by Penny Jordan
Seeing that Sara was genuinely hurt and bewildered by his sharpness, and remembering the temper in which Isobel had come hurrying from the study, Maggie wished she had the sort of relationship with Marcus which would allow her to tell him tartly and in private that it was unfair of him to take out his physical frustrations on his two half-sisters. Instead she suggested palliatively, ‘Look, why don’t I make your lunches for the first month or so, and then you can take over? It will be good practice for you.’
‘For when we get married,’ Susie intervened mischievously, pulling a face.
‘Not at all. Everyone should know how to cook a basic meal, be they male or female,’ Maggie countered calmly. ‘Just as everyone should know the proper way to iron a shirt or a blouse,’ she added drily, looking at the twisted and unironed collar of the blouse Susie was wearing.
They had all finished their melon, and she got up to collect the dishes and go into the kitchen for the main course, but Marcus gestured frowningly to the two girls and told them, ‘Susie, Sara…give Maggie a hand with the dishes.’
To Maggie’s surprise, as Susie got up she sketched Marcus a brief, cheeky curtsy and teased easily, ‘Yes, oh lord and master. Thy will is my command…’
And, far from being annoyed, an answering grin of appreciation tugged at Marcus’s mouth, softening it dramatically as he muttered mock-threateningly, ‘If it wasn’t for these plaster casts and this crutch…’
‘You’d what? Take the dishes out to the kitchen yourself?’ Susie teased him again, laughing as she picked up her own and his dish and danced tormentingly just out of reach.
After that, the atmosphere seemed far more relaxed, but Maggie herself was too on edge to enjoy it.
She was pleased to see the girls tucking into the delicately flavoured lamb cutlets with greedy enjoyment, although she did have a very bad moment when Sara paused between mouthfuls to say innocently, ‘Maggie told us this afternoon that Mum used to make this especially for you, and that it was one of your favourites.’
Maggie kept her head bent over her own plate, totally unable to lift her gaze to look at Marcus as she prayed he could not think that she had made the dish just because he liked it.
She heard Marcus confirming that the delicately flavoured lamb was indeed one of his favourites, but she dared not allow herself to look directly at him, not even when all the plates were clean and she had to get up to go to the kitchen to bring in the ice-cream she had made during the afternoon. Sweetened with honey and served with more of the fresh raspberries, it had a clean, fresh taste that made both Susie and Sara say enthusiastically that it was the best meal they had had for ages.
There was an expectant pause during which both girls looked at Marcus, and Maggie got up awkwardly, pushing back her chair. She had no wish to hear him paying lip-service to good manners by giving her compliments he would rather have withheld, but instead of agreeing with his half-sisters he said only, ‘Susie, Sara…you will both help Maggie with the washing up.’ And then he got up himself, such a look of agonised tension crossing his face that Maggie ached to go over to him and help him. It was plain that he was in considerable pain, and she had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to prevent her own small gasp of sympathy escaping.
In point of fact, the kitchen was equipped with an excellent dishwasher, but nevertheless the girls helped her to clear the table and tidy the kitchen. While they loaded the machine, she made coffee, using the beans she had bought and grinding them in the blender.
‘Mm…gorgeous smell,’ Susie said, sniffing enthusiastically.
‘It won’t be ready for a few minutes, so I’m just going to dash upstairs and have a look at the north-facing rooms on the second floor.’
‘Oh, to use for your painting?’ Susie asked knowledgeably. ‘Well, they’re all virtually empty apart from some old furniture.’
She wasn’t gone very long. Any of the four large rooms facing north would do admirably, but, before taking one of them over as a studio and work-room, she would have to check with Marcus that he had no objection to her doing so. She must not forget, after all, that this was Marcus’s house and not her own. It was amazing what a difference that knowledge made to her thinking, and she wondered uneasily whether, if she had known the truth earlier, she would have been so insistent in her determination to stay. Then, she had felt that she had right on her side…that this house was at least in part her own home. She felt no possessiveness about the house from a material point of view, and was sensible enough to realise that there could never have been any way for her to either buy out her cousins’ shares or indeed run such a large property, and nor had she ever considered that once they were of age the property could be sold and the proceeds shared between them. No, the loss she felt was more of an emotional than a material one: as though a safety net had been removed from underneath her.
She had always looked on this house as a refuge…as a cornerstone of her life…as a place where she had an immutable right to be; and to discover that she was wrong, that she had no more right to be here, to call this house her home, than any stray passer-by made her feel acutely uncomfortable…rather like a trespasser, in fact.
When she got back to the kitchen, she was half tempted to ask Sara or Susie to take Marcus his coffee.
He had gone straight back to the study after dinner, announcing that he had work do do.
‘Can’t be going out with Isobel tonight, then,’ Susie commented after he had gone. ‘They don’t go out much at all now. I wonder if they’ve had a row.’
‘Marcus’s private life is his own affair,’ Maggie told her severely. ‘I’ll take this coffee to him, and then I suggest you two make sure you’ve got all your homework finished.’
Either Marcus had made the excuse that he had work to do simply to get away from her, or he was finding it difficult to concentrate on it, Maggie reflected as she knocked briefly and then opened the study door and saw that he was standing in front of the window with his back to her.
He was dressed casually, as he had been ever since she had arrived, in a short-sleeved, thin cotton shirt, through which she could see the hard leanness of his back, and a pair of faded jeans slit up one side, to accommodate the cumbersome plaster which encased him.
She cleared her throat nervously, tensing as he swung round, his eyes chilly with rejection as he saw her hovering just inside the door.
‘Marcus, if you’ve got a moment to spare, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.’
She saw his mouth twist in cynical bitterness and felt her stomach go hollow as she read the message of contempt in his cold stare.
‘You…discuss? This must be a first.’
And she flushed guiltily at the accuracy of the thrust, remembering how many times in the past she had gone her own way, deliberately ignoring his advice, and how, when she’d arrived, she had announced that she was going to stay no matter what he chose to say.
‘It’s about my work,’ she told him quietly, putting the tray of coffee down on his desk. ‘I was wondering if you would object if I used one of the north-facing rooms on the second floor. I’ve got a couple of commissions to finish and…’
She broke off at the terse sound he made, lifting her head instinctively so that she couldn’t avoid seeing the surprise that drew a frown to his face.
‘Why ask me?’ he told her brutally. ‘Why not just go ahead and move your stuff in there?’
Maggie flushed again and, much as she wanted to lie to him, she knew she couldn’t.
‘I felt I had to,’ she told him painfully. ‘You see, I hadn’t realised until Isobel told me this afternoon that Grandfather left the house to you.’
His reaction was not at all what she had been expecting. Contempt…derision…even an outright demand that, since she did now know, she leave the house immediately; she had steeled herself for all of those, but to her shock he bit out sharply, ‘Isobel told you that?’
‘Yes,’ Maggie confirmed in some bewilderment.
‘And now you want to know just how it came about that your grandfather left his place to me, is that it?’
‘No!’ Maggie denied, openly appalled. ‘Of course not.’
He was looking at her with a rather odd expression…something compounded of pain, sadness and a fine irony that brought a lump to her throat, and took her three or four paces towards him before she realised what she was doing and stopped.
‘I know I’ve hardly given you any grounds to think anything other than the worst of me,’ she told him huskily. ‘But if my grandfather left the house to you, then I know that he must have had sound and just reasons for doing so. No, it isn’t that I wanted to talk to you about…it’s…’
‘It’s…what?’ he prompted her in a surprisingly soft voice that had her attention focusing on his face and noticing in confusion that his eyes were suddenly darker and warmer…and that the lines hardening his features had softened and that his mouth—normally when he spoke to her a grim line of disapproval—had softened and curled, so that… She caught her breath and found that she could not release it, just as she could not draw her gaze away from the fullness of that sensual lower curve of his lips, wondering dangerously what it would be like to run her tongue-tip along that tempting outline to probe delicately and teasingly at the closed firmness of his mouth until…
‘Maggie?’
The sound of her own name, raw and urgent, and yet muted as though by distance, made her wrench herself off the path of self-destruction she had been travelling down and focus instead on a spot beyond Marcus’s shoulder.
‘Where are your thoughts, I wonder, when you slip away like that? With your lover?’
He was so dangerously close to the truth that she replied almost violently, ‘No! I don’t have a lover. I…’
She broke off as he suddenly seemed to lurch forward and stumble, her one instinct to protect him, so that she ran instinctively to his side, supporting him with the weight of her own body as he grabbed hold of the edge of the desk.
Wedged close against him, her head almost tucked into the hollow where his shoulder joined his arm, pressed against the hard angularity of his hip, her hands holding tightly to his chest and back, the moment the crisis was over and he had steadied himself she was so acutely aware of him that, had she not been trapped between the desk and his body, she suspected she might have been the one to faint.
As it was, she was painfully aware of the musky, hot scent of him, intensely disturbing to her own senses. Strange that as a teenager her fantasies had never encompassed this unexpected eroticism which was already having a shocking effect on her own body.
His good arm, which Marcus had stretched out to save himself, left the desk to which he had clung, moving so that somehow or other she was caught between it and the side of his body. As he moved, she was pressed so tightly against him that the ripple of his chest muscles dragged the fine cotton of her jumper tautly against her own body, and the faint discomfort which had followed the betraying hardening of her nipples became a definite ache.
She glanced down at her own outline instinctively and nervously, unable to stop herself, hot colour stinging her face at what she saw. Her jumper was a fine summer weight one, and the bra she was wearing beneath it an even finer silk. Where once she would have been thrilled and proud of her body’s feminine awareness of him as a man, and all too eager for Marcus to be aware of it too, now she was hideously embarrassed and started immediately to pull away from him, only just managing to resist the impulse to cross her arms protectively against her breasts.
But it was already too late for such concealment because, as she struggled to move away, she realised that Marcus’s attention had already focused on the betraying outline of her breasts, which gave away all too plainly the fact that she had been aroused by her proximity to him.
Any hopes she had harboured that he might not have noticed were dashed as she raised her head and saw the amused and almost predatory male satisfaction in his eyes. And then, to her astonishment, as she struggled away from him, he said softly, ‘That’s a very pretty sweater you’re wearing, Maggie. That particular shade of blue always did suit you.’
She had to say something…to do something to salvage her battered pride, and so she said the first thing that came into her head and fibbed unconvincingly, ‘Thank you, but I’m afraid it’s not very warm. I feel quite cold.’
She gave a tiny artificial shiver to back up her fib, but to her chagrin Marcus responded with very definite amusement, ‘Do you think so? Now I, on the contrary, find it rather…warm in here,’ and it seemed to Maggie that his amused glance lingered very deliberately on her flushed face. ‘No lover…mm…’ she heard him add in a voice that sounded almost pleased, and as she turned away from him she could almost have sworn she heard him say under his breath, ‘What a waste.’
Somehow or other she managed to get to the door, but as the opened it, he called over to her, ‘We haven’t finished our conversation—remember?’ and she was forced to turn round again and face him. ‘You were about to say something about the fact that had you known the house belongs to me…’
Desperately gathering her scattered thoughts, Maggie tried to concentrate. ‘Oh, yes. Well, of course, if I had known…I would never have said what I did about it being my right to stay here…’ In a choked voice she added, ‘It was very forbearing of you not to…not to point out to me just how wrong I was, there and then.’
‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it?’ Marcus agreed with an irony she couldn’t miss.
‘If it weren’t for the promise I’ve already given the girls that I’ll stay, I would leave immediately,’ she continued in a stifled voice, and then, seeing the shuttered look in his eyes, she cried out desperately, ‘Oh, it’s no use. You’ll never believe me, whatever I say, will you? You’ll never forget what I did, how I lied…’ And then, too overwrought to bear any more, she turned and fled from the room, ignoring his command that she stop.
CHAPTER NINE
ONE week slipped by and then another one, and Maggie found herself slipping into a routine. In the afternoons, when her chores were finished, and before she went to collect the girls from school, she went up to the large north-facing room where she had set up her easel.
Oddly, when she bore in mind all the problems which should have prevented her from working, she found her imagination flourishing, perhaps under the stimulus of the views from her window. And, although she admitted that she herself was hardly in a position to judge, it actually seemed to her that the quality of her work had improved as well.
She had been back home for just over six weeks, and in many ways had come to feel as though she had never been away at all, a deceptive feeling and one which she was at great pains to monitor, when Isobel arrived early one morning to take Marcus into Carlisle where he was having the heavy plaster removed from his leg and its progress checked.
It was mid-afternoon before they returned. Maggie heard them before she saw them, the slam of Isobel’s car reaching her through her open window. With a faint sigh she put down her brushes and went downstairs. Isobel was no housewife, and would be no doubt expecting Maggie to appear and produce coffee and something to eat.
The study door was open as Maggie walked past it, and even if it hadn’t been it would have been difficult for her not to hear the raised voices coming from the room: Isobel’s shrill and piercing; Marcus’s deeper but every bit as angry. Maggie had just drawn level with the door when Isobel came shooting out, her face flushed with rage, her eyes glittering with venom as she glared furiously at Maggie.
‘This is all your fault,’ she hissed furiously at her as she swept past her. ‘If you hadn’t insisted on staying here to look after those blasted brats… Well, if Marcus thinks I’m going to marry a man who puts his family before his wife…’
Before Maggie could say a word, she stormed past her, slamming doors behind her and then starting the engine of her car with a lot of unnecessary revving. Biting her lip, Maggie walk
ed past the study and into the kitchen. Isobel was a very volatile woman, it didn’t need much intelligence to see that, but Marcus had always been very even-tempered. Still, being in love tended to arouse intense passion in the calmest breast.
She bit her lip harder as she tried to quell the misery that thinking of Marcus loving Isobel always brought her, and then stood indecisively in the kitchen, torn between wanting to go and ask Marcus how successful the removal of the plaster had been, and feeling that it would be unwise to intrude upon him until he had calmed down from his argument with Isobel. In the end she gave way to caution and went upstairs to collect her raincoat before hurrying out to her car.
The day had been overcast and dull, with the threat of thunder rumbling ominously in the distance. She had some shopping to do before she collected the girls from school, and it was only when she was half-way to Hexham that she realised that, although she had picked up her raincoat, she had forgotten her umbrella. It was the heavy thud of large drops of rain against her windscreen that brought this realisation, and as she drove into Hexham and parked her car she realised that she had overtaken the thunderstorm. With any luck she would have finished her shopping before it reached the town. However, luck, it seemed, was against her, for as she queued up at one of the market stalls to pay for her purchases the sky became ominously dark and, long before the stall-keeper had taken her money and handed her purchases to her, heavy drops of rain were beginning to spatter against the cobbles.
Blinding sheets of lightning rent the sky and thunder clapped sharply overhead. Maggie had never been frightened of thunderstorms, but the idea of getting soaked in the almost torrential rainfall now turning the narrow cobbled street into something approaching a small stream was not an appealing one. A hotel on the corner of the street, facing into the square she had just left, caught her eye. The last time she had visited Hexham, it had been hot and sunny and lunchers had been sitting at tables outside watching the busy ebb and flow of people through the square.