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

A floorboard on the landing creaked. Ellie stopped stuffing clothes randomly into bags and held her breath at the back of her throat.

She’d heard noises upstairs some time after noon, and had scurried up here not long after that. It was amazing just how long it could take a person to pack two cases and a couple of smaller bags. She’d made it last all afternoon.

But for once her reasoning panned out: the longer she left it before she saw him again, the less embarrassed she would feel and the easier it would be to handle her emotions when he asked her to leave. It couldn’t hurt to delay the inevitable confrontation with her soon-to-be-ex-boss until she’d finished packing and was on an even keel.

She squashed the T-shirt she was holding into the case in front of her and reached for her wash bag. It slid out of her fingers, but she managed to snatch at it, gripping it between forefinger and thumb before it reached the floor. Unfortunately her quick reflexes didn’t stop the contents spilling out and scattering all over the rug. With all her limbs occupied just preventing the bag from falling, she couldn’t do anything but watch as her tube of toothpaste bounced on the floor, then disappeared deep under the bed.

So much for an even keel. The world was still stubbornly off-kilter and refusing to go right side up.

She lifted Chloe’s blue teddy from where she’d placed it on her pillow the night before and pressed it to her face. For a while it had smelled of her daughter, but the scent of strawberry shampoo had long since faded. Ellie kissed it with reverence and placed it beside the case.

She’d only allowed herself a few treasures from home, and they had been the first things she’d pulled from her luggage when she’d unpacked. Propped on the bedside table was a single silver picture frame. The photo it held was her favourite of her and Sam together, taken on their honeymoon. They’d handed their camera to the retired couple in the next hotel room and asked them to take a snap on the day they’d travelled home.

She preferred this picture to the forced poses of her wedding photos. They were laughing at each other, hair swept sideways by the wind, not even aware of the exact moment the shutter had opened. She traced a finger over her husband’s cheek.

Her beautiful Sam.

He had been so warm and funny, with his lopsided grin and wayward hair. When he’d died it had been like losing a vital organ. Living and breathing were just so hard without him.

They’d met on the first day of primary school and been inseparable ever since, marrying one week after they’d both graduated from university. Sam had taken a teaching post at the village school and she’d commuted to the City, working as a PA for a big City firm, and they’d saved to buy the rundown cottage on the outskirts that they’d fallen in love with. They’d transformed the tumble-down wreck bit by bit, scouring architectural salvage yards for stained glass, old taps and doorknobs. They had even rescued an old roll-top bath out of one of their neighbour’s gardens—removing the geraniums before it was plumbed in.

When the last lick of paint had dried, they had proclaimed it their dream home and immediately started trying for a family. The following spring, they’d come home from the hospital with Chloe, a tiny pink bundle with fingers and toes so cute they’d verged on the miraculous. Ellie had almost felt guilty about being more happy than a person had a right to be.

But one wet afternoon had robbed her of all of it.

Her smile dissolved and she pushed the frame flat and folded the photo up in her pyjamas before tucking it into a well-padded corner of her sturdiest case.

When she’d moved back home after her rehabilitation, well-meaning friends and family had taken one of two approaches—some had wanted her to freeze-frame time and never do anything, the rest had dropped great clanging hints at her feet about moving on with her life. Their insensitivity had astounded her.

Move on? She hadn’t wanted to move on! She’d wanted things back the way they were before. Chloe’s pink wellies in the hallway. Sam bent over the kitchen table marking homework. But that was impossible. So she’d settled for hibernating in the present. But hibernating hadn’t taken long to become festering. Perhaps she should be glad that events in the village had forced her to leave.

She zipped up her bulging case, then sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the elegant surroundings.

Her journey had led her here, to Larkford Place. Unfortunately only a brief pit-stop. She hadn’t a clue what she’d do next. She could stay at the cottage for a few weeks if there weren’t any holiday bookings. But that would be going back, and now she was finally ready to move forward she didn’t want to do that.

However, she didn’t really have much choice after last night.

It was time she hauled her things down to the car. She picked up a case in one hand and stuffed a smaller one under her other arm, leaving her hand free to open the door. She tugged it open and froze.

Mark Wilder was standing straight in front of her, fist bunched ready as if to knock.

Mark dropped his hand, stuffed it in his back pocket and pulled out a wad of folded twenty-pound notes. He held them out to Ellie.

‘I thought you might need this.’

She stared at him as if he was offering her a hand grenade.

‘For the shopping,’ he added.

‘Shopping?’

‘Yes. Shopping. You know, with money …’

He waved the notes in front of her chin. Her eyes moved left and right, left and right, following the motion of his hand.

‘Money?’

This was harder work than he’d thought it would be.

‘Yes. Money. It’s what we use in the civilised world when we’ve run out of camels to barter with.’

‘But I thought …’ She fidgeted with a small silver locket hanging round her neck. ‘You’d … I’d be …’

Colour flared on her cheeks and she stepped away from him. He looked at the notes in his hand. She didn’t seem to understand the concept of shopping, which was a definite minus in a housekeeper. His decision to view last night as an embarrassing one-off started to seem premature.

He stepped through the door frame and followed her into the room. There were cases and bags on the bed. They were lumpy enough to look as if they had been filled in a hurry. The zips weren’t done up all the way, and something silky was falling out of the holdall nearest to him. He really should stop looking at it.

Ellie followed his gaze and dived for the bag, stuffing the item back in so deep that most of her arm disappeared. Now he was just staring at a pile of cases.

Cases? He tilted his head. Oh. Right. She thought he was going to give her the sack.

Well, as tempting as the idea might be, he couldn’t afford to do that at present. Firstly because he’d never hear the end of it from Charlie, and secondly because he really did need someone here to look after the house while he was travelling. He was due on another plane in less than twenty-four hours and he simply didn’t have the luxury of finding someone else. It had been hard enough to fill the position at short notice when Mrs Timms had decided to leave.

Maybe it was time to work some of the legendary Wilder magic and put this Ellie Bond at ease. If he showed her he was laughing off the incident last night, it might help her relax.

Mark waited for her to finish fiddling with the bag, and then pulled a smile out of his arsenal—the one guaranteed to melt ice maidens at fifty paces.

‘Well, I’m glad to see you’re still in your own room, anyway.’ He threw in a wink, just to make sure she knew he was joking. ‘With your track record, we can’t be too careful.’

Hmm. Strange. Nothing happened. No thaw whatsoever.

‘There’s no need to go on about that. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here, and I’m not familiar with the layout of the house yet, and I just … the moon went in … I counted three instead of four …’ The babbling continued.

There was one thing that was puzzling him. If she’d wanted a bathroom, why had she trekked down the hall?

‘Why didn’t you just use the en-suite?’

She stopped mid-babble. ‘En-suite?’

He walked over to a cream-coloured panelled door on the opposite wall to the bed, designed to match the wardrobe on the other side of the chimney breast. He nudged it gently with his knuckles and it clicked open. Her jaw lost all muscle tone as she walked slowly towards the compact but elegant bathroom.

She shook her head, walked in, looked around and walked out again, still blessedly silent. Actually, his new housekeeper seemed relatively normal when she stopped biting and yelling and babbling.

He had a sudden flashback to the night before—to the baggy blue and white pyjamas that hadn’t been quite baggy enough to disguise her curves—and he started to get a little flustered himself.

‘I have a … bathroom … inside my wardrobe?’

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘Actually, it’s not quite as Narnia-like as it seems. The wardrobe is that side.’ He pointed to an identical cream door the other side of the chimney breast. ‘We just had the door to the en-suite built to match. Secret doors seem to suit a house like this.’