The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella

CHAPTER SEVEN

BEN, despite every intention of staying well away from the kitchen, couldn’t settle. He’d finished cutting the grass, put away the mower. Taken a shower. And then, somehow, he found himself standing in the kitchen doorway, watching Ellie as she chopped onions. She said nothing, did nothing to suggest she knew he was there.

She didn’t have to.

There was an awareness between them, something palpable in the air when she was home, that seemed to fill the house. An echoing hollowness about it when she wasn’t there, like a room without a carpet.

His first reaction to that had been a how-dare-she? anger. It wasn’t her place. She didn’t fit. Wasn’t right. Natasha had been an expert in the minimalist Japanese style of flower arranging. Ellie favoured the infant school nature table style of floral art. She just stuffed anything she fancied in a jug. Leaves, daisies, even dandelions for heaven’s sake.

The way she draped stuff about the place, disguising the wear, softening the edges.

He’d held his tongue, well aware that the more time he spent with her, the harder she became to ignore. Witness the arrival of Roger and Nigel. She just drew him in, involved him, made him laugh…

‘Can I do anything to help?’ he asked.

‘Just taste the finished dish,’ Ellie said, not looking at him, but instead concentrating on chopping the onions to add to an already promising array of ingredients.

‘So what are you cooking?’ he asked, ignoring her discouraging tone, helping himself to a beer from the fridge and, with the door still open, turning to her. ‘Can I get you something?’

‘No, thank you.’

He shrugged, let it go, leaned his hip against the table as he snapped the top, took a drink, helped himself to a couple of shelled pistachio nuts from a dish. ‘It looks interesting,’ he said, refusing to be dismissed. It was, after all, his kitchen.

She flickered a glance in his direction. ‘Could you please go away? This is going to be difficult enough without an audience.’ Then, ‘Stop that,’ she said, slapping his hand with the back of her broad-bladed knife as he took another dip in the nuts. ‘Everything has been weighed.’

‘Chicken, nuts, spices, baby onions.’He picked up a small dish with a few threads of something red in it. ‘Is this saffron?’

‘Yes.’ She sighed, stopped chopping and, clearly hoping that if she satisfied his curiosity he’d leave her in peace, said, ‘It’s a Moroccan dish. That lot over there-’ she pointed with the knife ‘-is going to be couscous with herbs and nuts and pomegranate.’ She glowered at him as he took another nut. ‘Assuming there are any nuts left.’

‘I won’t eat them all,’ he assured her.

She shook her head. ‘Oh, go on. You might as well enjoy them. I’ll probably ruin the whole thing anyway.’

‘Nonsense. What are you going to do with the chicken?’

‘The plan is to make a tajine of chicken, caramelised onion and pear.’

He scarcely hesitated before he said, ‘That sounds interesting.’

‘“Interesting”. Good word.’ She still didn’t look at him, just lifted one shoulder in an awkward little shrug. ‘One of the women I clean for suggested it. She even loaned me her recipe book. She said the important thing was to keep it simple…’

‘This is her idea of simple?’

‘She said that even a fool could make it. I didn’t like to tell her that my sole experience of planning a meal consisted of choosing a topping for my pizza.’

‘Well, that’s an art,’ he said, wondering what it was about cooking that she found so stressful. ‘There’s the vexed question of anchovies for a start.’

‘Oh, please!’ she said, seizing on this distraction. ‘You have to have anchovies.’

‘Of course you do.’

Now, he thought. Now smile.

‘And for pudding?’ he pressed, when she didn’t.

‘Oh, no problem. Lemon tart, crème brûlée, a chocolate roulade.’

‘Three?’

‘I wanted to see which went best.’

‘Right,’he said. Then, ‘And we’re going to eat tonight?’

‘Relax. They’re in the fridge.’

‘They are?’He hadn’t noticed the scent of baking, the inevitable mess that quantity of cooking would entail. He turned and opened the fridge door again. True enough, three perfectly prepared puddings were sitting out of harm’s way on the top shelf. ‘They look good.’

‘Baking is serious cookery,’ she said. Then she sniffed, and he realised that the reason she wasn’t looking at him was because she’d been crying. ‘Actually, I bought them.’

Well, yes. Obviously.

‘Hey, all the best hostesses buy their puddings.’

‘They do?’ She sniffed again, and he didn’t think it was because she couldn’t handle a sponge cake.

‘Are you okay, Ellie?’

‘Fine,’ she said. She coaxed the smile into life, looked at him. ‘Just a touch of hay fever.’

‘Right,’ he said, unconvinced. ‘Is that recent?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The hay fever. You didn’t seem to have a problem when you were cutting the grass.’

‘Oh, no. It must be the onions, then.’

The onions might have set her off again, but, unless she was seriously allergic to them, the puffiness of her eyes, the redness of her nose, suggested that the tears had been flowing for some time. Maybe asking her to go to Emma’s wedding with him hadn’t been such a great idea-which was a shame because, against all the odds, he was now rather looking forward to it.

‘So,’ he said, with a gesture at the table, ‘what’s all this in aid of?’ She looked at him fast enough then, those big brown eyes startled wide. Her cheeks almost as pink as her nose. ‘You said you’re trying this out. I assumed there must be some big occasion coming up.’

‘Oh…’

She continued chopping the onion, and he winced as the blade narrowly missed her finger.

‘Here. Let me.’

He took it from her and finished the job.

‘So?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Big occasion. It’s, um, my sister’s birthday in a couple of weeks. I thought I’d cook a meal for her and her friends.’

‘And this is the dress rehearsal?’

‘Right,’ she said, and this time the smile was more of relief rather than any pleasurable anticipation of a family party.

Relief that he’d bought the excuse?

Could straightforward, look-you-in-the-eye-and-give-it-to-you-straight Ellie March be telling him a big fat fib? A blush that competed with her nose suggested that she was, but why? What was the big deal about cooking some special meal? What was she trying to hide?

Unless…

He looked at her. She couldn’t meet his gaze, which was totally out of character.

Unless the party was an excuse to cover the fact that she was doing it for him. Which would explain the blushes…

He scooped the onions into a waiting dish.

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Maybe you’d prefer to miss the main course and go straight to the pudding?’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘Risk aversion?’ she offered. ‘I’m more at home with a tin of polish than a bottle of olive oil.’

‘Nonsense. Between us we can beat this.’

‘You can cook?’

‘I can read,’ he said, wiping his hands and taking the glossy cookery book from its stand. ‘How hard can it be?’

Ten minutes later the onions were sizzling in the pan and Ellie, stirring them carefully while they softened, decided that it wasn’t hard at all.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready,’ she said, then added each of the spices as Ben, reading from the recipe, handed them to her.

Then he added the chicken, taking charge when it started to catch. ‘Gently does it,’ he said, snatching the pan from the heat, turning it down, then returning the pan to her so that she could brown it all over. ‘Didn’t you learn this at your mother’s knee?’ he asked.

‘No. My sister did all that stuff. I was considered a liability in the kitchen.’

‘Hence the need to impress her? Your sister?’

‘Pathetic,’ she agreed. And she wasn’t just referring to her feelings of inferiority.

Why didn’t she just tell him the truth? Get it out into the open. Be honest with him. How hard could it be?

The thing is, Ben, I’ve used your house, your garden, and now, infinitely worse, I’ve used you to break into print. This meal is so that I can write a convincing portrayal of an al fresco supper with friends-our friends…

How would that sound?

Amusing? Opportunistic? Exploitative?

How would she feel if the shoes were on the other feet?

She added the water, covered the pan and turned it down to simmer, turned to him. ‘Now what?’

He shook his head. ‘That’s it for fifteen minutes.’

‘It’s that easy?’

‘Apparently.’ Then, checking the recipe, ‘Oh, no. Now you have to cover the couscous with boiling water and leave it for fifteen minutes-’

‘I think I can handle that.’

‘And when that’s done we have to add the baby onions to the stew.’

‘Stew!’ She turned on him, arms akimbo. ‘Wash your mouth out, Ben Faulkner. This isn’t a stew!’

He laughed. ‘Quite right. Sorry, ma’am. Do you want to come down the cellar and help me choose a bottle?’

The cellar. He had to be joking…

‘Of mouthwash?’

‘I think I can do a little better than that. My father was a wine dealer.’

‘Really?’ She’d assumed Ben came from a long line of academics.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it? Isn’t it part of your duties as house-sitter to inspect every part of the house for potential problems at least once a week?’

‘Spiders? Cobwebs?’ She couldn’t quite control the little shiver that betrayed her. ‘I don’t think so.’

He regarded her with something like amusement. ‘Do I detect just the hint of a phobia?’

‘A hint? Please. Do I do anything by halves?’ she asked, doing her best to smile back. ‘Imagine, if you can, a full-blown case of the screaming habdabs and you’ll be close.’

‘I’ll take that as a no, then, shall I?’

‘You get the wine; I’ll organise the table.’

A few minutes later he found her in a sheltered walled corner of the courtyard that held the last rays of the sun. He was carrying two glasses of white wine and he handed one to her, looking thoughtfully at the table, laid with a cloth, napkins, silver, a tealight candle in a fancy holder.

‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble just for a “taste”,’ he said.

It was true. She had. She’d tried to write about the food without actually going to the bother of cooking it. She just couldn’t get the feeling right. She needed to smell the onions and spices cooking, taste them. Feel the dusk gathering around her. Test the candle…

Belatedly she saw what Ben must be seeing, and realised that it suggested an intimacy she had never intended.

‘It’s a citronella candle,’ she explained. ‘It’s supposed to deter midges. I wanted to know if it worked.’

‘Of course.’

‘Really.’ She looked at him. Oh, no…‘I’m not…’

He cocked an eyebrow.

He didn’t believe her. He thought she was trying to seduce him or something. As if she’d choose to do it with her useless cooking…

‘I’m just not-okay!’ she said, putting the glass down. Walking away. ‘I’ll go and get on with the next bit.’

Ben watched Ellie hurrying back to the kitchen. ‘Pity…’ he murmured. Pity.

The garden was absolutely still. For a while he stood there, considering exactly what that meant. Considering a future that suddenly seemed to have some meaning beyond work.

Needing a moment, he crossed the garden to the rabbit run, intending to shut Roger and Nigel away for the night. On an impulse he picked up the rabbit. He nervously burrowed his head down into the crook of his arm. Ben stroked him gently, reassuringly and after a moment he responded, looked up.

Ellie was right, he thought. He was warm. Gave back trust.

He tucked the pair of them up for the night, safe from the urban fox he’d seen loping through the garden early in the morning.

He straightened, lingered, not quite ready to return to the kitchen and Ellie. The only sound was a blackbird filling the air with his liquid song, fighting off competition from the faint ringing of a telephone in a neighbouring garden.

Ellie was ruffling a fork through the couscous when he rejoined her in the kitchen, adding more water, not looking at him again.

‘I suppose Natasha was a brilliant cook, too?’ she said, tetchily.

‘Cordon Bleu,’ he assured her, casually helping himself to another pistachio as he crossed the kitchen. ‘She could peel an onion without shedding a tear. She never got pink and flustered browning a piece of chicken,’ he said, as she slapped at him with the fork. ‘And if some small creature happened to drop on her while she was in the garden, she’d just pick it up like this…’ ignoring the way she was glowering at him, he smiled, retrieved the small spider that was scaling her shoulder and heading for her neck ‘…and put it outside.’

He walked across to the door and dropped the inoffensive creature in the nearest flowerbed. When he returned, Ellie hadn’t moved.

She tried to speak. Her mouth moved, but the words never made it.

He’d hoped that if he handled it calmly, without any drama, she’d see that it wasn’t a big deal.

Apparently not.

Clearly she’d been underplaying it when she’d owned up to the screaming habdabs; she was beyond screaming, totally incoherent with fear.

‘It’s okay, Ellie,’ he said. ‘It’s gone. You’re all right.’ For a moment she remained absolutely rigid. Then, with a shudder, she seemed to collapse against him and, putting his arms around her, he said it again. ‘It’s okay.’

Actually, with his arms around her it was. Very much okay. And in a gesture that was meant to comfort, reassure, he brushed his lips against her temple.

Then, because that had felt so good, he raised her hand to his lips, and she opened her eyes-not to react angrily, demand to know where he got off, but to look at him. Really look at him with those big brown eyes.

‘Th-thank you,’ she managed, then shivered again.

He drew her closer and she laid her head on his shoulder, and that was okay, too.

‘Better?’ he asked a few moments later, when she finally stopped shaking.

She looked up. ‘Yes, thank you.’ And her lips softened, parted in what might have been a smile, seemed much more. Need, invitation, he couldn’t have said what. He didn’t stop to analyse it, consider the consequences, but lowered his mouth to hers in something that wasn’t so much a kiss, but a kind of recognition.

Ellie felt the shock of it to her toes. The way he’d gathered her in to keep her safe. The touch of his lips on her fingers, a gesture so unexpected, so tender, that it took her breath away.

She couldn’t have said how it was she found herself pressed up close to him, her breasts crushed against his chest, her arms wound about his neck. Only that the brief brush of his firm lips against hers was like a jolt of energy, sending her pulse racing like a hundred-metre sprinter against the clock, even as it brought the world to a crashing halt around her. Made bells ring in her head…

Except that the bells weren’t in her head. It was the chiming of the doorbell, and they both drew back, as if caught out.

She stepped back. ‘The cavalry,’ she said.

‘I didn’t send for them.’

No, but he was glad they’d arrived. She could see it in his face.

‘No, I did.’ She shrugged. ‘I could see you didn’t believe me about that candle.’

‘You did ask me on a date.’

‘I didn’t!’ Then, ‘At least, I did. But not like that…’ Damn, she was blushing again, she realised. ‘No, honestly, Ben. I thought you might be more relaxed in a bigger party.’

‘How much bigger?’ he asked.

‘Just Laura. Laura Morrison. Her house backs onto this one.’

‘I know Laura.’

‘Oh, right. Well, there’s far too much food for just the two of us, anyway. She’s on her own, and I owe her for the ferns.’

‘I should have guessed that was where they came from.’

‘She was really kind to me. And she helped me with the pansies, too.’ On an impulse, she laid her folded hand against his cheek. ‘You were kind, too. You handled the spider perfectly.’

‘Any time. And by the way, Natasha wasn’t a Cordon Bleu cook. I just said that to distract you.’

‘Really?’ She looked doubtful, shook her head, then turned as Laura tapped on the kitchen door, having walked in through the mud room.

‘No one answered the door so I assumed you were in the garden.’ She nodded at Ben. ‘You’ve had a bit of excitement, I hear?’

‘Nothing to get worked up about, Aunt Laura.’

Ellie looked at Ben, then at Laura. ‘Aunt?’

‘Ben’s mother was my oldest sister. I stood for him at the font. Of course it took you to ask me to dinner, Ellie. If I’d waited for an invitation from Ben, I’d have starved.’

‘Er, right,’ she said, now totally embarrassed. ‘Actually, since I’m cooking that still might happen. Come and tell me how you think the ferns are doing while Ben gets you a drink.’

As they went outside, Ben heard her say, ‘How’s the back?’

Ellie had summoned the cavalry-but for him, not for herself. She hadn’t wanted to embarrass him, make him feel uncomfortable.

She hadn’t had a clue that Laura was his aunt, or that relations had been somewhat strained between them following her undisguised delight that Natasha had chosen New York over him.

That Laura had responded to Ellie’s invitation, prepared to risk sticking her head into the lion’s den, suggested that she liked her a great deal. A rare accomplishment; his aunt was a very difficult woman to please-as Natasha had discovered to her cost. She wasn’t used to being found wanting.

Ellie, he decided, taking a glass from the cupboard, pouring his aunt a drink and following them out into the garden, was a very unusual woman. Dizzy, irrational-it was totally irrational to fear small harmless creatures because they had too many legs-and lacking even the smallest degree of elegance. The kind of woman, in fact, that he couldn’t imagine living with. And yet he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that living without her would be extremely dull.

He tracked them down to what had once been the kitchen garden by the simple expedient of following his aunt’s carrying voice.

‘Does he still keep in touch with the stick insect?’ she was asking. He paused, hidden by the hedge. Ellie didn’t answer, and his aunt pressed. ‘Natasha?’

‘I’ve no idea, Laura.’

‘I do hope not. No woman should be that perfect. It’s a crime against nature.’ Ellie laughed, but not wholeheartedly, he thought. ‘Any man who had the misfortune to love her would always be trailing in her wake.’

‘He might be happy there.’

‘For a while. But she’d soon get bored with that, don’t you think? And, no matter how much he loved her, he’d be unhappy. A woman like that needs lovers, not a husband.’

‘I think it’s impossible for an outsider to understand what makes a marriage work.’

Laura laughed. ‘I’ve rarely been put in my place so tactfully. But you’re right. None of my business. Now, tell me about this herb garden you’re thinking of planting.’

Ben joined them, handing Laura a highball glass containing straight single malt whisky, no water, no ice.

‘Herb garden?’ he asked. ‘Is this going to involve another trip to the garden centre, Ellie?’

‘Are you prepared to take the risk?’ she asked, seizing this opportunity to change the subject. ‘If you’re holding fast about getting a dog, I might have to liberate a hamster…’

Laura’s eyebrows rose, and Ellie embarked on a description of their last visit, including the rabbit rescue mission and Ben’s heroic construction of the run, embellishing every little incident until his aunt was laughing so much that he had to rescue her drink.

Ellie grinned at him, then with a yelp exclaimed, ‘The chicken!’ and ran for the kitchen.

Laura glanced at him. ‘That was fun.’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on,’ she said, taking his arm. ‘Let’s go and see if she’s managed to rescue dinner.’

Ellie had caught it just in time. At least she thought she had. She removed the chicken from the pan, added honey to the onions with a little more liquid. Tasted it.

‘Does that taste burned to you?’ she asked, offering Laura some of the sauce on a spoon.

‘Add a drop of brandy. That fixes anything.’

‘It is burned. I talk too much, that’s my problem. My mother said I’d never make a cook until I learned to curb my tongue.’

‘It’s fine, really. Caramel is supposed to have that flavour.’

‘Really?’ She tried it again. The brandy Ben had sloshed in certainly gave it a kick.

An hour later they sat back, grinning. ‘Not bad, Ellie,’ Ben said. ‘And next time you won’t have as many distractions.’

‘You’re doing this again?’ Laura asked. ‘Can I come?’

‘We were guinea pigs, Aunt Laura. Ellie is going to cook this for her sister’s birthday.’

Laura glanced at her. ‘You have a sister?’

‘Stacey. Fortunately for my parents she’s not like me. Being older, she got dibs on the common sense genes.’

‘It’s a common sense sort of name. Ellie is…livelier. I imagine it’s short for something? Ellen? Eleanor?’ There was something about the way Laura asked that made her uneasy. But she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d buy Milady…

‘Gabriella,’ she said. With Ben sitting right there she couldn’t say anything else. Then, ‘Did the citronella candle work? Did anyone get bitten?’

‘I never get bitten,’ Ben said.

‘Nor me. Hide like a rhinoceros.’

‘Oh, well.’

‘Another brandy, Aunt Laura?’

‘No, thank you, dear. I couldn’t manage another thing. I’m ready for my bed.’

‘I’ll walk you home,’ Ellie said.

‘We both will.’

They saw her to the door. Laura kissed Ben, then Ellie. ‘Come and see me again soon, m’lady. We’ve a lot to talk about.’

Ben took her arm in his. ‘What was that about?’

‘Um…’ Her head was whirling. Clearly Laura knew her secret. Why on earth hadn’t she said something? She looked back. Laura waved from the door, nodded reassuringly.

Come soon.

Very soon…

‘It’s okay,’ Ben was saying. ‘I know she was having a dig at Natasha earlier on.’ He looked down her. ‘And I know you stopped her.’

Grabbing this unexpected lifeline, she said, ‘Why didn’t you go with her, Ben? To New York.’

He stopped. Damn! She’d been so busy paddling backwards that she hadn’t seen the weir until she’d fallen over it. Oh, well, in for a penny…

‘She did want you to?’

He didn’t deny it. ‘It wouldn’t have worked, Ellie. It wouldn’t have been a partnership, two people working towards the same end. We might have occupied the same space, but we wouldn’t have been together. Not in any way that mattered.’

‘But if you loved her…’

‘It wasn’t easy, turning her down. Breaking the connection. Choosing to stay.’ He glanced at her, his smile wry. ‘She said I was a pathetic male who couldn’t handle her success.’

‘She didn’t know you as well as you knew her.’

‘Maybe. Maybe she had a point. I knew I’d have been a spectator in her life instead of living my own. Maybe a bigger man could have handled it. I realise it’s a situation women have had to cope with since the year dot.’

‘She wanted it all,’ Ellie said.

‘It’s her right.’

‘I’m not disputing that. But there’s always a price to pay if you’re a woman.’

‘That’s a very un-PC attitude, Ellie.’

‘Is it? I thought I was just being realistic.’

‘You don’t believe there can ever be true equality?’

‘When men start having babies.’

‘Yes, well, there’s that. If Tasha had stayed here, lived my fantasy, settling down as the academic wife, she’d have soon become restless, bored. She’d have felt trapped by motherhood…’

He let the words die and Ellie wondered if he, too, was thinking about his great-grandmother-the one who’d run off with her poet…

‘I guess the truth is that neither of us was cut out to stand in someone else’s wake, and that’s the ultimate test, isn’t it? Not whether you’d die for someone, the one-time ultimate sacrifice, but how much you’d be prepared to give up for them, day after day after day, for the rest of your life.’

‘Is it?’

Ellie stood there for a moment, unable to think clearly. Or maybe, listening to the unravelling of Ben’s relationship, she was thinking, seeing, more clearly than she ever had before. Because if that was the test, if she’d got it so right, why suddenly did it feel as if she’d got it wrong?