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He was looking at her with a rather odd expression…something compounded of pain, sadness and a fine irony that brought a lump to her throat, and took her three or four paces towards him before she realised what she was doing and stopped.
‘I know I’ve hardly given you any grounds to think anything other than the worst of me,’ she told him huskily. ‘But if my grandfather left the house to you, then I know that he must have had sound and just reasons for doing so. No, it isn’t that I wanted to talk to you about…it’s…’
‘It’s…what?’ he prompted her in a surprisingly soft voice that had her attention focusing on his face and noticing in confusion that his eyes were suddenly darker and warmer…and that the lines hardening his features had softened and that his mouth—normally when he spoke to her a grim line of disapproval—had softened and curled, so that… She caught her breath and found that she could not release it, just as she could not draw her gaze away from the fullness of that sensual lower curve of his lips, wondering dangerously what it would be like to run her tongue-tip along that tempting outline to probe delicately and teasingly at the closed firmness of his mouth until…
‘Maggie?’
The sound of her own name, raw and urgent, and yet muted as though by distance, made her wrench herself off the path of self-destruction she had been travelling down and focus instead on a spot beyond Marcus’s shoulder.
‘Where are your thoughts, I wonder, when you slip away like that? With your lover?’
He was so dangerously close to the truth that she replied almost violently, ‘No! I don’t have a lover. I…’
She broke off as he suddenly seemed to lurch forward and stumble, her one instinct to protect him, so that she ran instinctively to his side, supporting him with the weight of her own body as he grabbed hold of the edge of the desk.
Wedged close against him, her head almost tucked into the hollow where his shoulder joined his arm, pressed against the hard angularity of his hip, her hands holding tightly to his chest and back, the moment the crisis was over and he had steadied himself she was so acutely aware of him that, had she not been trapped between the desk and his body, she suspected she might have been the one to faint.
As it was, she was painfully aware of the musky, hot scent of him, intensely disturbing to her own senses. Strange that as a teenager her fantasies had never encompassed this unexpected eroticism which was already having a shocking effect on her own body.
His good arm, which Marcus had stretched out to save himself, left the desk to which he had clung, moving so that somehow or other she was caught between it and the side of his body. As he moved, she was pressed so tightly against him that the ripple of his chest muscles dragged the fine cotton of her jumper tautly against her own body, and the faint discomfort which had followed the betraying hardening of her nipples became a definite ache.
She glanced down at her own outline instinctively and nervously, unable to stop herself, hot colour stinging her face at what she saw. Her jumper was a fine summer weight one, and the bra she was wearing beneath it an even finer silk. Where once she would have been thrilled and proud of her body’s feminine awareness of him as a man, and all too eager for Marcus to be aware of it too, now she was hideously embarrassed and started immediately to pull away from him, only just managing to resist the impulse to cross her arms protectively against her breasts.
But it was already too late for such concealment because, as she struggled to move away, she realised that Marcus’s attention had already focused on the betraying outline of her breasts, which gave away all too plainly the fact that she had been aroused by her proximity to him.
Any hopes she had harboured that he might not have noticed were dashed as she raised her head and saw the amused and almost predatory male satisfaction in his eyes. And then, to her astonishment, as she struggled away from him, he said softly, ‘That’s a very pretty sweater you’re wearing, Maggie. That particular shade of blue always did suit you.’
She had to say something…to do something to salvage her battered pride, and so she said the first thing that came into her head and fibbed unconvincingly, ‘Thank you, but I’m afraid it’s not very warm. I feel quite cold.’
She gave a tiny artificial shiver to back up her fib, but to her chagrin Marcus responded with very definite amusement, ‘Do you think so? Now I, on the contrary, find it rather…warm in here,’ and it seemed to Maggie that his amused glance lingered very deliberately on her flushed face. ‘No lover…mm…’ she heard him add in a voice that sounded almost pleased, and as she turned away from him she could almost have sworn she heard him say under his breath, ‘What a waste.’
Somehow or other she managed to get to the door, but as the opened it, he called over to her, ‘We haven’t finished our conversation—remember?’ and she was forced to turn round again and face him. ‘You were about to say something about the fact that had you known the house belongs to me…’
Desperately gathering her scattered thoughts, Maggie tried to concentrate. ‘Oh, yes. Well, of course, if I had known…I would never have said what I did about it being my right to stay here…’ In a choked voice she added, ‘It was very forbearing of you not to…not to point out to me just how wrong I was, there and then.’
‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it?’ Marcus agreed with an irony she couldn’t miss.
‘If it weren’t for the promise I’ve already given the girls that I’ll stay, I would leave immediately,’ she continued in a stifled voice, and then, seeing the shuttered look in his eyes, she cried out desperately, ‘Oh, it’s no use. You’ll never believe me, whatever I say, will you? You’ll never forget what I did, how I lied…’ And then, too overwrought to bear any more, she turned and fled from the room, ignoring his command that she stop.
CHAPTER NINE
ONE week slipped by and then another one, and Maggie found herself slipping into a routine. In the afternoons, when her chores were finished, and before she went to collect the girls from school, she went up to the large north-facing room where she had set up her easel.
Oddly, when she bore in mind all the problems which should have prevented her from working, she found her imagination flourishing, perhaps under the stimulus of the views from her window. And, although she admitted that she herself was hardly in a position to judge, it actually seemed to her that the quality of her work had improved as well.
She had been back home for just over six weeks, and in many ways had come to feel as though she had never been away at all, a deceptive feeling and one which she was at great pains to monitor, when Isobel arrived early one morning to take Marcus into Carlisle where he was having the heavy plaster removed from his leg and its progress checked.
It was mid-afternoon before they returned. Maggie heard them before she saw them, the slam of Isobel’s car reaching her through her open window. With a faint sigh she put down her brushes and went downstairs. Isobel was no housewife, and would be no doubt expecting Maggie to appear and produce coffee and something to eat.
The study door was open as Maggie walked past it, and even if it hadn’t been it would have been difficult for her not to hear the raised voices coming from the room: Isobel’s shrill and piercing; Marcus’s deeper but every bit as angry. Maggie had just drawn level with the door when Isobel came shooting out, her face flushed with rage, her eyes glittering with venom as she glared furiously at Maggie.
‘This is all your fault,’ she hissed furiously at her as she swept past her. ‘If you hadn’t insisted on staying here to look after those blasted brats… Well, if Marcus thinks I’m going to marry a man who puts his family before his wife…’
Before Maggie could say a word, she stormed past her, slamming doors behind her and then starting the engine of her car with a lot of unnecessary revving. Biting her lip, Maggie walk
ed past the study and into the kitchen. Isobel was a very volatile woman, it didn’t need much intelligence to see that, but Marcus had always been very even-tempered. Still, being in love tended to arouse intense passion in the calmest breast.
She bit her lip harder as she tried to quell the misery that thinking of Marcus loving Isobel always brought her, and then stood indecisively in the kitchen, torn between wanting to go and ask Marcus how successful the removal of the plaster had been, and feeling that it would be unwise to intrude upon him until he had calmed down from his argument with Isobel. In the end she gave way to caution and went upstairs to collect her raincoat before hurrying out to her car.
