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As she turned for the door, her sight was blinded by the bitterness of her tears. All these years she had kept in the secret places of her heart an image of Marcus as the perfect lover. All these years she had rejected other men because they were not him, and now, shockingly, in one brutal kiss he had shown her how far her dreams had been from reality.
She found her way back upstairs more by instinct than anything else, suddenly realising she was standing in her bedroom without having any real idea of how she had got there.
She hadn’t closed the curtains, and outside the sky was that intense shade of dark blue lighting to pale turquoise that seemed to be a feature of the short Northern summer night.
She had no idea what time it was. She could have been in the study hours or seconds. Stars made pinpoints of light overhead. Her window was open, and through it she could smell the rich scent of the old-fashioned climbing rose on the wall outside.
It was a French rose, brought home, so the tale went, by the Deveril who managed to attach himself to the court of the young Mary, Queen of Scots, and planted, where it had eventually flourished, in the gardens of the original Pele tower.
The foundations of that tower still existed in the grounds, and when the new house had been built the new bride had insisted on planting an offshoot of that original rose against its walls…for good luck, or so the story went.
Her husband, who had little time for such sentiment, but was mindful of his wife’s handsome dowry, let her have her way just as long as the rose was not allowed to spoil the handsome proportions of the new mansion, and so it had been planted here at the back of the house.
It had been her father who had told her that story, Maggie remembered numbly. She closed the curtains, but left the window open. How clean the air was up here…she had forgotten.
She crossed to the dressing-table and switched on the lamp, exclaiming in shock as she saw how swollen and bruised her mouth looked.
As he’d tasted her tears, Marcus had sworn savagely against its softness. She could have sworn that when he released her he had been as shocked by his behaviour as she was herself. She had always had a good deal too much imagination, she acknowledged bitterly, as she used some moisturiser to soothe the worst of the sting.
If she bathed her skin with cold water, with luck by tomorrow morning most of the bruising would have gone down.
Even now she found it hard to believe what had happened. She had known Marcus would not welcome her back, of course. How could he? She had expected objections…reasoned arguments, sarcasm, and even a downright refusal to let her stay; but the last thing she had been prepared for had been that furious kiss.
She slipped off her blouse and skirt and put on her robe over her underclothes, gathering up her toilet-bag. The bathroom was only a little way down the passage, and she was hardly likely to meet anyone, least of all Marcus.
Even so, she was relieved when she was actually inside the bathroom with the door locked safely.
She showered quickly and then spent almost fifteen minutes doing what she could do to control the swelling that made her lips look so full and red. Her hand trembled just a little as she touched antiseptic to the tiny cuts inflicted by Marcus’s teeth, and her reflection in the mirror shimmered and danced in front of her as fresh tears filled her eyes.
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She refused to let them fall, tensing every muscle until the desire to cry was beaten back. She was not one of those fortunate women who could cry beautifully, and besides, she had surely cried enough tears for one lifetime over Marcus.
When she went back to her room, the lights were still on downstairs and Marcus was presumably still in the study. Her last thought as she drifted off to sleep was that, no matter what Marcus might do, she was not going to leave. Susie and Sara needed her, and she…well, she needed to be needed, she acknowledged sleepily. Good friend though Lara was, she was a very independent person, and long ago, during the early days of their relationship, she had teased Maggie so much about her yearning to provide Lara and her father with the kind of domestic comfort and contentment she herself had known in her aunt’s household that Maggie had taken the hint and ceased trying to ‘mother’ them.
‘Some women have an instinctive urge to nurture,’ John Philips had told her consolingly, sensing her distress. ‘And there’s nothing to feel ashamed of, no matter what Lara might have told you. For Lara, her career and perhaps ultimately one man will always dominate her life.’ He had smiled whimsically at her then and added, ‘If God chose to make us all different, who are we to question his judgement?’
There was that need in her, she recognised tiredly. In London she had subdued it in forcing herself to take a more practical attitude, but Lara still teased her that she could never resist filling the flat with flowers and their friends with home-made food. Even in her work the need was there, as nothing gave her more satisfaction than to see a writer’s face light up with pleasure when she had successfully captured the essence of their characters in her illustrations.
It had been a long journey home to this very special place, and now that she was here… Now that she was here, she fully intended to stay.
* * *
THAT NIGHT she had a dream. It was as familiar to her as her own reflection, and as it started she had the dreamer’s awareness that it was just a dream and at the same time the familiar terror of wishing there was some way she could avoid what was to come.
It always started in the same way. She was in a garden, full of flowers and sunlight. She was happy, filled with joy and anticipation, and the reason for that joy was the man walking towards her, and then suddenly, as he came towards her, he started to blot out the sun, and her joy gave way to fear. She put her hands up in front of her face, as though to ward off something she did not want to see, but he wrenched them away. And then he was shaking her quite violently, his voice booming and rolling like thunder as he demanded inexorably, ‘Tell him the truth…tell him the truth.’
In her sleep she moved fretfully, making small, incomprehensible sounds of distress, her forehead pleated in a frown. She tried to protest…to beg for mercy, for he was growing even more angry and her fear increased. And yet, when he released her and turned to walk away, she screamed after him not to go, running after his departing figure.
The garden was walled, though, and, while he passed through the gate let into it, for some reason she could not do so and was left standing there, watching him leave her, tears flooding from her eyes.
Marcus, on his way to bed, heard her crying and paused outside her room, listening for a moment before pushing open the door and hesitating on the threshold.
When he realised that Maggie wasn’t awake, he frowned and then approached the bed. She cried out something, the meaning of the muttered words unintelligible, but their anguish so clear that he flinched as though in reciprocal pain. He saw that she was crying and, as though unable to stop himself, he bent down and touched her face tentatively. Her skin felt hot beneath his fingertips, hot and soft. He had forgotten. He gave a deep shudder, as though his body was under intense pressure, and then, completely unable to stop himself, leaned over the bed, supporting his weight with his good arm, gently touching his mouth to her tear-stained skin.
As though his touch was a benison, immediately she stopped crying, her restless movements ceasing. Straightening up, Marcus stayed watching her broodingly, until he was sure that she had fallen into a deep and relaxing sleep.
Looking at her now, with her hair all tangled on the pillow, her skin innocent of make-up, she looked hardly any different than she had done as a seventeen-year-old girl: so many regrets, so much pain.
