The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella

CHAPTER THREE

ELLIE’S pleasure was short-lived. The reception was noisy, crowded, and went on well beyond eight. By the time she’d helped clear up and got to the library it was nearly nine, and most of the members had already decamped to the pub.

Diana Sutton, the group’s secretary, who was already locking up, was sympathetic. ‘Bad luck. Never mind, come and have a drink. We’re celebrating. Gary’s sold a short story and Lucy’s sold an article to Women’s World. The one she wrote when we did that magazine exercise.’

‘Really? That’s brilliant news!’

‘Did you ever do anything for Milady?’

Ellie, who’d had to force her excitement through an unexpectedly large lump in her throat, found herself floundering. She’d written her journal to prove to everyone that she could do anything she set her mind to, but, having succeeded with it beyond her wildest dreams, it was the one thing she couldn’t brag about.

What, she wondered, was the point of belonging to a support group, with people who sympathised with your rejections, cheered at your successes, if you weren’t totally engaged? Honest.

These were her friends…

‘No? Well, it was a bit of a joke,’ Diana said, taking her silence as a no and rescuing her from having to admit that she was a failure.

Sean’s friends.

He was the one who’d written poetry. This had been his scene. She’d gone along because that was what they did. Sean-and-Ellie. Ellie-and-Sean. Started writing her historical romance because-well, she’d had to do something. No one, least of all Sean, had ever taken it seriously…

‘I’m sorry,’ Diana said, to someone who’d followed her in. ‘The library is closed. Late night is tomorrow.’

‘Thanks, but I’ve just come to pick up Ellie.’

Ellie half turned, happier to see Ben Faulkner than she would have believed possible a couple of hours ago. There was no way she could sit in the pub with these people tonight and not feel a complete fraud.

‘Good timing, Doc,’ she said. Then, ‘I’ll have to give the pub a miss tonight, Diana. Tell Lucy and Gary that I’m green with envy, will you?’

‘I will,’ she said, her look speculative, as if trying to work out how someone with so little to offer in the way of looks, style and career prospects had managed to pull someone so fanciable. Clocking all the details so that she could tell the rest of the group. ‘See you next month, then?’

‘Work permitting,’ she said, knowing that she wouldn’t go. Couldn’t go. She hadn’t actually lied, but by not telling the truth she’d cut herself off from them. Cut herself off from her past.

Too miserable to think, she allowed Ben to help her down the steps, across the pavement. He must have remembered the inelegant way she’d flopped into the seat, and this time he supported her, lowering her in gently-no doubt thinking of his springs or suspension or whatever it was that men worried about when it came to their precious cars.

She tugged on the seat belt, glancing back as it refused to budge.

‘Gently,’ Ben said, sliding behind the wheel and then, when ‘gently’ wouldn’t do it, ‘Leave it to me!’ And he reached across to pull it smoothly over her body, giving Ellie a dizzying close-up of his profile, a whiff of undiluted masculinity, before he fitted it into the clip.

‘It’s a bit temperamental,’he said, catching her look, misunderstanding it.

‘It’s old; it’s entitled to be cranky,’ she said.

‘True. So what’s your excuse?’

‘None of your damn business.’ She was tired, irritable, and at that moment she didn’t like herself very much. Which apparently made two of them. ‘I did tell you I’d get a lift.’

‘Next time,’ he replied coldly, ‘I’ll listen.’

‘Believe me,’ she snapped back, ‘I don’t plan to do this again any time soon.’ And it wasn’t the knee she was referring to.

‘No?’ He did not appear to be convinced.

‘No.’ Then, ‘Oh, look, I’m sorry. I’ve had the kind of evening I’ll be glad to forget, but that’s no reason to take it out on you.’He didn’t answer. ‘Or your car,’ she added.

He turned to her, his face creased not with irritation but concern. ‘Is the leg painful? We could go straight to A &E if you think it needs professional treatment?’

‘No. It held up better than I deserved for mistreating it so badly. I hardly felt a twinge. You did a good job, Doc. Ben,’ she corrected hurriedly, and, because she’d been at best tetchy, at worst downright rude, ‘I’m grateful for the lift, truly. I’ll be glad to get home.’ Realising that was probably not what he wanted to hear, ‘How about you? Any long-term damage?’

‘I’ll live.’ He glanced across at her. ‘Why do you do this, Ellie? Waitress, clean, caretake? You’re obviously an intelligent woman-’

‘Despite my deplorable taste in fiction?’

‘We all have our weaknesses.’

Ellie didn’t consider her love of nineteenth-century literature a weakness, but since there was no likelihood of changing Ben Faulkner’s mind she said, ‘True. So what’s yours?’

He glanced at her. ‘Do you always say the first thing that comes into your head?’

‘Usually,’ she admitted.

‘And you’ve managed to live how long? Twenty-four, twenty-five years without coming to serious harm?’

‘It’s very rude to ask a woman her age.’ Then, ‘Twenty-six years, actually.’

‘Twenty-six? Amazing.’

‘I know. I’m very well preserved.’ No wonder Mrs Cochrane thought she’d been married before the ink on her A-level certificates was dry. ‘All that beeswax in the furniture polish, no doubt.’

‘I meant it’s amazing that you’ve survived unscathed.’

She lifted one shoulder a fraction. ‘No one reaches my age unscathed,’ she said. The wounds might not show, but they went deep.

Fortunately, he thought she was talking about her knee, and said, ‘Can’t you find a less painful way of keeping body and soul together?’

‘If you think teaching a class of thirteen-year-olds to appreciate the Classics is not painful, you should try it some time.’

‘You’re a teacher?’

‘Not any more. Now I’m a writer.’ Then, because he didn’t seem unduly impressed-and why should he be?-she added, ‘That was the local Writers’ Circle meeting I missed tonight.’

‘And you missed it for the pleasure of carrying heavy trays of drinks because you couldn’t let your friend down?’He glanced across at her. ‘What does she do for you?’

‘She employs me. Even writers have to eat.’

‘Actually, until you’re earning a living from writing, I’d suggest that you’re a waitress.’

‘That’s like saying Vincent van Gogh wasn’t a painter because he didn’t make a living from his work. Not that I’m comparing myself with him,’ she added quickly. Then, because it was clear he was not convinced, ‘Besides, I’m not unpublished. Far from it. I’ve had articles published. Short stories. I’ll have you know…’

Just in time she caught her runaway mouth.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ He glanced across at her. She shrugged. ‘If you must know, I’ve written a novel.’

Well, she had to say something.

‘Would I have read it?’

‘It’s being considered by an agent…’ that would be agent number eleven ‘…at this very moment.’

‘Then the answer is no. I imagine it’s a romance?’ he said. And she could have sworn she saw him finally crack a smile.

‘What’s wrong with romance?’ she demanded. That was definitely not the smile she was looking for. ‘Jane Austen wrote romance.’

‘So she did. And your beloved Emily Brontë. Brooding, arrogant men, brought to their knees by strong-minded young women.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘But unlikely.’

‘Not that unlikely.’ Ben Faulkner had a pretty good line in disdain himself. ‘I felled you without even trying.’

‘I had always assumed, in romantic terms, the felling to be metaphorical,’ he said.

‘It is. Pity. The other way is so much quicker.’ Then, hurriedly, ‘Not that it was intentional.’ She was quite happy to see him on his feet if he’d only let her stay on in his house. There was tons of room, after all, and she earned her keep. Besides, he was bound to be going away again soon…

‘Can’t you write and teach?’ he asked, clearly no more anxious than her to prolong that line of thought.

‘You’ve been talking to my father, haven’t you?’

‘Is that what he thinks?’

‘Pretty much. Of course he helped finance me through four years of university, and has every right to expect me to put my education to the purpose for which it was intended. Teaching, as he never tires of telling me, is the perfect job for a woman.’

‘A career that fits around family ties? That’s a touch patronising.’

‘He’d say he was being realistic. The hours, nine to three-thirty, and the long holidays would, according to him, give me plenty of time to write in my spare time.’

And he thought she lived in a fantasy world.

‘Fathers, patronising or not, tend to have the best interests of their offspring at heart.’ He glanced at her. ‘He can’t be very happy with what you’re doing.’

‘No.’ More guilt that his aspirations for her had been so cruelly dashed. But she couldn’t help it. ‘The thing is, Ben, that while cleaning, waitressing, helping out people who need a spare pair of hands occasionally, may not be an intellectually rewarding career, not something that Dad wants to boast about to his buddies at the golf club, it does have its good points.’

‘It does?’

‘Absolutely. For instance, apart from the occasional bag of ironing, I never have to take work home with me. I don’t have to spend my weekends marking. There are no lesson plans to prepare, and the paperwork is practically zero.’

She started early, and even while she polished, ironed and vacuumed her mind was her own, free to take imaginary journeys, live a different life in her head.

‘I start at seven, I’m usually finished by two. Then I have a clear run through until bedtime to write,’ she explained.

‘Even so…’

‘Life is too short, too uncertain to put dreams on hold, Ben.’ She glanced at him. ‘Losing Sean, my husband, taught me that. I don’t want to look back and say “I wish…”. I’m taking the balloon ride.’

She felt rather than saw his look as he absorbed the information that she was a widow rather than just another girl who’d married in haste and lived to repent it, as so many of her friends had done.

‘The balloon ride?’ he repeated, after a moment.

She couldn’t believe she’d said that out loud. Maybe it was the fall, or the painful realisation of just how cut off she’d become from her family, her friends, that had brought the words bubbling to the surface now.

‘We used to watch them, the hot air balloons, drifting along the valley on summer evenings. Sean wanted to book a champagne ride for our first anniversary, but the electricity bill had arrived and I said…’

She shook her head, not wanting to think about what she’d said.

‘I’d spent my entire life doing the sensible thing, choosing the solid degree in English over some airy-fairy notion of taking Art. Waiting to get married until I finished university, had my teaching qualification.’ Putting babies on hold until they could afford them…

‘What happened to him?’ She looked up. ‘Sean?’

‘Oh, it was one of those ordinary Sundays. We got up, had a row about the fact that he’d used all the milk in a midnight raid on the fridge. He told me not to get excited, put on his headphones, jogged off to the newsagent’s to fetch a pint…’

They had come to a halt at traffic lights and she knew that Ben was looking at her.

‘He bought a paper, was looking at the sports headlines instead of the road. He always did that. Jogged there, walked back reading the paper, quite incapable of waiting until he got home to find out how Melchester United were doing in the league. He was football mad. I was always telling him he’d walk into something…’

He’d used to laugh, tease her that she was turning into a nagging wife…

‘He stepped off the pavement without looking. The driver never stood a chance.’ Then, ‘Someone ran to fetch me…’

For a moment she was back there with Sean, kneeling in the road, milk and blood soaking into the triumphant headlines proclaiming that United would move up next season. Cradling him in her arms as he said, ‘We aren’t going to get our balloon ride, Ellie…’

Then, as the car behind them hooted impatiently, she snapped back to the present, turned to him, and said, ‘You can’t stop time and re-do the bits you got wrong. The bits you missed.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Sorry he’d asked…

‘It was three years ago,’ she said, used to people lost for words, unable to cope with her loss. As if time made it any easier. Then, briskly, ‘What about you, Ben? What’s your life plan?’

He raised his hand in apology to the driver behind, pulled away, said, ‘Can you plan life? When so much is out of your control?’

‘Maybe not, but you shouldn’t be passive. Wait for things to happen to you. Keep putting stuff off until the time is right.’

‘Carpe diem?’

‘Exactly! Seize the day. That’s what I told my father when I gave up teaching.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said that fish were damn slippery things and I’d be better occupied sorting out a pension plan.’

Ben Faulkner laughed. She turned and stared at him. Mistaking her startled reaction for offence, he shook his head, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s okay. I laughed too.’ Although suddenly it wasn’t so funny. Even when things went right it wasn’t always as ‘right’ as it might be. Witness her Milady column.

Finally she had something to show for all her hard work-but who could she tell? Share it with? Not her sceptical father who, proud as Punch, would buy copies of the magazine and give them to everyone he knew. Not her mother who, even sworn to secrecy, wouldn’t be able to resist sharing the news with her best friend, which would be the equivalent of placing an ad in the Courier.

She hadn’t even told Sue. Her own very best friend. The one person with whom she’d shared every secret of her heart.

Only Stacey knew, and she wouldn’t tell. Although she and her sister had precious little in common, they did know how to keep each other’s secrets.

‘Adele wasn’t expecting you back until next year,’ she said, not wanting to think about the kind of person she was turning into. ‘What happened to your plans?’

‘Riots, mayhem, civil disturbance. I was working in Kirbeckistan.’

‘But isn’t that where…?’ She recalled the graphic scenes of violence she’d seen on the news. ‘But the civil war started weeks ago. Where have you been?’ Then, ‘Did you have trouble getting out?’

He shrugged. ‘When it finally blew, it all happened very quickly, and the airport was overrun before anyone could get away. A group of us walked out over the mountains. It took a while.’

‘That must have been tough.’

It certainly explained the state of his hands.

‘Not as tough for me as for the poor devils who had to stay there,’ he said. ‘The political situation being what it was, I’d taken the precaution of scanning and sending back the texts I was working on via the internet, so they’re not totally lost. I can at least continue my work here at the university.’

‘Are they important?’

‘They take us back another thousand years.’

‘And you can read them?’

That did produce a smile. ‘Let’s say that it’s a work in progress.’

‘It can’t be the same as having the original documents to refer to,’ she sympathised.

‘No.’

‘But it’ll be over in a few weeks, won’t it?’ she said hopefully. ‘You’ll be able to go back, carry on?’

He turned into the drive, pulled up by the kitchen door.

‘I can understand your eagerness to see the back of me, Ellie, but since the rebels burned the museum down around me I fear that your optimism is misplaced.’

She’d been right about the burns, then. ‘Were you hurt?’

‘Nothing to make a fuss about.’

His jaw tightened momentarily, and she was sure that other people he knew hadn’t been so lucky. He didn’t linger to discuss it, however, but climbed out and came round to open the door and help her to her feet. For a moment he continued to hold both of her hands, steadying her.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Will you be able to manage the stairs?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.

She’d have to be. Besides, she wanted him to know that she wouldn’t be a nuisance, wouldn’t be continually under his feet.

‘Thank you again for the lift. And the first aid.’

He nodded, picked up her bag and handed it to her.

‘You must have washing,’ she continued-Miss Runaway Mouth of whatever year you’d care to mention. ‘If you leave it in the utility room, I’ll run it through the machine tomorrow.’

‘I do know how to use my own washing machine.’

‘Do you? How rare is that?’ When he didn’t respond to her pathetic attempt at humour, she said, ‘Well, the offer is there. I start very early, so I’ll be gone before you get up I imagine. But you’ll find all the basics-cereals, eggs, that sort of thing. For breakfast. Just help yourself.’

‘Food, washing. Anything else?’

‘Well, I’m in town most mornings, so if there’s anything you need just stick a note on the fridge door before you go to bed,’ she said, ignoring the edge to his voice that hadn’t been there a few moments earlier. ‘I can pick it up while I’m out.’

‘And shopping. Domesticity on tap,’ he said. ‘For a price.’

‘I’ll bet my time is cheaper than yours,’ she said, furious that he’d wilfully chosen to misunderstand her. There was no way she would expect him to pay for what little extra work he’d cause, and she certainly didn’t expect to be paid for picking up the odd steak with her own shopping. It was obvious, however, that he thought she was just trying to capitalise on his presence, or even ingratiate herself, when she was just being herself.

He couldn’t possibly think…

‘Sweatshop labourers in the Far East earn more an hour than the average writer,’he said. ‘Even most of the published ones.’

‘Fortunately, under normal circumstances, shopping and ironing come at domestic goddess rates, which are considerably above the minimum wage,’ she replied, doing her best to keep her tone civil.

‘And under abnormal ones?’

Apparently he could.

‘You’re the one with the big brain around here, Dr Faulkner. I suggest you work it out for yourself.’ She detached herself from his supporting grasp. ‘Goodnight.’

She didn’t linger in the kitchen. She had a kettle in her study, with a bottomless supply of instant hot chocolate-it would take at least two mugs and a raid on the biscuit tin to make her feel better after that nasty little exchange.

Did he think her story about Sean had been no more than a cheap bid for sympathy? That she would stoop to offering the full range of personal services to keep a roof over her head?

Damn it, now she had no choice but to leave.

She switched on the kettle, found a packet of double chocolate chip cookies and tipped them into the tin she kept in the top drawer of her desk.

Her plan had been to use the time she’d gained from missing out on the pub making a start on next month’s Milady column. In her last column she’d concentrated on the garden, describing-amongst other things-her ‘hands-on’ restoration of an ancient bench. Well, she’d made a start-enough to make her description of aching back and need for a manicure authentic. Sent a drawing of it and the stone trough, transformed from a sad pansy dump into something ancient and venerable and overflowing with fashionable ferns similar to one she’d spotted in a shady corner in a neighbour’s garden.

This month ‘Lady Gabriella’ was organising an al fresco dinner party for her anniversary, and her jottings were going to include the shopping, the preparations, the menu-all of which was going to strain simple Ellie March’s imagination to its limits; but not as far as imagining a proper smile, a hint of graciousness from Ben Faulkner.

Instead she found a copy of the local newspaper and started searching through the ‘Accommodation to Let’ column.

Ben didn’t hurry into the house. Ellie was bound to be in the kitchen, making a drink or a sandwich. Would no doubt offer to make him something.

Or maybe not.

She’d really got to him with her ‘balloon trip’ story, her dead husband-which had no doubt been her intention-and he’d had to reach deep for some way to stop her lively tongue. Make her drop the ‘Doc’, drop the ‘Ben’, revert to a very chilly ‘Dr Faulkner’. In the end she’d made it easy for him, with her eagerness to please, but, taking no chances, he put the car away and then went for a walk in the garden.

A grey cat appeared out of the darkness, mewed softly as it brushed against his legs, then, as a light came on at the highest level of the ridiculous little turret at the far end of the house-and, no, he was not in the least bit surprised that his romantically inclined house-sitter had claimed the most inconvenient part of the house as her own-it turned away, bounded up onto the water-butt.

He watched as the creature leapt lightly onto the roof of the porch before taking what was clearly a well-trodden path across the rising levels of the roof until, with a final leap, it gained the sill of Ellie’s open window.

He saw the animal pause, back-lit by the soft light, lift its head. Heard its soft chirrup. A disembodied hand stretched out to him, and its head butted into her palm before it stepped inside. For a moment Ben felt as if he, rather than Ellie March, was the interloper. As if, despite the soft warmth of the May night, he was standing out in the cold, looking up at a room filled with warmth and comfort.

That if she had been offering a warm bed as well as a warm heart in return for a roof over her head he was all kinds of a fool to have turned her down.

Ellie couldn’t concentrate. She’d looked up as Millie had appeared at her window, seen the distant shadowy figure of Ben Faulkner standing alone in the twilight of the garden, and the anger had seeped out of her.

He’d obviously been through a rough time. To come home and find himself invaded must have been the last straw.

This was his house and, tough as it was going to be to leave, she could no more impose herself on him against his wishes than fly to the moon. She’d leave him a note in the morning, tell him that she’d started looking for somewhere, that she’d move out as quickly as she could.

She was well into her second cup of chocolate, digging deep into the double-choc-chip cookies, when there was a tap on the door.

Ben heard a scuffle, the sound of drawer being slammed shut, then Ellie’s muffled voice saying, ‘Come in.’

He opened the door, ducked his head beneath the low lintel, stopped as he caught sight of the local paper open at the ‘Accommodation to Let’ section, the telltale circles around three or four of the small ads. She was, evidently, way ahead of him.

‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘Since the moment you walked into the library,’ she replied.

‘We have that in common, at least.’

‘Then why are you here? I have to tell you if you’re looking for anything other than a sachet of hot chocolate you’re going to be disappointed.’

He was here to tell her that he’d give her a month, six weeks at the most, to find somewhere else to live. That she appeared to be ahead of him had rather taken the wind out of his sails, and instead he looked around.

The room had once been his. A teenage bolthole, study, a private place of his own, where his father, his grown-up sister hadn’t been allowed. All a very long time ago.

The last time he’d been up here the room had looked tired, shabby. Abandoned.

All that had changed. Ellie had taken down the ancient curtains and left the deep window embrasure unadorned, so that the twilight sky was a deep blue arch. There were scented flowers in a cream jug with a red heart. A pinboard with a year-planner, postcards, notes, photographs of interiors, clothes, faces that had been cut from magazines. She’d brought up a colourful rug that had once been in the nursery, polished up the small desk. Thrown an embroidered shawl over the shabby sofa.

The effect was of a somewhat disordered but nevertheless inviting charm.

‘You’ve made this comfortable,’ he said, resisting the call of the sofa. He remembered exactly how it felt to stretch out on it wrapped around a girl…

‘I’ll put back the curtains before I go,’ she said quickly, seeing him glance at the window. ‘I took them down to wash them, and then decided I liked it better without.’

‘I’m surprised they didn’t fall to pieces.’

‘No! That’s not why…I was very careful.’

‘I don’t doubt it, but you’re right. The window looks better that way. In fact the whole house looks better than it has in a long while. Very well cared for. Mrs Turner did a good job, but…’

‘It’s easier when you live in. There are always things that you just never get around to when you’re under pressure of time.’

‘Yes, I imagine so.’

‘It’s a lovely house.’

Ellie looked for a moment as if she was going to say something else.

‘But?’ he prompted. ‘A bit large for one person? Is that what you were going to say?’

‘I…’ She shook her head. ‘I was going to say that I enjoy looking after it. But, yes, it does need a family to fill it. Not that it’s any of my business.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Was there something?’ she asked. ‘I don’t imagine you climbed all the way up here simply to admire the view.’

‘No…’ He dragged his fingers through hair that badly needed cutting. This was not going as he’d intended. ‘I just wanted you to know, to tell you, that I don’t expect you to move out at a moment’s notice simply because my plans have changed.’

‘That’s just as well, because a moment’s notice would leave me sitting on the street surrounded by my stuff.’

‘You haven’t got anywhere? Anyone you could move in with?’

Her look spoke volumes. ‘Not “at a moment’s notice”, but as quickly as possible-is that it?’

That had been his intention…

‘What about your parents?’ he asked.

‘Would you move in with yours?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t have that option.’

‘I’m sorry, but neither do I. I’m well beyond the age where I’m prepared to run home to Mother.’ Then, ‘I imagine Sue would let me sleep on her sofa, if you insist on me leaving straight away.’

‘No.’ No matter how much seeing her here, so perfectly in tune with the setting-an out-of-date romantic in a ridiculous folly-stirred up buried memories, no matter how badly he wanted her out of his house, he just couldn’t bring himself to say the words. ‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘How long, realistically, do you think it will take you to find somewhere to live?’

‘Realistically? Have you any idea how hard is to find decent rented accommodation in a university city packed with students?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer, but indicated the paper lying on the desk. ‘I’ll start looking tomorrow. You have my assurance that I won’t drag it out.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, somehow wishing that, rather than being so reasonable, she’d leapt in to demand-as she had every right to-he keep to the last letter of whatever contract she’d made with Adele. That way he might not feel quite so bad. ‘If you need any help with a deposit-’

‘No! Thank you, Dr Faulkner. I haven’t squandered the rent I’ve saved in the last three months.’

About to remind her that she was supposed to call him Ben, he let it go. The space was too intimate, the girl too unexpectedly appealing.

‘No. Well, I’ll leave you to get on, then.’

‘Doc…’

He paused in the doorway, looked back.

She pushed back a strand of dark hair that had fallen over her face. ‘I meant what I said about helping yourself to whatever you find in the kitchen. I promise there are no strings attached.’