
‘Dusting?’ he added.
No, not warmth. Just sarcasm. He was a sarcastic cynic.
Without a sense of humour.
Fortunately, before she could say something guaranteed to leave her with a huge empty space where the roof over her head was meant to be, the clock on the mantelpiece began to chime the half-hour, and, genuinely surprised, she exclaimed, ‘Good grief! Is that right?’ She looked at her own wristwatch and saw that it was it fact ten minutes slow. ‘I lose all sense of time when I’m dusting a good book.’
‘Perhaps you should save your energies for something less distracting?’
‘No, it’s okay. I’m prepared to suffer,’ she assured him, wheeling the steps back into place. She didn’t actually feel much like climbing them, but she’d have to do it sooner or later, and it was a bit like falling off a horse—best to get straight back on. Or so she’d heard. ‘I hate to leave a job half done.’
‘Very commendable, but I’d be grateful if you’d save it for another day. I have calls to make.’
Ellie ignored him. She wasn’t about to scuttle off like one of his students put in her place. She’d been there, done that—although not, admittedly, with any lecturer who looked like Benedict Faulkner—and got the degree to prove it. Instead she concentrated on finishing what she’d started.
‘Are you going to be much longer, Miss March?’ he asked, as she worked her way along the shelf.
And that was a way of keeping his distance, too. Whoever called anyone under the age of fifty ‘Miss’ any more? Although, given the choice, she preferred it to ‘madam’.
‘My name is Gabriella,’ she reminded him. Her way of keeping her distance. All her friends, employers, called her Ellie. Gabriella was a special occasion name. Gabriella March was going to look very special embossed in gold on the cover of her first book. Then, having descended the ladder—this time in the conventional manner, one step at a time—she added, ‘And it’s Mrs. Mrs Gabriella March.’
He removed his spectacles and turned to face her. Now she had his attention. ‘Mrs? There are two of you?’
She stiffened. ‘No. Just me. If you find all that too difficult to remember, maybe you’d find Ellie easier.’
She could do sarcasm.
‘Ellie?’
‘There—that wasn’t so difficult, was it?’
Unsurprisingly, he did not respond with an invitation to call him Ben, and she found herself wishing she’d left it at ‘Ellie’.
‘I’ll, um, leave you in peace, then. If there’s nothing else I can do for you?’
His look suggested that she had done more than enough, but he restricted his response to, ‘Nothing. Thank you…Ellie.’
She could tell that he’d had to force himself to use her name. Just what was his problem? It wasn’t as if she’d flirted outrageously with him. Good looking he might be, give or take a sense of humour, but she wasn’t about to throw herself at him. Not intentionally, anyway. Not if she wanted to continue to ‘live-in’—and it was quite possible that this was just a flying visit.
‘Help yourself to whatever you like from the fridge,’ she said. ‘Milk. Eggs…’ Then, when that didn’t elicit a grateful response—or any response at all…‘Right. Well, I’ll see you later, perhaps.’
Dr Benedict Faulkner easily managed to contain his excitement at the possibility.
Ellie forced herself to ignore the shabby rucksack that had been dumped in the kitchen. It was probably full of dirty washing, and her fingers twitched to get it into the washing machine, but she restrained herself.
Instead she wiped a smudge from the wooden drainer, rearranged a jug full of garden flowers she’d put on the windowsill, straightened a row of old boots in the mud room. She always found it hard to drag herself away from this house. It felt lonely, as if it needed her.
Which was plainly ridiculous.
What it needed, she thought, was a couple who would love it and cherish it and fill it with children. A proper family to bring life to silent rooms, children to play Chopsticks on the piano, build dens in the overgrown garden. A woman with time and love to lavish on it and turn it into a home. Someone like Lady Gabriella and the imaginary family with which she’d populated it during the last few months. Eight-year-old Oliver, six-year-old Sasha, little Chloe. And a shadowy masculine figure who was not the man she’d loved, married, lost—this was not his place—but someone utterly different, a man who, until now, she’d managed to avoid bringing into focus…
Enough. Time to go. She picked up her backpack, then paused to guiltily dead-head the bedraggled pansies in a dreary stone trough by the kitchen door—something else that looked as if the last person who’d taken any notice of it was Dr Faulkner’s great-grandmother.
Ben Faulkner stood at the arched gothic window of his study and watched as Ellie March struggled to mount a vintage sit-up-and-beg bike of the kind that his great-grandmother had probably ridden. The flighty one who’d read romantic fiction and caused a scandal.
If she’d been around today, he thought, she’d probably be wearing hip-hugging jeans, a cropped T-shirt and have a gold ring in her navel, too. Ellie March was not only a danger to any man who made the mistake of getting too close to the ladder she was perched on, but dressed like that she was a serious traffic hazard.
He closed his eyes, reliving the moment when he’d opened the study door and seen her whiling away the working day with her head in a book. It was as if time had somehow slipped back.
He shook his head at the stupidity of it.
Natasha had possessed an ethereal pale gold Nordic beauty that the more substantial, earthier Ellie March could never aspire to.
And Tasha would not have been wasting her time reading a nineteenth-century gothic romance, but Yevtushenko, or Turgenev. In Russian.
Yet, even while he’d known it was just an illusion, he’d still been drawn in. Like a moth to a flame.
Why couldn’t his sister just mind her own business? What arrangement had she tied him into? Whatever it was, he’d have to give the woman reasonable notice, time to find somewhere else.
It could take weeks, he thought, flexing his shoulder, easing the muscle he’d pulled as she’d felled him, then lain there, as warm and soft a handful of womanhood as any man could wish for, her hand against his heart, her hair brushing against his cheek, her scent tugging at buried memories.
He’d kept his eyes closed then, in a vain attempt to keep them from surfacing. He kept them closed now, hoping to claw them back, hold the moment.
Stupid, stupid…
And yet there was a warmth in Ellie’s soft brown eyes that sparked and flared and stirred at something he’d thought long dead inside him. Something that he did not want resurrected.
Forcing himself to confront the reality, rather than some fantasy brought on by jet lag, he watched as she tried to scoot the bike into motion. She seemed to be having trouble, and as soon as she put all her weight on her leg she pulled up short, letting the bike fall. Then she aimed a heartfelt kick at it.
The kick was a mistake.
He was right, he decided, heading for the door. He should have turned around and walked away while he’d had the chance.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you’d hurt your knee when you fell?’
Ellie had seen Dr Faulkner striding towards her on those long, fine legs, and her pain had been overridden by a flutter of pleasure that, had she had time to analyse it, would have brought a blush to her cheek. As soon as he opened his mouth, however, it was clear that he was no knight in armour riding to her rescue.
She lifted her shoulders a millimetre or two.
Okay, so she was no Guinevere, but even so a little sympathy would have been welcome, instead of the undiluted irritation that appeared to be his standard response to her.
What was his problem?
She hadn’t gone out of her way to get under his feet. On the contrary, he was the one who’d got under hers. He was the one who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, not her.
‘My mother taught me that discretion was the better part of valour,’ she said. ‘It seemed like an excellent moment to put her advice to good use.’
‘It might have been more useful if she’d warned you about the dangers of daydreaming at the top of ladders,’ he replied.
Ellie watched as he picked up the bike and propped it against the wall, out of harm’s way.
Hello! I’m here! Crumpled up on the driveway in agony—well, maybe agony was pushing it a bit, but still, it’s me you’re supposed to be picking up and—
Maybe not.
Having dealt with the bike, he turned to her.
‘Can you stand?’ he asked.
‘I’m going to have to, unless I plan on staying here all evening.’
She could do ‘you’re a dumb idiot’ responses, too.
Then, as she finally made a move, he said, ‘Wait!’ She looked up at him.
‘For what? Christmas?’
By way of reply, he offered her his hands.
Better. Especially as they were the kind of hands a romantic novelist expected of her hero. Broad palms. Long fingers. Wide thumb-tips. Not smooth, soft, like most academics, but callused, scarred with small cuts and abrasions. Dull red marks that looked as if they might have been burns.
It seemed almost wanton to place her own against them, but it was a gesture, one it would be rude to ignore, and she grasped them. He pulled her to her feet without making it look as if he was hauling a sack of coal from a cellar, making her feel for just a moment like some fragile heroine.
It was only the words that came out of his mouth that persistently spoiled the image.
‘How is it?’ he asked, finally getting even that bit right. ‘Your leg?’
‘Fine,’ she said, feeling no pain. Then, realising that she was staring up at him instead of testing her knee, she quickly said, ‘Thank you.’ And let go.
For a moment she thought it was going to be all right, but then she made the mistake of twisting around to get at her backpack, and gasped as pain shot through the joint.
‘That fine?’ he said, catching her elbow, taking her weight as the knee buckled.
‘Tricky things, knees,’ she said, catching her breath. It was the knee, not the man. She did not fancy him. She was not that shallow. She had standards, and they included kindness above sun-kissed hair and cheekbones that could slice cheese. ‘Great in a straight line, not so good for cornering. But it’ll be okay.’
‘Of course it will.’
Now, that, she decided, really was sarcasm.
‘Where were you going?’ he asked.
‘What? Oh, to the Assembly Rooms in the city centre. There’s a reception for the Chamber of Commerce.’
‘You’re a member of the Chamber of Commerce?’
She stared at him. Was he kidding? It was impossible to tell from his expression. ‘No,’ she replied, taking no chances. ‘I’m attending the reception in a professional capacity.’ Then, in the face of his blank expression, ‘I’m on waitress duty,’ she explained. ‘Drinks, canapés…’
‘Right.’ Those blue eyes swept over her in a thoughtful look. ‘The dress code, if you don’t mind me saying so, seems a little casual. What happened to the little black dress and white apron?’
‘For your information, Dr Faulkner, they’re in my backpack.’ Well, the modern equivalent, anyway. Black trousers and black shirt. ‘Along with the black stockings and suspenders,’ she added, tossing caution to the winds. There was only so much sarcasm a girl could take with a smile. ‘The police have forbidden me from wearing them when I’m riding a bike,’ she added, just to demonstrate that sarcasm was not a male preserve. ‘Speaking of which…’ she shrugged off her backpack and extracted her cellphone ‘…I’d better call a cab.’
‘What?’ It was the second time she’d managed to grab his full attention. She was beginning to enjoy it. ‘You can’t seriously be planning to spend the evening on your feet? Surely they can find a replacement?’
‘I am the replacement,’ she informed him, as she scrolled through her fast-dial numbers. Waitressing at receptions was absolutely her least favourite job—including cleaning ovens. ‘And I can’t let Sue down.’
‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘Who is Sue?’
‘My best friend since playgroup, despite the fact that we’re total opposites…’ She found the number she was looking for and hit ‘dial’. ‘Which is why she’s the one running Busy Bees, while I’m the one she’s paying to smile and waft around gracefully with trays of drinks and canapés.’
‘Not tonight.’
‘Well, maybe wafting gracefully will be a stretch,’ she admitted. Then, ‘Damn, it’s engaged.’
As she hit ‘redial’, he said, ‘Leave it!’ And, in case she had any plans to ignore him, he wrapped those long and very strong fingers around both hand and phone, so that she could do nothing but blink.
How dared he?
She looked at his hand. Then at him.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.
‘Stopping you from behaving like an idiot.’
That would cover it, she thought. However, since it was the only option open to her, she said, ‘I appreciate your concern, and if I had any choice I can assure you I wouldn’t be doing this.’ Then, when he didn’t seem convinced, ‘Truly. I had something much more interesting planned for tonight.’
For just a moment she thought he was going to ask her what, but he apparently thought better of it and instead said, ‘Very well, if you insist on going then I have no choice but to drive you there myself.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘Oh, yes, Mrs March, I do.’
‘Ellie, please.’ Maybe she’d misjudged him…
‘But not before you’ve got some strapping on your knee.’
‘There’s no time for that. I’ll sort it out when I get there,’ she assured him, lying through her teeth. ‘A lift is more than enough—’
‘I’ll do it now,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll take you to the local hospital and let them do it.’ He didn’t wait for her to choose, which suggested he was a fast learner, but put his arm around her waist. It must have been shock that stilled the ‘get lost; I’ll take a cab’ retort that flew to her lips, and made redundant his follow-up, ‘How will you beat off burglars and mow the lawn if you’re laid up with a crook knee?’
Pressed against the soft weave of his jacket, his arm supporting her, she felt the words still in her throat. This, she decided, must be what being swept off your feet must feel like.