Читать книгу At His Service: Cinderella Housekeeper: Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After / His Housekeeper Bride / What's a Housekeeper To Do? - Фиона Харпер - Страница 6

ELLIE gave in to the insistent nagging at the fringes of her sleep and woke up. She focused on the display from the digital clock next to the bed.

Two-sixteen—and she needed to go to the bathroom. But it was her first night in an unfamiliar house and she didn’t really want to be crashing around in the dark, even if she was the sole occupant.

She punched her pillow and flopped onto her other side, burying her head under the duvet. She could last. Clamping her eyes shut, she shifted position again, wriggling into the mattress. The seconds sloped by in the thick silence. She lay completely still, counting her heartbeats.

Apparently she couldn’t last. Bother.

She blinked and tried to see where the outline of the door was in the blackness of the bedroom. The dull green glow from the alarm clock lit the duvet but not much more. The edge of the bed was about as inviting as the edge of a cliff.

Ellie Bond, get hold of yourself! A grown woman has no business being scared of the dark. Even in the kind of huge old house that looked as if it might have ghosts or bats in the attic.

She flung the duvet off and planted her feet firmly on the carpet, but hesitated for a couple of seconds before she stood up and inched towards the wall.

Ouch! Closer than she’d guessed.

Maybe she should have paid more attention when she’d dumped her cases in here, but she’d been so exhausted she’d only managed half her unpacking before she’d fallen into the large, squashy bed.

She rubbed her shoulder and felt along the wall for the door. It was a couple of steps to the left from her point of impact. The antique handle complained as she twisted it millimetre by millimetre. She winced and opened the door slowly and carefully. Why, she didn’t know. It just seemed wrong to be too noisy in someone else’s house late at night, even if they were away from home.

Ellie leant out of the doorway and slid the flat of her hand along the wall in search of the light switch.

Where was the stupid thing?

Certainly not within easy reach. But as she crept along the hallway the clouds parted and sent a sliver of moonlight through the half-open curtains at the end of the landing. Bingo! She could see the bathroom door, right next to the window. She padded more speedily along the wooden floor, her bare feet sticking to the layers of old varnish.

Relief swirled through her as she scrambled inside the bathroom and yanked the light cord. A few minutes later she opened the door and froze. The moonlight had evaporated and she was left standing in the pitch-dark.

Don’t panic, Ellie. Think!

There had to be logical way to deal with this.

‘Okay,’ she whispered out loud, ‘my room is the—’ she counted on her fingers ‘—third on the left … I think.’ All she had to do was feel for the doors and she would be back in that wonderfully comfortable bed in no time.

She tiptoed close to the wood panelling, letting her left fingers walk along the surface in search of door fames.

One …

Two …

She meant to creep slowly, but with each step her pulse increased, adding speed to her steps.

Three …

She opened the door and made a quick dash for the bed. Ever since she was a child she’d had an irrational fear that some shadowy figure underneath would grab her ankles when she got close. She’d even perfected a sprint and dive manoeuvre in her teenage years. She decided to resurrect it now.

Big mistake.

She tripped over a discarded shoe and stumbled into a solid wall of … something.

It was warm. And breathing.

Oh, heck.

There was somebody in the house! A burglar, or an axe-wielding maniac …

Her brain short-circuited. Too much information at once. Too much to process. Thankfully, more primal instincts took over. She backed away, hoping she hadn’t got muddled and that the door was still directly behind her. But she hadn’t made more than two steps when a large, strong hand grabbed her wrist.

Ellie’s stomach somersaulted and she froze. Without even thinking about why or how, she lunged at him, whoever he was, and shoved the heel of her hand under his chin, causing him to grunt and stumble backwards.

Mother, I will never moan about the self-defence classes you made me go to in the village hall again!

In the surreal slow-motion moment that followed, she wondered why a burglar would be bare-chested in March, but before the thought was fully formed in her head his other arm grabbed her and he fell, taking her with him. She came crashing down on top of him, and then they lay winded in a tangle of arms and legs on the floor.

Here, he had the advantage. She didn’t know how, but she could sense he was taller than her, and if the chest she’d just landed on was anything to go by he had five times as many muscles. Somehow as they’d fallen they’d twisted, and she was now partly pinned underneath him, her legs trapped. She started to wriggle.

I should have paid more attention at those classes, instead of gossiping at the back with Janice Bradford.

Because the man obviously had no intention of letting her loose. In one swift movement he flipped her onto her back, his hands clamping both her wrists and digging them into the scratchy wool rug while his knees clamped her thighs together. The air left Ellie’s body with an ‘oof’ noise.

She flailed and struggled, but it was like trying to dislodge a lump of granite. Eventually she lay still beneath him, every muscle rigid. His toothpaste-scented breath came in short puffs, warming the skin of her neck. Panic fluttered in her chest.

It dawned on her that her original assumption that he was a burglar might be a tad optimistic. Things could be about to get a lot worse.

She had to act now—before he made his next move.

In a moment of pure instinct, she lifted her head and sank her teeth into the smooth skin of his shoulder. Then, while he was yelping in pain, she used every bit of strength in her five-foot-five frame to rock him to her left, getting him off-balance and thereby gaining enough momentum to swing him back in the other direction. The plan was to fling him off her so she could escape.

The plan was flawed.

He tumbled over, all right, but as she tried to crawl away he got hold of her right foot and dragged her back towards him. Ellie tried to stop herself by twisting over and clawing at the rug, but large tufts just came away in her fingers. And then she realised she was travelling further than she’d scurried away. She was being dragged back towards the bed.

That was when she started shouting. A wave of white-hot anger swept up her body.

How dared he?

‘Get out of my bedroom!’ she screamed. ‘Or I’ll—’

‘What?’

He was angry, but there was something more in his voice—confusion?

Harsh light flooded the room, accompanied by the click of a switch. Ellie peeled her face off the carpet and blinked a few times, desperate to focus on anything that might give her a clue as to where the door was. Her eyes began to adjust, and she made out a tall figure against the pale blue of the wall.

Pale blue? Oh, help! My room is a kind of heritage yellow colour.

She crinkled her eyelids until they were almost shut, and swivelled her head to face her attacker. Through the blur of her eyelashes she saw a pair of deep brown eyes staring at her. There was something about them … Had she dreamt about a pair of eyes just like that before she’d woken up? Half a memory was lodged somewhere, refusing to make sense.

Ellie’s chest reverberated with the pounding of her heart and she felt the fire wash up her face and settle in the tips of her ears. He looked as astonished as she felt.

She had seen those eyes before, but not in her dreams. They hadn’t been scowling then, but laughing, twinkling …

Ellie let out a noise that was part groan, part whimper as the memory clunked into place. She started to collect her limbs together and move away.

‘I’m … I’m … so sorry! I got lost in the dark …’ She shot a glance at him, but his face was still etched with confusion. ‘I mean, I thought you were a—a maniac.’

He blinked. Something told her his assessment of her hadn’t been dissimilar.

‘Mr Wilder … I …’

‘I know who I am. Who on earth are you?’

She licked her lips—they seemed to have dried out completely—and cleared her throat. ‘I’m Ellie Bond, your new housekeeper.’

One month earlier

Ellie’s limbs stopped working the moment she crossed the threshold of the coffee shop. The woman in the red coat was early. She wasn’t supposed to be here yet, but there she was, sitting at a table and reading a newspaper. After a few seconds the door swung closed behind Ellie, hitting her on the bottom. She didn’t even flinch, mainly because she felt as if she’d swallowed a thousand ice cubes and they were now all jostling for position as they slowly melted, spreading outwards through her body.

The woman’s long dark hair almost touched the tabletop as she bent over an absorbing story. Chunky silver earrings glinted in her ears when she flicked her hair out of the way so she could turn the page. Earrings that Ellie had given her for her last birthday.

The woman hadn’t noticed Ellie yet, and she was glad about that. She stared harder. Perhaps if she just stood here for a moment, took her time, it would come to her.

Something the woman was reading must have bothered her, because she stiffened and, even though her head was bowed, Ellie knew that three vertical lines had just appeared above the bridge of the woman’s nose. That always happened when she frowned. When people had been friends for more than a decade, they tended to notice little things like that about each other without even realising it. The brain collected a scrap-book about a person, made up of assorted images, sensations, sounds and aromas, all of which could be called up at a moment’s notice. And Ellie had plenty of those memories flooding into the front of her consciousness right now—untidy college bedrooms, the smell of dusty books in the library, the giggles of late-night gossip sessions …

A fact that only made the current situation more galling.

Ellie couldn’t remember her name.

Since the accident, finding the right name or word had become like rummaging around in the cupboard under the stairs without a torch. She knew the information she wanted was in her brain somewhere, but she was fumbling in the dark, not really knowing what she was looking for and just hoping she’d recognise it when she finally laid hold of it.

A waitress bustled past her, and the movement must have alerted her friend to the person standing at the edge of her peripheral vision, because she looked up from her newspaper and smiled at Ellie.

Ellie waved back, but behind her answering smile she was running through the letters of the alphabet, just as she’d been taught at the support group, to see if any of them jogged her memory.

Anna? Alice? Amy?

The woman stood up, beaming now, and Ellie had no choice but to start walking towards her.

Belinda? No.

Brenda?

The chunky earrings bobbed as her friend stood and drew her into a hug. Ellie just stood there for a moment like a rag doll, and then she made a conscious decision to contract her arm muscles and squeeze back. Not that she was opposed to hugging; it was just that her brain was far too busy ferreting around for the right letter, the right syllable, to get her started.

Christine … Caroline … Carly?

Carly. It seemed right and not right at the same time.

A whisper tickled her ear. ‘It’s so good to see you, Ellie!’

Ellie knew her friend would understand if she just admitted her memory blank. But Ellie was fed up with being understood. She just wanted to be—to live her life the way everyone else did, without the sympathetic glances. That was why she’d arranged this meeting in the first place.

A familiar sensation washed over her. She imagined it to be what it might feel like if portions of her memory were buoys, chained to a deep and murky ocean floor, and then all of a sudden one freed itself and floated upwards, arriving on the surface with a plop.

Charlotte Maxwell.

‘Hi, Charlie,’ she said, and finally relaxed into the hug. ‘It’s good to see you too.’

She tried not to, but as she pulled away and sat down Ellie sighed, deep and hard. Charlie tilted her head and looked at her.

‘How are you?’

Ah. How innocent that phrase sounded. How kind and well-meaning.

Ellie had come to hate it. People were always asking her that, normally wearing a concerned expression. Oh, she wasn’t fooled a bit. It wasn’t small talk. Chit-chat. What people wanted from her when they asked that question was a full psychological and medical rundown.

She smiled, but her lips remained firmly pressed together. ‘I’m great. Really.’

Charlie kept staring at her. ‘Still getting the headaches?’

‘Only occasionally,’ she replied, shrugging the observation away.

The wicked twinkle returned to Charlie’s eyes as she stood back and looked Ellie up and down. ‘You’ve had your hair cut,’ she said.

Ellie automatically raised a hand to feel the blunt ends of her tousled blonde curls. She’d only had it done a few days ago, and she still wasn’t used to finding fresh air where there had once been heavy ringlets that reached halfway down her back. The ends now just brushed the tops of her shoulders. It was shorter, maybe a bit younger, and a heck of a lot more manageable.

‘I was ready for a change,’ she said.

Change.

That was why she was here. She might as well get down to business and ask Charlie the question that had been burning her tongue all morning. If she didn’t do it soon she was likely to get distracted and end up going home without mentioning it at all. She opened her mouth to speak.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Charlie said in a grave voice, ‘but I can’t be expected to indulge in a month’s worth of gossip without a side order of caffeine—and possibly a muffin or three. It’s just not done.’

Ellie glanced over at the counter then stood up.

‘I’ll have a …’

Oh, flip. What was the word? She knew she knew it, but it seemed to be speeding away from her, like a dream that was fast evaporating with the last traces of sleep.

‘You know … the fluffy, milky drink with powder on top.’

Charlie didn’t bat an eyelid, bless her. ‘Two cappuccinos, please,’ she said to the barista.

Ellie leaned forward and looked at the girl over Charlie’s shoulder. ‘And a chocolate muffin, please.’

‘Make that two.’ Charlie turned and smirked at her while the barista rang up the sale. ‘That’s my girl. Couldn’t forget chocolate if you tried.’

If her mother or her sister had said something like that Ellie would have snapped at them, but she found herself laughing at Charlie’s sideways comment. Maybe she was too sensitive these days. And she’d wound herself up into a state about meeting Charlie before she’d even got here. No wonder her memory was malfunctioning. It always got worse when she was stressed or nervous.

Charlie understood. She made Ellie’s ‘condition’ seem like no big deal. That one positive thought gave her confidence. She was going to ask her. She was ready.

But the first cappuccinos had been drained and the second round ordered before Ellie finally worked up her nerve. She twiddled the silver locket she always wore between her thumb and forefinger.

‘Actually, Charlie, there was a reason I suggested getting together this morning. I need a favour.’

‘Anything. You know that.’ Charlie leaned forward and rubbed her forearm. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help.’

Ellie took at deep breath. She was asking for a lot more than the usual sympathetic ear or moral support at social functions. A lot more.

‘I need a job.’

Charlie just seemed to freeze. She blinked a couple of times. ‘A job?’

Ellie squeezed her bottom lip between her teeth and gave a little nod, but Charlie broke eye contact and took her time while she folded a corner of the newspaper page into a neat triangle. She glanced up once she’d scored it with a long, red fingernail.

‘I’m sorry, Ellie. I only need a couple of people in the office, and I’ve got all the staff I require at the moment.’

Oh, fab. Charlie thought she was asking her for a pity job—one with minimum responsibilities and no challenges. But Ellie couldn’t give up now. She was desperate. She stopped fiddling with her locket and folded her hands in her lap.

‘No. I mean I want you to put me on your agency’s books, preferably for a job where I can live in. I need to … get away from Barkleigh for a while. You must have something I could do? Something that uses my skills? You know I’m a fantastic cook.’

Charlie nodded and said nothing, but Ellie could see her mind working. She made a rather nice living running an exclusive little agency providing the well-off with domestic staff—from butlers and chauffeurs to cooks and nannies.

‘But are you …? Can you …?’ Charlie wrinkled her nose and paused.

Ellie knew what she was trying to ask, what she really didn’t want to put into words. Was the patched-up and rehabilitated Ellie capable of holding down a full-time job? The truth was, Ellie wasn’t even sure herself. She thought she was. She’d worked hard to put strategies and coping mechanisms in place to help with the memory and concentration problems that were so common after a serious head injury, but she was shaking in her boots at the idea of moving away from everything familiar and starting again somewhere new.

‘I just have to work a little bit harder than everyone else at keeping myself organised nowadays. But I can do this, Charlie. I know I can. I just need someone to believe in me and give me a chance, and you said you’d do anything you can to help.’

Okay, that was playing dirty, but she was desperate. The pained look on Charlie’s face was almost too much to bear. She wasn’t convinced. And if Ellie had been in her shoes maybe she wouldn’t have been either.

For a long time Charlie said nothing, and Ellie thought she might be creating brand-new wrinkles on her forehead with all the mental wrestling she was doing. Then, slowly, the lines faded.

‘Okay,’ she said, staring out of the window. ‘I just might have something. I’ll let you know.’

The cottage door slammed. There was something very final about the sound of the old door hitting the door frame. Ellie tried to remove the key from the worn Victorian lock, but it refused to budge.

Today was not going well. Lost keys, a case that wouldn’t shut and a pigeon stuck in the roof had already plagued her this morning. If she had been one to believe in bad omens she’d have run upstairs and hidden under her duvet a few hours ago. But the duvet was freshly laundered, waiting for someone else, and the rest of her life had been divided into packing boxes and suitcases. The cottage was now bare of all personal possessions, ready to be rented out by the week. The holiday lettings company had jumped at the chance of a child-friendly property in the picturesque little village of Barkleigh. Other families would build memories here now.

She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth and resumed her negotiations with the lock. The choreographed sequence of turns, pulls and twists had long ago become a matter of muscle memory rather than conscious thought, and finally the key jerked free. It always did in the end. It just needed a little gentle persuasion.

It was time to leave. Ellie shoved her keys in the back pocket of her jeans and stared through the stained glass panels that filled the top half of the heavy old door. Once, the hallway had been warm and inviting, filled with discarded shoes, coats hanging haphazardly on a row of hooks. Now it was cold and empty, distorted through the rippling glass.

A large drop of rain splashed onto the top of her head. She shuddered, picked up the last piece of luggage, then turned and walked down the path towards her waiting car.

Ellie looked out across the fields. An overstuffed dark grey cloud was devouring the sunshine, heading straight towards her. Another plop of rain dropped on the back of her neck and ran down between her shoulder blades. She increased her speed. The boot of her old hatchback stood gaping and she slung the holdall in the back, slammed the door shut and hurried round to the driver’s door. The tempo of the rain increased. By the time she was inside it was drumming an unpromising rhythm on the roof of the car. Warm, earthy smells drifted through the ventilation system.

She glanced at the handbag sitting on the passenger seat. Poking out of the top was a worn blue teddy bear with one eye and bald ears where the fluff had been loved off. The backs of her eyes burned, but she refused to blink, knowing that any moisture leaking over her lashes would feel like acid. The pummelling on the roof of the car magnified, filling her ears and pulling the world away from her down a long, invisible tunnel.

Not now. Today of all days I need to keep it together.

She forced herself to sit upright in the driver’s seat and stared blindly into the blurry grey scenery beyond the windscreen, then turned the key in the ignition. The car rumbled grudgingly to life, coughed once, and promptly stalled.

Still she didn’t blink, just held her breath for a few seconds, then reached out to stroke the dashboard.

Come on, girl! Don’t let me down now.

She pumped the gas a few times and tried again, and when the engine rewarded her with an uneven purr, she released her breath and put the car into gear. She pulled away slowly, rumbling down the country lane, and didn’t allow herself the luxury of looking back.

An hour later she was sitting behind a caravan on the motorway. It was only going at about fifty, but she made no attempt to pass it. This speed was fine, thank you very much. Driving wasn’t her favourite occupation these days, and she hadn’t been on a motorway in a long time. She distracted herself from the haulage trucks passing her at insane speeds with thoughts of fresh starts and new jobs.

Everyone had been so happy when she’d come out of hospital after the accident, sure she was going to be ‘back to normal’ in no time. And after a year, when she’d finally moved out of her parents’ house and back into the cottage, her family and friends had breathed a collective sigh of relief.

That was it. Everything done and dusted. Ellie is all better and we can stop worrying now.

But Ellie wasn’t all better. Her hair might have grown again and covered the uneven scars on her skull, she might even talk and walk the same, but nothing, nothing, would ever be the same again. Underneath the ‘normal’ surface she was fundamentally different and always would be.

She focused on the droplets of rain collecting on the windscreen.

Water. That was all those tiny splashes were. Almost nothing, really. So how could something so inconsequential alter the course of three lives so totally, so drastically? She nudged the lever next to the steering wheel again and the specks of water vanished in a flurry of motion.

Thankfully, within a few minutes the rain had stopped completely and she was able to slow the squeaking wipers to a halt. Warm afternoon light cut clean paths through the clouds. Her shoulder blades eased back into their normal position and she realised she’d been clenching her teeth from the moment she’d put her foot on the accelerator. She made a conscious effort to relax her jaw and stretched her fingers. The knuckles creaked, stiff from gripping the steering wheel just a little too tightly.

A big blue sign was up ahead and she read it carefully.

Junction Eight. Two more to go.

She’d promised herself that she would not zone out and sail past the turn-off. Getting lost was not an option today.

The caravan in front slowed until it was practically crawling along. Ellie glanced in her wing mirror. She could overtake it if she wanted to. The adjacent lane was almost clear. Still, it took her five minutes and a stiff lecture before she signalled and pulled out.

She was still concentrating on remembering to exit at Junction Ten, visualising the number, burning it onto her short-term memory, when a prolonged horn blast startled her. A car loomed large in her rear-view mirror. It inched closer, until their bumpers were almost touching, its engine snarling. Ellie was almost frightened enough to speed up to give herself breathing room. Almost.

Flustered, she grabbed at the levers round the steering wheel for the indicator, only to discover she’d turned the fog light on instead. She fought to keep her breathing calm, yanked at the correct lever and pulled into the inside lane. What she now realised was a sleek Porsche zoomed past in a bright red blur.

A sigh of relief was halfway across her lips when the same car swerved in front of her. She stamped on the brake and glared at the disappearing number plate, retaliating by pressing her thumb on the horn for a good five seconds, even though the lunatic driver was now a speck in the distance, too far away to hear—or care.

It had to be a man. Too caught up in his own ego to think about anyone else. Pathetic. She had made a policy to keep her distance from that type of person, whether he was inside a low-slung car or out of it.

She shook her head and returned her concentration to the road, relieved to see she was only two miles from the next service station. An impromptu caffeine break was in order.

It wasn’t long before she was out of the car and sitting in an uncomfortable plastic seat with a grimy mug of coffee on the table in front of her. She cupped her hands round it and let the heat warm her palms.

The crazy Porsche driver had flustered her, brought back feelings and memories she had long tried to evade. Which on the surface seemed odd, because she couldn’t even remember the accident itself.

But perhaps it was better not to have been conscious as they’d cut her from the wreckage of the family car, the bodies of her husband and daughter beside her. Not that her battered memory didn’t invent images and torture her with them in the depths of the night.

She had no clear memories of the beginning of her hospital stay either. The doctors had told her this was normal. Post-traumatic amnesia. When she tried to think back to that time it was as if a cloud had settled over it, thick and impenetrable.

Sometimes she thought it would be nice to lose herself in that fog again, because emerging from it, scarred and confused, to find her lovely Sam and her darling eight-year-old Chloe were gone for ever had been the single worst moment of her existence.

All because it had rained. And because two boys in a fast car hadn’t thought that important. They’d been arrogant, thinking those little drops of almost nothing couldn’t stop them, couldn’t spoil their fun.

She looked down at her coffee. The cup was empty, but she didn’t remember drinking it.

Just as well.

Brown scum had settled at the bottom of the cup. Ellie shook off a shudder and patted down her unruly blonde curls, tucking the ends of the long fringe behind her ears. She couldn’t sit here all day nursing an empty cup of coffee. But moving meant getting back in the car and rejoining the motorway. Something she wanted to do even less now than she had when she’d left home this morning. She closed her eyes and slowly inflated her lungs.

Come on, Ellie. The only other option is admitting defeat and going back home to hibernate for ever. You can do this. You have to. Staying at the cottage is eating you alive from the inside out. You’re stagnating.

She opened her eyelids, smoothed her T-shirt down over her jeans, swung her handbag out from underneath the table and made a straight line for the exit.

Back on the road, her geriatric car protested as she reached the speed limit. She filtered out the rattling and let the solitude of the motorway envelop her. She wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, but she wasn’t giving her attention to the road either. Her mind was in limbo—and it was wonderful.

The sun emerged from the melting clouds and flickered through the tops of the trees. She flipped the visor down to shield her eyes. The slanting light reflected off the sodden carriageway and she peered hard at the road, struggling to see the white lines marking the lanes.

In fact, she was concentrating so hard she failed to notice the motorway sign on the grassy verge to her left.

Junction Ten.