A Reason for Being

‘Away from here?’ Marcus asked her silkily.

‘Did I say that?’

‘By implication, but my life is here, Maggie. My home is here, and I intend that it is going to remain here.’

‘That’s something you should take up with Isobel, not me,’ Maggie told him unwisely. ‘After all, she’s the one who’s going to be your wife.’

The minute she said the words, she knew it was a mistake. They were too dangerous…too evocative of all that lay between them…

She saw a shadow pass across Marcus’s face and wondered if he was thinking of that other girl who should have held that role. The girl she had never met. He must have loved her a great deal indeed not to have married for so long. Why hadn’t he married her once she herself had gone? These were questions she could never ask him. The old intimacy and easiness between them had gone forever, and in its place was a savage hostility which both of them tried to mask but which constantly flared into life. And she was going to have to live with the knowledge of that hostility. She was going to have to live side by side with Marcus and Isobel… She was going to have to see them building a life together…having a family…and suddenly she wondered what on earth she had done.

‘See, you’re not as convinced you’re doing the right thing as you pretend,’ Marcus pounced, seeing the doubt fill her eyes. ‘Taking on the responsibility of parenting two teenage girls is no easy task…as I know.’

‘So do I,’ Maggie told him fiercely. ‘I’m not seventeen any more, Marcus. I’m an adult…a woman. Or are you, oh, so subtly, trying to i

mply that you don’t consider me a morally fit person to have charge of them?’

The tension was almost tangible now, and Marcus was obviously as aware of it as she was, because he limped over to the french windows and pushed them open angrily, standing in the cool waft of evening air, staring out over the grounds. He was silent for a long time and then, when he did speak, his voice was so raw and low that she had trouble hearing it. Automatically she walked closer to him, trying to catch what he was saying.

‘Maggie…think…think what you’re doing.’ He swung round, catching her off guard, less than half the length of the desk between them, his eyes brilliant and glittering oddly, the pupils slightly enlarged. Every bone in his face seemed to be tensed in fierce pressure, and Maggie had a tremendous awareness both of his power and his emotional control. She had the vivid impression that he would like to do her violence, and that he was only stopping himself with great difficulty.

‘I have thought,’ she told him shakily. ‘And I’m staying. You can’t make me leave, Marcus.’

It was the wrong thing to say. He closed the gap between them, saying harshly, ‘Can’t I? We’ll see about that.’

And then, shockingly, he had taken hold of her, her body suddenly frighteningly fragile as she felt the pressure of his grip, threatening her ribcage.

‘What have you really come back for, Maggie?’ he demanded thickly, his breath warm against her skin. She wanted to pull away from him, but she was too conscious of the weight of his casts to push him hard in case she damaged them, and besides, he had her trapped between his body and the desk.

His body… She drew an agonised breath of shock as he shifted his weight and leaned heavily into her. He was aroused physically in a way that was totally unfamiliar to her, and where once she would have swooned with pleasure at the knowledge, now she was sickened by it…knowing that it sprang not from desire but from anger.

She felt the heat of his breath graze her ear and knew that he was going to kiss her. She turned her head away from him and demanded, ‘Stop this, Marcus. I know you must hate me…I know you must want to punish me for what I did, but not…’

‘Then if you know it, why don’t you stop fighting me and accept your punishment?’ he jeered harshly.

She could feel in the heavy rise and fall of his chest the effort it was costing him to breathe. One sharp push and she could probably unbalance him… As though he picked up her thoughts, he pushed her back harder against the desk, pinning her there.

‘You owe me this,’ he told her angrily, and then his free hand slid into her hair, tightening almost painfully in it, holding her immobile while his mouth savaged hers in a kiss of such violence that she could scarcely believe it was happening.

During her years in London she had dated many men. A goodnight kiss was as far as she allowed them to get, and over the years she imagined she had experienced every kind of kiss there was, but now, shockingly, she realised she was wrong.

As she fought to deny the angry domination Marcus was forcing upon her, he grated against her swollen lips, ‘Open your mouth. Open it, Maggie, or I’ll make you.’ And when she still refused, her body trembling with shock and fear, his fingers tightened their grip and he whispered savagely, ‘Remember what you said to your grandfather…that you and I were already lovers…that I had taken you to my bed and initiated you into every art there is… You owe me this, Maggie.’

And, because her muscles had suddenly turned weak and fluid at the mention of the past, she obeyed him, limply and automatically, a rag doll in his arms while he savaged her mouth until she could bear it no more and the salt tears ran down her cheeks, stinging the tender, bruised flesh of her lips.

He released her then, staggering back from her as though she had indeed pushed him. He looked dazed and white, his eyes unfocused, his muscles clenched as though he himself couldn’t believe what he had done.

When he lifted his hand and reached out to touch her sore mouth, she jerked away.

‘Oh, Maggie…’

‘You aren’t going to make me go away, Marcus,’ she told him thickly, and then added quietly, ‘And if you ever touch me like that again, I promise you I’ll go straight to Isobel and tell her exactly what kind of man she’s marrying.’

He looked like a man who’d been put on the rack, she recognised, her own emotions running too strongly and turbulently for her to recognise the anguish that darkened his eyes as his hand fell away and he said rawly, ‘Maggie, I’m sorry. I just…’

‘Wanted to punish me. Yes, I know.’

She had to get out of this room before she broke apart completely…before she broke down in front of him and sobbed out her pain and grief.