Spring Blossom (8 page)

“You haven’t answered me.”

“I have.”

He shook his head. “Not honestly.”

“Mr. Maguire, a silly question hardly
deserves an answer.”

“Was it silly?”

“I thought so.” She started to turn away
again.

His eyes narrowing, holding her attention as
he set his own glass aside, he crossed his arms over his wide
chest. “I am interested in hearing more about your ‘sensible’
attitude toward men.”

Margaret’s complexion turned a livid, heated
pink. “It’s very bad manners to eavesdrop on private
conversations!”

“I’m sorry, Margaret,” he offered sincerely,
“but your conversation was hardly pitched to remain private and I
must admit to being curious.”

“I once heard of a boy who was curious about
a rabbit trap,” she said evenly. “He could have lost more than his
finger.”

He grinned in obvious admiration. “Well
done, Miss Downing.”

“I thought so.”

So she could still give as good as she got,
he thought with something akin to pride. “Perhaps I should return
to the subject of horses,” he offered.

She nodded her head stiffly. “Perhaps you
should.”

“Very well, then,” he drawled. “You wouldn’t
have an inkling as to what happened to mine this afternoon, would
you?”

“You really must excuse me,” she said coolly
and this time, with a hearty laugh, he let her go.

Margaret hurried through the dining room,
her eyes scanning the table to make sure nothing had been
forgotten. Only four places had been set. Florence and Jennifer
would take their evening meal in the kitchen. She made a mental
note to see that both girls went to bed after their supper as the
hour would already be late.

Entering the kitchen, Margaret silently
prayed that Anna was ready to serve the meal. The end of their
supper would signal the ending of the evening and Margaret had
already grown weary of being in the company of their guest.

Seeing Anna spoon small peas into a bowl,
Margaret asked, “Is the meal ready, then? Shall I take the platters
through?”

Anne did not care to be rushed and frowned
as she nodded toward the platter heaped with thinly sliced lamb.
“Take that and the potatoes. I’ll bring the rest.”

“Will you call everyone to the table,
please?” Margaret asked and earned a glare from the older woman.
“We have to do this properly, Anna,” Margaret insisted. “We don’t
want to embarrass Papa.”

“Always trying to please Papa,” the woman
muttered as she placed a shoulder against the swinging door and
disappeared into the dining room.

Margaret sighed wearily and lifted two large
platters of food before following. Why did Anna always have to be
difficult, she wondered? And the woman always seemed to choose
those moments when there was a lot to be done or a lot at
stake.

Sometimes Margaret thought that she alone
was responsible for seeing to all that needed attention at
Treemont.

Arranging the platters carefully on the
table, just as Anna was returning from announcing dinner, Margaret
heard the soft voices of Florence and Jennifer as they bade Hunter
good night. Her eyes scanned the table once again, noticing that
the meat fork was missing. Whispering a soft expletive, she turned
and raced back into the kitchen.

When she returned to the dining room, Denise
was seated and her father and Hunter were patiently standing behind
their chairs.

Margaret placed the fork where it belonged,
but before she could touch her own chair, Hunter was there behind
her, pulling it back from the table and waiting politely for her to
sit. Somewhat flustered by this attention, she smoothed the back of
her skirts with both hands then she gracefully sank to her place.
“Thank you,” she murmured softly, her eyes darting to her sister
even as she reached for the linen napkin beside her place
setting.

Denise smiled brightly and Margaret
frowned.

From his place at the head of the table,
Alastair looked at his eldest daughter and then at his friend. They
were seated to his right and left, facing each other, and he
wondered if the tension he could feel in the room would be a
breeding ground for indigestion.

“Margaret has been telling me you have some
very good stock for sale at the moment, Alastair,” Hunter said as
he speared a slice of lamb from the platter and placed it on his
plate.

“Indeed. We have several young stallions and
one older fellow for you to inspect,” Alastair said, accepting the
platter of meat from the younger man. “The older horse is the only
one of the lot we know to be true.”

Margaret’s eyes snapped up to her father’s.
“You’re not speaking of Pride, Papa?”

Alastair looked at her briefly before
attending to the matter of filling his plate. “He’s the only young
stallion we have at the moment that has been put to a mare.”

Margaret lowered her fork to her plate and
braced both forearms on the table edge. “You can’t mean to sell
Pride?” she asked anxiously.

“He’s to be offered for sale along with the
others,” her father returned firmly.

Maggie bit her lip, fretting. She loved all
the horses but Pride was special. He was worth a dozen of the
others and Treemont needed the foals he would produce. Surely her
father understood that? Still, Margaret knew she could not argue
the matter here in front of others. She would discuss the future of
Pride when she and her father were alone.

Hunter had watched the interaction between
father and daughter very closely. Clearly, Margaret was shaken by
her father’s announcement about this particular horse. He wondered
if her reaction was due to a particular attachment to the animal or
to the fact that a decision had been made without her knowledge.
Since Margaret gave the impression that she was in control of a
great many things, it would surely hurt her pride to have something
like this announced without her prior agreement. On the other hand,
Hunter could understand strong emotional ties to certain animals
and, as he stared across the table, the look he gave Margaret was
one of compassion.

Raising her eyes from her plate, Margaret
encountered the dark eyes of their guest and immediately decided
she had somehow betrayed too much of herself and her feelings. He
seemed to be offering pity and that was something she wanted from
no one; particularly this man.

Wanting to discharge the uncomfortable
moment, Margaret straightened her spine and smiled at her father.
“In any event, I believe we should reconsider selling any of the
horses to Mr. Maguire, Papa,” she said tightly. “He seems to
misplace them.”

Alastair lowered his fork and frowned.

Hunter threw back his head and laughed.

CHAPTER 7

Hunter now understood Alastair’s worry over
Maggie. Obviously the woman was riding roughshod over the household
and no one was stopping her. Someone should have taken her in hand
years ago, but then, just a few short years ago Maggie had been a
sweet, laughing, fun-loving girl. She hadn’t yet become Margaret
the ice princess and war-monger.

He mulled over what could have happened to
the Maggie he had known. She certainly hadn’t come to bring him
breakfast in bed.

Swinging his long legs over the side of the
bed, Hunter stretched, twisted his torso, and got to his feet all
in one fluid motion.

It was still dark outside as he padded
across the room to retrieve his breeches and a plain white shirt.
He wondered if any of the household would be about. Actually he
hoped to have a quiet moment to sip some coffee before he was
forced to face a whole herd of Downings. He had been pondering the
changes in his friend’s family for a portion of the night and now,
as he quietly left his room and traversed the wide corridor toward
the winding staircase he concluded that the girls, with the
exception of Maggie, had retained their pleasant and appealing
natures. The question that now remained was that of one small scar
and how it so dramatically affected Margaret’s disposition.
Somehow, in his gut, Hunter knew there had to be more to this
so-called ‘accident’ than he had been told.

He had seen much about Maggie the previous
evening that he did not remember and only snatches of the young
woman he had known. She was now stiffly in control, while she had
once been wonderfully carefree. She now smiled coldly, but he
remembered laughing warmth. She now tried to avoid him whereas, in
the past, she had continuously sought him out. But the wit was
still there and the intensity of emotions, as witnessed by her
fervor when talking about the horses. Her passions appeared to have
been channeled in a different direction, while once she had turned
to him with the hope of youth. She could obviously run the
household as if she had been born to order troops about, but he
sensed no happiness in her and he intended to find out why. He
wanted to see Maggie laughing and smiling and affectionate
again.

The housekeeper was in the process of laying
out a multi-course breakfast when Hunter entered the massive dining
room. He smiled apologetically at the woman who was busy setting
platters on the sideboard.

“My apologies. I hope I am not disrupting
your plans? I’m an early riser.”

Anna Crosleigh was a thick-waisted woman of
perhaps sixty who possessed an unpleasant manner. Hunter had sensed
that she disliked him during his previous visit and he sensed it
again now. She was unfriendly and unsmiling. He recalled Alastair
explaining that he kept the woman employed only because she worked
like a horse and seemed to like it that way. Well, as far as Hunter
was concerned, a good day’s work did not compensate for having to
suffer her rudeness. On the heels of that thought, he considered
that perhaps Maggie had been associating too much with Anna! But
the smile that formed on his lips was not one of humor.

“Things is ready,” Anna said before hastily
leaving the room.

Hunter was pouring his first cup of coffee
when he heard the sound of running feet and, sighing, he frowned.
Obviously he was not to have a few moments alone with his coffee
and his thoughts.

In the next moment Jennifer charged headlong
into the room, executing a well-controlled maneuver that prevented
her from bouncing into him or the sideboard. “Good morning!” she
chirped, grinning up at him while she reached for a plate. “Are you
up to facing the wicked Downing girls today?” She helped herself to
a slice of freshly baked bread and a substantial slice of smoked
ham before turning toward the table.

Hunter smiled as he took his coffee to the
table and sat at the place he had occupied the previous evening. “I
can tolerate some better than others,” he responded lightly.

The girl sat opposite him and reached for
her knife and fork. “I’m glad you get up early,” she said as she
began cutting into the meat. “Now we can chat.”

Hunter suppressed the urge to laugh and
raised the cup to his lips. “And what would you like to chat
about?”

“Well,” she drawled and then swallowed. “I
should tell you that Denise feels very badly about last night. She
told me so when I went to wake her this morning.”

“Denise need not feel badly.”

“She said they were not very polite; that
she and Margaret had another argument. But then, Denise and
Margaret are always arguing.”

“Really?” He raised a dark brow in
question.

Jennifer nodded her head and leaned toward
him, her scowl intense. “Denise is the only one who stands up to
Margaret,” she confided.

Hunter leaned back in his chair and drew a
small cheroot from his pocket, curious as to what and how much this
child knew. “Why is that, do you think?”

“No one else would dare defy Margaret. We
always do as she tells us, until her back is turned, and then we
let her go her own way.”

“Is that what you do, Jennifer? Do you also
let Margaret go her own way?”

Jennifer studied her fork as a frown cross
her cherubic face. “Sometimes Margaret is nice to me, but not much
anymore, so I just leave her alone. She used to be fun, but not
since the accident.”

Hunter got to his feet and moved to the
sideboard. As he returned with the silver coffee pot in hand, he
asked, “What sort of accident was it?”

Jennifer shrugged as he took his seat. “I
don’t know. Anna told me I was not to talk about it.” She chewed
thoughtfully on a wedge of ham for a moment, considering. “I don’t
think Denise and Florence know either. Some man hit Maggie and left
that scar on her face, but I don’t know why someone would do such a
thing. He must have been a beast, don’t you think?”

“
An ogre,” Hunter said
quietly.

“I’d bet you’ve never hit a woman.”

He smiled in return. “Never. Nor would
I.”

“I knew that!” she declared with confidence
before taking up serious study of her now empty plate. “I don’t
remember when you were here before but Margaret used to talk about
you a lot.” She raised her eyes to study his. “She was quite gushy
about you, really.”

Hunter laughed. “Gushy?”

A smile lit up her eyes at his reaction.
“You know…silly. Like older girls get sometimes when they talk
about boys?”

“Yes, I believe I know what you mean.”

“Time to get ready for school, Jennifer,” a
quiet voice announced from the doorway.

Two pairs of eyes turned in that direction
and Hunter’s expression turned to disbelief when he saw her. The
vision of loveliness of the evening before had vanished, only to be
replaced by a severe and unfeminine specter. Today Margaret had
pulled her glorious hair back severely and her attire was that of a
stable hand. He could not imagine anyone putting a rough plaid
shirt and stiff dungarees next to a woman’s delicate skin, but she
had done just that. And he was taking this fashion statement of
hers as a direct challenge.