by Penny Jordan
It only took her just over half an hour to drive into Hexham and park her car outside a large supermarket, which was new since her days of living locally.
The market was still there, though, she discovered a little later when the majority of her shopping was done. She wandered round it, and gave in to the temptation to buy several different portions of cheese from a farm produce stall. There were also fresh local vegetables, which looked much fresher than those from the supermarket…her aunt had always grown her own, and so could she, provided Marcus’s gardener was prepared to help her.
She made her way back to her car, pausing to watch the bustle of the busy Tuesday cattle market. The remains of the abbey basked in the warmth of the sun. It made her feel both sad and elevated to reflect on how many generations of people had lived in this small town.
She didn’t rush to drive back, telling herself that she wanted to take in the beauty of the countryside, so long forbidden to her, but it was only when she was within five miles of home and her accelerator needle started to drop still lower that she acknowledged that it was not so much her desire to admire the countryside that was delaying her, but her reluctance to return home.
When she eventually turned into the drive, she discovered that someone else was driving down it ahead of her in a bright red Mini. It stopped neatly in the courtyard, and Maggie parked next to it. A pretty, plump woman in her early forties climbed out. She had dark auburn hair, softly curled and well-styled, her pale green linen separates a perfect foil for her colouring.
As Maggie got out of her own car, the older woman gave her a puzzled look.
‘I’m Maggie Deveril,’ Maggie told her, introducing herself.
‘Oh, yes, of course.’ The puzzled look disappeared. ‘The photo on Marcus’s desk. I thought I recognised you, but… I’m Marcus’s secretary, Anna Barnes.’ And, despite Isobel’s catty remarks, quite definitely not in love with her boss, Maggie judged shrewdly.
As she extended her hand, Maggie noticed the glint of gold from her wedding finger.
‘Since Marcus has had his accident, I’ve been bringing the post out to him every day so that he can check through it. I did offer to chauffeur him to and from the office, but the pins holding the bones had been giving him a lot of pain, and I don’t think he much cares for the idea of being cramped up inside a car.’
‘Pins?’ Maggie queried, uneasily. The word sounded rather ominous and, although she didn’t know much about medical matters, she would not have thought pins necessary for a simple break.
‘Well, yes,’ Anna Barnes confirmed, looking rather awkward and uncomfortable. ‘It was such a bad break. His leg was crushed in several places by the weight of his horse…and yet, do you know, I think Marcus was more concerned for the poor beast than for himself. He was furious with Isobel…really tore a strip off her, I believe, told her she had no right to bring the dog out when it wasn’t properly trained.’
Maggie badly needed to sit down. She had been feeling oddly sick ever since Anna had innocently revealed to her just how serious Marcus’s accident had been. He might have been killed. He was lucky he had not been killed in fact. And if he had been, she would have known nothing about it. A sensation not unlike someone jerking painfully on her heart caused her to tremble violently at the thought of Marcus dying without her being aware of it.
‘Oh, heavens, you’ve gone as white as a sheet,’ Anna apologised guiltily. ‘I take it you didn’t know?’
‘Not the details… I just thought he’d taken a tumble.’
‘Look, I think we’d better get you inside so that you can sit down,’ Anna said gently, firmly taking hold of Maggie’s arm.
Maggie gestured vaguely towards the car and her shopping, murmuring something which Anna obviously managed to interpret, because she said soothingly, ‘No, we’ll leave it there for now. It won’t come to any harm,’ and somehow or other Maggie found herself inside the cool kitchen and being firmly pushed into one of the wooden armchairs.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she demanded huskily. ‘I had no idea.’
Anna didn’t seem to find either her urgency or her shock odd.
‘I’ll put some coffee on first, shall I? If I know Marcus, he’ll be ready for a cup.’ She made a face. ‘I must say I’m not sorry you’re here. Mrs Nesbitt was all right in her way…not my idea of a good housekeeper, but some women are inclined to take advantage of a man living on his own, aren’t they? And he never seemed to mind. But once she left… Well, I know it isn’t easy taking charge of a house like this, but Marcus pays good wages and he was prepared to get extra help in. It’s not paying for staff these days, though, is it? It’s finding them. And then there’s the extra responsibility of the girls. I’ve got one of my own and a boy as well, so I know what it’s all about…’
‘The accident,’ Maggie interrupted her, her voice raw… Her throat was dry, speaking a painful necessity. Her eyes burned and felt gritty with the weight of unshed tears. Her stomach was churning like a cement mixer, her whole body ready to shake with shock.
Anna gave her a quick, assessing look.
‘He’d gone out riding. Not with Isobel, apparently, but she must have seen him and followed him. Her father spoils her to death, and he bought her one of those toy four-wheel-drive things last year. It’s painted red and white. Horrible little thing really, and dangerous too, I’m sure. Anyway she’d got this dog in it—or puppy, really…another present from an old boyfriend, apparently.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Rumour had it at one time…’ And then she broke off and added hastily, ‘But you know what people are like round here…and anyway, he’s dating someone else now.’
‘The accident,’ Maggie intervened fiercely. She didn’t want to hear about Isobel’s supposed relationship with anyone else…she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the other woman’s love-life. She wanted to know about Marcus. Marcus, who could have died and she would not have known… Or would she? Would she somehow or other have felt the lack of his human form inhabiting the same space of time as her own? Would her instincts have told her…warned her?
‘Well, she drove off after him and eventually caught up with him just inside the Howards’ four-acre field. Stupid woman that she is, she drove right across his path, and of course his horse took fright, reared up on its back legs… He might have been able to bring it back under control, but the dog leapt out of the car and ran right under the horse’s hooves, barking its head off.
‘Well, that did it. The horse panicked and reared again. It fell over sideways, taking Marcus with it. And even then that stupid girl Isobel had no more sense than to stand there screaming, but luckily Ted Howard had seen everything. He went back to the house for his gun…’
She gave a comprehensive shrug of her shoulders.
‘Marcus was very lucky that they were able to save his leg. He’s still in a lot of pain, although he won’t admit it. He collapsed shortly after Ted reached him. Concussion!
‘I must say, we were all surprised when we learned that he and Isobel were getting engaged. They’d been out together several times, but no one had any idea it was that serious. We all knew she was visiting him in hospital.’
‘How long have they been engaged?’ Maggie interrupted her.
‘Oh, not long. They announced it the day he came home from hospital.’ She glanced at her watch and said briskly, ‘Look, I’d better go and let Marcus know I’ve arrived. Will you be all right?’
‘I’m fine now,’ Maggie told her. ‘It was just the shock.’ She bit her lip and looked directly at the older woman. ‘Look…please don’t say anything to Marcus about…’
‘About what?’ a harsh male voice demanded, and Maggie swung round, appalled to discover Marcus standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
Anna said nothing, but Maggie knew she couldn’t ignore the question; for one thing, it wouldn’t be fair to the older woman.
‘I felt rather faint when I was outside,’ she said evasively. ‘I didn’t want to w
orry you.’
The dark eyebrows rose steeply, the look in his eyes betraying his disbelief.
‘It was my fault, actually,’ Anna intervened hastily, obviously aware of the tension building between them. ‘I had no idea that Maggie wasn’t aware of the seriousness of your accident.’ She gave Maggie an apologetic look as she added, ‘I’m afraid I gave her rather a shock.’
Maggie couldn’t tear her attention away from Marcus’s face. She saw disbelief give way to frowning concentration and then thoughtful scrutiny as he looked at her.
‘You know how squeamish I’ve always been,’ she told him hastily, and a little untruthfully. ‘That stupid imagination of mine…’ She plucked nervously at her shirt buttons, unaware of the haunting look of anguish darkening her eyes. ‘I couldn’t stop myself from visualising…’
She raised her head and looked at him, the words she had been going to say dying on her lips. He seemed to hold her under some kind of hypnotic spell with his gaze, forcing her to surrender to the force of it, forcing her to say huskily, ‘You could have been killed, and I wouldn’t have known…’
Tears blocked her throat. She could hear them herself in her own voice. Panic took hold of her. What on earth was she saying? What on earth was she doing?
Marcus took a step towards her and then, as the panic and desperation flashed betrayingly through her eyes, he stood still.
‘As you just said,’ he told her in a flat voice, which seemed, to her too sensitive ears, to hold just a touch of cynicism, ‘you always did have far too much imagination.’
He turned round awkwardly, heading for the door. Giving Maggie a sympathetic look, Anna followed him.
How to make a prize fool of yourself in four easy movements, Maggie reflected savagely as she got up. What on earth had possessed her to carry on like that? Of course it had been a shock…but surely she had enough self-possession, enough self-control to… To what? To pretend she didn’t care?
The cup she had picked up off the table to take over to the sink slipped through her fingers and crashed to the floor. She stood staring at the broken shreds without really seeing them.
Why did she need to pretend? She didn’t care. Hadn’t cared for a long, long time. The only reason she had been able to let herself come back was because she knew that she didn’t care.
She bent to pick up the broken mug, her movements slow and awkward, as though she had suddenly turned into an old woman. Kneeling on the floor, gathering the china, she suddenly stopped what she was doing and pressed her hands to her face as her body shook in silent anguish.
She didn’t care. She couldn’t care. She must not care. But she did… She always had, and she always would.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LATER, when she was rational enough to care who might have witnessed her self-betrayal, she was glad that Marcus had been fully occupied in his study and that the girls were at school; that way at least she need not fear that anyone else had witnessed the total disintegration which had torn her apart when the truth sank in.
She wasn’t yet strong enough to admit whether it was love or hatred she felt for Marcus, but what she could no longer deny was that it was the strongest emotion she had ever experienced in her life. Far too strong an emotion, and as she carefully placed the shards of broken pottery outside in the dustbin her movements were those of an old woman, not one of not quite twenty-eight.
The sun warmed the ancient walls of the house and the rough cobbles of the courtyard, but its heat failed to penetrate through the intense cold which had gripped her.
How could she stay here in the knowledge that she was as still as dangerously capable of focusing her whole life on Marcus now as she had been ten years ago? How could she stay, and yet, how could she not?
She wasn’t a teenager any more, but a mature woman with loyalties and responsibilities. She couldn’t simply turn and run away any more. There were the girls to think of… Her promise to them that she would stay… Herself to face if she broke that promise. And this time, surely, forewarned was forearmed?
It wasn’t going to be as it had been before. Marcus was already engaged. She was not that same child who had misguidedly persuaded herself that he loved her.
Oh, God, why on earth had she come back here? Why on earth had she allowed herself to give in to that crazy need to make atonement…to reach out to her past and bridge the distance between it and her future?
Unless this was to be her penance…this the payment which would be exacted from her for the past: that she must stand and watch, a silent, anguished witness to Marcus’s love for and life with someone else.
She realised she was still standing in the courtyard. She turned her head and the brilliance of the sunshine blinded her. She shaded her eyes instinctively, her hand betraying her agitation with its fine tremor.
Dear heaven, this couldn’t be happening, but it was… While she stood here as motionless as the stone doves on the rim of the drinking fountain, her world had turned full circle around her, leaving her defenceless to the enormity of what had happened.
‘Boss said you wanted to have a word about the kitchen garden.’
The Northumberland accent was familiar to her, but the voice wasn’t, nor the man who addressed her, shocking her out of the bewilderment and into the realisation that anyone could have walked out of the house and read her unguarded face.
Luckily he had approached her from behind, and before she turned round she managed to compose herself a little.
He was about sixty, with sparse, grizzled grey hair and sharp blue eyes. His skin was burned by years of exposure to sun and wind.
‘John Holmes,’ he introduced himself. ‘I come round a couple of times a week to do the gardens. Not the lawns. My lads do that…but the borders. Fine borders you’ve got here, planted by…’
‘My grandmother,’ Maggie supplied for him, pulling herself together.
She saw from the shrewd look he gave her that he knew of her connection with the house. No doubt the entire village knew she was back by now.
In her grandfather’s day they had employed a full-time gardener, but he had died some two years before she left, and after that the gardening had been done by a local firm of contract gardeners.
‘Don’t do much myself these days… Rheumatism doesn’t allow me. But yon borders, now…’
‘They are lovely,’ Maggie agreed, and he gave her another sharp look.
‘Lovely they might be, but they takes a lot of hard work. Borders allus do…’
Maggie remembered being told that her grandmother’s perennial borders had been her pride and joy. Planted against immaculately clipped yew hedges, either side of a brick path, they stretched for thirty yards along the front of the house, just beyond the terrace, and were a blaze of colour all through the summer months. Her grandmother had apparently been a keen gardener and had adapted one of Gertrude Jekyll’s plans for a one-colour border.
These at Deveril were all in blues, from the palest white-blue to the darkest purple of larkspurs and delphiniums, so tall that their spikes topped the green backcloth of the hedge against which the borders were planted.
‘What is it exactly you’ve got in mind for the vegetable garden? A rare sight it is now, choked with weeds and nettles.’
Maggie tried to concentrate on what he was saying to her.
‘Told me to see you about it this morning, did Mr Marcus. Always likes to walk along the border first thing on a fine summer’s morning. Knows a lot about plants, does Mr Marcus.’
Yes, Marcus had always loved that part of the garden. Her heart gave a painful wrench as she remembered the number of times she had sneaked out early to waylay him on his early-morning walk. She would have thought that, in view of his accident, he would have chosen to abandon it for a few months. As she remembered what Anna had told her about his fall, she felt faint again, and put out a hand to touch the comforting warmth of the kitchen wall to steady herself.
‘I know the kitchen garden’s in
a bit of a state,’ she agreed when she felt reasonably confident that her voice wouldn’t betray her. ‘But if it could be cleaned up, I thought we might be able to make some use of it. The girls might find it interesting to grow their own vegetables.’
‘Well, if it’s just cleaning you want…’ He scratched his head. ‘I suppose if I put some of my lads on to it, we could have half of it ready for autumn planting… Course, the fruit bushes will have to come out and be replaced…and then it will need manuring…cheaper to buy your veg from the market come market day,’ he said warningly. ‘Mind you,’ he added judiciously, ‘can’t say as I don’t prefer ’em home-grown myself. So we’ll have half of it cleared in time for the autumn, and then we should have the rest ready for spring…and if you give me a bit of warning, I dare say my lads will look to your plantings should yon girls not be as interested as you wish. Everyone likes gardening when it’s like this,’ he added, looking up at the sun. ‘But when it’s cold and wet… Well, then, that’s a different kettle of fish entirely.’
She had yet to meet a gardener who was anything but lugubrious, Maggie reflected tiredly after he had left her. Any other time she would have enjoyed her encounter with him, but this morning she had just not been in the mood. She had far too much on her mind.
When she eventually went inside, she was only half surprised to discover that she was physically shaking. The plans she had made with such optimism only a very short time ago were now as alien to her as though she’d had no part in their formulation at all.
She stared at the groceries she had brought back from the market as though she had never seen them before. What on earth had possessed her to put herself in such danger? Had she honestly thought that she could defy fate? Had she genuinely believed that her feelings for Marcus would disappear like morning mist in the heat of the summer sun?
She shook her head tiredly. Did it really matter now whether it had been folly or ignorance which had brought her here? Here she was, and here she would have to stay. She gave a tiny shudder which had nothing to do with the coolness of the kitchen after the heat of the courtyard. There were things she ought to be doing, but somehow or other she simply couldn’t summon the energy to do them. All she really wanted to do was to hide herself away from reality and the rest of the world, and most of all from Marcus’s far too sharp eyes.