She half turned. Waited.
‘When I said that, I meant…’ He didn’t know what he’d meant.
A pair of fine dark brows drew together in a frown.
‘Just…take your time,’ he said. ‘Find somewhere that suits you. Where you’ll feel comfortable,’he added, belatedly wishing he’d let her go.
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes. No. In case you were wondering, your job here is not in question.’
‘Of course not. We both know how hard it is to find a good cleaner.’
‘Ellie…’
‘Could you sound any less enthusiastic?’ she demanded. Then, ‘I suppose I owe these concessions to a little arm-twisting from Kitty?’
‘She didn’t bother with my arms. She went straight for the withers.’ This time her eyebrows went up instead of sideways. ‘She gave me chapter and verse of the way you cared for Adele when she was sick,’ he said.
‘Adele is not just an employer, she’s a friend. Leave or stay, I’d do it again tomorrow.’
‘Then you must stay or go as you please,’ he said, and, recalling his disparaging remarks about romantic heroines bringing arrogant men to their knees, he found himself unexpectedly in sympathy with them.
‘What the devil does that mean?’
‘It means…’ He shook his head, unable to believe he’d got himself into this position. ‘It means that I’m not going to be rid of you for at least a month, more likely two. I imagine by then I’ll have got used to you.’ He was doing this for Adele, he told himself. Because she’d expect nothing less of him and he owed it to her. For no other reason. ‘And if-when-I go away again, I’ll only have to find someone to take your place.’
Some women would have told him that they would think about it. Some might even have told him to look after his own house and to stuff his three pokey rooms.
Ellie did neither of those things.
She smiled.
Not a smile of triumph, or satisfaction, but a smile that could light up a room. A smile that could recharge a moribund heart. And he found himself taking a step back from what felt like a punch in the chest, a blow as painful as anything he’d felt when she’d fallen on him.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she asked. He waited. There was no chance that, having made up her mind to it, she wouldn’t ask whatever she wanted. ‘Whereabouts are the withers?’
‘Between the shoulderblades. Of a horse,’ he added.
She nodded. ‘I thought so. I’ll be sure to add liniment to my shopping list.’
Ellie, unable to believe her luck, beat a swift retreat to the safety of her own little self-contained world in the turret, and went straight up to her study, under the conical slate roof. She shooed the cat from the comfort of the ‘to-do’ basket so that she could add the dentist’s reminder to the pile of filing and other stuff awaiting her attention.
Studiously ignoring the large brown envelope, Ellie sat down, letting out a whoosh of air that she hadn’t been conscious of holding. ‘We’ve got a reprieve, Millie!’ she said, scooping up the local paper and tossing it into the bin.
Millie twitched her tail, annoyed at being disturbed, and settled on the windowsill.
‘Don’t get sniffy with me, madam. If I’m homeless, so are you, so you’d better not do anything to blot your copybook,’ she said, but grinned. Another few months might not make any difference to Ben Faulkner, but it made the world of difference to her, and she had no doubts who to thank for it.
Kitty was a secretary of the old school. All crisp vowels, dark suits and no nonsense. She must have told Ben in no uncertain terms that his sister had made a deal and he must stick to it.
The real mystery was why he found it so hard.
No, the real mystery was why he was alone in this big old house.
Then, since speculation-however pleasing it was to her novelist’s imagination to daydream about a good- looking man and what dark secrets might drive him-would, as her great-grandma had been fond of saying, butter no parsnips, she updated her work diary.
This was where she kept a list of the jobs she was booked for, hours worked, a running total of the money she’d earned.
Today, as every morning, she had spent an hour putting the local estate agent’s office straight before moving on to the optician’s. Then, because it was Friday, she’d shopped for Mrs Williams. After that she’d picked up Daisy Thomas from nursery school and looked after her until her mother returned from the hospital.
That done, she turned to her personal diary-an indulgent, A4-sized leather-covered volume worthy of a novelist. The smooth, fine paper was perfect for spilling out the details of her day, the weird incidents that happened when you were working in other people’s homes, for scribbling her little illustrations as she went.
Nothing much so far today. Unlike yesterday, which had been rather too incident-packed, work had been uneventful. Even her trip to the market-frequently the source of amusement-had lacked drama.
All she had to fill the blank day was Rejection Number Eleven. She wrote it down. Underlined it.
She was keeping count so that when her book was a bestseller she could tell the journalists flocking to her door exactly how many people had been dumb enough to turn her down before her genius was recognised. Wouldn’t all the rest of them feel really stupid then?
Probably not.
But back to reality, and the lurking presence of that large brown envelope. She doodled a little line drawing of the cat who was once again curled up in the ‘to-do’ basket.
She drew the little cupcakes with angel wings that she’d baked with Daisy to keep her from worrying about her mother.
Drew a floppy lick of hair that was just like the way Ben Faulkner’s hair fell across his forehead.
Now there was a subject that would fill a book.
Dr Benedict Faulkner.
She couldn’t believe how rude he’d been yesterday. And yet he’d strapped her up, given her a lift to work, then come and collected her from the library.
More than any girl could ask, in fact-until he’d spoiled it all by implying she was prepared to offer more than a bit of dusting in return for accommodation. Ironic, under the circumstances. At least Kitty had put him straight about that.
Maybe she should write one of those hideous ‘true-life’ stories that some weekly magazines headlined on their covers. It was no more than he deserved.
Nowhere near sensational enough.
Better.
What? Oh, no…
Writing fairy tales was one thing, but believing in them was something else. And with that thought she stopped putting off the inevitable and tore open the big envelope.
Her book had obviously caught the reader on a really bad day, and instead of just returning it with a preprinted slip she had decided to tell her exactly what she thought about it. She didn’t stint herself, making free with words such as ‘cliched’ and ‘dated’. For a moment Ellie just sat there, completely stunned, before quickly opening a drawer and pushing the thing out of sight.
She had better things to do than worry about another rejection for her novel.
Mrs Cochrane wanted the names of the ferns in her trough by Monday, and since she knew absolutely nothing about ferns it was going to involve knocking on a total stranger’s door and asking. The sooner the better.
Her ring on the doorbell was answered by a call from the rear of the house.
‘I’m round the back.’
Ellie found the owner of the voice, an elegant blonde who could have been anywhere between forty-five and sixty, stretched out on a sofa in a huge old-fashioned conservatory, peering through high-powered binoculars. She didn’t get up but, sparing her a momentary glance, said, ‘I was expecting someone else.’
