The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella

CHAPTER SIX

A SECOND batch of letters had arrived from the Milady offices, and Ellie spent an entire afternoon answering them, using the heavy cream stationery supplied for this purpose.

Her column rambled over her impressions of the garden centre, described the small black rabbit and the honey-coloured guinea pig that had joined the family menagerie. How ‘Daddy’ had built a fox-proof house for them-with the hindrance of the children, who had been eager to help-and an extensive run on the shady side of the daisy-strewn lawn.

She drew little sketches of both rabbit and guinea pig, as well as her giant flowerpot overflowing with pansies. Under advice from Laura, she’d replanted the ones she’d dug up, trimmed off the lank growth and stood them in some semi-shade where, maybe, with a bit of luck, they’d eventually match her imagination.

Mrs Cochrane had offered reserved approval, said that a staff reporter was already working on a photo feature on the playhouses, and made it clear that next month she wanted food.

Ellie was a bit miffed about the feature, and as for food-well, for heaven’s sake, it was her life she was writing about. When food happened, she’d write about it.

Then, realistically, she decided that probably wasn’t going to work. Food didn’t happen in her life. She was going to have to make an effort. Maybe she could cook something for Ben. A special thank-you. There would be some point to that.

Enthused, she asked one of her clients-a serious cook-for advice. Armed with a menu and a shopping list, she shopped on the way home. Once there, she updated her diary, and then dug out her rejected book.

She’d been putting off sending it to the next name on her list. Was there any point? Maybe Ben was right. Instead of emulating her idols, maybe she should be writing what she knew. Feather-brained girl doing the unpleasant jobs that the well-heeled, the useless-that would be the men-or just plain desperate, were prepared to pay someone else to do.

Like that would sell, she thought. Then began to leaf back through her diary, reliving some of the blush-making incidents, the stuff that made her laugh out loud, the horrors.

Maybe there was something. Leaving it to stew in the back of her mind, she went out to take Roger and Nigel a carrot and a few dandelion leaves. Then, because in the war between the grass and the dandelions the dandelions were winning, she got out the ride-on mower. Ben had said to leave it, that he’d do it, but there was something about doing mindless, repetitive jobs that untangled her thoughts, made everything seem simpler.

And just lately things had become very complicated.

Milady. Ben. Ben. Milady. Ben…

She’d been working for about twenty minutes when she turned and saw one of her complications walking round the corner of the house. He’d gone into the university first thing that morning, and for a moment she was transfixed by how utterly gorgeous he looked in a dark shirt, well-cut stone-coloured trousers, his hair flopping untidily over his forehead.

‘Stop!’

Belatedly realising that she was running out of lawn, she hunted for the brake with her foot, then, when she couldn’t find it, looked down.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

That was promising. The last time he’d asked that, Roger and Nigel had moved in. Maybe this was going to be a good day for some poor mutt who needed a home…

‘What’s up, Doc?’ she asked, as she finally managed to bring the thing to a halt before she cut a swathe through a bed filled with a riot of perennials.

Ben, who’d had to move sharply to avoid being mown down, ignored the Bugs Bunny routine and said, ‘Do you think this is a good idea?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You’ve just given me a very close demonstration of your lack of hand/eye co-ordination skills.’

She grinned up at him. ‘Aw, shucks. I never touched you.’

True. But somehow the way she said it made it a matter for regret rather than congratulation.

‘You’re a menace.’

‘Relax. I’m cutting grass, not driving round the ring-road. There’s no one to bump into-well, no one but you, and you’re pretty nifty on your feet when you see the danger coming.’

Not nearly nifty enough, he thought, or he wouldn’t be stuck with Ellie March and her growing menagerie as his own personal live-in torment.

‘What is your sport?’ she asked.

‘I really think you should leave this to me, Ellie,’ he replied, ignoring her attempt to change the subject.

‘I’ll bet it’s rugby. On the wing, right?’

‘Off the mower. Now.’

‘Oh, I get it.’ She sat back. ‘This is a “boy’s toy”.’ She gestured broadly at the machine she was sitting astride. ‘Girls are supposed to stick to the boring stuff, like sweeping up the bits of grass that get sprayed onto the path.’ She shook her head. ‘My dad used to be just the same. Kept all the good stuff to do himself, then wondered why we didn’t want to play.’ With that, she swung one leg high over the steering wheel, offering a heart-stopping display of leg, before sliding off the seat. ‘I’m nearly done, anyway. There’s just that bit down there by the treehouse.’

He looked in the direction of the old oak. ‘What treehouse? There was never a treehouse.’

‘Wasn’t there?’ Her face was flushed pink by the sun, but even so he could have sworn she blushed. ‘Well, there should have been. The way the branches spread out to make the perfect platform is just begging for one. I can’t believe your dad didn’t build you some kind of den up there when you were a kid.’

‘My father was in his fifties when I was born. Climbing trees was a bit beyond him by the time I was old enough to want such a thing.’

‘Oh, right. I didn’t think-’

‘I was right about you, Ellie. You’re exactly like Adele’s idiotic red setter. You just leap in, say the first thing that comes into your head, and you don’t know when to quit.’

‘Some people think that’s a good quality,’ she said, then added, ‘The not quitting thing.’

‘Clearly they haven’t been on the receiving end of one of your inquisitions.’ Then, in an attempt to turn the tables, he said, ‘What about you?’

‘Me? You want to know about my family? Mum’s a great cook, she’s a member of the Women’s Institute, helps out at a charity shop three times a week. Dad is a civil servant. Taxes.’ She shook her head. ‘We don’t talk about that outside the family. My sister takes after him. You’d like her. She’s the sensible one with brains-’

‘I’m not interested in them. I said I’d do this when I got home, so why are you out here cutting my grass when you should be devoting all your time to writing? That is what this alternative lifestyle is in aid of? The reason you gave up your legitimate career? Your life? So that you can write?’

‘I needed thinking time, and I can think and mow the lawn at the same time,’ she said. ‘And I haven’t given up my life.’

‘No? I share a house with you, and I haven’t seen any signs of one. When was the last time you went out on a date?’

‘Good question,’ she said without hesitation. ‘When did you?’ Then, before he could answer, ‘Do you want to come to dinner tonight? I’m trying out a recipe and I need someone who’ll give me an honest opinion. I know I can rely on you for that.’

‘You’re evading the question.’

‘And you aren’t?’ she demanded. ‘I’m not ready to date. What’s your excuse?’

For a moment neither of them spoke, giving him plenty of time to regret that he’d followed the sound of the mower. To wish that he’d gone straight inside.

‘I haven’t given up my life, Doc, I’m going for it.’ She stood, hands on hips, looking as if she was about to take on the world. ‘I’ve done all the sensible stuff, made all the compromises. Never again.’

‘You’re taking the balloon ride?’

‘As far as hot air and a following wind will take me.’

‘You’re sure you’re not just running away?’

She stared at him, shocked for a moment into silence. Then, ‘No!’

‘No?’ He wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, except suddenly he wasn’t as convinced by this cheerful, go-for-it exterior as he should be. Ellie had suffered a terrible loss, and instead of rebuilding her life she appeared to be running blindly into the future, doing her best to escape it. ‘So why, when you decided to fly, didn’t you go back to your first love and enrol in art school?’

She took a breath as if to speak. Didn’t. Couldn’t. Opened her mouth. Closed it.

‘Well?’ he pressed, certain now in every fibre of his being that he’d got beneath the outer shell to touch something soft, raw at her centre.

‘It was too late,’ she finally managed. Her arms had dropped to her sides and she was no longer quite as self-assured, in-your-face-confident. ‘I’m a different person.’

‘People don’t change.’

‘Maybe I didn’t want it badly enough in the first place.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘you were always too scared to go for it. Maybe that’s why you didn’t push for it in the first place. Override your father’s objections.’

Her father? When had she said it was her father who’d talked her out of it? She shook her head. It didn’t matter.

‘What’s this? Psychology Central? You’re not exactly living life to the full yourself. You get plenty of invitations. I empty the bin you toss them in. So who messed up your life, Doc?’

And it was his turn to do the fish impression.

She shook her head, just once, said, ‘Life isn’t a rehearsal, it’s one long first night.’

‘Maybe I don’t like the script.’

‘Then change it. You get dumped on the stage, but the moves are up to you. The important thing is to keep moving.’

Then, as if to show him how it was done, she turned and began to walk away from him. The cut-offs were the same ones she’d worn on the day they went to the garden centre, clinging to her hips, accentuating her bottom which, as she walked, swung in the opposite direction to her heavy dark ponytail. The effect was hypnotic.

‘Natasha,’ he called after her. Anything to stop that swaying. Anything to stop her from walking away. ‘Her name was Natasha.’

It worked. She stopped, turned.

No. That was no better. Now, instead of her bottom, he had a full frontal of her heart-stopping bosom, hugged by a close-fitting vest top that swooped low enough to offer a promise of the delights it concealed. He’d caught more than a glimpse that night he’d taken her to the Assembly Rooms when, oblivious of his presence, she pulled off her top to display the kind of bra that had caused traffic chaos when an equally well-endowed model had displayed one on sixty feet of roadside hoarding.

He’d never been turned on by the too obvious sexuality of wide hips, a generous bosom, an old-fashioned waist, but there had been no doubting the effect Ellie’s body had had on him that night.

Or now.

And he kept on inflicting it on himself. While his mind was determined on one course, his body just kept walking into trouble. It was walking into trouble now, he knew, as he took a step towards her.

‘She was tall, fair, slender, always perfectly dressed, never a hair out of place,’ he said, as if by conjuring up Tasha’s pristine pale gold image he could somehow protect himself from a sensual clamour that responded so insistently to Ellie March. ‘She spoke ten languages fluently, another seven well enough to carry on a conversation. She was perfection, and I loved her.’ He stopped six inches from Ellie. Near enough to smell the grass where tiny pieces of it clung to skin damp with the heat. Near enough to feel the warmth of her body.

‘Past tense, Ben?’ she asked, her eyes softening, her voice catching in her throat.

‘Only in relation to my life.’ She waited. For a woman who had a runaway mouth, she understood the power of silence. ‘She was offered a job at the highest level of the United Nations.’

‘And she took it?’

He felt rather than heard her sharp intake of breath. Having anticipated some great personal tragedy to equal her own desperate loss, she was shocked by this banal story of raw ambition overriding emotion. No story there for her imagination to get to grips with. No passion. Quite the reverse.

‘No,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘If she’d grabbed for it, walked away, you’d have got over her. You encouraged her to go, didn’t you? Made the sacrifice?’ She nodded, able to understand that. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s love.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s pragmatism. You see a look in a person’s eyes, Ellie, and you know, even while she’s telling you that it’s nothing, even while you’re clinging to that, trying to block out reality, that it’s over. That you’ve already lost. One way or another she was going to leave. It was the life she was made for, and I didn’t want her to feel guilty about grabbing for it.’

‘Pragmatism. Love. They’re just words. It’s the motivation that counts. The feeling that drives the action.’ She paused, as if to catch her breath. ‘And now I’m here, in her place, doing the things she’d be doing. Bringing it all back.’

‘Yes,’ he said, because to lie would be pointless. Then, because strands of dark hair were clinging to her cheek, because she was pink from the sun, because she worried about rabbits instead of world affairs, wrote silly romances rather than reports of world-changing significance, he added, ‘And no.’ He took her hand, turning it over, looking at her fingers, stained with green. ‘You are not perfect.’

‘No, I’m a scruffy feather-brain who’s ten pounds overweight, has no career prospects and…and can only speak five languages.’

‘Five?’

‘I can count to ten in French, Italian, German and Welsh,’ she said.

‘Welsh?’

‘Un, dau, tri, pedwr, pump…Didn’t I mention that my great-grandma was Welsh?’

‘If you did I missed it. But are you sure you can count all the way to ten? I only make that four languages.’

She smiled. ‘Oh, I can do it in English, too.’

Ben heard himself laughing. What had Ellie said? It didn’t matter what you did so long as you did something. And on an impulse he turned his hand so that it was grasping hers. Reaching for the lifeline that she’d tossed him.

‘About those invitations. I’ve been invited to a wedding on Saturday-one that I really can’t avoid. Could you bear to come with me?’ Then, when she didn’t immediately answer, ‘That is if you aren’t already booked to attend in a professional capacity?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t do weddings.’

‘Oh, no. It must be…difficult.’

‘Horrendous. I always find myself offering champagne to someone who was in the same year as me who’s now a rising media star or, worse, is marrying one.’

He knew he was supposed to laugh, but he discovered that he couldn’t quite manage it. Couldn’t quite decide whether her flippant humour was courage in the face of personal tragedy or refusal to confront the pain. Suspected it might just be the latter.

‘This one is in London. My cousin, a contemporary of Adele’s, is getting married for the second time. I have to attend on Addy’s behalf. The groom is a stockbroker, apparently, so you should be safe enough.’ He waited. ‘If I go on my own I’ll stand out like a sore thumb. Everyone will think I’m either a closet gay or a sad bastard who can’t rustle up a partner.’

‘Oh, right. You want me to ride shotgun. Fend off the matchmaking aunts.’A shadow briefly crossed her face. ‘Enough said. There’s just one condition.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘I meant what I said about you trying out my cooking this evening. Just a mouthful.’ Her smile, usually so confident, was unexpectedly diffident.

‘It sounds like a win/win deal to me.’

‘Wait until you’ve tasted it before you congratulate yourself. My culinary skills are somewhat limited.’

‘I’ll risk it. I can pick your brains for a suitable wedding present for the couple who have everything.’

‘Oh, no problem. Buy them a goat.’

‘A what?’

‘You said it. They’re not spring chickens, and presumably they’ve both been married before, so they’ll have everything they need for their home.’

‘Er, yes?’

‘So buy a goat, or some tools, or a share in a mango plantation in their name for some Third World family who aren’t so fortunate. If nothing else it will give them something to talk about at dinner parties.’

‘Where on earth did you come up with an idea like that?’

‘Maybe I’m brighter than I look,’ she said. Then she shrugged. ‘Or maybe I read it in a magazine. I’ll find you the website address. You can check it out for yourself.’

A wedding? Ellie stripped off the grass-stained clothes she’d been wearing-nothing elegant or perfect about them-and then turned to look at herself in the mirror.

Not tall. Not fair. Definitely not slender, she thought, pinching the excess at her waist.

She pulled off the band holding her hair in a ponytail and it fell in an untidy mess around her shoulders. Not even a hint of Lady Gabriella, let alone the fabulous and perfect Natasha with her seventeen languages-she was bound to be fluent in all of them by now. Just an over-abundance of Ellie March.

What on earth was she going to wear to a posh London wedding? What would Lady G wear?

She pulled a face. She wasn’t even going there. Ben had invited her and that was who he would get. Not her pretend alter ego, and definitely not a second-class Natasha.

Through the open window she heard the mower start up and couldn’t help looking out.

Ben had changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He had fabulous legs, she thought. Not white pasty things that had never seen the sun, but the well-muscled legs of a sportsman, with a sheen of fair hair that glinted in the evening sun.

She drew back as he turned the machine, flexed her hand, feeling again that moment when he’d caught it, turned it into his, held it palm to palm in his and she’d felt a shiver of heat, shocking in its urgency, drive deep into her body.

She’d desired him, wanted him-not in that meaningless, fancying-a-good-looking-bloke way that she joked about with Sue, not just physically, but totally, in a way that she’d never thought possible again.

No. It was more than that.

With Sean it had been different. She’d known him all her life. Fought with him in primary school, assiduously ignored him when she was ten and eleven and twelve. And then at thirteen he’d smiled at her, and she’d blushed, and then he’d blushed, and after that it had always been Ellie-and-Sean.

They’d done their homework together, gone to the school disco, shared their first kiss, fumbled through their first sexual encounter together, done everything together for the first and last time.

They’d never been parted.

She’d felt safe with him. Had known that he’d never do anything to hurt her.

Except die.

This was different.

Something had been driving her today. Some restless, reckless need to provoke Ben, make him notice her, make him look at her, and she’d stirred him up like a fool poking a stick in a wasp nest.

She hadn’t expected him to come right back at her, daring to suggest she was running away from her past rather than grabbing for the future she wanted.

As if.

Well, she’d told him, and then she’d walked away. Easy.

Except he didn’t understand the rules. He’d come after her and done the one thing she couldn’t ignore. He’d asked for her help.

Nothing difficult. Just go with him to a family wedding. It wasn’t the invitation that was a problem. Or even that it was a wedding. Okay, so maybe she’d shed a tear for herself, but she wouldn’t be alone.

It was the fact that for Ben it would be duty, nothing more. While for her…

She swallowed, suddenly scared.

It had been so long, more than three years since Sean had died, and there had been no one since. Flirting, yes, but only in a jokey way with men she knew, who were safe, who understood that she didn’t mean anything. Wouldn’t call her on it because they knew that she had always belonged, would always belong, to Sean.

Somehow, though, Ben Faulkner had slipped beneath her defences. When had that happened?

She switched on the shower, stepped under the water and let the hot water pour over her, scrubbing at the green stains on her fingers, scrubbing her nails, shampooing her hair as if she could somehow clean him from her pores.

It didn’t work.

When eventually she stepped from the shower, wrapped a towel around her, tucking it in above her breasts, wrapped another around her hair, she could still feel her hand in his.

Feel the callused roughness from where he’d climbed out of Kirbeckistan. The scars.

Feel the electric charge of his skin against hers, an answering flutter deep in her womb. A sensation that excited her, stirred her, made her long to reach out for something dangerous, something that scared her witless.

Because Ben Faulkner was not like Sean March. If she allowed herself to fall in love with him, he’d hurt her in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine-because he’d never love her back.

She swallowed, sat down on the bathroom stool, leaned forward and tugged on the towel so that it hung down over her face.

If?

Too late for if. Too late from the moment she’d lain against him as she’d caught her breath, feeling the beat of his heart. Too late from her first ‘idiot’.

It was the first word she’d said to Sean when, five years old, he’d knocked her flying as he’d raced into school one morning. After that, no matter how they’d ignored one another, there had always been a consciousness between them, an awareness of the other.

They’d kept their distance. Scowled. Sniped. Mocked. Circled each other until one day they’d come face to face, alone in a corridor. And, with no one else there to see, he’d smiled at her.

‘Sean?’ she whispered desperately. ‘Where are you?’