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‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered when he looked frowningly at her. She couldn’t tell him of that brief, shocking mental image she had just had of him trapped beneath the weight of the fallen horse…of his body shattered and torn.
‘That’s all right,’ he told her grimly. ‘As Isobel told me this afternoon, no man with any feelings could expect a woman to feel anything but disgusted horror at the thought of…’
‘No…no, it’s not that at all,’ Maggie interrupted him emotionally, reaching out to touch his arm as he abandoned his search for a chair and sat down on her bed instead.
‘No?’ he queried wryly. ‘What was it, then?’
Biting her lip, Maggie turned away from him. How could she tell him the truth? If she had any sense, she would get this interview over with as quickly as possible.
‘I’m sorry about your engagement…about Isobel,’ she told him quietly.
‘I haven’t come up here to talk about that.’
She focused on him properly for the first time, and realised on a tiny shock of pain that, beneath his outward calm, he was almost as tense as she was herself.
‘Maggie, just what the hell did you mean when you said earlier that I was punishing you?’
She stared at him, dumbfounded; this was the very last question she had expected.
‘I…you must know what I mean,’ she stammered at last, and when he made no response other than to continue to watch her in a way that made it plain he wasn’t going to let the subject drop, she said painfully, looking away from him and focusing on the bedroom window, ‘I know you must hate me, Marcus…for what I did…before. It was a terrible thing to do. I can’t offer you any excuse other than to say that…’ She paused, her mouth dry, wishing she had never started on this path of torture and knowing that Marcus wouldn’t allow her to stop now until she had reached the end; and yet perhaps in saying the words, in admitting to him the folly of her youthful feelings, might there not be some form of catharsis that would free her once and for all from her guilt?
It was enough to make her take a deep breath and turn to face him.
‘I was very much in love with you, you see…and I thought…or rather, I’d deceived myself into believing that you loved me in return…not as a cousin or an adopted brother, but as a man. When I heard you saying you were getting engaged…’ She gave a deep shudder. ‘Oh, Marcus, what can I say, other than that I think perhaps I was a little insane in the way that over-emotional and too intense teenage girls sometimes can be. You had given me no reason to believe what I did…it was just my own stupid, dangerous imagination. I believed you loved me because I wanted to believe it. I know how you must hate me for what I did, how you must have ached to make me suffer as much as you have done yourself, but believe me, I have suffered. All these years of guilt…’
She was almost wringing her hands, her body shaking as the words poured from her, her voice raw and so painful to the man listening to her that he actually found he had to swallow as though to relieve a soreness in his own throat.
‘I know I deserve to be punished for what I did then…but your engagement to Isobel… Believe me, I had no intention of destroying that. I know I virtually forced my way in here. I know you don’t want me to stay…’
‘Don’t want you to stay? Maggie, there hasn’t been a day or a night for the last ten years when I haven’t wanted you to come back.’
Maggie stared at him, her whole body frozen with shock.
‘What?’ she whispered in disbelief through almost numb lips. ‘But that’s impossible! You told me to leave. You…’
‘I lost my temper…my self-control…I couldn’t believe what was happening. I never wanted you to leave home like that, Maggie. You were such a child. I went frantic trying to find you. I lived for months tormented by visions of you alone… hurt…too proud to come back. I couldn’t sleep or eat for imagining what might happen to you, and your grandfather was too ill for me to leave him.’
‘Yes, I know. I saw the notice in the paper. I suppose I did that, didn’t I?’ she asked miserably. ‘Brought on that third stroke?’
‘No,’ Marcus told her forcefully, and then added more gently, ‘Oh, Maggie, what burdens I’ve put on your shoulders. No…I never told your grandfather you’d run away. I let him think you were staying at the vicarage until things had calmed down. I told him…’ He checked and then added, ‘That third stroke was inevitable, I’m afraid. I already knew that. The doctor had warned me just after he had the second one that it was only a matter of time. In fact, he lived rather longer than either I or the specialist had expected. And while we’re on the subject, he changed his will because he wanted to protect all of you…not to punish you. He left the house to me, but with the stipulation that it would always be your home. You were so young, Maggie, and Susie and Sara even younger…’
‘Yes…I don’t mind…about the house, I mean,’ she told him quietly. ‘It was just the shock of Isobel telling me.’
‘She had no right to do that,’ Marcus interrupted fiercely. ‘No right at all.’
Maggie stared at him. He was talking about his ex-fiancée as though he loathed her.
‘You’ve no idea what torment I went through wanting to come after you to find you and bring you home where you belonged, but I couldn’t leave your grandfather. And then I got your letter saying that you were all right, but that you intended to stay in London…that you were never coming home and that you didn’t want any further contact with me.’
Maggie sighed. ‘John made me write it.’
‘John?’ He looked at her sharply, a shadow in his eyes that in other circumstances she would have suspected came from jealousy.
‘Yes…’ Briefly she explained about her friendship with Lara and her father. ‘They tried to persuade me to tell them who I was and where I came from, but when I wouldn’t, John insisted that I at least write to you. He couldn’t believe that you wouldn’t be concerned.’
‘He was right,’ Marcus agreed grimly. ‘I was almost out of my mind. A couple of malicious comments and suddenly my whole world seemed to have blown up in my face.’
He saw Maggie’s expression and made a harsh sound deep in his throat, catching hold of her upper arms, his hands warm and firm against her delicate skin.
