A Reason For Being

‘Ah, yes, I think I remember you,’ Isobel commented thoughtfully, her eyes narrowing. ‘You left the area rather unexpectedly, didn’t you? You know, darling, you’ve never told me all about that. I do think family skeletons are so exciting, don’t you?’ she asked Maggie, focusing on her again, and then adding with a light laugh, ‘Although when a young unmarried girl leaves home unexpectedly, there is normally only one conclusion one comes to, isn’t there?’

There was a tense pause, and then her own cold, ‘Is there?’ and Marcus’s hard, ‘Isobel, that’s enough,’ both came at the same time.

‘Teenage girls leave home for a wide variety of reasons which have nothing to do with your unwarranted implication,’ Marcus continued. ‘In Maggie’s case it was because…’

‘…I wanted to go to art school in London, whereas my grandfather would…have preferred me to attend college in York,’ Maggie lied, quietly intervening.

She had no idea what Marcus had intended to say, but, if he wished to reveal her sins in full to his fiance´e, then he could do so without her looking on.

‘Is there no one at all in charge of the house at the moment?’ she challenged him, changing the subject.

‘Not as such, no,’ he responded curtly.

‘Poor darling. It’s the pain that’s making you so irritable, isn’t it?’ Isobel cooed sickeningly. ‘Never mind. Daddy says you’ll probably be able to have the plaster off in another six to eight weeks.’

Marcus made a sound that sounded more like a growl of irritation than anything else, and Maggie was hard pressed not to smile a little. How very vulnerable he seemed now, with both his hair and his temper ruffled, and relief flooded through her, releasing her inner tension. There was nothing she had to be afraid of. Marcus was engaged to be married, and she was not a child any longer, living in a world of fantasy and make-believe. The shadows which had dogged her footsteps for so long shortened a little, suddenly far less menacing.

‘And what the hell do you think is so funny?’ Marcus challenged her, bringing home to her the fact that he was far from being a helpless child.

She might not like his fiance´e, but she certainly didn’t envy Isobel the task of soothing him, she reflected wryly, as she told him sweetly, ‘What happened, Marcus? Did you fall off that high horse of yours?’

The anger that arced between them shut out Isobel completely, and for a second the present dropped away and she was conscious of him with all her senses, both awed and intimidated by him, held in thrall to her childish dreams; then Isobel said something and the spell was broken, freeing her from its cruel bond.

She stepped back from him, feeling a need to put an actual physical distance between them, shivering a little as she did so, and Isobel, seeing it, remarked with mock solicitude, ‘Oh, dear, Marcus, Maggie is cold. Of course, you’ve been living in London. I do envy you.’ She pulled a pretty face. ‘I do manage to get down for the odd break, and I have chums down there from school and we all meet up pretty regularly, but since Daddy insisted on my helping out by acting as his receptionist at the surgery…I simply haven’t had the chance. And Marcus, of course…hates me being away, don’t you, darling? I take it this is just a fleeting visit?’ she added with apparent casualness, but Maggie wasn’t deceived. She could see how little the other woman relished her presence.

‘I don’t know yet,’ she told her calmly. ‘It all depends.’

‘On what?’ Marcus demanded bluntly.

Later she would have time to investigate more thoroughly that dull little pain which attacked her at his obvious desire to be rid of her; for now she had to marshal all her resources in order to be able to tell him calmly, ‘On why Susie felt it necessary to write and ask for my help.’

‘Susie wrote to you…’ It was Isobel who responded to her, her expression changing to one of anger. ‘Oh, really, Marcus, that child is getting too much,’ she told him furiously. ‘I keep telling you. Both of them should be at boarding-school. You must see how good it would be for them, darling,’ she added in a more wheedling tone as she saw his frown. ‘And for us. When we get married. And anyway, now that Mrs Nesbitt’s gone, what alternative do you have, especially when you’re immobilised like this? I mean, it’s all very well relying on friends to take the girls to and from school…You know I’d be pleased to help out myself, but Daddy needs me too much, and frankly, darling, the girls are getting the teeniest bit spoiled. I promise you a few years at school will do them oodles of good…and it will give us the privacy we both need. Such a shame we can’t bring the wedding forward from next June, but you know that Mummy has set her heart on a June wedding, and, as I said, Daddy needs me to help out at the surgery…’

And wasn’t she just thrilled about that, since it meant that she was released from having to do anything about the girls, other than insist that they went to boarding-school? Maggie reflected wryly. She had met many women like Isobel in London: selfish, self-absorbed, completely insensitive women who projected an image of frail femininity while in reality being as hard as the diamonds of which they were often so very fond.

‘You can’t possibly manage with them at home, anyway. You know that it’s going to be at least another three months before you’re properly back on your feet.’ She gave a small trill of laughter. ‘I feel so guilty about the whole thing.’

‘You can hardly be held responsible for a bolting horse,’ Marcus interrupted her grimly, and Maggie, who knew quite well that Marcus rode superbly, wondered what on earth had happened to cause him to be thrown, and so violently that he had apparently broken both his shoulder and his leg.

‘Well, it’s just like you to be so sweet about it, but I’m terribly conscious of how many problems being immobile is causing you. What about the business?’

‘My partner’s taking over for the time being. I can keep up with most of the paperwork from here. My secretary has agreed to come out three afternoons a week, so that we can keep on top of it.’

‘What a treasure she is,’ Isobel cooed, but Marcus could see the betraying narrowing of the hard blue eyes. ‘But if I could give you a little word of warning, darling. Her husband’s away so much, and I suspect she’s a little in love with you. It wouldn’t do to let her get the wrong idea. Look at the problems it caused you before…’ She gave Maggie an acidly sweet smile, and added, unforgivably, ‘I’m sure, now that Maggie herself is an adult, she won’t mind my saying how worried you were at the time. I mean, girls of that age don’t always realise what they’re doing, do they? And they can be so very, very determined. I mean, we’re always reading about schoolmasters whose lives have been ruined because of the importunings of some oversexed little schoolgirl…’

‘Isobel,’ Marcus warned harshly, interrupting her, but Maggie had no need of his interruption. After all, Isobel wasn’t saying anything about her that she hadn’t already said herself; and she had long ago become inured to the pain of knowing how stupidly she had behaved. While it wasn’t true that she had actually physically opportuned Marcus, she had certainly done everything she could to make him aware of her sexually, albeit within the limits of her very scanty knowledge and even more scanty experience.

‘Oh, it’s all right, Marcus,’ Maggie told him coolly. ‘I quite agree with Isobel. Teenage girls can be terrifyingly dangerous when they develop an intense crush on someone. Luckily most of us grow out of that phase,’ she added pointedly, and then watched the hard colour burn in Isobel’s face. ‘Obviously you two must want to be on your own,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I’ll go upstairs and unpack. I take it my old room is still empty?’

She saw from the look on Marcus’s face that he hadn’t anticipated her question, and moreover that he was shocked by her decision to stay. Well, let him be. Everything she had just heard in this room confirmed her feeling that Susie would never have written so desperately to her if she had not genuinely felt she needed help.

At Isobel’s mention of a boarding-school, warning signs ten feet high had sprung up in Maggie’s brain. In the old days, the housekeeper had kept a motherly eye on Susie and Sara, and Marcus himself had taken on the role of parenting them. A deep bond had always existed between the two little girls.

Maggie had had the opportunity to get to know Ruth, Marcus’s mother, very well, after her own parents died. She had married very young for the first time, and Marcus had been born when she was just eighteen.

By all accounts she had been very much in love with her older husband, a major in the army. He had been killed in action when Marcus was ten and, after all those years of being alone with his mother, it must have been very difficult for him to adjust when she eventually married again, especially when the two girls were born. He had been an adult when Susie arrived; there was a twenty-one-year gap between them, and Maggie wondered if he had ever felt any resentment. If so, she had never seen any evidence of it.

In those early days of her uncle’s second marriage, she and her parents had only been infrequent visitors at Deveril House, and Marcus himself had been away at university. It was only when her parents died that she had come to be more familiar with her uncle and his family, and certainly in those days she had discerned no resentment of his two half-sisters in Marcus’s manner towards them; rather, he had been very much the indulgent older brother. As he had been to her…only their relationship had been very different. She had clung to Marcus after she had overcome the shock of her parents’ death, seeing him as someone she could rely on…someone who wouldn’t abandon her…someone who cared for her. If only things had stayed that way. If only she had continued to look upon him as an older brother-cum-father instead of as a man.

It made her uncomfortable even now to think of the adolescent fantasies she had woven around him, fantasies she had pushed to the back of her mind until Isobel’s catty tongue had recalled them.

Fantasies which had eventually led to the destruction of her whole world. Fantasies which had caused scars she bore even now. Fantasies which had caused her such pain…such guilt…and not just her. Marcus, too, had suffered. She could never allow herself to forget that. She wondered if Isobel knew that he had been engaged before…that he had contemplated marrying someone else. She realised with a slight sense of shock that she hadn’t even known the name of her rival…hadn’t even allowed Marcus to tell them exactly who it was he was getting engaged to; she had been too shocked, too hurt to do any more than protest that he couldn’t, he mustn’t mean what he was saying—not when he loved her!

CHAPTER THREE

THE bedroom, originally chosen for Maggie by Marcus’s mother when she was first orphaned, was on the first floor of the house and overlooked the rear of the property.

As Maggie pushed open the door and stood motionlessly on the threshold, she realised with a pang of nostalgia how much she had always missed this room, and how much thought and care must have gone into preparing it for her.

Her emotions dulled by the sharp grief of losing her parents, she had barely noticed the soft sheen on the antique four-poster bed, nor the expensive luxury of its prettily faded curtains, their chinoiserie design very much in keeping with the early nineteenth-century bed.

Now a film of dust covered the polished boards of the floor and the antique dresser, but simply by closing her eyes Maggie could recall with vivid clarity the day she had first seen this room, realising now how much of its ambience her senses must have recorded and retained even though she herself had not been aware of it.

Now, coming back, she could only humbly marvel at the time and effort Marcus’s mother must have put into preparing this room for her. Then the furniture had shone with polish, its scent permeating the room, mingling with the elusive delicacy of the pot-pourri mixture which perfumed every room in the house. Then the curtains had been crisply fresh on both the bed and the pretty dressing-table beneath the window.

Her aunt had helped her unpack, talking calmly and gently to her as she did so, her fingers deft where Maggie’s own were clumsy. She had shown her which bathroom she was to use, half-way down the corridor, and then she had quietly and tactfully left Maggie alone in her new surroundings, whisking herself out of the door.

A huge sense of loss engulfed Maggie as she stood there caught up in the time-warp of the past, as she grieved for the grace and kindness of her long-dead aunt. She had known her for such a short spell of time and, while loving her, had not truly appreciated all that she was…had taken for granted the comfort and kindness which she had created within the old house. And now suddenly she was aware that all that was gone; that her daughters and her son had been cruelly deprived of her cherishing warmth.

Maggie crossed the faded carpet and stared out of the window, noticing dimly the faint blurring of the landscape as her emotions caused tears to fill her eyes.

She had not expected to feel like this, but now that she did she was filled with an even firmer resolve to find out what was bothering Susie and, if she could, to put matters to rights.

She strongly suspected she would learn that it was the threat of being sent away to boarding-school that was distressing her young cousins, and she could only sympathise with them.

She put her weekend case on the bed and opened it, and then turned to unlock the old-fashioned wardrobe doors. To her shock, the wardrobe still held her old clothes, and the sight of them hanging there caused a frisson of sensation to run down her spine.

The dress she had worn for her seventeenth-birthday party swung gently in its plastic cover. She reached out and touched it tentatively, and then the past and its ghosts vanished as she was suddenly struck by an idea to complete an illustration she had been commissioned to do, and she reached eagerly into her case to extract the sketch-book she took everywhere with her.

Within minutes she was so deeply immersed in her work that she was oblivious to everything else, even the opening of her bedroom door.

‘So you’re still up here. What…?’

Maggie’s pencil snapped as Marcus’s voice broke her concentration and threw her shockingly into a pose of frozen tension. She hadn’t expected him to invade her privacy like this, but rather to keep his distance, and it worried her that she should feel so disturbed by his presence.

It was because of the memories he evoked, that was all; memories of those times when she had welcomed his presence here with her.