The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella Read online

  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.’

  ‘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 not
iced 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 demon
strated 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.’