A Surprise Christmas Proposal. Liz Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ was when I saw Gabriel York and realised I’d got it all wrong.

      Twice over.

      His dogs were not poodles and he wasn’t some dapper little gallery owner in a bow tie.

      Gabriel York was six foot plus of dark-haired, muscular male. And the reason he hadn’t answered the door when I rang was because he was lying on the hall floor. Still. Unmoving.

      I remembered the echoing thump. Had that been him, hitting the deck?

      The second hound, lying at his side, lifted his head and looked at me for a long moment, before pushing his long nose against his master’s chin with an anxious little whine, as if trying to wake him up. When that didn’t have any effect he looked at me again, and the message he was sending came over loud and clear.

      Do something!

      Oh, crumbs. Yes. Absolutely. Right away.

      I dug in my pocket, flipped open my cellphone and with shaking fingers punched in the number for the emergency services. I couldn’t believe how much information they wanted—none of which I had. Apart from the address and the fact that I had an unconscious man on the other side of the door.

      How did I know if he’d hit his head? And what difference would it make if I told them? It wasn’t as if they could do anything about it until they got here…

      Maybe I sounded a touch hysterical, because the woman in the control centre, in the same calming voice more commonly used to talk to skittish horses, over-excited dogs and total idiots, told me to stay right where I was. Someone would be with me directly.

      The minute I hung up, of course, I realised that I should have told her the one thing I did know. That they wouldn’t be able to get in. I looked around in the vain hope that a passing knight errant—and I’d have been quite happy to pass on the gleaming armour and white horse—might leap to my rescue and offer to pick the lock, or break a window, or do some other totally clever thing that had completely eluded me and climb in.

      The street—and the way my day was going I was not surprised by this—was deserted.

      Actually, on second thoughts, maybe that was just as well. I wasn’t sure that anyone who could pick a lock at the drop of a hat would be a knight errant. Not unless he was a bona fide locksmith, anyway.

      I looked through the letterbox again, hoping, in the way that you do, that Gabriel York had miraculously recovered while I’d been panicking on his doorstep. There was no discernible change. Was he actually breathing?

      ‘Mr York?’ It came out as little more than a whisper. ‘Mr York!’ I repeated more sharply.

      The only response was from the dogs, who reprised the bark/howl chorus, presumably in the hope of rousing someone more useful.

      Oh, help! I had to do something. But what? I didn’t have any hairpins about my person, and even if I had I couldn’t pick a lock to save my life. His life.

      I looked over the railing down into the semi-basement. The only window down there was not just shut, it had security bars, too, so breaking it wouldn’t be much use.

      I took a step back and looked up at the house. The ground-floor windows were all firmly fastened, but, blinking the drizzle out of my eyes, I could see that one of the sash cord windows on the floor above street level was open just a crack. It wasn’t that far, and there was a useful downpipe within easy reach. Well, easyish reach, anyway.

      I stowed my phone and, catching hold of the iron railing that guarded the steps, pulled myself up. Then, from the vantage point of this precious perch, I grabbed the downpipe and hitched myself up until I was clinging, monkey-like, with my hands and feet. I didn’t pause to gather my breath. I was very much afraid that if I paused to do anything I’d lose my nerve. Instead I clung with my knees, reached up with my hands, pushed with my feet. The cast iron was cold, damp and slippery—and a lot harder to climb than I’d anticipated.

      I hadn’t got very far when the muscles in my upper arms began to burn, reminding me that I hadn’t been to the gym in a while. Actually, I really should make the most of it before my membership expired, I thought, and slipped, banging my chin and biting my lip in the process.

      Concentrate, you silly cow…

      Quite. I gritted my teeth and, telling myself not to be such a wimp, hauled myself up. Things didn’t improve when I finally got level with the window, which was rather further from the pipe than it had looked from the ground. Just a bit more of a stretch. Excellent from a security point of view, but an unnervingly sickening distance to span from mine.

      It was perhaps fortunate that the biggest spider I’d ever seen decided to investigate the bipedal blundering that had disturbed whatever it was that spiders do when they lurk behind downpipes—and frankly I’d rather not know—thus confirming the fact that I would rather risk the fall into a stone basement area than endure a face-to-face encounter with eight horribly long though undoubtedly harmless legs.

      Idiotic, no doubt, but as a force for overcoming inertia arachnophobia takes some beating.

      Have you ever wished you hadn’t started something? Just wished you’d never got out of bed that morning?

      It was my birthday. I was twenty-five years old and everyone was telling me that it was time to grow up. As if I hadn’t done that the day I’d realised that love was no competition for money.

      But, clinging to Gabriel York’s windowsill by my fingernails, I had a moment of truth. Reality. Let me live through this, I promised whatever unfortunate deity had been given the task of looking after total idiots, and I will embrace maturity. I’ll even get to grips with my dislike of technology and sign up for a computer course.

      In the meantime I dug in and hauled myself up, trying not to think about my expensive manicure—probably the last one I’d ever be able to afford—as my nails grated against stone and, with my knee on the sill, I managed to grab hold of the window and push it upwards.

      Someone must have been listening to my plea for help because, unlike the sash cord windows of my family home, which stuck like glue in damp weather, Mr York kept his well oiled and perfectly balanced. In response to a shove with the full force of my bodyweight behind it the window shot up and I fell in, landing in a painful heap on a polished oak floor, closely followed by a spindly table and something fragile that shattered noisily very close to my ear.

      Make that half listening. Bumped chin, bitten lip, wrecked nails, and now I had a throbbing shoulder to add to the tally. And my knees hurt. This job definitely came under the heading ‘life-changing’. Whether I’d survive it was yet to be proved.

      I opened my eyes and was confronted by the ruin of what might have been a Dresden shepherdess. And something told me that this wasn’t a replica. It was the real thing.

      I blamed its total destruction on the latest craze for ripping up carpets and polishing original wooden floors. If there had been a draught-stopping fitted carpet, with a thick cushion underlay, the shepherdess would have still been in one piece and I wouldn’t have bruised my knees. And, of the two, it was my knees I was more bothered about. The shepherdess would undoubtedly be insured for replacement value. My knees were unique.

      Not that I had any time to lie there and feel sorry for myself. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sound of a siren—hopefully that of the ambulance I’d summoned. I had to get СКАЧАТЬ