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‘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If she’d been the waif-like heroine of one of those top-shelf romances—or indeed of her own growing pile of unpublished manuscripts—Ellie would, at this point, have dropped tidily into his arms and the fool, having taken one look, would have fallen instantly and madly in love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 Bront? 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 clichе 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.’
‘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.
