As she listened to her, it came to Lara that something deeply buried inside her friend was almost glad of the excuse to go home. While she talked, underneath the anxiety there was a light in her eyes that Lara had never seen before, and with startled perception she realised that she had never really seen Maggie herself before. It was as though the real Maggie had suddenly stepped out from behind the shadow-figure she had used as concealment.
‘You know…you look like someone who’s just been told they’re no longer an outcast from paradise,’ she told her softly.
Instantly Maggie’s expression changed. Wariness crept into her face, her body tensing, as though she was waiting for a blow to fall, Lara recognised. Panic flared in her eyes, obliterating the wariness, and she said edgily, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Am I being?’ Lara asked her quietly. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Maggie, but I think I can number on the fingers of one hand the times you’ve mentioned your home and family, and yet when you do…I wonder what you’re doing living here in London when you would so obviously rather be with them.’
She saw Maggie go pale as though she was going to be sick, her eyes betraying her shock, but, rather to Lara’s surprise, she made no protectively defensive rebuttal of her comment, saying only in a huskily tense voice, ‘I have to go back, Lara. Susie wouldn’t have written like that if they didn’t need me.’
Much as she longed to ask who ‘they’ were, Lara held her tongue. She could see that Maggie was perilously close to the edge of her self-control—another rather odd circumstance in a woman whose smilingly calm manner was normally such a feature of her personality.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll know how long you’ll be gone?’
‘No,’ Maggie agreed shortly, impatiently pushing her hair off her face with one of the narrow, elegant hands that Lara, with her more stocky frame, had once envied so desperately.
‘You’ll have to let Gerald know you’re going,’ Lara reminded her.
Gerald Menzies was the latest in a long line of men who had dated Maggie. Ten years older than her, he was urbane and sophisticated—divorced, with two sons at public school and an ex-wife who was determined that, divorce or not, she was still going to live in the manner to which Gerald’s wealth had accustomed her. He owned a small but extremely fashionable gallery, which was where Maggie had met him. Lara had introduced them, following an approach from Gerald to show some of her work.
Their affair, if indeed their relationship could be described as that, which Lara privately doubted, had endured for nearly ten months. They dated once or twice a week, but as far as Lara could tell Maggie felt no more for Gerald than she had done for any of the other men she had dated over the years.
No, Maggie had never been short of men willing to admire her, but as far as Lara knew she had never been deeply emotionally involved with any of them.
Indeed, at twenty-seven, they were probably the only two of their year at art school who were still not involved in a partnership of one sort or another. For Lara it was because she had ambitions that she knew were going to be hard enough to fulfil, without the added burden of a husband and potentially a family.
But for Maggie it was different. Maggie didn’t share her ambitions. Maggie was made for love, for giving and sharing, but Maggie held everyone who might want to share her life at bay. Carefully, gently, almost without them being aware of it—but keep them at bay she did.
‘I’ll telephone him once I’m there,’ she responded rather vaguely to Lara’s comment.
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Lara told her firmly. ‘Why don’t you telephone home and find out exactly what the problem is before you go haring up there?’
She could see that her suggestion didn’t find favour with her friend, and for a moment she almost disliked herself for making it. She could see that Maggie was struggling to find an acceptable explanation for her refusal, and, since there was something about Maggie that made you want to be kind to her, she found herself offering, ‘Or perhaps they aren’t on the phone?’
‘Yes…yes. They are, but…’ Maggie had her back to her, but now she turned round. ‘Yes, you’re right. I ought to ring.’
The telephone was on a small table beside the settee. She snatched up the receiver almost as though it was hot to the touch, Lara thought, watching her punch in the numbers with shaking fingers. Numbers which she had quite obviously had no trouble at all in remembering, Lara recognised on a wave of compassion.
She touched her arm, not really surprised to discover the tension of the muscles beneath the fine skin.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she whispered, but Maggie shook her head and grabbed hold of her, her colour suddenly very hectic and hot.
‘No…please stay.’
And, because Maggie was holding her so tightly, she was standing right beside the receiver when the ringing stopped and a harsh male voice said, ‘Deveril House?’ with a brusque impatience which, although rather off-putting, was surely no reason for Maggie to start shaking violently. The blood drained from her face and she slammed the receiver back down, holding it there while she shivered and trembled and the delicate bones of her small face stood out in proud relief.
Despite all the questions clamouring in her brain, Lara managed to restrain herself from saying anything other than a dry, ‘A rather formidable gentleman.’
‘My stepcousin,’ Maggie told her shakily. ‘Marcus Landersby.’
And then she dropped down on to the settee with her head in her hands, her body racked by such deep shudders that Lara was genuinely frightened for her. Whatever else Maggie was, she was most definitely not emotionally unstable, rather the opposite, and yet here she was virtually falling to pieces in front of Lara’s eyes. And the explanation for this so out-of-character behaviour lay, Lara was quite sure, with the owner of that enigmatic and grim voice.
Marcus Landersby. She tried to visualise what he might be like, but couldn’t. It was like being given a jigsaw puzzle with too many of the pieces missing to form any kind of real picture.
She left Maggie and went into the kitchen, raiding their small supply of drinks to pour her a restorative brandy.
Maggie shuddered as she drank it, her eyes blank with despair when she raised her head and looked at her flatmate. ‘Sorry about that,’ she apologised thickly.
‘That’s quite a talent this stepcousin of yours has,’ Lara commented lightly, watching the colour come slowly back to her skin. ‘Instant and abject terror…He wouldn’t happen to be related to Dracula, would he?’
Now Maggie was flushed where she had been pale.
‘I can’t talk about it, Lara,’ she apologised huskily. ‘I’m sorry…I must pack. It’s a long drive home, and I’d like to get there while it’s still light.’
So, for all that they had been good friends for ten years, Maggie was still not going to confide in her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Maggie apologised awkwardly a second time. ‘It’s just that…that there are some things that it’s impossible to talk about, even to as good a friend as you.’
‘I’ll help you pack,’ Lara offered, resisting the impulse to press her for at least some hint of what had happened between her and her stepcousin in the past to elicit such a reaction.
‘Thanks.’
ONLY ANOTHER few miles. It was ten years since she had left here, and yet nothing had changed. Of course, she was seeing the countryside at the best time of the year: summer. In the winter these hills were covered in snow, these small villages totally cut off. In the