A Reason For Being

Where she had not quailed in the presence of millionaires and politicians, she quailed a little now as that cold, searching grey gaze fastened on her, but she controlled her reaction to it, masking her thoughts from him by dropping her eyelids, so that she missed the sharp quiver of emotion that tensed his face.

There was no emotion though in his voice as he exclaimed harshly, ‘My God!’ He half made to start up, and then demanded instead, ‘What the hell are you doing here, Maggie?’

She took a deep breath, and stepped aside from her own personal feelings and emotions as she had taught herself to do, so long ago.

‘Susie wrote to me and begged me to come,’ she told him quietly.

She saw his expression darken with quick, growing anger, his muscles tensing as he fought to control it.

So something had changed, after all. How many times in the past had she been infuriated, baffled and, yes, frustrated by Marcus’s ability to hide his feelings from her? She had always been aware of his strength of will, or course, but, apart from the night she had run away, she had never seen him so quickly aroused to betraying what he felt.

Quite a unique distinction, she reflected grimly: to be one of the very few people he disliked strongly enough to betray an emotional reaction to.

That was another thing which had always infuriated her about Marcus: the fact that he always seemed to distance himself from others…to set himself apart and sort of look on in almost contemptuous amusement at the follies of the rest of the human race.

She had seen and met people in London who displayed the same skill, although with nothing like Marcus’s finesse. They, she had learned, used it as a protective shield against the world and the hurts it could inflict; she had even learned to adopt a little of that camouflage for herself, and now, unexpectedly, beneath her firmly controlled apprehension, ran a fine thread of speculation. What was it in Marcus’s life that had made him decide he needed the benefit of such camouflage?

As she observed his angry reception to her arrival, she was aware that, perhaps for the first time, she and Marcus were meeting on the same level. The ten-year gap which as a teenager had made her feel so awestruck and tongue-tied in his presence, especially when she started to suffer from that crippling crush on him, was now of no importance at all.

Yes, the disadvantage she had suffered because of their age difference had gone, but the hostility remained. And small wonder that he should resent her. He had never married—because of what she had done? It was an uncomfortable thought, and one which awoke old guilts.

‘How long have you been in contact with Susie?’ he asked her harshly, trying to swing round in his chair so that he could face her properly.

It gave her a tiny, savage thrill of satisfaction to realise that for once he was the one at a disadvantage, both from the surprise of her arrival, and from the fact that his heavy plaster cast made it virtually impossible for him to stand up, so that she was in the enviable position of looking down on him. It was a strange sensation when she was more used to him towering above her.

She was a fairly tall girl, somewhere around five foot seven or eight, but she had always found Marcus’s powerful six foot two male frame a little intimidating.

Probably because vulnerable teenage girls were, by their very natures, inclined to be over-impressed by such physically masculine attractions as those Marcus possessed, she reflected cynically.

He wasn’t perhaps a strictly handsome man, but he had something more compelling than intense good looks. He had a magnetism…a maleness that no woman could fail to be aware of.

By the time she had come to live at Deveril House he had been over his teenage years of dating a different girl every month, and for a long time there had been no serious girlfriend in his life, but it had still been very obvious even to her that the half-dozen or so girls who almost continuously called round on some pretext or other whenever he was at home were the ones doing the running in whatever relationship he had with them.

He had told her once that he didn’t intend to marry until he found someone he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with; she, at fifteen and already desperately in love with him, had breathed safely again. If he hadn’t found that women yet, then there was time for her to grow up and convince him that she was that woman.

After that she had prayed fervently every night that he would not find someone until she had grown up.

Her birthday fell in July, and the year before she left school, she thought that moment had actually come and that Marcus no longer saw her as a child, but as a woman.

Marcus and her grandfather between them had arranged a party to celebrate her attaining her seventeenth birthday. Her grandfather had given her some small items of jewellery which had once been her mother’s: a string of pearls, the diamond pendant which had marked her own birth, and various other gifts from her father to her mother, some of which had been in the Deveril family for very many years.

As the second son, her father had always known that eventually the small estate and the house would pass to his elder brother, but that had never worried him. He enjoyed teaching, loved his quiet, calm way of life and his small family, and his father, being a wise and caring parent, had made sure that there was no rivalry between his two sons by allowing both of them to give their wives gifts of jewellery from the small number of pieces that still belonged to the family.

Maggie had also received a charmingly delicate Victorian bow brooch in diamonds and pearls for her birthday, and she had left both that and the diamond ear-rings Marcus had given her behind her when she had left. When she had realised that, far from loving her, in reality Marcus thought of her as nothing more than a difficult child…a child whom he now hated and loathed. When, as the angry lash of his acid words had flayed her tender nerves raw, she had realised that she could no longer live under the same roof as him.

He had looked at her once after he had finished castigating her, and had demanded bitterly, ‘Why? Just tell me why?’

And she had turned her head in stubborn silence, too shocked and numb with the reality of what she had unleashed to defend herself.

‘You’d better go,’ he had told her quietly. ‘Before I do something I’ll only regret.’

And then, as she walked towards the door, sick with shame, trembling with the shock of his angry words, he had added rawly, ‘You just don’t care, do you? You just don’t give a damn…’

She had managed to speak then, fighting back the nervous tremors that racked her to say huskily, ‘Would it make any difference if I did?’

He had looked at her for a long, long time before saying stonily, ‘No…I don’t think it would. I wish you’d never come into my life. Do you realise that, I wonder? Do you realise how much I wish I never had to set eyes on you again?’ he had added viciously, and she had taken those words to bed with her and had known, as she lay there sleepless and cold with shock and reaction, that there was only one course open to her.

One of them must leave, and it couldn’t be Marcus. Her grandfather needed him too much, and so it must be her…

She came out of the past with a start.

Deveril House was in reality more her home than it was Marcus’s, but right from the first moment she had come to live here, after her parents’ death, she had associated the house with him, and therefore she had always felt that he had more claim on it than she had herself.

It was because of that conviction that she had not allowed herself to grieve over it…to miss it. Because of Marcus, she had striven so hard to remain independent of it.

Surely she had achieved that, if nothing else? she reflected with grim satisfaction, refusing to remember her seventeenth birthday party or the kiss that Marcus had given her then…her first truly adult kiss, or so she had thought it at the time. A tame thing perhaps, by modern standards…If she closed her eyes, though, even now she could call back the rough/smooth sensation of his mouth on hers, the tension that had gripped her for that heart-stopping second of time when the pressure of his mouth had changed and she had known, gloriously and triumphantly, that he wanted her.

So much for the folly of youth.

‘I said, how long have you been in contact with Susie?’

She took refuge in feminine vagueness, shrugging her shoulders and saying carelessly, ‘I don’t really know. Does it matter? Quite some time. Long enough for her to feel that she can trust me, obviously,’ she pointed out with delicate unkindness, watching the colour touch his cheekbones as her thrust went home.

‘Where is she, by the way?’ she asked idly, as though unaware of his anger.

‘She’s out with a friend,’ he told her grimly. ‘What exactly was it she told you that made you come rushing back here, Maggie? Quite a miracle for her to perform. I seem to remember that, when your grandfather died, I put notices in every newspaper and magazine I could find, begging you to return.’

‘That was different,’ Maggie defended herself huskily. ‘Gramps was gone. There was no point,’ she added, unwittingly betraying the fact that she had read his pleas for her to come home. ‘There was nothing I could do…but this is different.’ I’m different, she wanted to add, but the words remained unsaid. To utter them was to court danger, since he might reasonably demand to know in what way she had changed, and she would be forced to admit that it was only now, after ten years, that she felt confident enough of her self-control to be able to return to the scene of her agony.

‘So…you still haven’t answered my question. What did Susie tell you to bring you rushing back here?’

‘I think that’s between me and Susie, don’t you?’ Maggie taunted him, adding, ‘Where’s Mrs Nesbitt, by the way?’

Before he could reply, the door burst open and a stunning brunette burst in. Older than Maggie herself, she had the polished perfection which Maggie automatically associated with someone very much in the public eye and very much aware of herself and her attractions.

It was idiotic to take such an instant and strong dislike to the other woman. Maggie normally liked other members of her own sex, enjoying their company and their conversation, but this woman…perhaps it was something to do with the very hostile way in which she was regarding her, she reflected as the brunette demanded, ‘How is my poor fiance´ today, and, Marcus darling, who does that car outside belong to? Don’t tell me you’ve actually found someone to take Mrs Nesbitt’s place? I only hope this one lasts a little longer than the last replacement. You’ll really have to learn to control that temper of yours if…’

‘Sorry, Isobel. Not a housekeeper, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh.’ She turned in Maggie’s direction and studied her coolly, her hand resting on Marcus’s shoulder as she stood beside him.

‘Then who…?’ She paused delicately, eyebrows slightly raised, glossed mouth faintly pursed.

‘My stepcousin, Maggie Deveril. I presume it is still Deveril?’ he asked Maggie in an unexpectedly harsh tone.

His question caught her off guard, shocking her. Did he really think she would have married after what…Abruptly she caught herself up just in time, sensing the traitorous ground lurking beneath her feet. Of course, it was only natural that he might think her married…just as it was equally natural that he should be engaged.

Engaged…She told herself that the sick feeling gripping her insides owed its existence to the past and not the present.