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the churchyard. These days St. Anselm’s is locked at night, so she can no longer get inside to kneel before the altar … waiting for the sound of her bridegroom’s footsteps hastening down the nave to explain what had caused him to be more than half a century late showing up with the ring.”
    “Men! They are a bad kettle of apples.” The woman was finally getting to her feet and I was relieved to see the physical damage done to her by Heathcliff was not as bad as she had made out when pounding her fists through my front door. Her handbag appeared to be intact apart from the broken strap, and she wasn’t minus either of her legs.The dog did rise up on his haunches when she stood, but there was nothing bristling about his posture. Instead, he extended a conciliatory paw while assuming an expression of tongue-lolling meekness worthy of a much-misunderstood canine, one fully prepared to let bygones be bygones.
    “I behave like a chicken with three heads, Frau Haskell,” said the woman. “It is a miracle I do not wake up your husband and set your entire household on its ear hole.”
    “You were in fear of your life,” I assured her. Until that moment I had seen her in bits and blobs—a face blurred by terror, a pair of hands warding off the inevitability of annihilation. Now that the hall had changed back from one of the chillier chambers of Darkmoor House to its old friendly self, I was rather surprised by what I saw. Here was a plumpish woman who appeared to be approaching sixty, whose salt-and-pepper hair was braided into shoulder-length plaits, tied at the ends with ribboned bows as big as poppies. She wore a Swiss miss costume complete with dirndl and embroidered apron, white stockings, and buckled shoes. Hoping she hadn’t noticed my rude stare, I added hastily, “You have the advantage of me. You know my name, while I …?”
    “Me?” Our midnight intruder gripped her handbag with both hands and her knees gave way so that she appeared to wobble a curtsy. “I am Gerta, your new au pair girl.”

Chapter

3

    “I refuse to have that creature in this house!”
    My husband leapt out of bed before I had added the finishing touches to my explanation of the situation. Ben is rarely at his best at two in the morning, but even so there was no need for him to pace up and down in front of the bedroom fireplace, his eyes blazing, his black hair tousled from repeatedly raking his fingers through it. Any minute now he would be demanding to know who was the master of Merlin’s Court! Meanwhile the pheasants on the wallpaper were all aflutter.
    “Darling, you’re being unreasonable!” I trotted around him as he circled the hearth rug. “We agreed …”
    “We did indeed!” Ben stopped dead in his tracks. In turning to face me, he almost tripped over his pajama legs, which were a couple of inches taller than he and which, having perversely refused to shrink in the wash, needed hemming. Yanking on the cord, he tied it into a ferocious knot. “I told you, Ellie, in no uncertain terms this evening that I am not prepared to provide a home for Miss Bunch’s orphan dog!”
    I sat down on the bed with a bump and pressed a hand to my throbbing head. “He’s the sweetest little pup in the world, although timid to a fault! But I thought we were talking about Gerta!”
    “And she’s not the German shepherd?”
    “No! She’s the au pair!” There was no point, I decided, in further complicating matters by explaining that Heathcliff had made no bones about his lack of pedigree. “You really are the limit, Ben. Have you paid any attention to what I’ve been saying for the last five minutes?”
    “To every word, give or take a few, of the woman’s heartrending story.” Striding over to the window, Ben pulled the wine velvet curtains more tightly closed, either to relieve his feelings or to prevent the moon getting up to any peeping Tom tricks. “The woman came to this country from Switzerland some ten years ago,