A Reason for Being

by Penny Jordan

  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.

  As he moved awkwardly towards the door, he wondered grimly if he would find it as easy to sleep as she obviously did; somehow he doubted it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MAGGIE woke up early, conscious of the most unexpected sense of well-being and peace. She touched her face tentatively and then coloured up angrily. What was the matter with her? she asked herself cynically; did she really believe that, because for the first time in all the years she had been having the dream Marcus had heeded her cries, and had turned round and come back through the gate to hold out his arms to her and to hold her safely in them, it had actually happened?

  It struck her as an uncomfortable coincidence that the dream should change so dramatically on the very same night as Marcus had kissed her. Not the kind of kiss she had dreamed of receiving from him as a girl, either.

  His kiss had been forced upon her in anger and punishment and yet, for all that, his body had been aroused to passion…just as her senses had been stirred by the same sharp flare of sexual arousal.

  She tried to dismiss the thought, knowing that it was an admission she didn’t want to acknowledge. She had been so angry at the time that she had been able to ignore that shocking frisson of awareness and need, that almost lemming-like urge to press herself into him and to let herself drown beneath the savage onslaught of his mouth.

  She started to shake, tiny tremors raising goosebumps on her skin. It had been so long since she had experienced sexual desire, and never…never with that primitive intensity. As a teenager, she had been as much curious about sex as she was fathoms deep in her fantasy love for Marcus, but now she was a woman, and that fierce thrill of sensation she had felt had been as unmistakable as it was unwanted. As a girl she had spent many, many hours in this room daydreaming about what it would be like to be made love to by Marcus, and then, when her daydreams had trembled over the dangerous edge between imagining and fantasy, she had been so skilled at persuading herself that he loved her that when she lay on her bed, and gave herself to her daydreams, she could almost feel the sensation of his mouth moving on hers…the weight of his body…

  Her yearning body had known no inhibitions or barriers, and her reading had supplied her with a vast wealth of detail about the art of making love.

  In her imagination Marcus came to her in the cool darkness of the night, opening the door to her room and stepping inside. She was invariably already lying on her bed, clad not in the girlish cotton nightdresses which were the only nightwear she possessed, but in some fine mist of silk, through which the perfection of her flesh glowed and enticed so that Marcus could only stand and stare before reaching to touch her with hands that trembled…or perhaps she would choose to clothe herself in sumptuous satin, which slithered sensuously against her skin as she sat up in bed to question what he was doing in her room.

  In these fantasies, Marcus was always the instigator of their lovemaking, while she was the quiescent, all desirable, irresistible siren.

  She would get up off the bed and approach him, and Marcus, who in these daydreams was always wearing something far more romantic than the rather prosaic ancient towelling bathrobe he normally favoured, would come towards her, unable to drag his gaze from the pointed thrust of her breasts where they strained against the satin.

  As she had daydreamed, so her body, intensely attuned to her thoughts and needs, had reacted, so that it was merely enough for her to imagine Marcus looking at her breasts for them to immediately swell and harden, until her nipples did in fact make small pinpricks of desire against the cotton of her nightdress.

  As he looked at her, it was then that he would beg her to allow him to kiss her, slavishly adoring her in a way that the real Marcus with his calm and slightly cynical manner was hardly likely to emulate, and she, while enjoying the tiny thrill of pleasure his need gave her, withheld herself from him, punishing him in her daydreams for his refusal to acknowledge her love for him, to see her as a grown woman and not a child. In these daydreams, it was she who was in control…she who orchestrated what happened between them.

  Of course, after a delicious period of teasing, she always allowed him to have his kiss, and for a while that had sufficed, but as she had grown older, no longer sixteen but on the way to eighteen, so her need had grown, and her knowledge, and there were times when she ached to be alone in her room so that she could be with her fantasy lover—with Marcus.

  Now he was no longer content to press chaste kisses to her sixteen-year-old lips, and behind her closed eyelids she felt the heat of his breath searing her skin, following the path of his hands as they slid over her seductively clad body. If she really concentrated, it was almost possible for her to feel his hands cupping her breasts, his fingers eagerly seeking their engorged peaks, but here again she was the one in control and he the supplicant, begging her with feverish words to allow him to touch her.

  Of course he was desperate to make love to her, but for some reason, even though she had seen him on any number of occasions stripped to the waist, and even, on one never to be forgotten one, had been standing just outside his bedroom when he emerged from it wearing only a pair of very brief briefs, which had hardly concealed as much as Adam’s figleaf, in her imaginings she rarely visualised Marcus’s body. It had been her own sensuality which had concerned her…her own needs.

  Gradually, as she had drifted deeper and deeper away from reality and into the darkness of her fantasy world, her fevered daydreams of his lovemaking had grown more intense, and almost at will she had been able to conjure up the sensation of his mouth against her breast…against her belly, her body on fire with desire and triumph while he pleaded with her to acknowledge his love for her.

  Sometimes, in the early hours after these imaginings, she had woken up tense and aching with an
odd sort of pain and an emptiness inside her that made her wish Marcus would hurry up and realise that she was grown up.

  Grown up…Maggie sighed and shook her head grimly over her own folly, her face flushed by the vividness and sensuality of her own imagination. Now, of course, she knew that making love meant giving pleasure as well as receiving it. If she were to indulge in those daydreams now, it would not just be Marcus’s hands and mouth on her own body that she would want to conjure up, but hers on his. She would…

  Aghast, she caught herself up, her skin fiery with heat and shame. What on earth was she doing?

  In the village the church clock struck the hour. She had a busy day ahead, and there was little point in wasting time sitting here reliving the past.

  On her way downstairs, she paused on the galleried landing to check her reflection in the mirror that hung there. Her mouth no longer looked bruised, but it did look softer than usual, fuller…somehow very vulnerable. A fine tremor ran through her and she turned away from her reflection, determinedly refusing to dwell on last night’s confrontation with Marcus.

  The staircase was oak, and the balustrade had been carved by Grinling Gibbons. All manner of fantastical creatures peered out on the world from their wooden prison. Bunches of grapes and other fruits were skilfully woven with the arms of the Deverils. As a child, this staircase had fascinated her, these carvings exercising a spell on her imagination which had made her dream at night that the creatures were alive. That had been in the days when she only visited the house with her parents. She sighed faintly, touching the wood with gentle fingers. Dust had gathered on the carvings, spoiling the beauty of the wood. She wondered idly if Mrs Cermitage in the village still made her own beeswax; her aunt had sworn by it, and the wood looked as though it would welcome a good feed.

  There was no one else in the kitchen, and, remembering how little there was in the way of food provisions, Maggie reflected that a shopping trip needed to be very high on her list of priorities. She could drive to Hexham after she had dropped the girls off at school.

  She made some fresh coffee and, while she was waiting for it to filter, she started making out a shopping list. Although Marcus had always enjoyed his food, he had always been careful about his diet, and now it showed, she acknowledged, mentally visualising his lean fitness, remembering how hard and muscled his body had felt against her own.

  That recollection brought back others, and as she bent back over her shopping list her skin burned.

  ‘Mm—that smells good,’ Susie announced, hurrying into the kitchen.

  She was wearing her school uniform. It hadn’t changed much since she herself had worn it, Maggie acknowledged.

  Like the girls, she too had received her schooling privately at a local convent which took pupils of all denominations, just as long as they were girls. Girls worked harder and achieved more without the distraction of boys; mixed schooling often led to girls deliberately holding themselves back so as not to appear more intelligent than their male peers, and Maggie knew that the convent was justly proud of the number of girls who stayed on until the sixth form and went on from there to universities.

  Marcus and Sara arrived in the kitchen together, which meant that Maggie was able to get away with offering him a cool ‘good morning’ under cover of Sara’s chatter.

  Over breakfast, nothing was said about their interview the previous night. In view of his half-sisters’ very obvious delight at having her home, there was very little Marcus could say, Maggie acknowledged cynically.

  He obviously had a good relationship with them, but he was their guardian as well as their half-brother, and it was obvious to Maggie, listening to the conversation, that he was quite a firm disciplinarian.

  Neither of the girls seemed to resent it, though, and since it was equally obvious that he cared very deeply for them Maggie suspected that they had their own way of getting round him when they really wanted to.

  Both of them kissed him naturally and affectionately as they gathered up their jackets and schoolbooks.

  ‘Don’t let him bully you into leaving when we’re gone, Maggie,’ Susie warned her, grinning at him. ‘He’s had a horrid temper since he had his accident.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie told her lightly, focusing on Marcus’s shuttered face. ‘I’m quite definitely here to stay.’

  She saw from the grim way Marcus’s mouth tightened that he knew exactly what she meant, but would he also know how much heart-searching had gone into that decision? Probably not. He might even see it as simply a rather childish way of defying and irritating him, but in reality…

  In reality, despite her anger over the way he had treated her last night, inwardly she still felt the weight of her guilt. Inwardly she still yearned to wipe out the past and to share with him that closeness they had once known. When he smiled at the girls, she felt so shut out…so cold…so hurt…

  Horrified by what she was thinking, she tried to push her thoughts away, hurrying the girls with their preparations and rushing into an unsteady and rather muddled speech about her intentions of making an appointment to see the headmistress, and then going on to do some shopping.

  ‘If you’re going shopping, you’ll need some money,’ Marcus interrupted her, reaching awkwardly into the pocket of the tweed jacket he was wearing.

  As he did so, his crutch fell to the floor. Maggie automatically dived towards it at the same time as Marcus himself reached out to rescue it, his unplastered fingers brushing hers as they closed round the crutch.

  Instantly her body burned, shocking tingles of sensation racing up her arm. Her heart started to pound frantically, her pulses thudding out a message which she told herself was fear and shock.

  ‘I think I’ve got enough. We can sort it out when I get back,’ she told him huskily, quickly withdrawing from contact with him.

  Only when she was safely at the door did she turn to face him and demand rawly, ‘I take it I have your permission to tell the school that I shall be taking charge of the girls?’

  They had both gone out ahead of her and she could hear their voices ringing on the still summer air outside in the courtyard.

  Marcus looked at her steadily for a long time. She held her breath, half expecting another battle.

  ‘Would it make any difference if I withheld it?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Not to my decision to stay, no,’ Maggie told him, adding quietly, ‘but when it comes to what I shall tell other people…’ Her face went pale, but she faced him squarely. ‘I’ve learned my lessons well, Marcus. Too well to ever again commit the folly of lying.’

  She saw from his sharp intake of breath and darkening gaze that she had caught him off guard. A muscle pulsed in his jaw and she could almost feel the tension invading him as though it were her own.

  ‘Maggie,’ he said at last, ‘about last night…’

  Now it was her turn to experience tension, but she refused to give in to her desire to flee.

  ‘It didn’t work, Marcus,’ she said instead. ‘You can’t frighten me into leaving.’

  ‘Frighten you…’

  An odd look crossed his face, an almost yearning, anguished look that made her heart almost stop beating and her feet propel her four or five steps towards him. And then abruptly she stopped.

  Are you crazy? she asked herself mentally, and, turning on her heel, she left before she could do anything even more foolish.

  * * *

  IT WASN’T VERY FAR to the convent school, which was housed in a Victorian mansion some fifteen miles away.

  Maggie was a good driver. Marcus had taught her, and she was used to the winding country lanes. Even so, she was surprised to see how much the volume of traffic had increased in the time she had been away. However, they reached the school in good time. Maggie parked the car and, while the girls went off to find their friends, she hurried towards the main door to the school.

  Inside it was much as she remembered: the familiar smell of chalk and disinfectant. Black-robe
d nuns moved silently through the corridors, their faces composed.

  She herself had never experienced any kind of vocation, but as she looked at them now she marvelled at their inner serenity.

  The secretary’s office was a busy jumble of papers and books; the secretary herself, new since Maggie’s days as a pupil, smiled warmly at her and asked how she could help.

  Maggie explained briefly, and asked if it was possible to make an appointment to see the Reverend Mother.

  ‘I think she could possibly see you now,’ she was told. ‘If you’d just like to wait while I check.’

  The secretary returned almost immediately.

  ‘Yes, she can. If you’d just like to go through.’

  Both the room and its occupant had changed since Maggie’s day. Reverend Mother was somewhere in her late thirties, a tall, very attractive woman with an air of calm peace and authority about her.

  Accepting both a chair and a cup of coffee, Maggie quickly explained the position.

  ‘The two Deveril girls… Yes, I remember hearing that their brother had been injured in an accident. You say you’ve come home to take charge…’ She looked speculatively at Maggie. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not quite sure what relationship…’

  ‘I’m their cousin,’ Maggie explained. ‘My father and their father were brothers. My father was the younger brother.’

  ‘I see. So your cousin asked you if you could come home and take charge of the girls.’

  ‘My cousin? I… Oh, I see. Marcus isn’t exactly my cousin. His mother had been married before she married my uncle.’

  ‘I see.’ She gave Maggie an oddly thoughtful look. ‘Well, girls of that age can be rather difficult for a man to bring up on his own.’

  Before she left, Maggie had been given a list of the families living close by who had girls at the school, so that she could get in touch with them, with a view to sharing driving duties. She thanked the Reverend Mother for her help and made her way back to her car.