The day had been overcast and dull, with the threat of thunder rumbling ominously in the distance. She had some shopping to do before she collected the girls from school, and it was only when she was half-way to Hexham that she realised that, although she had picked up her raincoat, she had forgotten her umbrella. It was the heavy thud of large drops of rain against her windscreen that brought this realisation, and as she drove into Hexham and parked her car she realised that she had overtaken the thunderstorm. With any luck she would have finished her shopping before it reached the town. However, luck, it seemed, was against her, for as she queued up at one of the market stalls to pay for her purchases the sky became ominously dark and, long before the stall-keeper had taken her money and handed her purchases to her, heavy drops of rain were beginning to spatter against the cobbles.
Blinding sheets of lightning rent the sky and thunder clapped sharply overhead. Maggie had never been frightened of thunderstorms, but the idea of getting soaked in the almost torrential rainfall now turning the narrow cobbled street into something approaching a small stream was not an appealing one. A hotel on the corner of the street, facing into the square she had just left, caught her eye. The last time she had visited Hexham, it had been hot and sunny and lunchers had been sitting at tables outside watching the busy ebb and flow of people through the square.
Now the tables were deserted, the umbrellas closed, and Maggie remembered one of the diners saying that the small hotel had a very attractive coffee lounge, much favoured by locals and tourists alike. It would probably be wise for her to shelter in there until the heaviness of the rain had abated, and a hot, fresh cup of coffee wouldn’t come amiss either, she reflected, ducking her head and grimacing as she had to almost paddle across the cobbled streets to reach the entrance to the hotel.
Inside, someone had carefully exposed and cleaned the ancient beams. Despite the fact it was late July, a log fire was burning cheerfully in the huge grate. A waitress, carrying a heavy tray of glasses, shook her head regretfully when Maggie asked the direction of the coffee-lounge.
‘It’s only open market days and Saturdays,’ she explained, ‘but if you don’t mind sitting here I could bring you a tray of coffee and something to eat.’
Thanking her, Maggie looked round for an empty table. There was only one free in one of the half-dozen or so small alcoves along one wall. It was shadowy, almost dark at this end of the room, and the booths themselves were curtained off from one another, giving them an air of shadowy mystery and privacy.
A man and a woman were sitting in the booth next to her own, and all Maggie could see of them as she removed her raincoat and sat down was their legs, as the light from the lamp on the table illuminated them. The woman was wearing impossibly high heels of the type that Isobel favoured, the man, pale grey leather loafers almost exactly the same shade as the immaculately creased pastel-grey trousers that looked so out of place in this sturdy building, whose customers were mostly burly farmers and their families.
These two had obviously not come in to shelter from the rain, Maggie observed as the smiling waitress reappeared and took her order. There were no signs of damp on either the spindly-heeled court shoes or the soft loafers. Neither were the pale grey trousers marked by rain spots. Idly wondering who this couple were and deciding that they must be tourists, although rather inadequately shod ones if they planned to go round the remains of the abbey, Maggie was just about to take a sip from the deliciously fragrant coffee the waitress had brought her when she heard Isobel’s familiar voice.
She froze instantly, imagining she must be mistaken, half making to get up in her seat, only to subside again as she heard Isobel demanding theatrically, ‘Oh, hell, Paul, tell me what I ought to do.’
‘You know what you must do,’ her companion answered her. His voice wasn’t as deep or as attractive as Marcus’s, and Maggie felt a faint frisson of distaste run through her, although why, she could not have said. Perhaps it had something to do with the man’s immaculate clothes, so plainly out of place in this country setting.
‘We can’t keep meeting like this,’ Isobel interrupted him in some agitation. ‘Someone is bound to see us.’
‘Does it matter?’ the man responded, his voice amused and caressing. ‘Let’s go back to my place,’ Maggie heard him adding softly. ‘No one would see us there, and I’d be able to…’ His voice dropped lower, but not so low that Maggie couldn’t hear quite plainly the intimate and extremely explicit suggestions he was making.
Her face burned, more with indignation on Marcus’s behalf than with any shock at what she was overhearing. She waited for Isobel to chide the man and remind him that she was engaged to someone else, but to her astonishment Isobel merely giggled. From the sounds she could hear, Maggie guessed that the pair of them were preparing to leave.
What she did next was something she would come to regret bitterly, but at the time the only thought in her mind was that somehow or other she must protect Marcus’s interests. Somehow she must prevent a second engagement from being wrecked, and as she stood up and confronted the departing couple, barring their way, it was with a confused belief etched very firmly in her mind that fate had decided she was to make atonement for her past sins, by being instrumental in preventing Marcus’s second chance of happiness from slipping away from him.
Isobel went white when she saw her, grabbing hold of the arm of her companion. He wasn’t much taller than Isobel herself, a neat, languid figure with blond hair and a too-white smile that somehow never quite reached his eyes. Compared with Marcus he was nothing, and Maggie couldn’t imagine what on earth it was that Isobel could possibly see in him.
‘Come on, Paul. Get me out of here, for heaven’s sake,’ Isobel cried out, and when Maggie reached out to try and stop her she pushed past her, almost causing her to overbalance.
Sick with the implications of what she had witnessed, Maggie sank back into her own seat. She desperately wanted another cup of coffee, but her hand shook so much when she poured it that more of it seemed to end up in the saucer than in the cup. Her mind was a jumble of confused thoughts.
What exactly was Isobel’s relationship with Paul, apart from the obvious? The obvious being that they were quite definitely lovers. Maggie winced at the thought. Had Isobel met Paul after she had become engaged to Marcus, or was he perhaps a married man with whom she had had a long-standing affair, or…and then abruptly she remembered Anna Barnes telling her that Isobel had been very heavily involved with another man before she became engaged to Marcus, and that this man had supposedly dumped her in favour of somebody else. She tried to remember what Anna had told her about Isobel’s previous boyfriend and could remember nothing. She glanced up uncertainly and saw that the sky was lightening. If she delayed much longer, she would be late collecting the girls.
Finishing her coffee, she picked up her parcels and stood up, and was amazed to find that she was still trembling. It was no business of hers if Isobel chose to have coffee with someone, she tried to tell herself as she headed back to her car, bitterly regretting that she had ever gone into the hotel in the first place. But she had, and now she was the possessor of information she would much rather not have had.
There was absolutely no way she could tell Marcus what she had overheard, but neither was there any way she could conveniently put it out of her mind. Her heart ached for Marcus. He deserved better than Isobel, much, much better, but it was not her place to tell him so.
All the way home Maggie worried about what she had seen and overheard, and, as though the girls too picked up on her introspective mood, they sat quietly in the back of the car. Almost the first thing Maggie saw as she turned into the courtyard was Isobel’s car parked next to the door.
As she switched off her engine, she realised the Isobel had only just reached the house ahead of her. Quickly she wondered if her delay had been caused by the fulfilment of the hot desire she had seen burning in Isobel’s eyes just before they’d focused on her and she’d realised that she and her lover had been overheard.
The girls went ahead of her into the kitchen, leaving Maggie and Isobel alone.
‘I suppose you can’t wait to tell Marcus, can you?’ Isobel challenged her recklessly, her eyes glittering with malice. ‘Well, I’m sorry to deprive you of the opportunity to play Miss Goody Two Shoes, but I’m going to tell him myself.’
Maggie recoiled in disbelief and distress as she caught the very obvious scent of alcohol on Isobel’s breath. Surely the other woman had more sense than to drive when she had been drinking? She was wearing a vibrant dark red lipstick, far too sophisticated and glossy for the country.
‘Such a perfect little woman, aren’t you?’ Isobel hissed venomously at her, and then disappeared into the kitchen before Maggie could defend herself against her malicious remarks.
Both girls had gone upstairs to get changed, and when they came down again Susie reminded her that she had promised to take them down to the vicarage so that they could play tennis with Alison and another friend. All the time they were eating the light snack she had prepared for them, Maggie was tensely aware of Isobel’s presence in the study.
What was she saying to Marcus? Was she telling him the truth—that she had spent the afternoon with another man, another lover? Maggie shuddered, trying to put herself in Marcus’s place, tryin
g to imagine how she would feel if she had to learn that the person she loved had betrayed her with someone else.
A very thick wall, a corridor and two doors separated the study from the kitchen, and therefore it was not really surprising that no voices, raised or otherwise, should penetrate into the kitchen. The girls were waiting impatiently for her to drive them down to the vicarage.