Fantasies which had eventually led to the destruction of her whole world. Fantasies which had caused scars she bore even now. Fantasies which had caused her such pain…such guilt…and not just her. Marcus, too, had suffered. She could never allow herself to forget that. She wondered if Isobel knew that he had been engaged before…that he had contemplated marrying someone else. She realised with a slight sense of shock that she hadn’t even known the name of her rival…hadn’t even allowed Marcus to tell them exactly who it was he was getting engaged to; she had been too shocked, too hurt to do any more than protest that he couldn’t, he mustn’t mean what he was saying—not when he loved her!
CHAPTER THREE
THE bedroom, originally chosen for Maggie by Marcus’s mother when she was first orphaned, was on the first floor of the house and overlooked the rear of the property.
As Maggie pushed open the door and stood motionlessly on the threshold, she realised with a pang of nostalgia how much she had always missed this room, and how much thought and care must have gone into preparing it for her.
Her emotions dulled by the sharp grief of losing her parents, she had barely noticed the soft sheen on the antique four-poster bed, nor the expensive luxury of its prettily faded curtains, their chinoiserie design very much in keeping with the early nineteenth-century bed.
Now a film of dust covered the polished boards of the floor and the antique dresser, but simply by closing her eyes Maggie could recall with vivid clarity the day she had first seen this room, realising now how much of its ambience her senses must have recorded and retained even though she herself had not been aware of it.
Now, coming back, she could only humbly marvel at the time and effort Marcus’s mother must have put into preparing this room for her. Then the furniture had shone with polish, its scent permeating the room, mingling with the elusive delicacy of the pot-pourri mixture which perfumed every room in the house. Then the curtains had been crisply fresh on both the bed and the pretty dressing-table beneath the window.
Her aunt had helped her unpack, talking calmly and gently to her as she did so, her fingers deft where Maggie’s own were clumsy. She had shown her which bathroom she was to use, half-way down the corridor, and then she had quietly and tactfully left Maggie alone in her new surroundings, whisking herself out of the door.
A huge sense of loss engulfed Maggie as she stood there caught up in the time-warp of the past, as she grieved for the grace and kindness of her long-dead aunt. She had known her for such a short spell of time and, while loving her, had not truly appreciated all that she was…had taken for granted the comfort and kindness which she had created within the old house. And now suddenly she was aware that all that was gone; that her daughters and her son had been cruelly deprived of her cherishing warmth.
Maggie crossed the faded carpet and stared out of the window, noticing dimly the faint blurring of the landscape as her emotions caused tears to fill her eyes.
She had not expected to feel like this, but now that she did she was filled with an even firmer resolve to find out what was bothering Susie and, if she could, to put matters to rights.
She strongly suspected she would learn that it was the threat of being sent away to boarding-school that was distressing her young cousins, and she could only sympathise with them.
She put her weekend case on the bed and opened it, and then turned to unlock the old-fashioned wardrobe doors. To her shock, the wardrobe still held her old clothes, and the sight of them hanging there caused a frisson of sensation to run down her spine.
The dress she had worn for her seventeenth-birthday party swung gently in its plastic cover. She reached out and touched it tentatively, and then the past and its ghosts vanished as she was suddenly struck by an idea to complete an illustration she had been commissioned to do, and she reached eagerly into her case to extract the sketch-book she took everywhere with her.
Within minutes she was so deeply immersed in her work that she was oblivious to everything else, even the opening of her bedroom door.
‘So you’re still up here. What…?’
Maggie’s pencil snapped as Marcus’s voice broke her concentration and threw her shockingly into a pose of frozen tension. She hadn’t expected him to invade her privacy like this, but rather to keep his distance, and it worried her that she should feel so disturbed by his presence.
It was because of the memories he evoked, that was all; memories of those times when she had welcomed his presence here with her.
In her frozen state of shock, it seemed almost possible that if she turned her head and looked at the bed she might see the ghost of her childhood self, sitting there cross-legged and straight-backed in the shadow of its hangings, begging Marcus to stay just a little longer, the whiteness of her cotton cambric nightdress a pale blur as she pleaded with him to stay just until she had gone to sleep.
That had been in the early days of her coming here…when her nights had been tormented by the nightmares which only Marcus seemed to have the power to hold at bay.
How often had he sat in the armchair beneath the window in response to her pleadings, reassuring her, soothing her…allowing a bond to form between them which surely in his maturity he must have realised would one day hold the elements of disaster?
‘What the devil are you doing?’ Marcus demanded, th
e abrasively harsh tones banishing her ghosts from the past and bringing her back to reality. She and Marcus might once have been close, but those days were gone, destroyed by…destroyed by her own folly, her stupidity, her lies…her love.
‘Earning my living,’ she told him crisply, tucking her hand beneath the pad so that he wouldn’t see its betraying shake.
She saw the surprise leap into his eyes before he shuttered his expression from her, and had a moment’s savage satisfaction that for once she had caught him off guard.
‘You’re an artist?’
She remembered how he had encouraged her interest in art in those early days, and wondered bitterly if he had known even then that she did not have the ability which would make her work outstandingly significant. Very possibly, if the look of surprise was anything to go by, and her earlier euphoria vanished, leaving her feeling drained and tense.
‘Of sorts,’ she told him calmly, determined not to let him see how much his comment had hurt. She had come to accept years ago that her skill would never be more than merely a very good second-rate; that was partly why she had chosen illustrating as her career. ‘I’m an illustrator, and I work with a variety of writers.’
She toyed with the idea of telling him that that was how Susie had found her, and then cautiously decided against it.
‘Why have you never come home?’