A Reason for Being

Maggie had blushed a little as she denied her friend’s allegation. It was true that, when she first lived with Lara and her father, she had told them she had no family, but later, when she had learned to trust them, she had admitted the truth…or at least some of it. She had kept back the exact reason why she had left, and once he’d realised that no force on earth was going to get her to either confide in them or go back, John Philips had stopped pressing her. She had been lucky to find such a refuge, she acknowledged now as she went to call the others to supper; even now it made her skin crawl to think of the fates that could have befallen her. Had Marcus ever wondered, ever worried…? She stopped herself from following such unprofitable lines of thought. Marcus owed her nothing. He had trusted her and she had abused and betrayed that trust. She had…

Noisy footsteps in the passage reminded her that the past was dead, and Susie and Sara hurried into the kitchen together.

‘Smells good,’ Sara exclaimed with a smile as she went to sit down. Neither of them made any reference to the fact that they were eating in the kitchen. Maggie had prepared a tray for Marcus, thinking he might prefer the privacy of his study, well away from her, but as she was getting it ready he came into the kitchen and frowned down at it.

‘Not eating with us?’ he asked her caustically.

She flushed. ‘The tray was for you…I thought…’

‘Well, don’t,’ he told her abruptly, and then added under his breath so that the girls couldn’t hear, ‘Much as you might want to pretend I don’t exist, Maggie, I’m afraid I do. If I want to have my meals on my own, you may rest assured that I shall tell you.’

His sarcastic rebuke made her angry. An anger she had no right to feel, she reminded herself as she watched the girls enjoying their food, and pushed her own miserably around her plate.

‘Not eating?’ Marcus queried, raising an eyebrow.

‘I…I’m not hungry. I was wondering if the kitchen garden still exists,’ she added hurriedly, uncomfortably aware of the narrow-eyed scrutiny he was giving her slender frame. Did he think she was too thin? Was he comparing her slender frame with Isobel’s far more lush curves? Where once she would have been delighted to have his attention on her, to have his gaze on her, now she was made awkward and miserable by his scrutiny, bleakly aware of how dangerously vulnerable he could still make her feel. Now, though, there was no sexual frisson of pleasure in the knowledge, only a cold and nauseous burden of guilt and misery.

‘In a way. It’s very overgrown. Why?’

‘I had to use frozen vegetables tonight, and I couldn’t help remembering how your mother always had fresh things.’

‘Well, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be resuscitated, if that’s what you want,’ he told her, surprising her. ‘When John comes tomorrow, I’ll have a word with him. Get him to make a start on clearing out the weeds. We might not get much from it this summer, but next year…’

‘Oh, yes…and we could help you,’ Sara interrupted, her eyes shining. ‘We could make jam like you said Mum used to.’

‘Yes,’ Maggie agreed softly, touched by the enthusiasm in the younger girl’s voice. ‘We’ll do that. In fact, we could make some this autumn. We’ll go blackberrying,’ she promised them, ‘and see what we can find.’

From the way they all cleaned their plates, even Marcus, it seemed that her cooking was a success, Maggie reflected, as she offered to make some coffee and apologised for the lack of any dessert.

‘Girls, you can both help Maggie with the washing-up,’ Marcus announced firmly. Once or twice during the meal, watching him listening to something one or other of the girls had been telling him about their day, Maggie could almost have imagined herself back in the past, and then, as though conscious of her concentration, he would turn and look at her and all her guilt and misery would come rushing back.

Now, as he pushed back his chair and stood up, she could see that he looked tired and strained. And no wonder; those plaster casts couldn’t exactly be comfortable.

‘Perhaps you’d prefer to have your coffee in the study,’ she offered formally.

He looked at her, dark eyebrows lifting.

‘Trying to get rid of me again?’ he asked sotto voce as the girls carried the dirty plates over to the sink.

To her own disgust, she flushed. It was ridiculous, this pale skin of hers that so easily gave her away, betraying every single emotion she felt.

‘No,’ she told him shortly. ‘I just thought you might prefer the comfort of the chairs in there. It can’t be easy for you—?

?? she looked at the casts ‘—heaving all that extra weight around.’

‘It isn’t,’ he agreed shortly, ‘and they itch damnably. Actually I have got some work to do, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’

‘Isobel won’t like that,’ Susie commented cheerfully, catching his last comment as she came back for the rest of the dirty dishes. ‘She was furious when she found out that Marcus was going to be off his feet for so long. She likes to go out dancing and to parties,’ she told Maggie, adding thoughtfully, ‘I suppose that’s why she didn’t want us around, ’cos she’d have to find babysitters and things for us.’

‘Susie…’ Marcus warned her tetchily, but Susie ignored the warning growl in his voice and tossed her head.

‘It isn’t my fault if she doesn’t like us. Mrs Nesbitt said she only got engaged to you anyway because she’d had a row with her last boyfriend.’

‘Susie, I don’t think you should repeat gossip,’ Maggie intervened hurriedly, not daring to look at Marcus to see how he was reacting to these disclosures. Behind her, she heard Marcus making to get up, and as he did so he staggered a little, suddenly clumsy. She reacted instinctively, reaching out to steady him, surprised to feel the fine tremor racing over his skin as she held on to him to balance him. It was hardly cold enough to merit such a shiver, and then she realised that the muscles beneath her fingers were bunched in tense agony, and as she looked into the too-dark depths of his eyes, she realised that she was the cause of that shudder of revulsion.

She let go of him immediately, her skin burning with acute misery. Of course he would loathe the very touch of her, but she hadn’t thought. She had simply wanted to help him. Idiotic tears blurred her eyes and she turned her back on him, hating herself for her stupidity.

When she had made the coffee, she got Susie to take it into him. The girls still had homework to do, and while they did it she busied herself checking on the meagre contents of the cupboards.