At His Service: Cinderella Housekeeper: Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After / His Housekeeper Bride / What's a Housekeeper To Do?

He might not know what was going on here—clueless, as always—but one thing was certain: whether she knew it or not, Ellie needed him in this moment. She needed someone to be angry with, someone to fall apart on. And, hey, wasn’t he the most likely candidate to light her fuse at the moment, anyway? He might as well take the brunt of whatever this was.

No way was he about to brush this situation off with a joke. It was time to face the challenge he’d walked away from so many times over the last decade. No amount of sequins or cash would defuse the situation. He was just going to have to be ‘real’ too. He hoped to God he still had it in him.

She was still trying to push away from him, but now the tears came. She gulped and cried and sobbed as if she’d never stop. He swallowed rising fear at such intense emotion, whispered words of comfort in her ear and waited for the squall to wear itself out. Eventually the sobbing became shallower and she surrendered to it, burying her face in his jumper. All those crying sessions with Kat now just seemed like practice sessions leading up to this moment—and he was thoroughly glad of the training.

How he wished he could do something to ease her pain. It was so raw. Perhaps if he held her long enough, tight enough, something of him she needed would seep through the damp layers between them in a kind of osmosis. He wanted to make up the missing parts of her. Loan her his uncanny ability to shield himself from everything, to feel nothing he didn’t want to.

His fingers stilled in her curls as he thought what a poor exchange it would be. He had nothing to give her, really. She could teach him so much more. Her determination, her ability to say what she felt whether she wanted to or not. She knew how to live, while he only knew how to dazzle.

The sky turned to lavender-grey as afternoon retreated. Mark let the thump of his heart beat away the minutes as Ellie became motionless against him, pulling in deep breaths. She peeled her face from his chest, the ridge marks of the wool knit embedded on her hot cheek, half blinded by the thick tears clogging her eyelashes. Mark held her face tenderly in his palms and looked deep into her pink-rimmed eyes, desperate to soothe away the tempest he didn’t understand.

Ellie stared back at him.

He could see weariness, despair, the ragged depths of her soul, but also a glimmer of something else. Her eyes were pleading with him, asking him to give her hope.

His voice was soft and low. ‘Tell me.’

It was not a demand, but a request. Ellie’s lips quivered and a tear splashed onto his hand. Never taking his gaze from her, he led her to the passenger door and sat her on the edge of the leather seat, crouching to stay on her level, keeping her hands tight between his.

Ellie let out a shuddering sigh as she closed her eyes. Her top lip tucked under her bottom teeth. He could see she was searching for words. Her pale green eyes flipped open and looked straight into his.

Her voice was low and husky from crying. ‘It was just a panic attack. I get them sometimes … Sorry.’

He wasn’t sure he was buying this. A forgotten voice inside his head—his conscience, maybe?—poked and prodded him and dared him not to let this slide. Whatever she needed to say was important. And it was important she said it now. So he did the only thing he could do. He waited.

For a few minutes no one spoke, no one moved, and then she dipped her head and spoke in a low, hoarse voice. ‘My husband and daughter were killed in a car accident on a wet day like this,’ she said, looking down at their intertwined fingers.

‘I’m so sorry.’

Well, that was probably the most inadequate sentence he’d ever uttered in his life, but it was all he could come up with. Lame or not, it was the truth. He was sorry for her. Sorry for the lives that had been cut off too early. Sorry he hadn’t even known she’d been married. He squeezed her hands tighter.

‘It was almost four years ago now. We were driving home from a day out shopping. I’d bought Chloe a pair of sparkly pink party shoes. She never even got to wear them …’

There was nothing he could say. Nothing he could do but let her talk.

‘The police said it was joyriders. They’d been daring each other to go faster and faster … There was a head-on collision at a sharp bend on a country lane. Nobody could stop in time—the road was too wet.’

How awful. Such a tragedy. He wondered how she’d found out. Had the police come knocking at her door? A word she’d muttered earlier came back to haunt him.

We?

He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. ‘You were in the car too?’

She sniffed and hiccupped at the same time, then looked at him, a deep gnawing ache in her eyes. ‘I was driving.’

Mark pulled her back into his arms. He could feel her salty tears on his own cheek, smell her shampoo as she laid her head on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and drank in her gentle fragrance. Her soft ringlets cushioned his face, a corkscrew curl tickling his nose.

‘Feel,’ she said. At first he didn’t understand, but she pulled his hand away from her back and placed it on the right side of her head. Where there should have been smooth bone beneath skin and hair there was a deep groove in her scalp. Mark stroked the hair there too. Gently. So gently.

‘The police told me there wasn’t anything I could have done,’ she said quietly. ‘But I don’t remember. And it’s like having a huge question mark hanging over my life. I’m never going to know that for sure. What if I could have reacted a split second faster or turned the wheel another way?’

She drifted off into silence again.

His voice left him. He’d never imagined …

And he realised how stupid he’d been now. He should have curbed the adolescent urge to show off around her, racing his car down the winding lanes. All this was his fault.

Ellie sighed and relaxed into him. It felt perfect, as if she’d been carved to fit there. In recent weeks he’d not been able to stop himself fantasising about holding her close like this, kissing her brow, her nose, her lips. Well, not exactly like this. But he knew if he gave in to the fierce pull of his own desire now he would desecrate the moment, and he knew it would never come again.

She stirred, pulling back from him slightly to drag her hands across her face in an effort to mop up the congealed tears.

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was so faint it was barely a whisper.

‘No. I’m sorry. For starting all this in the first place …’

‘You couldn’t have known.’ All the fizzing, spitting irritation she’d held in her eyes every time she’d looked at him since the night of the party was gone.

‘Well, I know now. And I am sorry. For anything—everything—I did to upset you. You must know I would never do that on purpose, however much of an idiot I may seem sometimes.’

Her mouth curved imperceptibly and her eyes never left his. He felt a banging in his chest just as hard as when she’d been thumping on it with her fist. He stood up and rested his hand on the door to steady himself.

‘Let’s go home.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

NO LIGHTS were on in the drawing room. The firelight flickered, playing with the shadows on the wall. Mark sat in his favourite chair and savoured the aromatic warmth of his favourite whisky as it smouldered in his throat. The only sounds were the cracking of the wood on the fire and the laborious ticking of the antique clock in the corner. Ellie had gone to bed early, and he was left to relentlessly mull over the events of the afternoon.

They had driven back to Larkford in complete silence, but it had been different from the combustible atmosphere of their outward journey. The calm after the storm. He hadn’t wanted to jinx the easy comfort by opening his big mouth. He hadn’t been sure if Ellie was lost in the recent past, or plumbing the depths of earlier memories, and it hadn’t felt right to ask.

The vivid evening sky had deepened to a velvety indigo by the time they’d drawn up in front of the house. Mark had carried the shopping in, forbidding Ellie to help, and had suggested she have a long hot bath. He’d realised, as he’d struggled with the dilemma of where to put the dried pasta they’d just bought, that he didn’t have a clue where stuff went in his own kitchen. He’d got down to a shortlist of two possible cupboards when he’d heard the unmistakable sound of Ellie’s bare feet on the tiles.

‘Top left,’ she said quietly.

‘Thanks,’ he replied, shutting the cupboard door he was holding open and walking to another one on the other side of the room. When he put the linguine away next to the other bags of pasta he turned to look at her. She was dressed in a ratty pink towelling robe that was slightly longer at one side than the other. Her hair was wet, the blonde curls darkened and subdued, but struggling to bounce back. Her face was pink and scrubbed, eyes bright. He had never seen her look so gorgeous.

She walked towards him. His heart thumped so loudly in his chest he thought she was bound to hear it. But she didn’t stop and stare at him. She didn’t laugh. Instead, she was smiling, eyes hesitant but warm. He was hypnotised.

‘Thank you, Mark. For everything.’

She was only a foot away from him now, and she stood on tiptoes and placed an exquisitely delicate kiss on his cheek.

‘Goodnight,’ she said gently, and she headed for the door.

‘Night,’ he replied absently, still feeling the sweet sting of her lips on his cheek.

Now, hours later, he could still feel the tingle of that kiss. He took another sip of the whisky and rubbed the spot with the tips of his fingers.

At least he understood that tragic look in her eyes now. Ellie was haunted; the ghosts of her lost family still followed her. She had lived through more hurt than he could possibly imagine and yet she had found the strength to carry on living.

He looked back at his own life over the last decade and berated himself for his self-centredness and cowardice. He’d been afraid to let anyone close because he’d allowed one gold-digging woman to discolour his view of the rest of her sex. Instead of moving on and growing from the experience he’d sulked and cut himself off from any possibility of being hurt again, learning to cauterise the wounds with sarcastic humour and a don’t-care attitude. He’d taken the easy way out.

Not like Ellie. She was brave. How did you pick yourself up again and keep on living after something like that?

He downed the rest of the whisky and sat for a long time, holding the empty glass. Once upon a time he’d written her off as fragile, but she was possibly the strongest person he’d ever met.

Be careful what you wish for, Ellie thought, as she exited the kitchen through the French windows and took her usual route round the garden. All those months in Barkleigh, longing for breathing space, the chance to be on her own without anyone fussing …

Well, now she had air and space in bucketloads. And for a while it had been good, and she thought she’d escaped that creeping sense of loneliness that had seeped into her bones at the cottage, but it had just followed her here.

Okay, most of the time it was pretty perfect. Like now, when the early-morning sun was gently warming her skin as she wandered a subconscious route round the gardens, her habitual cup of tea cradled in her upturned hands, but sometimes all this room, this space, it was a little … well …

She shook her head. She was just being silly.

It was hardly surprising she was finding life a little solitary. Only a couple of days after the disastrous trip to the supermarket Mark had disappeared, mumbling something about putting a big deal together, and she hadn’t seen him for more than a fortnight. She guessed he was staying up at his flat in London, going to meetings all day. She tried not to speculate on what he might get up to at night.

The view of the Thames from his flat must be stunning, the vibe of the warm summer nights exciting, but if she had a choice of living in a crowded city, full of exhaust fumes and scary commuters, and being here at Larkford, she knew what she’d pick.

She kicked her flip-flops off as she reached the edge of the lawn and sighed in pleasure as the soles of her feet met soft grass that was dry, but still cool from the early-morning dew.

It was silly, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Mark was staying away deliberately. Maybe he was embarrassed. He wouldn’t be the first person not to be able to handle her unique circumstances. She’d tried to run away from that feeling too, hadn’t she? And now it had tracked her down and turned up on her doorstep.

She looked around the garden. The roses on the wrought-iron arches that lined the main path were in flower, a variety with frilly shell-pink petals. The smell was fantastic.

She sighed. Well, if Mark wanted to stay away, she couldn’t stop him. It just seemed such a pity he was missing how beautiful his home looked. Every day there was something new to admire in the garden, another flower opening its buds or shooting out new green leaves. Maybe Mark wasn’t the sort of person to notice these kind of things, but even if you didn’t notice the details you couldn’t help but feel rested here.

When she went back inside the house and checked her laptop she found an e-mail from Mark, and this time, instead of giving another boring, bland reply, she decided to add a little bit about Larkford—about the rose walk and how the wisteria on the back of the house was fairly dripping with flowers, how the hazy summer mornings burnt off into hot, bright afternoons. At least he wouldn’t miss the magic of his house totally, even if he wasn’t here to see it for himself.

Just as she was about to turn the laptop off she heard a ping, announcing the arrival of an e-mail. Thinking it might be from Ginny, informing her of the latest in a long line of pregnancy-related stories about absent-mindedness, she almost ignored it, but at the last minute she clicked on the little window and opened up the message.

She blinked and opened her eyes a little wider. It was from Mark. He must be online right now.

Hi Ellie

Thanks for the update on the plumbing situation. I’m sure you’ll be glad to have your own space when the repairs are finished in your apartment. Feel free to decorate as you’d like.

I’m glad the wisteria is stunning and the roses are happy!!! I didn’t realise you were a poet as well as a housekeeper ;-)

Mark.

What a cheek! Still, she couldn’t erase the image of Mark’s devil-may-care smile as she read it, and she was smiling too when she typed back her reply.

Fine. Now I know my boss is a Philistine I won’t bother sending any similar observations with my next message!

Of course he couldn’t leave it at that. And a rapid e-mail battle ensued. Ellie was laughing out loud when she finally admitted defeat and switched the laptop off. Maybe he was busy, after all. Maybe this whole ‘deal’ thing wasn’t just an excuse to avoid her.

And that was how communication continued the next week or so. The e-mails got less businesslike and more chatty. Mark always added winky faces made out of colons and semicolons—Sam would have said that he used far too many exclamation marks—and Ellie forgot her threat not to tell him anything about Larkford and ended up describing the way the wonderful house looked in the pale dawn light, losing herself in the images and getting all flowery about it …

And Mark, true to form, would reply with a teasing quip and burst her lyrical little bubble, causing her to laugh out loud and send back something equally pithy. She decided it was nice to communicate with someone who didn’t remind her constantly of what she’d been like before the accident, who just accepted her for who she was now and didn’t patronise her. He wasn’t just her boss now; he was an ally.

But she knew he couldn’t be any more than that. And that was fine, because that was exactly how she wanted it. Really, it was.

London late at night was stunning. Mark pressed his forehead against the plate-glass wall that filled one side of his living room and used his own shadow to block out the reflection of his flat so he could see the city beyond. Multi-coloured lights blinked on the black river below, endlessly dancing but never wearying.

When he’d bought this place he hadn’t thought he’d get tired of this view, but lately he’d found himself wanting to trade it in for something else. Maybe a leafy square in Fitzrovia or a renovated warehouse near the docks?

He decided to distract himself from his restlessness by turning on the TV, but everything seemed pointless, so he wandered into his bedroom, crashed so hard onto the bed that it murmured in complaint, then picked up the book on his bedside table. A Beginner’s Guide to Head Injuries. Only one more chapter to go and he’d be finished.

He got it now. Why Ellie had moments where she zoned out, why she forgot common words. It wasn’t just that she was scatterbrained. Not that it mattered, anyway. And he wasn’t entirely sure that all of Ellie’s unique qualities were down to a rather nasty bump on the head. He had the feeling that even if the head injury could be factored out of the equation she’d still be pretty unique.

He read to the end of the bibliography and put the book back where he’d got it from. He hadn’t checked his e-mail yet this evening, had he? And he had started to look forward to Ellie’s slightly off-on-a-tangent e-mails. She had a way of making him feel as if he were right there at Larkford, with her little stories about village life and descriptions of which plants were in flower in the garden.

Bluebells.

In her last e-mail she’d said that she’d seen a carpet of bluebells in the woodland at the fringes of the estate. Although he’d never been a man to watch gardening programmes, or take long country walks to ‘absorb nature’, he’d suddenly wanted to stand in the shade of an old oak tree and see the blue haze of flowers for himself. He wanted to see Ellie smile and turn to him, as if she were sharing a secret with him …

No.

He couldn’t think that way. He liked Ellie. He respected her. Hell, he was even attracted to her—majorly—but he couldn’t go down that path.

It had been a long time since he’d held a woman in such high regard. And that was why this was dangerous. All the things he thought about Ellie … Well, they were the basis for a good relationship. Friendship, compatibility, chemistry. But he couldn’t risk it. And not just for himself. What about Ellie? He wasn’t the man for her. She didn’t need someone who would probably cause her even more pain.

He jumped off the bed and started moving. Not that he had any particular destination in mind. He just seemed to get a burst of speed whenever he thought about a certain housekeeper.

And that was why he’d stayed away from Larkford. Because he was scared of what he was starting to feel for her. Yet even then she’d burrowed even further under his skin. Staying away hadn’t worked, had it?

He found himself by the window in the living room again, and placed his palm on the glass.

So why was he here? Bored and wishing he was somewhere else? If keeping his distance hadn’t worked, he might as well go and enjoy the house he’d bought for himself, because that was what he really wanted to do.

He wanted to go and see the bluebells for himself.

The gentle chiming of distant church bells roused Ellie from her Saturday morning slumber. Almost subconsciously she counted the chimes, not realising when she’d started but knowing the total by the time they’d finished. Eight.

Warm sunlight filtered through the curtains. She half sat in bed and rubbed her eyes. Her mouth gaped in an unexpected yawn. She shuffled herself out of bed, threw back the curtains and drank in the beautiful morning. The plumbing in her apartment above the old stables was now all fixed and she’d moved in. While her little kitchen looked over the cobbled courtyard, her bedroom had a wonderful view over the gardens. They were glorious this morning, bursting with life. She felt decidedly lazy as she watched a bee worrying the clematis beneath her window. It seemed completely unimpressed with her and disappeared into the centre of a large purple flower.

She turned from the window, full of great ideas for an al fresco lunch, and the sun glinted off the picture frame on the windowsill. She stopped to look at it, head tipped on one side. The photo had been taken at Chloe’s fourth birthday party. Chloe was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat, her freshly lit birthday cake in front of her on the table. Sam and Ellie leaned in behind her, faces warmed by the glow of the candles.

They all looked so happy. She kissed her index finger and pressed it onto the glass where Chloe’s smile was. It had been a wonderful day.

The memory came easily and painlessly now. She smiled as she recalled the incessant squealing of little girls and the pungent smell of blown-out birthday candles. Chloe had spent the whole party bouncing up and down in excitement, even when she was devouring pink birthday cake. She remembered Sam’s smile later that evening, when he’d silently beckoned her to come and look at Chloe. They’d crept through the post-party devastation into the lounge and found her fast asleep on the sofa, chocolate smeared all over her face and clutching the doll they had given her in her sticky hands.

She’d found it so hard to look at this photo in the past. Even so, she’d kept it on prominent display as a kind of punishment. What she was guilty of, she wasn’t sure.

Being here when they weren’t. Being alive.

Since their deaths she had lived life as if she was walking backwards—too terrified of the unfamiliar territory ahead to turn and face the future. She’d blindly shuffled through each day, just trying to keep going without meeting disaster again. Pain was to be avoided at all costs. No risk. No attachments. But no love, either. Her smile dissolved completely.

What would Sam think of the way she’d been coping?

She knew exactly what he would say. Her face creased into a frown. She could almost see his hazel eyes scowling at her, the trademark tuft of wayward hair slipping over his forehead.

Life should never feel small, Ellie.

That was what he’d always told her. Despite her secure family background she’d always been a shy child, but Sam had seen beyond the reserve. He’d asked her to play tag while the other schoolchildren had ignored the quiet girl on the wooden bench with her coat pulled round her. She’d been desperate to join in, but much too scared to get up and ask in case they laughed and ran away. But Sam had won her over with his gentle smile as he’d grabbed her hand and pulled her off the bench. Within minutes she’d been running after him, the wind in her hair and a smile beneath her rosy cheeks.

It had always been like that with Sam. He had encouraged her to dare, to believe. To make life count.

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ she whispered, the glass misting as she talked to his face in the photo.

She sighed and pulled her tatty robe from its hook on the back of the door. Since the incident in Mark’s car, she’d felt different. Liberated, somehow. Perhaps the whole embarrassing scenario had done some good after all. She’d been clutching on to her grief for so long, and her reaction to Mark’s driving had finally provided an outlet—the last great emotional lurch in her rollercoaster stay at Larkford so far.

Ever since she had got here she’d been plunging into some forgotten feeling—panic, shame, anger—desire, even. She’d experienced them all in vivid richness. And somehow Mark Wilder stood in the middle of the maelstrom. Instead of making her feel safe, as Sam had, he made her feel nervous, excited and confused all at once. It was as if the universe had shifted a little when she wasn’t looking and she suddenly found herself off-balance when he was around.