‘Please call me Cassie. After all, we are going to see quite a lot of each other over the next few weeks.’
He blinked again. ‘We are?’
She nodded. ‘I shall come here every day to clean, tidy up and do your laundry. I will also take care of your shopping and do my best to provide good, hearty meals, but I must warn you that cooking isn’t my forte, so please don’t expect any Michelin cuisine from me.’
He frowned. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I don’t need anyone to clean, shop or cook for me. And by the way, I came here to forget all about Christmas, so don’t bother getting a tree or whatever else you were planning to buy. In fact, don’t bother coming back at all.’
The woman’s smile frosted over and her dimples faded away. ‘There seems to be a misunderstanding. I have instructions from your friend Charles to come here every day. Think of me as your housekeeping fairy, rescuing you from all boring household chores.’
A fairy wearing dungarees and riding a feather duster… that was the picture painted at the side of her red van. He stared at the woman in front of him, and sighed. Bloody Charlie. Was he so afraid he’d do something daft that he’d hired a babysitter to watch over him?
‘I’ll take care of Charlie,’ he said, his voice even more raspy than usual. ‘I came here to be alone, not to be rescued by anyone, even less by an overzealous cleaning lady…’
She slapped her pen and notebook onto the table.
‘I am sorry if that’s the way you feel, but I’m being paid to do a job, and I intend to do it unless I get confirmation from Charles Ashville that my services are no longer required.’
She narrowed her eyes and tilted her chin. ‘And if you don’t mind me saying, this house would benefit from a little Christmas cheer… and you certainly would too, as well as from a good dose of good manners.’ She crossed her arms, and two red spots appeared on her cheeks.
Touché. Stefan almost smiled. It looked like this cleaning fairy may be riding a feather duster instead of a broom but she could turn into a bit of a witch if provoked, and she wasn’t all sugar, smiles and dimples.
He held his hands up. ‘Message received loud and clear. You can come to Belthorn and do whatever you have to do until I get in touch with Charlie…’
Last he’d heard, Charlie was working in a field hospital in a very remote and very dangerous part of Mali. His friend didn’t need to worry about him on top of everything else he had to contend with over there.
‘But I object to you doing my laundry,’ he added. ‘I will take care of my socks and underpants myself.’
If he was hoping to make her smile, he’d failed miserably. She gave him a hard grey stare, flipped the cover of her notebook open and took hold of her pen again. ‘That’s fine with me… So, would it be overzealous to ask a few questions about your dietary requirements?’
The hurt in her tone made him feel a little guilty. After all, she was only doing what Charlie had asked. It wasn’t her fault his friend was being overprotective. ‘Not at all. Fire away.’
‘Are you a vegan or vegetarian?’
He shook his head.
‘Any allergies or food preferences I should know about?’
‘None.’
She scribbled something in her notebook, then slipped it back into the pocket of her dungarees. ‘Good. I will get some supplies tomorrow, enough to tide you over for the weekend. Now I will show you the fuse box, how to work the heating and where to find the instruction booklets for all the appliances.’
He nodded and rose to his feet. His back screamed in protest but he tightened his fists in his pockets against the pain. He’d give her five minutes – ten at the most – and then he would do what he craved to do. Take his painkillers. Lie down and slide into oblivion.
Chapter Three
He was a bear, Cassie decided as the van rumbled down the lane. No, make that a rude, grouchy and disgruntled bear, and he had no excuse for being so obnoxious when she was only doing her job and trying to be helpful.
Lambert had more or less shown her the door the moment she had finished explaining how to use the oven range, where to find the fuse box and the stopcock, and how to start the boiler should it fail. He hadn’t even glanced at the various manuals for the appliances. In fact, thinking back to the cold, harsh glare in his hazel eyes and the nervous twitch that had appeared by the side of his mouth when she said she had to give the house a thorough vacuum, clean the bathrooms and make his bed, she was surprised she had lasted that long.
He had retorted in that deep, rough voice of his that the vacuuming could wait and that he’d make his own bed, and had hardly given her the time to put her coat on and gather her bags before shutting the door in her face.
He made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with her. ‘Well, Monsieur Lambert,’ she muttered to herself, ‘I don’t want anything to do with you either!’
The problem was that she couldn’t leave him alone, however much she wanted to, without paying back the money Charles Ashville had already transferred to cover her housekeeping costs, and waving goodbye to the bonus he had promised to pay her if his friend was satisfied with her services. Business was scarce in winter and she needed every penny.
The lane was slippery, and she slowed to a crawling pace as she approached the Sanctuary Stone and Lambert’s car. He may not look like a man who would be easily spooked, but something had scared him, enough for him to skid and crash the car. What had he seen? Her throat dried up, and her fingers gripped the wheel more tightly. What if it was the ghost of the Grey Friar who haunted the ruined abbey, and her nightmares? She let out a slow breath. Better not think about the Grey Friar. People claimed that thinking about him was enough to conjure him up…
Her breathing only steadied once she had driven over the cattle grid at the bottom of the lane and she was back on the main road. She could forget about Belthorn until the following day. What she couldn’t get out of her mind, however, was Stefan Lambert’s hazel eyes and the sound of his broken voice. However unpleasant he was, the man shouldn’t be alone at night in that big, gloomy manor house. No one should.
She had hardly parked in front of Bluebell Cottage when her grandfather opened the front door. He must have been standing at the window, watching out for her.
‘What took you so long, Trifle?’ he asked, using the nickname she had been given as a child, and never managed to lose. ‘I’ve been waiting for my tea. Did you forget it was Friday night?’
Cassie took her bags from the back of the van and walked up the path leading to the door. ‘Sorry, Granddad, but I’ve been busy.’
‘Busy doing what? Only this morning you were complaining that there wasn’t much work.’
She hung her coat on the peg in the hallway, and dropped her bags to the floor. ‘I had to go to Belthorn. Sophie resigned today, just like that! She’s going to live with her boyfriend and work as a waitress in Manchester, can you believe it?’
‘Can I believe what? That you went to Belthorn although you hate the place, or that scatterbrain friend of yours left Red Moss?’
‘Both.’
Her granddad followed her into the kitchen. He was dressed for going out, his white hair freshly washed and combed back. Cassie’s nose twitched. It smelled like he'd splashed on the aftershave she’d bought him for his birthday too.