Fate & Circumstance - A North & South Continuation

CHAPTER TEN - THE POWER OF LOVE WITHIN

CHAPTER TEN – THE POWER OF LOVE WITHIN

A stifled gasp rose from somewhere deep within Margaret and punctured the air, her deepening blushes precipitating the horror of discovery even as she stared at the horrified servant before her. Oh! To think how they must have appeared! Through the haze of her distracted thoughts she was conscious of John's arms, latched just now so possessively about her as if nothing would prise them free, falling away as though all the strength and tension of the bones within them had been ripped away and coming at just exactly the same moment as her own arms dropped like drooping sunflowers to her sides.

“Dixon! We were…”

She faltered awkwardly, in those moments unable to summon a way to coherently express her feelings at all. Humiliation came from nowhere and engulfed her, crippling her to such a degree that she could not bear to contemplate it. Her voice, usually so strong, trailed away and shame, more blighting than she had felt in the wretched aftermath of her impulsive actions to protect John during the riot, lit a vivid torch within her, even though it was only Dixon who stood before them. Dixon who was merely a servant.  Dixon whom she had known for the whole of her life. Oh! If only she could feel that such a person's opinion did not matter, that she could cast it aside as inconsequential. But the connection was too close, the bindings too strong. Dixon's disdain cut through her like a blade, as if her mother herself was standing there before her. Nothing could temper the absolute realisation of how shocked by her recklessness her mother would have been. How upset! She would not have approved of her being found in such an intimate, abandoned attitude with a man, whether he was her fiance or not; and Margaret found herself shrinking from that very image of her gentle, compliant mother as her characteristic battle spirit all but vanished like raindrops into the earth.

Her head fell forward, casting her beautiful face into shadow. John was still standing close to her, unmoving, silent. She found her eyes focussing upon the small buttons of his black wool waistcoat. There were some tiny specks of white upon it that she suddenly longed to raise her hand to and brush away, but she did not do so. Her arms instead remained resolutely by her sides. John’s laboured breath flooded her head and for an all too transient moment it was the only sound she heard in the tension of the room; those quick, shallow pants that bespoke so eloquently of the ardour that had held them so breathlessly suspended just a few moments before. His strong, broad chest that had just now been pressed against her body rose and fell before her, every dilation moving in harmony with her own rapidly beating heart.

“I can see, Miss Margaret,” Dixon said abruptly, her clipped tone blatantly conveying her disapproval in having caught them both in such an intimate situation. She had thought that their conduct on the train journey to Milton had been misplaced and Mr Thornton's claim upon her young mistress uncomfortably possessive, but this - this was altogether something else! She could hardly believe that Mrs Shaw would approve!

“What do you want?” John’s voice, brusque and peremptory, resounded through Margaret's head, his cheeks awash with the firebrand harshness of aggravation at having been disturbed so unexpectedly and intrusively. “I assume that you have come to the mill for a reason?”

Dixon drew herself up. “Your mother said to tell you that she has ordered tea,” she replied with disparaging primness, turning her contemptuous gaze in John’s direction, clearly singling him out as the instigator of her mistress’s present state of woeful dishevelment.

His eyes narrowed as if he could not quite comprehend the banality affecting the reason for the servant’s unwelcome presence. Tea!”

“Yes, Sir. Tea.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “She sent you here for that reason alone?”

“Yes Sir. And just as well too in my opinion.”