Spring Blossom (11 page)

He noticed as they rode that Alastair had
left several fields to fallow. He pulled back, slowing his mount
until Margaret was beside him. “Are these fields played out?”

Margaret looked around her. “I wouldn’t have
thought so,” she said and then shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps
Papa decided to leave them for another year.”

Hunter was surprised that Maggie lacked the
knowledge to answer his question. Although the horses appeared to
be her primary area of responsibility, he would think that Alastair
would discuss the workings of the farm with her, even in casual
conversation. It also surprised him that his host had not chosen an
alternative crop that would be easier on depleted soil. Few
planters could afford to leave fields lying fallow for many years.
And then Jennifer drew up beside him.

Hunter slowed his horse to match the pace of
the pony while the girl chattered on about several topics. His
thoughts, however, remained a few paces behind…with Margaret.

Soon they left the fields behind and were
riding through a pretty forest that smelled of evergreen and sweet
damp earth and wildflowers that grew in patches where the
over-story of the trees did not blot out the sun. When they emerged
from the trees, Hunter suddenly recognized the location.

“I remember this pond!” he said, smiling as
he turned to look at Margaret. “You must remember as well.”

“Why?” Jennifer asked, looking from one to
the other.

“It was one of Mother’s favorite places,”
Margaret said carefully.

Hunter laughed. “Your sister and I took a
little dip in this pond.”

Jennifer’s eyes widened with shock. “You
went swimming?” she demanded. “Together?”

Margaret began fidgeting with her reins, not
wanting to remember that afternoon when she had cried as only a
foolish child could cry. She knotted the end of the reins, picking
at the leather to avoid looking at the man who had managed to bring
back more memories in two days than she thought she could have
dredged up in a lifetime.

“We didn’t swim intentionally,” Hunter
explained as he lifted Jennifer to the ground.

“You fell in?” she asked while squinting up
at him with a grin. Then she turned to tease her sister. “Did he
pull you in Mag?” she dropped the pony’s reins and ran toward the
pond. It didn’t look very deep. She looked back at Margaret
awaiting a full explanation, then frowned in confusion when she saw
her sister refuse a hand down. Hunter shrugged casually and turned
away, leaving Margaret to her own devices.

“I pulled him in,” Margaret said, setting
the record straight.

“Aww, you did not! He’s too big.”

Hunter was smiling as he walked toward the
water and sat on a fallen log at its edge. “It’s true, monkey,” he
said. “She pulled me in.”

“Jiminy! Maggie’s stronger than I
thought!”

Margaret stubbornly remained mounted, but
she was watching her sister closely. “Don’t get too close to the
water, Jennifer!” she called and then was startled when Maribelle
began prancing. Maggie frantically grabbed the saddlebow to avoid
being unseated. It took her a moment to realize what had happened;
the mare had dropped her head to nibble the grass and the knotted
reins had slipped forward on the animal’s neck with enough slack so
that the mare’s forefoot had stepped through. When Maggie had
called out, Maribelle had abruptly lifted her head with the reins
now trapping her foreleg.

The mar whirled and began to panic when she
could not lower her leg to the ground.

“Hunter!” Jennifer screamed as she turned
from the water and saw her sister’s desperate attempts to stay in
the saddle while the frightened horse whirled and pranced with
increasing hysteria.

Hunter needed no more than a quick glance to
understand what had to be done. He was on his feet and running
before Maribelle’s first squeal rent the air.

He had no time to think of the consequences.
He circled the mare at a run, leaping up to drape himself over her
neck. Maribelle was forced to bow her head against his weight, but
she continued to whirl frantically. The mare's neck was almost
rigid with fright, but Hunter’s weight was enough to force her head
further down until he was able to push the knotted reins over the
animal’s ears. As soon as the tension of the leather and Hunter’s
greater weight were relieved, the mare stood on all fours, blowing
and snorting while he attempted to calm her.

Hunter then freed the knot as he stepped
around the mare’s head and looked up at Margaret. Her normally
glowing complexion had paled and her hands continued to grip the
saddle as she stared down at him, stunned by the thought of the
near tragedy that had been avoided by his quick thinking.

“Come down,” he said softly and reached up
to grasp her around the waist. Margaret did not refuse his aid this
time. When she stood before him, he ducked his head, examining her
eyes closely. “You’re all right?”

Maggie nodded her head. “Maribelle?”

“She seems all right. Can you stand on your
own while I take a look at her?”

Once more Margaret nodded her head and
Hunter reluctantly removed his hands from her waist. He dropped to
one knee and ran his hand down the length of the mare’s finely
boned leg.

The second Margaret’s feet were firmly on
the ground Jennifer ran to her and put her arms around her sister’s
waist. “You scared me, Maggie,” she said fiercely. After a moment
of no response, Jennifer tipped her head back, frowning.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Margaret managed to
say as she clutched Jennifer close. But the aftermath of the shock
had set in and tears sprang to her eyes.

“Don’t cry, Maggie,” Jennifer pleaded.

Then Hunter was there, placing one hand
reassuringly on Jennifer’s shoulder while, with his free arm, he
gathered Maggie close against his chest. “All right,” he said
quietly. “Maribelle is fine and you will be, too.” And when he felt
her stiffen against him, he added, “Come now, you can lean on me
this once, until the storm passes, Maggie.”

Somewhere within her a dam seemed to burst
as two days of pent-up emotions chose this moment to be released.
Margaret gripped his shirtfront as she buried her face against his
chest and wept.

Jennifer was looking decidedly worried, and
Hunter was afraid she, too, would burst into tears. “Take Maribelle
over to the small tree and tie her, monkey,” he suggested as a
means to distract the girl. “Can you do that?”

Jennifer nodded her head and stepped around
him, frequently looking back over her shoulder to keep a watchful
eye on her sister as she did as he requested.

“Put your arms around my neck,” he
whispered. He bent his knees and scooped her up in his arms before
Margaret could comply. For safety’s sake she was forced to wrap one
arm around him, but she would not raise her head, and her face
remained hidden against his chest, her hand covering her eyes. “My
brave girl wouldn’t be this frightened,” he said with conviction as
he sat on the log and settled her on his lap. “Would you care to
tell me what this is really about?”

Margaret’s initial response was to get away
from him but, after scrambling off his lap, her sub-conscious
sought to retain his comfort and she sat beside him. With her head
turned away so that he could not see her tears, she said, “I was
afraid Maribelle would be hurt.”

Hunter did not comment as she angrily wiped
the palm of one hand across her cheeks; she was clearly fighting to
regain control.

He said only, again, “The mare is fine.”

The silence stretched out between them until
Margaret finally demanded, “Why did you come? Can’t you see this is
hurting me?”

“Yes, I can see your pain, Maggie,” he
sighed. “And I want to understand why? I need to know why my being
here is so painful?”

Margaret sputtered something that was very
close to a wry laugh. “As I recall,” she said, raising her head to
stare out over the pond, “I cried the last time we came to this
place.”

Hunter quietly stared at her profile. “You
cried then for a very different reason.” He held out his
handkerchief to her, waiting patiently, willing her to go on.

“Yes. I remember. I was a foolish child back
then,” she whispered.

“Why foolish?” he asked, frowning as he
leaned toward her, trying to understand. “You thought you loved me,
back then. Love is never foolish, little one. It’s something
everyone desires.”

Margaret had collected herself by now and
the tears were gone when she turned to look at him. “Not everyone,
Hunter,” she murmured. “Not everyone needs love.”

She was then certain she had made her
desires fairly clear, but she had not anticipated one small but
revealing detail; the subtle catch in her voice when she had
spoken.

CHAPTER 9

When they arrived back at the house,
Jennifer jumped down from her pony unassisted, leaving the animal
to be cared for by others as she raced to the house to tell her
father and sisters about their afternoon adventure and Maggie’s
near calamity.

Hunter helped Margaret down from Maribelle’s
back and, once the two horses had been led into the stables, he
turned her, with his hand on her elbow, toward the house. “Your
father will want to see that you are not injured,” he said, “but I
want us to talk privately after you’ve seen him.”

Startled, Margaret stopped in her tracks.
“Talk privately? About what?” She raised her finely arched brows,
shooting him a cocky appearance, but Hunter was not fooled.
Something was seriously wrong; something had hurt her severely, far
beyond the scar she bore, and he was going to find out what that
something was.

“I want to continue the discussion we were
having before Jennifer interrupted us,” he said.

“Oh, you do! And if I choose not to
participate in this discussion…?”

“But you do,” he said, convinced, “you
desperately what to discuss something with someone, even me. But
you’re afraid.”

Margaret clearly resented his
high-handedness and tried again to be remote, turning away.

She was not to escape that easily,
however.

Hunter stepped in front of her, folding his
arms across his chest, his feet set apart, presenting a solid,
authoritative mean. “You have asked me more than once my reason for
coming here,” he said. “Why do you think I've come?”

Margaret very quickly decided she had
sparred enough; she was tired and hungry and wanted a hot bath.
And, in order to see an end to it, she snapped, “I suspect you have
bargained with my father,” she ground out. “For me!”

When she tried to step around him, obviously
done with conversing, Hunter gently gripped her arm. “Bargained?”
he asked in surprise. “You're hardly a side of beef.”

“I’m not even the stallion you say you are
buying.”

“All right,” he said, thinking it was past
time they did away with all pretense. “I want the stallion but my
main purpose in coming back was to see you. There was once
something very special about the young woman I met here…there was
something special between us. I wanted to know if it was still
there.”

Margaret laughed shortly. “Trust me, Hunter,
there is nothing there.”

“You haven’t given us an opportunity to find
out,” he said reasonably. “You set your mind against me before I
had even arrived. You have either tried to avoid me completely or
keep our conversations to business.”

Exasperated, Margaret raised her palms to
the heavens. “I discuss business when it’s required of me, Mr.
Maguire. And I like to be alone on occasion. Is that so unusual?”
she added as she wrenched her arm free of his grip.

He let her go, but not without a parting
comment. “It’s easy to hide one’s fears in solitude, isn’t it,
Maggie? When do you plan to face them?”

*

With only three days remaining before he was
scheduled to leave Treemont, Hunter was firmly convinced that he
wanted to marry Margaret Downing. She was still in there; the girl
he had known. She was still beautiful, more than beautiful and
possessed a sharp wit, although it had been hardened by an
‘accident’ he had yet to fully understand. And he loved her spirit,
or he would once it was rechanneled again. There was only one
difficulty…Margaret seemed to have convinced herself that she did
not want, or need, him…or anyone for that matter. He was, however,
convinced that was a lie.

Today she had exposed a more tender,
vulnerable side of herself. He was convinced that her aloofness and
her prim ways were merely a means of concealing her fears, of
protecting herself against whatever had hurt her. So now he had two
tasks. First he needed to understand her anxieties. Then he had to
convince her that there was nothing they could not overcome
together.

The opportunity presented itself the
following afternoon when Margaret was entering her bedroom, having
returned from a solitary ride, and Hunter was about to return to
the lower level of the house to join Alastair for a before-dinner
drink.

Margaret had not fully closed the door to
her room before Hunter strode in behind her, gently pushing her
forward before he leaned back against the polished door, sealing
them inside and, finally, alone.

“Here we are,” he said cheerfully.

Margaret whirled to face him, glaring. “Get
out of my room,”

“Ho,” he returned, grinning. “In the past
you have often violated my privacy.” He looked around, folding his
arms across his chest as he continued to secure the door with his
back. “If you want me to leave, you’ll have to talk first.”

“I have nothing to say.” She strode away
toward the tall windows on the opposite side of the room.

“Very well. I’m in no hurry.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she snapped,
turning to glare at him.