A Reason For Being. Penny Jordan
that he was getting engaged to someone else…not because she had wanted to destroy that engagement…But what had been the point? By then she had seen with appalling clarity just how foolish she had been…had realised that her dreams had been nothing but that, and in an agony of angry shame she had refused to speak a single word in her own defence, listening to Marcus’s furious tirade of bitter anger as though she were doing penance. And afterwards…
And afterwards, as she stole away in the night like a thief, Marcus’s words burned into her like so many brands.
Tiredly she gripped the steering wheel a little harder. Hadn’t she learned years ago that there was nothing to be gained from this pointless torment of herself? She had long ago outgrown the need for self-punishment, surely…had long ago faced up to what she had done and accepted that it could never be undone.
But Marcus had never married. She had learned that from Susie’s letters. Ignoring the tiny prickly feeling of sensation that ran through her, she drove down the dip and in through the open gates.
She automatically parked her car at the rear of the house, in the cobbled courtyard which had once been busy with servants and horses, or so her grandfather had told her. Now the stables were empty of everything bar Marcus’s hunter, and the servants were gone. Mrs Martin, who had been her grandfather’s housekeeper, had now retired and Maggie had been unable to place the Mrs Nesbitt Susie had mentioned as being Mrs Martin’s replacement.
The kitchen door gave under her hand. Inside, nothing had changed, and the large, old-fashioned room was still dominated by the huge scrubbed deal table that stood in the centre. As a young girl coming to visit the house, one of the first things that had struck her about the kitchen had been its lovely smell. Her uncle’s second wife had been an inspired cook, and not just that…She had grown her own herbs and vegetables, and in due season the herbs had been picked and hung up to dry in the storerooms off the kitchen, so that their scents permeated the atmosphere.
It had been her own mother who had taught her to cook, but it had been her aunt who had shown her how to turn that basic skill into an art form.
Disappointment scored Maggie with sharp claws as she searched for the smallest trace of that once-familiar smell, but it was gone. The kitchen seemed empty and barren, not the warm, comfortable hive of activity that she remembered.
She walked from it down a narrow passage, and pushed open the door which had once marked the boundary between the servants’ and the family’s quarters.
The once immaculate polished parquet floor looked dusty, and Maggie frowned as the sunlight from the windows picked up the uncared-for appearance of the furniture in the sturdy square hallway.
Six doors led off it, but she found herself walking automatically to only one of them.
Her fingers touched the cool brass of the handle. These were heavy mahogany doors, installed at the same time as the Palladian portico and owing much to the influence of Robert Adam. She knew from experience that, despite their weight, the doors would swing open without a sound, so perfectly balanced that, even after all the years which had passed since they were installed, they still opened silently.
She thought at first that the room was empty. It had the same unkempt and slightly cold air as the kitchen and the hall. This room had once been her grandfather’s study, and then Marcus had made it his own private domain.
Its windows looked out on the main drive and the sweep of the park. Its marble mantelpiece was exactly the right height for a gentleman to place his glass of port on while he meditated on his business affairs; the bookshelves to either side of the fireplace were of the same rich mahogany as the door. At some stage or other, a Victorian Deveril had had the walls papered in a rich, dark green, very masculine silk, so that the room always seemed rather dark and overpowering.
Curtains of the same silk hung at the window, and the Aubusson carpet had a background of the same rich green.
Either side of the fireplace stood a heavy wing chair, a huge old-fashioned desk being the only other major piece of furniture in the room, and it was only as she advanced across the carpet that Maggie realised that the chair with its back to her had an occupant, one heavily plastered leg propped up on a stool.
She knew who it was before she saw him, just by the way the hairs on her scalp prickled warningly, and it took all her considerable courage not to turn round and flee while she still could.
As she rounded the corner of the chair and came into his sight, she took a deep breath to hide her inner agitation and said calmly, ‘Hello, Marcus.’
CHAPTER TWO
HE HAD changed so little physically that to look at him was to step back ten years in time.
It was true that there were small touches of grey in the black hair, hardly discernible unless one looked closely, but his eyes were the same—the pure cold grey of the North Sea—and his face still held that same quality of hard perception, that made one feel there could be no secrets safe from him.
His skin was still as tanned, his body still as physically fit, despite the encumbrances of two plaster casts, one from hip to ankle and one on his right arm. He still had that same daunting air of authority, of knowledge and intelligence, which had initially made her feel nervous of him as a teenager.
Strange, when she had met so many successful people, both male and female, that Marcus should still stand out among them; or was it simply that she was still held in thrall to her own childhood awe of him, so that she was investing him with a magical power he did not really possess?
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