There was a tense silence, into which Susie jumped, saying defiantly, ‘You aren’t going to try to persuade Maggie not to stay, are you, Marcus?’ When he made no reply, she added desperately, ‘Sara and I want her to stay. That’s why I wrote to her. Oh, why do grown-ups have to be so difficult?’ she added crossly. ‘Everyone knows that you and Maggie quarrelled and that she ran away, but whenever I ask anyone why, they all try to pretend they haven’t heard. If you did quarrel, why can’t you make it up again? After all, that’s what you’re always telling us to do.’
She had to say something. She couldn’t let this go on, Maggie thought frantically. Not with Marcus standing there looking as though he had been turned to stone, his face almost bone-white, his eyes blind and staring right through her.
‘We didn’t quarrel, Susie,’ she said quietly. ‘I did something very, very wrong indeed…an
d…’ Helplessly she looked towards Marcus, silently begging for his help.
‘You’re quite right, Susie,’ he said heavily, limping over to the table and putting his arm round the girl’s thin shoulders. ‘In actual fact I wanted Maggie to come home a long time ago, and I promise you that, now that she is here, I’m not going to drive her away. Shouldn’t you be making a start on your homework, by the way?’ he asked drily.
The girls left the kitchen with reluctance, and as the door closed behind them Maggie had a cowardly impulse to call them back. She didn’t want to be left alone with Marcus, not right now when her emotions were threatening to overwhelm her. The sound of his voice saying that he had wanted her to come home, in that husky, almost despairing way, had completely undermined her.
‘There was no need for you to say that,’ she told him shakily. ‘I wasn’t going to leave anyway…and they’ll find out sooner or later that you don’t really want me here.’
‘Is that why you came back, Maggie…because you knew I wouldn’t want you?’
Her face flamed.
‘Of course not… I’m not a child, Marcus,’ she told him indignantly. ‘Neither am I so petty or small-minded as to…’ She broke off, flushing even harder as she saw the way he was looking at her. ‘All right, I know you must find that hard to believe after what I did…oh, hell, haven’t I paid enough for that?’ she demanded in a tortured voice. The feelings she had fought to hold at bay ever since her arrival were completely overwhelming her. ‘What I did was wrong…terribly wrong…but don’t you think I’ve suffered for it…don’t you realise?’ She broke off, gritting her teeth and tensing every muscle against the plea she longed to make. She was no longer a child and Marcus her mentor; he could no longer remove all her hurts with his touch and his love. These were wounds she had to bear for herself…wounds she fully deserved.
‘I came here because of Susie’s letter,’ she told him unsteadily when she had herself under control. ‘That’s all…not out of malice or spite…not for any reason other than because I felt she and Sara needed me.’
Another minute and she would be in floods of tears, and that was the last thing she wanted. She bit down hard on her lip…too hard, she realised as she tasted the rust-salt taste of her own blood and realised what she had done. She touched the small wound with her tongue.
‘They do need you.’
The quiet admission stunned her. She stood where she was, her mouth half open, her eyes registering her amazement.
‘It won’t be for long,’ she assured him when she had got over her astonishment. ‘By the time you and Isobel get married…’
An odd look crossed his face. A spasm of something that could almost have been pain. Was it because he knew how much the two girls disliked his fiancée?
‘That won’t do,’ he told her quietly. ‘Susie is sixteen, Sara fourteen. If you’re serious about making a commitment to them, it’s going to have to be for something more like four years than four months…’
‘Four years?’
He smiled grimly.
‘Yes. Think about it, Maggie, and then after dinner we’ll have a talk.’
When he probably expected her to back down, to say that she wasn’t prepared to give up four years of her life, Maggie realised sickly as he left the room. Oh, he was clever, she had to give him that. He thought he’d found the ideal way of getting rid of her without arousing the girls’ antagonism. He was going to make her do the leaving, just as he had done before. She swallowed down the sobs of pure rage building in her throat. This wasn’t the time to give way to the feelings burning inside her. She needed to stay calm and controlled…she needed to think.
Four years! But what did it matter…four or forty? There was nothing for her in London. This was her home. She already knew she would never marry. But living here meant that she would be constantly tormented by the sight of Marcus himself…by her memories…by her feelings.
She checked herself abruptly. What feelings? She had no feelings left…for Marcus or any other man. She was immune to the emotional and physical impact of any man, incapable of responding to them in any way at all.
So why had she been in this constant turmoil ever since she arrived?
Because of her own guilt, she told herself angrily. That was why. Nothing more.
* * *
BECAUSE she wasn’t sure where they normally ate and didn’t want to disturb either the girls’ concentration on their homework or invade Marcus’s privacy in his study, Maggie laid the table for supper in the kitchen, using the dinner service on the old-fashioned dresser.
In Marcus’s mother’s day, supper, or more properly dinner, had always been served and eaten with proper formality in the dining-room, but since tonight’s meal was rather a sparse affair Maggie didn’t feel it warranted the faded splendour of the Edwardian dining-room with its crimson paper and heavy mahogany furniture.
She had managed to find time to ring Lara and tell her that she was staying on. Lara had been somewhat disturbingly unsurprised.
‘Some day I’m going to make you tell me more about this stepcousin of yours,’ she had warned her. ‘And don’t bother saying there’s nothing to tell. When you mentioned his name, you looked just as you used to look when you told Dad you didn’t have any family.’