‘He’s psychotically passionate and she’s passionately dim?’ he offered.

Realising that this was a conversation going nowhere, she didn’t bother to answer but turned her attention to the book itself, and in a belated attempt to prove herself a trustworthy and useful addition to his household said, ‘This is a fine early edition, Dr Faulkner. It could be quite valuable.’

He glanced up at the shelf she was supposed to have been dusting, then shrugged.

‘It probably belonged to my great-grandmother.’ He offered no hint as to whether he thought that would make it a treasured possession, or thought as little of his great-grandmother’s taste as he did of hers. ‘The one who ran away with a penniless poet.’

It was odd. While he kept saying things that were certainly meant to crush her, Ellie found herself not only not crushed, but positively stimulated.

‘Like Elizabeth Barrett?’ she enquired. After all, if his great-grandmother had run away from a comfortable home, she’d probably had very good reason. A husband who didn’t have sense of humour, perhaps?

‘Was Robert Browning penniless?’

‘Would it have mattered?’

‘What do you think?’

Oh. Right. He was a cynic.

‘I think that, judging by the depth of dust up there, your great-grandmother was probably the last person to take a duster to the top shelf.’

To prove her point, she opened the book and then banged it shut, producing a small cloud of the stuff. The choking fit was not intentional, but it did go a long way to proving her point.

Dr Faulkner made no move to ease her plight—none of that back-slapping, or rushing for a glass of water nonsense for him. On the contrary, he kept a safe distance, waiting until she’d recovered, before he picked up the duster she’d dropped as she’d vainly sought to save herself and offered it to her.

Ellie used it to give the leather binding a careful wipe.

‘Books,’ she assured him, having clearly demonstrated the necessity, ‘should be dusted at least once a year.’

‘Oh? Is that what you were doing?’

Did his face warm just a little? Not with anything as definite as a smile, but surely there was the slightest shifting of the facial muscles?

‘Dusting?’ he added.

No, not warmth. Just sarcasm. He was a sarcastic cynic.

Without a sense of humour.

Fortunately, before she could say something guaranteed to leave her with a huge empty space where the roof over her head was meant to be, the clock on the mantelpiece began to chime the half-hour, and, genuinely surprised, she exclaimed, ‘Good grief! Is that right?’ She looked at her own wristwatch and saw that it was it fact ten minutes slow. ‘I lose all sense of time when I’m dusting a good book.’

‘Perhaps you should save your energies for something less distracting?’

‘No, it’s okay. I’m prepared to suffer,’ she assured him, wheeling the steps back into place. She didn’t actually feel much like climbing them, but she’d have to do it sooner or later, and it was a bit like falling off a horse—best to get straight back on. Or so she’d heard. ‘I hate to leave a job half done.’

‘Very commendable, but I’d be grateful if you’d save it for another day. I have calls to make.’

Ellie ignored him. She wasn’t about to scuttle off like one of his students put in her place. She’d been there, done that—although not, admittedly, with any lecturer who looked like Benedict Faulkner—and got the degree to prove it. Instead she concentrated on finishing what she’d started.

‘Are you going to be much longer, Miss March?’ he asked, as she worked her way along the shelf.

And that was a way of keeping his distance, too. Whoever called anyone under the age of fifty ‘Miss’ any more? Although, given the choice, she preferred it to ‘madam’.

‘My name is Gabriella,’ she reminded him. Her way of keeping her distance. All her friends, employers, called her Ellie. Gabriella was a special occasion name. Gabriella March was going to look very special embossed in gold on the cover of her first book. Then, having descended the ladder—this time in the conventional manner, one step at a time—she added, ‘And it’s Mrs. Mrs Gabriella March.’

He removed his spectacles and turned to face her. Now she had his attention. ‘Mrs? There are two of you?’

She stiffened. ‘No. Just me. If you find all that too difficult to remember, maybe you’d find Ellie easier.’

She could do sarcasm.

‘Ellie?’

‘There—that wasn’t so difficult, was it?’

Unsurprisingly, he did not respond with an invitation to call him Ben, and she found herself wishing she’d left it at ‘Ellie’.

‘I’ll, um, leave you in peace, then. If there’s nothing else I can do for you?’

His look suggested that she had done more than enough, but he restricted his response to, ‘Nothing. Thank you…Ellie.’

She could tell that he’d had to force himself to use her name. Just what was his problem? It wasn’t as if she’d flirted outrageously with him. Good looking he might be, give or take a sense of humour, but she wasn’t about to throw herself at him. Not intentionally, anyway. Not if she wanted to continue to ‘live-in’—and it was quite possible that this was just a flying visit.

‘Help yourself to whatever you like from the fridge,’ she said. ‘Milk. Eggs…’ Then, when that didn’t elicit a grateful response—or any response at all…‘Right. Well, I’ll see you later, perhaps.’

Dr Benedict Faulkner easily managed to contain his excitement at the possibility.

Ellie forced herself to ignore the shabby rucksack that had been dumped in the kitchen. It was probably full of dirty washing, and her fingers twitched to get it into the washing machine, but she restrained herself.

Instead she wiped a smudge from the wooden drainer, rearranged a jug full of garden flowers she’d put on the windowsill, straightened a row of old boots in the mud room. She always found it hard to drag herself away from this house. It felt lonely, as if it needed her.

Which was plainly ridiculous.

What it needed, she thought, was a couple who would love it and cherish it and fill it with children. A proper family to bring life to silent rooms, children to play Chopsticks on the piano, build dens in the overgrown garden. A woman with time and love to lavish on it and turn it into a home. Someone like Lady Gabriella and the imaginary family with which she’d populated it during the last few months. Eight-year-old Oliver, six-year-old Sasha, little Chloe. And a shadowy masculine figure who was not the man she’d loved, married, lost—this was not his place—but someone utterly different, a man who, until now, she’d managed to avoid bringing into focus…

Enough. Time to go. She picked up her backpack, then paused to guiltily dead-head the bedraggled pansies in a dreary stone trough by the kitchen door—something else that looked as if the last person who’d taken any notice of it was Dr Faulkner’s great-grandmother.

Ben Faulkner stood at the arched gothic window of his study and watched as Ellie March struggled to mount a vintage sit-up-and-beg bike of the kind that his great-grandmother had probably ridden. The flighty one who’d read romantic fiction and caused a scandal.

If she’d been around today, he thought, she’d probably be wearing hip-hugging jeans, a cropped T-shirt and have a gold ring in her navel, too. Ellie March was not only a danger to any man who made the mistake of getting too close to the ladder she was perched on, but dressed like that she was a serious traffic hazard.

He closed his eyes, reliving the moment when he’d opened the study door and seen her whiling away the working day with her head in a book. It was as if time had somehow slipped back.

He shook his head at the stupidity of it.

Natasha had possessed an ethereal pale gold Nordic beauty that the more substantial, earthier Ellie March could never aspire to.