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‘Come on, you two, I’m starving,’ Susie announced, cutting right across her sister’s comments and knocking her own chair over as she stood up, causing it to crash noisily to the floor.
Maggie felt as though the breath was being squeezed out of her lungs. She put a restraining hand on Susie’s shoulder and demanded quietly, ‘Who did you think I might be madly in love with, Susie?’
‘Oh, no one special,’ Susie told her airily, ‘and it was a long time ago, anyway, when we first found out about you. I thought perhaps you’d run away to London because you were madly in love with someone and Marcus and Grandfather wouldn’t let you marry him.’
‘But Susie,’ Sara protested, ‘you…’
‘Come on,’ Susie exhorted, ignoring her younger sister. ‘I’ve got to go and wash my hands. They’re covered in biro. And so are yours,’ she pointed out to Sara. ‘See you downstairs,’ she called out to Maggie, taking hold of Sara’s arm and practically dragging her out of the room with her.
She was an idiot to keep imagining everyone knew how she felt about Marcus, Maggie chided herself as she herself went back downstairs. She paused on the first floor and hurried into her own room. The dusky pink silk dress she had intended to wear lay across the bed. She touched the fabric, and then looked at her reflection in the serviceable cotton blouse and skirt she was already wearing.
Why did she suffer from this foolish need to subject herself once again to a pain she already knew was almost unendurable? Marcus wouldn’t look any differently at her if she wore silk or rags. Marcus was far too intelligent, far too astute to love a woman simply for the way she looked. As the thought formed, it was followed quickly by another one.
If Marcus was really so astute, how on earth could he have fallen in love with a woman like Isobel, who was so shallow and heartless that she could contemplate sending two teenage girls to a boarding-school they had no desire to attend simply because she did not want the responsibility of them?
She picked up her brush and tugged it impatiently through her hair, brushing it so hard it crackled with electricity and turned to living fire in the dying rays of the sun. In the end she refused to allow herself the vanity of getting changed, simply exchanging her blouse for a nice blue jumper that matched her skirt. A delicate embroidered detail ran from the shoulder to the wrist, but apart from that the sweater was completely plain. Oblivious to the way its softness outlined the gentle curves of her body, Maggie went back downstairs. She found Marcus in the kitchen, looking at the bare table with some perplexity and irritation.
A feeling of pain and confusion swept over her as she watched him. This was the man she loved. She ached to be able to go up to him and put her hand on his arm, to look at him with all that she felt showing plainly in her face and her eyes. She longed to be able to wipe away the bitterness between them, to tell him simply and truthfully how very much she regretted the pain she had once caused him; but most of all she longed for him to turn and smile at her the way he once had done, and once again admit her to that small and privileged circle of those close to him. But that door was barred to her forever, and in her heart of hearts she acknowledged that it was better so, once he was married to Isobel.
‘I thought you said we were eating at half-past eight,’ he said harshly, interrupting her thought-flow.
‘Yes, everything’s ready,’ she responded, and then realised what he meant. ‘Oh, I thoug
ht we’d eat in the breakfast-room.’ Hot colour flooded her face at the way he looked at her. ‘If you’d like to go to sit down in there,’ she suggested uncomfortably, ‘I’ll bring dinner through.’
It occurred to her as she watched him limp painfully away that he was probably mentally cursing her for making him walk the unnecessary distance between his study and the kitchen. She also wondered worriedly if he ought to be putting quite so much of a strain on his as yet unmended bones. She knew she was fussing, but she ached for the right to be able to fuss over him properly, to insist that he sit down and not work so hard, to insist that he tried to relax so that those deep furrows marking his forehead would go away and the hard lines etched alongside his mouth ease, and, as the thought formed, she wondered a little bleakly how many of those lines she herself had been responsible for.
She had bought some plump Ogen melons while shopping. Their flesh was sweet and juicy, and, scooped out of the halved fruit and mixed with the sharp freshness of raspberries, it would make a refreshing appetiser for such a hot June night.
She saw Marcus’s eyebrows lift a little in surprise when she brought in the starter. Mrs Nesbitt and the temporary staff who had followed her had not bothered with the niceties of three-course meals, she suspected.
Her suspicions were confirmed when the girls’ eyes rounded with pleasure.
‘Melon…my favourite,’ Sara murmured rapturously, eyeing her bowl with the appealing greed of the young.
‘Mmm, good for my skin as well,’ Susie added. ‘All that stodge we get at school, I’m lucky not to be covered in spots.’
‘Some of the girls take meals prepared at home by their mothers,’ Sara told her guilelessly and, hiding a tiny smile, Maggie promised, ‘Well, maybe not this week, it will take me a little while to get settled in properly, but in a couple of weeks’ time we’ll have a talk about it…’
To her astonishment, Marcus cut in harshly, ‘Maggie’s going to have enough to do without pandering to the pair of you like that. If you want to take your own lunches to school, then I suggest you make them yourselves.’
Seeing that Sara was genuinely hurt and bewildered by his sharpness, and remembering the temper in which Isobel had come hurrying from the study, Maggie wished she had the sort of relationship with Marcus which would allow her to tell him tartly and in private that it was unfair of him to take out his physical frustrations on his two half-sisters. Instead she suggested palliatively, ‘Look, why don’t I make your lunches for the first month or so, and then you can take over? It will be good practice for you.’
‘For when we get married,’ Susie intervened mischievously, pulling a face.
‘Not at all. Everyone should know how to cook a basic meal, be they male or female,’ Maggie countered calmly. ‘Just as everyone should know the proper way to iron a shirt or a blouse,’ she added drily, looking at the twisted and unironed collar of the blouse Susie was wearing.
They had all finished their melon, and she got up to collect the dishes and go into the kitchen for the main course, but Marcus gestured frowningly to the two girls and told them, ‘Susie, Sara…give Maggie a hand with the dishes.’
To Maggie’s surprise, as Susie got up she sketched Marcus a brief, cheeky curtsy and teased easily, ‘Yes, oh lord and master. Thy will is my command…’
And, far from being annoyed, an answering grin of appreciation tugged at Marcus’s mouth, softening it dramatically as he muttered mock-threateningly, ‘If it wasn’t for these plaster casts and this crutch…’
‘You’d what? Take the dishes out to the kitchen yourself?’ Susie teased him again, laughing as she picked up her own and his dish and danced tormentingly just out of reach.
After that, the atmosphere seemed far more relaxed, but Maggie herself was too on edge to enjoy it.
She was pleased to see the girls tucking into the delicately flavoured lamb cutlets with greedy enjoyment, although she did have a very bad moment when Sara paused between mouthfuls to say innocently, ‘Maggie told us this afternoon that Mum used to make this especially for you, and that it was one of your favourites.’
