The Secret Life Of Lady Gabriella

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If she’d been the waif-like heroine of one of those top-shelf romances—or indeed of her own growing pile of unpublished manuscripts—Ellie would, at this point, have dropped tidily into his arms and the fool, having taken one look, would have fallen instantly and madly in love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