It was whis
pered locally that there was a curse on the family, put there by a wild gypsy girl who had had a passionate affair with the heir to Deveril House, only to be cast off by him when his parents arranged an advantageous marriage.
Every family of long lineage in the country could probably claim similar curses, Maggie reflected wryly as her small car crested the last hill before home, and it was foolish of her to dwell too much on the many tragedies which seemed to have touched hers.
Marcus at least would be free of it, if indeed such a curse existed, since he was not a Deveril at all, and it was only by his mother’s marriage to her uncle that he had been drawn into the family. There had been times when Maggie had felt that her grandfather wished that Marcus had been his grandson; his male heir.
It had been after hearing of her own father’s death that her grandfather had had his first stroke; and no wonder, Maggie reflected, remembering her own shock and pain at losing the parents she adored.
The death of his last remaining son had exacerbated his frail condition, and after that Marcus had stood between the world and her grandfather, challenging them to disturb his fragile peace.
She had slowed down without realising it. She had the road to herself, and yes, there it was, Deveril House, viewing the surrounding countryside from the small hill on which it stood, the stone walls basking in the summer sun, as though the house wanted to soak up its warmth.
From here she could see the straight line of the drive, and the park designed by a disciple of Capability Brown and bearing all his famous hallmarks of created naturalness.
From here she could even see the swans on the small lake. Unbidden, she had a painful memory of how, when one of the farmer’s sons had threatened to shoot the beautiful birds, she, not realising that he was only teasing her, had run to Marcus to beg him to intervene.
That had been in the early days after her parents’ death, when Deveril, although familiar to her from her visits, was still not truly her home…when she had clung to Marcus as the only stable thing in her very unstable world, and he had patiently and kindly let her.
Marcus had been kind to her then. Too kind, perhaps, and she had turned towards him like a flower to the sun, drinking up his warmth as greedily as the stone house soaked up that of the sun.
It had surely been only natural that her adoration of him should turn to an emotional teenage crush; there was, after all, no blood tie between them. Marcus was only ten years her senior, a vital and very sensual man, who should surely have been able to deal quite easily with the emergent feelings of a shy young girl. So where had it all gone wrong? How had it happened that she had become so lost in her own fantasy world that she had actually believed Marcus returned her feelings…that he was only waiting for her to grow up to claim her as a woman?
She was the one at fault. She was the one who had deliberately lied about their relationship, who had deliberately tried to force… But no…even now there were some things she just could not acknowledge; some truths she just could not accept. It was a physical agony even now to face up to her own failings, the muscles in her chest and throat locking as she battled with herself, refusing to allow herself to escape and hide from reality. From the truth.
And the truth was… The truth was that, demented by jealousy, she had deliberately and wantonly tried to destroy Marcus. At least, that was what he had thought, what he had bitterly accused her of wanting to do, and she had been too sick with the shock of realising just where her idiotic fantasy had led her to deny his accusations, to tell him that it had been out of love and naïveté that she had lied, and not out of jealous destructiveness. That it had been because she had honestly not been able to believe 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 too