“Frau Haskell,” she began, and her quiet voice and gentle manner did not make me feel any better about myself, “I am sorry to come in on you so late. I was in the hall on my way to make some hot milk, and I see Herr Haskell, who tells me you are in here alone.”
“My cousin is still out with George Malloy,” I said, wishing the guilt I felt did not make me sound so stiff. “Please come and sit down, Gerta, and tell me how the dinner at Abigail’s went.”
“It was very good.” Gerta sat down on the sofa, hands on her knees and a smile on her face. “Abbey and Tam they have a nice time and eat all on their plate. Mrs. Mop, she came too and she looked pleased. I think she gets to like your cousin, who is very nice even to me. Mr. Malloy made lots of jokes about me thinking he was a crazy man and telephoning the police station. We all laughed a lot and for a little while I forgot my troubles.”
“I’m glad,” I said, sitting beside her.
“But the pain is still here”—Gerta placed a hand over her heart—“that I am so glad you get me out of the house before that man arrives.”
“Karisma?”
“That’s him, Frau Haskell.” The plaits slipped from their anchors and plopped over her slumped shoulders. “And now I see clear as daytime why you acted to save me.”
“You do?”
“Mrs. Mop had a book with that most-naked man on the cover. In her handbag at the restaurant. And when your cousin told her he was coming to this house, she showed him to me. It was almost more than I could bear without the tears landing on my face.”
“Oh, dear,” I murmured.
“He is so much like my husband.”
“Really?”
“The hair it is much longer and my Ernst always wears his trousers up to where they are supposed to be, not down around his personal parts, but otherwise they are the same man.”
“Good heavens!” I was beginning to wonder if Vanessa had been right after all. “You never said anything about this when you saw Karisma on television the other morning.”
“I was too upset that Mrs. Mop would let the children watch such a person, instead of the dinosaurs, to see what was in front of my face. And I have you to thank, Frau Haskell, for saving me from going wacky.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” Gerta picked up my hand and planted an impassioned kiss upon it. “You remembered what I had told you about my Ernst and knew I could not be in the house with this unclad man. All that talk you made about him bringing lots of servant people and it being nice for me to have a quiet place of my own, it was your kind heart speaking. And I can never make enough strudel and dumplings to repay you.”
I was at a loss for words, but even had I attempted to say anything, my voice would have been drowned out when Gerta jerked her head towards the open window and let out a scream that threatened to shred the curtains end to end.
“He is here!” She was on her feet, hiding her face in her hands. “I must go to the cottage before he comes in and my mind is never the same again.”
“Karisma isn’t due here until tomorrow night,” I assured her, somewhat bewildered by her panic. “You must have seen a shadow cast by one of the trees, or even more likely Ben went outside for a minute. It’s getting dark, so it’s not surprising you would confuse him with someone we were just talking about.”
This was not Ellie Haskell’s evening. At that very moment my husband came charging into the room with his eyebrows elevated to the middle of his forehead and steam coming out of his nostrils. “Who gave that bloody awful screech? I was all the way upstairs and it sounded as though a siren was going off inside my head.” So much for Ben being the lurker in the shadows. Gerta and I had both opened our mouths to explain, when the doorbell rang.
“That must be Vanessa and George,” I said even as my heart began to hop, skip, and jump. “Who else could it be?” There would have been no point in my saying that Gerta’s hypothesis was rubbish, because suddenly I was alone in the room. She had escaped, in fear and trembling, through the French windows into the courtyard and Ben had gone to open the front door.
“Good evening, I do not arrive too late at night I hope.”
The masculine voice of incredible sexiness was as recognizable to me as my own face in the mirror above the bookcase as I made frantic, futile attempts to smooth my hair and lick my lips into some semblance of desirability. Not only had I heard that voice on the television, I had known it always in some secret corner of my heart, possibly from time immemorial and certainly from the time I stopped reading School Girl Annual and walked the Yorkshire moors with Heathcliff’s namesake.
“Ellie, guess who just arrived?” My husband sounded politely enthused, but how he looked as he came back into the room is anyone’s guess. My eyes saw past my spouse to the embodiment of all my girlish dreams. Karisma! Here in the glorious flesh. He crowded out every sane thought with his magnificent height, powerful breadth of shoulders, flowing mane of hair, and those eyes that looked deep into my soul as if he too had been waiting a dozen lifetimes for this moment. He was indeed virility personified and—my heart slowed to an even thud—inhumanly handsome.
“Hello,” I said, amazingly still on my feet and able to extend my hand. Only now did I focus on his clothes—blue jeans and a black leather jacket opened to the waist with not a stitch of shirt underneath. He wore them like a second skin.
“Giselle …” His smile would have melted the ice age as he bent and kissed the tips of each of my fingers. “It is so good of you and your husband to make me a guest in your home. But I have goofed”—the word sat enchantingly on his lips, given his deep-timbred continental accent—“I arrive on your doorstep before I am expected.”
“He and Mrs. Swabucher got their wires crossed.” With this interruption, Ben reminded me of his presence. “But I told Mr. Karisma there’s no problem. It won’t take more than half an hour to get a room ready for him, and I wasn’t going to bed for another five minutes anyway.”
“I intrude …” Karisma’s eyes darkened with anguish.
“Nonsense. Whatever gave you that idea?” Ben strolled between me and our guest to wave a hand at the sofas and chairs. “You can ring Mrs. Swabucher when she’s had time to reach home and let her know you’re here. In the meantime, why don’t you and Ellie sit down and I’ll fix you both a drink? A sherry for you, darling?” The voice was that of the devoted spouse, but the glance he gave me was inscrutable. “And what’s your pleasure, sir?”
Karisma had paused before the mirror to stand rumpling the tawny strands of his hair through his hand. His expression was perplexed as he turned around. “Forgive me, I did not catch what you said to me.”
“A drink?” Ben held up the crystal decanter from which he had been pouring my sherry. “I can offer you a fairly decent brandy, or would you prefer Scotch?”
“You are so kind, but if it is no problem I would prefer a glass of vegetable juice if you have some freshly made, or …” Taking the silence as a negative, he suggested, “I will take a mineral water.”
“From our very own springs.” My husband’s little joke bounced off Karisma, who in accepting the Perrier and lime pronounced it better than anything currently available on the market. Or was he being polite? The world’s most beautiful man was a mystery, I reminded myself, except on one subject.
“I lorve women,” he said.
Ben, not appreciating such exquisite sensitivity, merely raised an eyebrow.
“They are my intoxicating beverage.” Karisma leaned forward so that his classic features and incomparable bone structure made every other object, inanimate or otherwise, fade into the walls. He opened the room up to the sky. He was the room. “To me all women are beautiful. They feed my spirit, fuel my masculinity, and make music in my heart.”
“Excuse me if I get myself another drink.”
It was inexcusable of Ben to sound as if he were being driven to overindulgence, but Karisma did not appear to notice. He was looking at me as if I were an entire
orchestra.
“Women have something that we men lack.” His expression became one of utmost tenderness, which only served to emphasize the sheer physical power of the man. “They have the gift of friendship. I know from looking into your eyes … Giselle … that you have many people in Chitterton Fells who turn to you when they need desperately for someone to make them feel part of the human race.”
“She has me.” The sound of Ben replacing the stopper exploded into the air like a gunshot, forcing me at last to find my voice.
“I think Karisma was speaking of social friends,” I said as kindly as I was able. “And we are lucky there, aren’t we, dear? Since coming to live here we’ve been fortunate in meeting some wonderful people, including the members of the Library League, all of whom are so grateful, Karisma, that you have spared some of your valuable time to be the drawing card for our fund-raiser.”
“It is no problem.” He modestly shied away from further expressions of my gratitude. “This is a beautiful house you live in. It is quite like a fairy tale castle, just as Mrs. Swabucher told me.”
“You know the old adage,” Ben said with an eloquent shrug, “an Englishman’s castle is his home.”
“Yes, I have heard that saying.” Karisma walked towards the windows that still revealed something of the grounds in the amethyst light. “Such beautiful trees and you are so privately situated. You do not have any other houses pressing up close to you.”
“The vicarage is quite near.” I addressed his broad back while admiring the feral grace with which he rested his hand against the open window.
“And the people who live there are your great friends?”
“Eudora and Gladstone Spike are special people. She is a very caring clergy woman—”
“And he is a splendid cook.” Ben drained his brandy glass and set it down by the decanters. “Of course, some people may not consider whipping up a cake to be the height of masculinity, but being a chef myself, Mr. Karisma—although I don’t suppose that counts for much in the glamorous world you inhabit—I’m inclined to cheer for the bloke who can separate the white from the yolk of an egg.”
If my husband had been the age of the twins, I would have sent him up to bed with a flea in his ear. But being stuck with his dampening presence, I put a bright face on the situation.
“Gladstone also writes the Clarion Call, which is the St. Anselm’s Church bulletin,” I said. “He manages to make it a real page-turner; last week I couldn’t wait for it to arrive so I could read the latest thrilling installment of the discovery of church records in a biscuit tin in the vestry.…” My voice petered out as I realized how boring all this must be to Karisma.
“I would lorve to meet your friends, Giselle.” He turned from the window and stood cloaked in twilight as if having just leapt through it after being hounded along the cliffs by the king’s excise men who suspected him of supplying us with contraband brandy. “Perhaps tomorrow we can go and visit them. I will take them a life-size photo from my swimsuit calendar.”
“The Spikes won’t believe their good fortune.” Ben managed to sound passably sincere.
“Speaking of photographs, Karisma,” I said, “Mrs. Swabucher told me you would be bringing your own cameraman along with members of your staff. But you came alone.”
“Not entirely”—again my husband stuck in his oar—“he must have fifty pieces of luggage in the hall.”
“We had an upset at my home.” Karisma shook the tousled locks back from his noble brow. “A stomach upset. The chef prepared a midday meal for himself, my trainer, and my hairstylist while I was gone on a photo shoot. And when I got back, it was too great a shock. They were all crawling around on the dining room floor. It was horrible, the moans and the groans. Poor Wu Ling, he says if he gets better he will have to kill himself. Nothing like this has ever happened to him before. He says he must have offended the kitchen-god’s wife and she has put a curse on my house.”
“Giselle doesn’t believe in curses.” Vanessa’s voice floated in upon us from the doorway before I could ask if something untoward had happened to the photographer. Moving into the room with George Malloy in her wake, Vanessa had never looked more lovely. Her amber silk frock was cut high at the thigh and low at the neck. She was barefoot and flushed as a June rose, and I realized I was really delighted to see her.
“You told me he was coming tomorrow, Ellie!” Stepping within two inches of Karisma, she tilted her face up to his and touched his fingers with a pearly fingernail. “How interesting, our hair is almost the same colour. Mine’s natural”—her lips parted in a pensive smile—“what about yours?”
“Nessie!” George expressed his consternation by dropping one of the sandals he had been carrying for her. Even Ben looked mildly embarrassed when he saw Karisma stiffen into a sculpture of himself. My heart ached for the man even though he was enough to knock Geronimo off his bronze pedestal.
“My cousin Vanessa is such a tease.” I attempted a laugh, but it got tangled up in my vocal cords. “And she’s particularly giddy just now, Karisma, because she recently became engaged to George Malloy, whose mother has to be one of your most devoted fans here in Chitterton Fells.” Leading the redheaded, red-faced fiancé forward with the result that he dropped the second sandal, I kept right on gabbling. “George manufactures exercise equipment and Vanessa is doing some modeling for his television spots.”
“So she and I are in the same business. Could it be that one day we will work together, like this?” Karisma came back to life with a flourish. Sweeping the undeserving Vanessa to him in one fluid motion, he held her draped over his arm. Her hair spilled almost to the floor and her bosom swelled above the neckline of her frock. It was a pose straight from the cover of a Zinnia Parrish novel, and my heart almost stopped when I tore my eyes away from it and glanced at George. He was also a picture—of utter despondency. How could he not see himself as anything but overweight, blunt-featured, and dull as ditch-water in the face of such sizzling competition? He wasn’t like Ben, who though he might not be of romance-cover calibre, was certainly handsome enough on the everyday scene and had no reason to get his ego out of whack.
Being a first-rate coward, I escaped George’s wounded eyes by saying I must go and check on the children. Ben followed me out with such speed that when I closed the door he was right on my heels.
“Vanessa really is the limit,” I raged, “and you weren’t any better.”
“The fellow’s a royal pain in the rear.”
“Shush! he’ll hear you.”
“Good! What an egocentric ninny! The man doesn’t talk—he emotes! And don’t tell me he went over to the window to look at the view! He was making love to himself in the glass.”
“How can you be so hateful?” I had trouble keeping my outrage down to a whisper. “He’s a celebrity. People like that aren’t like you and me. They have flair, spontaneity, and—”
“Karisma?” Ben growled. “Did you ever hear such a stupid name? I felt a complete idiot every time I said it. And what does anyone—man or woman—need with all that hair? We’ll be vacuuming it up for days and tearing up the drains at God knows what expense.”
“He’s here on a mission of mercy.”
“Because he lorves libraries? Give me a break, Ellie.”
“Exactly what are you getting at?”
“Do I have to spell it out? The man has an ulterior motive.”
“You’re right.” I bared my teeth in a smile. “Mrs. Swabucher must have shown Karisma my photo and raved about how men drop like flies when I enter a room. Whereupon he knew he could not live another day without me in his life.”
“My idea”—Ben stepped back and knocked over two suitcases—“is that he had to leave town in a hurry because the law is after him for dressing in a manner that undermines the morality of this nation. Consider the facts, Ellie! He doesn’t give you enough time to properly prepare for his visit, and then he arrives the evening before he is expected. And take a look at
this luggage! I’ll have to empty his room of furniture before I can get this lot inside the door!”
“He’ll need to change his clothes any number of times for the photo sessions.” I righted the toppled suitcases with a couple of thumps. “From the way Mrs. Swabucher spoke, I’m sure he plans to spend the best part of a day in front of the camera.”
“If the photographer turns up.”
“Of course he’ll be here,” I said coldly. “I expect he’ll arrive tomorrow morning with Mrs. Swabucher. And now, if you’ve nothing else nasty to say, I’ll go back and see how our guest is doing.”
Ben’s savage glare faded. “I’m sorry.” He reached out a hand, then dropped it to his side. “I don’t know why I’m being such a lout, Ellie. This library thing is important to you, and it’s not going to kill me to be pleasant to the bloke for your sake. Tomorrow you’ll get the new and improved me; that’s a promise.”
I watched him tuck an overnight bag under one arm and pick up three of the larger suitcases, then start up the stairs. For a moment I was tempted to run after him, but when he said, “I’ll even serve him freshly made vegetable juice for breakfast,” I had to strain to catch the words because he had reached the upper gallery. And as I crossed the hall I had the feeling that he might as well be on the moon.
It was when I stumbled over Tobias, who came out from under the trestle table, that I knew I had to get out of the house for ten minutes. Gathering my furry friend up in my arms, I opened the drawing room door and stuck in my head. The scene presented would have been quite ordinary if Karisma and Vanessa had been two other people. They were doing nothing more scintillating than standing talking to each other by the window. But the juxtaposition of his supreme machismo and her vivid beauty provided enough drama for a three-act play. And there was George Malloy. He was by the mantelpiece, and it was woefully evident his was a walk-on part.
“Hello!” My overly cheery voice made even me jump. “I have to take the cat for his evening walk, but I won’t be long.”
“You go alone, so late?” Karisma took two strides towards me. “I shall come with you and we will talk, how is that?”
How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams Page 21