A Surprise Christmas Proposal. Liz Fielding

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      ‘Two dogs.’

      ‘Do I get paid per dog?’ I asked. ‘Or was the rate quoted for both of them?’ I was learning ‘businesslike’ fast.

      ‘You’re being paid for an hour of your time, Miss Harrington, not per dog.’

      ‘So I’d be paid the same if I was walking one dog?’

      I thought it was a fair question, but she didn’t bother to answer. All she said was, ‘The client’s name is York. Gabriel York. If you’ve got a pen handy, I’ll give you the address.’

      I grabbed my new kitty notebook, with its matching pen, and wrote it down. Then, since the ability to put one foot in front of the other without falling over was the only potential of mine that Miss Frosty-Face was prepared to tap, I registered with a couple of online agencies who might ignore me but at least wouldn’t be rude to my face.

      CHAPTER TWO

      I WAS late. It wasn’t my fault, okay? People had kept phoning me to see what I was doing to celebrate my birthday. No one had believed me when I’d said nothing. They’d just laughed and said, ‘No, really—what are you doing?’ and in the end I’d relented and promised I’d meet Tony down the pub at nine o’clock.

      Then my mother had phoned from South Africa, wanting to tell me about everything she’d been doing—well, obviously not everything—and I could hardly say I had more important things to do, could I?

      Anyway, it was hardly a matter of life or death. Dogs couldn’t tell the time and I didn’t have to rush off anywhere else. They’d get their hour. Start twenty minutes late; finish twenty minutes late. Sorted.

      Gabriel York’s address proved to be a tall, elegant, terraced house in a quiet cul-de-sac untroubled by through traffic. Its glossy black front door was flanked by a pair of perfectly clipped bay trees which stood in reproduction Versailles boxes; no one in their right mind would leave the genuine lead antiques on their doorstep, even if it would take a crane to lift them. The brass door furniture had the well-worn look that only came from generations of domestics applying serious elbow grease—a fate, I reminded myself, that awaited me unless I gave some serious thought to my future.

      The whole effect was just too depressingly perfect for words. Like something out of a costume drama, where no one was interested in the reality of the mud or the smell of nineteenth-century London.

      This was a street made for designer chic and high, high heels, and I felt about as out of place as a lily on the proverbial dung heap.

      My own fault, entirely.

      I’d stupidly forgotten to ask what kind of dogs Mr York owned, and since there was no way I was going to call back and ask Miss Frosty to enlighten me I’d gone for the worst-case scenario, assuming something large and muscular, times two, and dressing accordingly. At home that would have meant one of the ancient waxed jackets that had been hanging in the mud room for as long as I could remember and a pair of equally venerable boots. The kind of clothes that my mother lived in.

      Had lived in.

      These days, as she’d told me at length, she was to be found stretched out poolside in a pair of shorts, a halter neck top and factor sixty sunblock. I didn’t blame her; she was undoubtedly entitled to a bit of fun after a lifetime of waiting hand, foot and finger on my father for no reward other than an occasional grunt.

      I just didn’t want to be reminded of the difference between her life and my own, that was all.

      Here in London it was doing something seasonal in the way of freezing drizzle, and although I’d stuffed my hair into a pull-on hat I hadn’t been able to find a pair of gloves; my fingers were beginning to feel decidedly numb.

      Anyway, without the luxury of a help-yourself selection of old clothes to choose from, I’d had to make do with my least favourite jeans, a faux-fur jacket—a worn-once fashion disaster that I’d been meaning to take to the nearest charity shop—and a pair of old shoes that my sister had overlooked when she moved out. They were a bit on the big side, but with the help of a pair of socks they’d do. They’d have to. I wasn’t wearing my good boots to plough through the under-growth of Battersea Park.

      Now I realised that I looked a total mess for no good reason. I needn’t even have bothered to change my shoes. I only had to take one look at those pom-pom bay trees to know that Mr York’s dogs would be a couple of pampered, shaved miniature poodles, with pom-pom tails to match. They’d undoubtedly consider a brisk trot as far as Sloane Square a serious workout.

      So, I asked myself as I mounted the steps to his glossy front door, what kind of man would live in a house like this? My imagination, given free reign, decided that Mr York would be sleek and exquisitely barbered, with small white hands. He’d have a tiny beard, wear a bow tie and do something important in ‘the arts’. I admit to letting my prejudices run away with me here. I have a totally irrational dislike of clipped bay trees—and clipped poodles.

      Poor things.

      I rang the doorbell and waited to see just how well my imagination and reality coincided.

      The dogs responded instantly to the doorbell—one with an excited bark, the other with a howl like a timber wolf in some old movie. One of them hurled itself at the door, hitting it with a thump so emphatic that it echoed distantly from the interior of the house and suggested I might have been a bit hasty in leaping to a judgement based on nothing more substantial than a prejudice against clipped bay trees.

      If they were poodles they were the great big ones, with voices to match.

      Unfortunately, the dogs were the only ones responding to the bell. The door remained firmly shut, with no human voice to command silence. No human footsteps to suggest that the door was about to be flung open.

      Under normal circumstances I would have rung the bell a second time, but considering the racket the dogs were making my presence could hardly have gone unnoticed. So I waited.

      And waited.

      After a few moments the dog nearest the door stopped barking and the howl died down to a whimper, but apart from a scrabbling, scratching noise from the other side of the door as one of them tried to get at me that was it.

      Seriously irritated—I wasn’t that late and the dogs still needed to be walked—I raised my hand to the bell to ring again, but then drew back at the last minute, my outstretched fingers curling back into my palm as annoyance was replaced by a faint stirring of unease.

      ‘Hello?’ I said, feeling pretty stupid talking to a dog through a door. The scrabbling grew more anxious and I bent down, pushed open the letterbox and found myself peering into a pair of liquid brown eyes set below the expressive brows of a cream silky hound.

      ‘Hello,’ I repeated, with rather more enthusiasm. ‘What’s your name?’

      He twitched his brows and whined sorrowfully.

      Okay, I admit it was a stupid question.

      ‘Is there anyone home besides you dogs?’ I asked, trying to see past him into the hallway.

      The intelligent creature backed away from the door, giving me a better look at his sleek short coat, feathery ears and slender body, then he gave СКАЧАТЬ