The Secret Life Of Lady Gabriella

‘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 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.