A Surprise Christmas Proposal. Liz Fielding

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 a short bark and looked behind him, as if to say, ‘Don’t look at me, you fool, look over there…’ And that 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