by Liz Fielding
She swept and dusted and polished, coughing and sneezing and transferring a large quantity of it to herself until she got the hang of damping everything down with the spray first. Then she turned her attention to the bed. The chest of drawers yielded white bed linen and a yellow and white striped coverlet that matched the curtains, although by the time she had finished it was barely light enough to see anything, let alone the pale stripes. Downstairs it was much darker.
Gabriel had already lit half a dozen or so candles and the soft luminous glow combined with the flames flickering around the logs to banish any lingering cobwebs to the darkness, leaving a small inviting area in front of the freshly cleaned hearth.
A window overlooking the darkening surface of the lake had been thrown open wide to let in fresh air, she could hear the disgruntled chuntering of water fowl settling down for the night and a blackbird was making sure everyone knew that he was king of the neglected garden.
It should have been idyllic; instead it was just a little sad.
But, aided by the homely scents of cooking, the long closed-up fustiness of the cottage was in retreat and suddenly hungry, Claudia was drawn to the kitchen.
Gabriel hadn’t wasted his time. The surfaces glistened damply where they had been washed down and now he had turned his attention to the dishes. The scene provoked an image of homeliness, of comfortable togetherness which she found disturbing. They weren’t at home, or together, but had been thrust into one another’s company by fear and guilt.
She hadn’t made a sound yet apparently sensing her presence he swung round and the cosy image evaporated in an instant along with the “new” man.
Gabriel’s features were thrown into sharp relief in the shadowy light, his expression dangerous, his body taut and menacing. She knew she should have been reassured by his alertness, but she found it distinctly unnerving.
Seeing her in the doorway he visibly relaxed and she released a long, slow breath, making a mental note to whistle ‘Dixie’ in future, just to make sure he heard her coming.
‘You’ve been busy,’ she said.
‘So have you.’ Mac scanned her appearance with a thoughtful look. ‘The bedroom must be a lot cleaner,’ he remarked. ‘Most of the dirt seems to be on you.’
‘Isn’t that supposed to happen?’ she enquired, with every indication of surprise. ‘When I played the housemaid they didn’t have real dirt,’ she explained.
‘You can have make-believe dirt?’
‘You buy it in spray cans. Cobwebs, too,’ she told him. He looked slightly perplexed, not entirely sure whether she was kidding him or not and rather enjoying having the upper hand for once, she didn’t enlighten him. ‘Where shall I put these?’ she asked, indicating her cleaning materials.
‘There’s a cupboard over there.’ The door set into the wall concealed the space beneath the stairs. She had been expecting a “black hole”, full of junk and spiders. Instead it was lined with shelves containing the standard array of household cleaning equipment. There were also a number of paint tins, mostly unused and a sad array of paintbrushes stuck into a pot of white spirit that had long since dried up. She quickly shut the door.
‘I think I’d better wash my hands before supper.’ There was only one other door. She opened it and was disconcerted to discover that several steps led down into the dark interior of a pantry.
‘Go out of the back door,’ Mac instructed. ‘It’s the next door along.’
‘Outside?’
‘I’m afraid so. I can’t put in a door from the kitchen because of building regulations. I was planning to extend…’ He stopped rather suddenly, turned away to stare down at the sink.
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Claudia said, brightly, when it became obvious he wasn’t going to say any more, clearly wished he hadn’t started. ‘This could be made into a lovely cottage.’ It didn’t help. In fact, she realised that under the circumstances it was probably rather tactless. It suggested she didn’t much like it the way it was. But then tact, like housework, was a skill she had somehow managed to sidestep. ‘Gabriel-’ she began, but he didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
‘You’ll need this,’ he said, cutting her off as he unhooked a heavyweight torch from behind the door.
She hesitated for a moment wanting to tell that she was here for him, a willing ear if he wanted to talk. But his face was blank, discouraging and instead she looked down at the torch. ‘Isn’t this rather modern?’ she enquired.
He visibly relaxed at her teasing note. ‘You can take a candle if you prefer. I always find they blow out at the most inconvenient moments.’
Despite her reservations the facilities were modern, the water was hot and there were no spiders - at least none that she could see - and Gabriel had put out a clean towel.
The torch threw a bright light, but since she couldn’t hold it and wash at the same time, the beam was either pointing at the ceiling, or the wall, leaving her reflection little more than a ghostly shadow in the mirror. Undaunted, she peeled off her t-shirt and did the best she could. Her face stung, but at least she was clean.
‘There, it wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he enquired, as she hung the torch back in its place and took down a tea towel to start on the drying up.
‘Ask me again when it’s raining. Are those jacket potatoes I can smell cooking?’
‘And sausages.’ He glanced at her slender figure. ‘Maybe you don’t eat sausages?’
‘Not often, but it’s long a time since I indulged in comfort food and now seems like a good time.’
Gabriel put down a plate just as she reached for one and their hands collided. It was like a shock going through her, spreading out, heating her, until she was glad of the candlelight to cover her blushes.
He moved his hand away from hers as carefully as if he were easing himself away from a close encounter with a landmine. She knew how he felt.
‘Comfort food?’ he asked, carefully.
She concentrated very hard on drying a plate. ‘You know, the kind of food that the best nannies give you to make you feel better. When it’s the last day of the holidays and you’re dreading going back to school, or when you’ve got a cold and steamed fish and vegetables, no matter how many times you’ve been told they’re nourishing and good for you, just won’t go down. Or when you just need cheering up because...’
Because your mother is having a bad day.
Or someone has thrown a tin of paint over you.
‘Oh, comfort food. You mean dripping toast and fried egg sandwiches and-’
‘Do I?’ she interrupted before he got too carried away. ‘I don’t think so. Not fried egg sandwiches, anyway.’
His teeth flashed white as he grinned. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing. Did you have a lot of nannies?’
‘I was a bit of handful.’
‘You still are,’ he assured her, but his look became pensive. ‘But it’s no way for a child to grow up. Your father suggested as much.’
Most people assumed that she had had an idyllic childhood. His perception was oddly disconcerting.
‘Did he?’ She lifted a shoulder to her ear. ‘Well the alternative was boarding school; you pays your money and you takes your pick.’ Her mother had wanted to send her away the moment she was eight. Beau had protested, but she would have got her way. She always did. Then there was the accident and boarding school had been temporarily shelved. An eight-year-old couldn’t be trusted to keep secrets.
Maybe, on reflection, it would have been wiser of her father to have got them both out of the house before their mother came home from the hospital. But he was going through his own personal nightmare at the time, so she and Fizz became extras in the continuing drama of Elaine French’s glamorous life. The show must go on.
Her hands suddenly began to shake, a saucer slipped. Mac turned quickly to field it and their hands, their arms, their shoulders tangled.
‘Are we going to wash the entire contents of this kitchen?’ she demand
ed, jerking away from him, leaving him in possession of the saucer.
‘Not tonight. But I thought you would object to eating off dusty plates and it seemed a shame to waste the water.’ He took the cloth from her, dried up the remainder of the dishes before emptying the sink and wiping it down. ‘Supper won’t be long. Could you handle a drink? There might be a bottle of wine somewhere.’
He didn’t wait for her answer but unhooked the torch from its place behind the door and stepped down into the pantry. He returned a moment or two later with two bottles that clouded with condensation in the warmth of the kitchen.
Curious, she reached out and touched one of them. It was cold. ‘All the pleasures of civilisation despite the lack of electricity?’
‘Civilisation was heavily into pleasure long before the National Grid. Or the invention of the refrigerator. They had ice cream in sixteenth century Italy. I can’t manage that tonight, but since the back of the pantry is below ground, cold wine isn’t a problem. Red or white?’
‘White please.’
He uncorked the bottle, poured two glasses and handed one to her. ‘What shall we drink to?’
Claudia stared into her glass. ‘Why are you doing this, Gabriel?’ She lifted heavy lids and looked at him. ‘Why are you going to all this trouble when we both know that you don’t think I’m worth two minutes of your time?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘You never say anything, but you think very loudly.’ For a moment the air was charged with enough electricity to make the candles redundant. Then Claudia shrugged. ‘Whilst I have a reputation for never thinking at all and saying far too much.’
‘Do you? Well perhaps that’s the way you like it because you don’t go out of your way to correct the impression people have of you. No matter how mistaken they are.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘Supper won’t cook any more quickly if we stand and watch it. Shall we make ourselves comfortable?’
In reply she settled herself in one the armchairs, kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet beneath her.
A piece of wood dropped in the grate sending up a flurry of sparks, but the flames had died down around the logs and there was more cheer from the glow than heat which was just as well. Her tussle with the dust has warmed her through and Gabriel’s words, the intensity of his look, had gone a long way to completing the job of heating her blood.
She waited while he settled in the chair opposite, while he stretched out long legs that filled the space between them, crossing his ankles so that she was confronted by the largest pair of feet she’d ever seen on a man. When he was upright, they were in proportion and they weren’t so noticeable, now she had difficulty in taking her eyes of them. Gabriel, staring into the pulsing embers of the fire, didn’t appear to notice.
‘Well?’ she prompted, gently, when she had waited long enough, reminding him that she was still waiting for an answer to her question.
At least he didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. ‘I told you, it’s personal.’
‘You’re going to all this trouble simply because someone stuffed that photograph of me in one of your parachutes?’ Surely he didn’t expect her to believe that? ‘You know it has to have been one of the television crew. Why didn’t you tackle Barty James about it when you saw him on Saturday? He’ll have a note of everyone who was there.’
‘It could have been Mr James himself,’ Mac suggested. ‘Have you considered that?’ She scoffed at the very idea and he replied with a grin. ‘Perhaps you’re right. He couldn’t have been responsible for the dress, anyway. But I don’t need to ask him for a list of his crew, I have my own. Everyone who came onto the airfield was checked in. Maybe you’d like to look at it in case one of the names means something.’
‘Maybe.’
For a moment she thought he was going to press her further but he must have thought better of it because he put down his glass and unfolded himself from the armchair.
‘Shall we eat here, in front of the fire?’
The gentle warmth had made her drowsy. ‘I’d like that,’ she murmured and he fetched a low table from the other side of the room. She made a move to rise, offer her assistance, but he stopped her.
‘Leave it to me, I know where everything is.’
It was only when he’d disappeared into the kitchen that she realised he still hadn’t answered her question. And rather to her surprise she found herself laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’ he called out.
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me.’ He reappeared with a tray and he looked directly at her as he bent to place it on the table. It was slightly intimidating. He was a lot better at interrogation than she was.
‘It was nothing,’ she said, turning to look into the fire. Then she realised she was doing it too. Sidestepping. Not confronting the problem. Maybe it was catching. Or perhaps a lifetime of avoiding her own black beast had left her with unsuspected skills in the technique.
He was very good at it, but she wondered how he would respond to direct assault. There was only one way to find out. Claudia lifted her head, tilted her chin a little to give herself courage and turned to look him straight in the eye.
‘I just noticed that whenever I ask you a personal question you always manage to steer the subject away from dangerous secrets.’
‘And you found that funny?’ Her glance wavered momentarily. In the firelight the vivid blue of his eyes had darkened to slate. But she refused to be intimidated. Or distracted.
‘Not especially. But I wondered if you had special training for that in the army?’ she asked. ‘In case of capture. Or is it a gift you were born with, seeping through in the genes from all those generations of military men? Like acting seems to with the Beaumonts.’ The silence that followed this was not promising and quite suddenly she lost her nerve. Ducking her head, she turned with a generous gesture towards the tray and said, ‘That looks good.’
She had been about to say neat. Ten out of ten. She supposed all soldiers quickly learned the habit. The tray would certainly have passed the toughest of inspections. Even the sausages were lined up with military precision.
Claudia wondered what it would be like to ruffle the man, muss hair kept trimmed to a millimetre, clothes that seemed to leap to attention the moment he put them on. Gabriel was so controlled, so untouchable, so competent in everything he did. He could kiss a woman or cook a sausage with one hand tied behind his back. And they would both sizzle.
She was seized by an almost overwhelming urge to reach up and tousle his hair as he leaned over to pass her a plate. She restrained herself, Gabriel MacIntrye was no teddy bear. The only bear he resembled was a grizzly. And a girl ruffled a grizzly at her peril.
‘Would you like some butter for your potato?’ he asked, with blade-edged politeness.
‘Thank you.’ He passed it to her, waited for her to split her potato and place a small knob of butter inside it. ‘Salt? Pepper.’
‘You don’t have to wait on me.’
‘You’re my guest.’
‘An unwanted one. An inconvenient nuisance.’
‘That’s not true.’
But she shook her head, unconvinced. ‘I’ll try to be good. I know you’re doing this to help me. That you’d rather not be here.’
‘I thought that I would rather not be here, but don’t feel guilty. It’s not as bad as I had expected.’
Claudia felt a queer little flutter in the region of her waist. What on earth was he going to say? He said nothing, turning instead to help himself to butter and pepper. She longed to prompt him, urge him to begin, but for once an unusually acute sense of what was prudent kept her silent as he returned to his seat.
She dipped her fork into her potato, swallowed a little. Mac seemed to have forgotten the food on his lap.
‘You must have realised,’ he said, breaking the silence, ‘it must be glaringly obvious, that I haven’t been here since Jenny died.’
She didn’t fal
l into the seductive trap he offered, managed to withstand the temptation to ask him one of the questions crowding her brain, fighting to get out, questions that would offer him a welcome diversion from his painful thoughts. She held her tongue, waited and she was finally rewarded for her patience.
‘I kept putting it off. I told myself that I’d come next weekend, then the next.’ He paused, waiting, perhaps hoping that she would speak. But Claudia uncharacteristically held her tongue. ‘When I could no longer fool myself that way, I told myself that it was only sensible to wait until the weather was warmer, the evenings longer and I’d have more time. There was so much to do.’ He raised one hand in resignation. ‘Then it was winter again.’
And now it was summer. Two years. After a long time Claudia slowly cleared her throat.
‘You didn’t have to come back at all. You could have sold up. People do. And weekend cottages with the potential of this one, with a lake...’ But even as she was saying it she knew that he would have found that impossible. And admission of defeat. ‘You must have loved her very much.’
‘Must I?’ There was the briefest pause, before he said, ‘Your supper’s getting cold, Claudia.’ And in case she hadn’t got the point, he devoted his entire attention to his own food.
Afterwards he politely refused her offer to help with the washing up. She had the feeling that he would prefer to be on his own and she didn’t push it. But he paused in the kitchen doorway.
‘You’re going to have to start thinking about who is responsible for this, Claudia. Now might be a good time.’
His face was in the shadows and she couldn’t tell his mood from his voice. He was back in control and she doubted that he would let the mask slip again.
‘And while you’re assessing the possibilities I’d like you to consider this. Around eighty per cent of women who find themselves the victim of continual harassment and violence have been in some kind of a relationship with the person who is giving them a hard time.’
So she took his advice and thought very hard about what had been happening. Someone wanted to frighten her. No. The stakes had been upped when that paint was thrown into her face. Someone wanted to terrify her. Worse. And Gabriel was right, it had to be someone she knew, no stranger would take so much trouble, or so many risks.