This chapter contains references to my North and South fanfic retelling, "A Mother's Final Gift."

MARGARET'S MOTHER'S DAY

Chapter Three

John and Margaret both sat on the bed, gazing into each other's eyes, her breath catching in her throat and tickling every strand of her nerves as she drank in his mischievous expression, one which was etched in every angular contour and dimple of that unreasonably handsome face.

'John…,' Margaret began suspiciously, her eyes sparkling with the thrill of the suspense. 'What is it?' she asked, for she simply had to know. Scrambling forwards, she rose to kneel on the mattress, ready to scavenge for her reward if required, since Margaret was as excited as a child on Christmas morn.

But John in his infuriating discretion, said nothing, not in the least bit flapped by her snooping, merely shaking his head and tapping his beak of a nose as if to indicate that this was the most secret of secrets and that the tight-lipped master would not be letting the cat out of the bag that easily.

Margaret pouted coquettishly.

'John!' she protested glibly, playfully slapping him on the arm. 'You know that I cannot bear surprises!' (A complete fib, one might add).

'Tell me, what offerings has my king brought his queen?' she demanded to know, her eyes impatiently searching behind him before taking John's large hands in hers and turning them over to corroborate that he was not stowing his hush-hush knick-knack thereabouts, which of course, Margaret knew he was not. But then again, perhaps he had secreted something in the folds of the bedclothes, such was her husband's sly scheming when it came to surprising and spoiling his wife with presents, since you see, for John, the giving of the gift was as gratifying as the gift itself.

Margaret's mind was racing with a flurry of possibilities, each new prospect as delightful as the last. Was it an item, an object? Oh! Could it be a shawl? That was certainly possible, given that Margaret was fond of furnishing her wardrobe with pretty and unpretentious layers, always keen to wrap up warmly against the bitter northern breeze that whipped up about her in Milton, nipping at her poor fingers and toes, the southern lass in her never quite able to acclimatise to the arctic conditions of Darkshire. Yes, perhaps John had designed and fashioned her a new cotton covering from the looms of the factory, a thoughtful gesture that the mill master had bestowed upon the mill's mistress before. Margaret's eyes scooted to the well-worn cream stole that lay regally on a chair beside her dressing table, the delicate fabric having been spun like strands of gossamer threads on the machines of their very own Marlborough Mills, the exquisite material then embellished with yellow Helstone roses, a generous endeavour that had been undertaken with painstaking care by the most skilled seamstress in the city, Hannah herself.

Or then again, John may have arranged for Fred to source and convey another multi-hued scarf from the sun-kissed shores of Spain. That could be it, since the sister knew that her brother had recently sent John a hefty parcel, one which Margaret had somehow forgotten to enquire into the contents of, no doubt an example of her, "baby brain," as Dixon would say. She most certainly did appreciate it when Fred and Dolores posted trinkets from Seville, a real treat, the cloth of that country so vivid that Margaret often thought that while he had been varnishing the stars with flecks of gold to make them shine brighter still, God had inadvertently spilt his pallet of paint, the colourants then dripping down from above and dyeing the vibrant goods of the exotic Mediterranean lands.

Margaret chewed her bottom lip as she pondered this. If her teasing husband was going to make her solve this Mother's Day mystery, then she was going to outwit the tricky fox at his own game by guessing correctly with just one astute deduction.

However, it could be something different altogether. Oh, wait! A new journal? Ah-ha, yes, that was it! Margaret nodded to herself. That was a most plausible prediction, given that Margaret had taken to writing with her friend Mary Smith from Crampton and their mutual acquaintance from Manchester, Elizabeth Gaskell. Over the past year, Margaret had been scribbling a few modest stories about her and John's life together to pass onto their children as keepsakes from their childhood. The mother hoped that it would turn out to be a special way for their baby chicks to feel close to their parents once they had grown up and flown the nest themselves, or indeed, to remember John and Margaret once they had passed away in years to come. It was a chance for them to always maintain a link with their legacy, a bond that would tether them to their heritage, a compass that showed the way home, no matter where they would go and what they would do in this new world that was evolving around about them with such inestimable momentum.

John, ever the encouraging husband, had fully supported this idea, insisting that Margaret sit opposite him in his study as she wrote, the man's bottom rising from his chair every now and again so that he might take a sneak peek at her work. It was proving a most diverting activity, one which was fast becoming a family venture, since Maria, a talented young author herself, had been helping Margaret with this sentimental exercise, a creative project which brought both mother and daughter much pleasure and closeness as they scrawled away side-by-side.

Margaret lifted a finger to her roseate lips and plucked at them, her eyes narrowing reflectively, a pensive look which made John smirk, his heart swelling with love for this quaint creature that he was blessed to call wife.

Finally, Margaret could take it no longer. Throwing her arms around his neck, she shuffled closer and placed a tempting kiss against his ready lips. 'Enough, sir!' she asserted. 'I cannot stand it; my mind is going quite mad with delightful imaginings. I must know!' she insisted.

John dropped his chin so that he could regard her with that disarmingly dashing smoulder of his. It was an amorous attribute that John had not even known he possessed before he had met the one and only woman for him, and since then, he had only ever wanted to smile at her, his fervent passion often affecting his face to break out into an unfairly dishy simper, one which left Margaret quite weak at the knees.

Nevertheless, once the delectable deity that was Margaret Hale had consented to be his bride, the married man had quickly found that even the slightest of his smiles could disarm his dear wife, rendering her soft, supple, and sinfully satisfying as she accepted his affectionate attentions. Therefore, it was now a weapon in his arsenal which the infatuated master employed with unapologetic purposefulness, most notably whenever he wished to knock Margaret off her feet and into his ready embrace, sturdy arms which ached for her constantly, a cavity that only she could appease.

'I do not have to tell you anything, woman!' he maintained, closing his eyes and leaning forward to capture her mouth in another moist and prolonged kiss. However, his efforts were thwarted by Margaret, who stopped John's advances by laying her prohibiting fingers against his lips, the man's eyes flying open in confusion. He watched as a pair of glimmering blue orbs sassily stared back at him and his wife shook her head in rebellion, those chestnut curls framing her face like a curtain of glossy tresses.

'No!' she persisted adamantly, folding her arms to signify that she would not budge. 'No more kisses until you confess your ruse, Mr Thornton.'

'No more?!' John echoed in discontent, his mouth hanging open in dismay. 'But I shall starve, wife! I stay alive from suckling the nectar of your honeyed lips. It is what sustains me. I shall not survive without it!' he implored, his tongue extending to lick the space between her nose and mouth. 'Have pity, I am just a poor man in love, after all.'

Margaret laughed and pulled away. 'No! Not so much as a peck, and certainly nothing to do with that wandering and wayward tongue of yours, sir!' she taunted. 'So, come on, out with it, my boy, I am all ears!' she ordered, ever the master's master.

John chuckled, and the rumble which escaped his throat was irresistibly rich, much like melted chocolate dripped over a scrumptious pudding. 'Well, first of all, Mrs Thornton, I am sorely offended that you thought I would fail to remember such an important day. You are, after all, the mother of my children,' he said tenderly, his nose rubbing against hers, much like an affectionate tomcat nuzzling his mistress.

'What do you take me for?' John muttered good-naturedly, his chords strumming a low thrum that twanged at the strings of her heart. 'Have I ever forgotten before? Hmm?' John tested, tilting his head enquiringly. 'I will remind you, madam, that I am a man known far and wide for his efficiency,' he sustained, a puckish glint flashing in his blue eyes.

Margaret furrowed her brow. 'No, but I…,' she was about to contend, stating that she knew his aptitude for organisation was unparalleled. But all the same, John was a man with an expanding business to manage, a court of law to oversee, a pregnant wife to aid, and a throng of Thornton pups scampering about his feet, all distractions to keep his already laden schedule well and truly occupied. Surely to goodness, acquiring her a gift was the very last thing on his industrious mind.

Nevertheless, Margaret soon trailed off as she watched her husband slowly slip off the bed and kneel down on the floor beside her, his impish eyes never once leaving hers. With his sleeves rolled up, exposing his hairy arm, John slithered it below the frame. Once there, John began to explore this furtive nook, one which was home to a hoard of buried treasure, including a single silken shoe, a volume of Keats' poems, a rag-doll with a missing arm, and a collection of Fanny's piano music sheets, all items that Lord Ruff, the family Labrador, had hidden beneath the bed, a den which he liked to slink under and sleep in whenever he could sneak past his slumbering master and mistress.

However, it would be unfair to blame the dog for stealing the last item on that list, the music, since John was the guilty culprit in this case, the brother having constantly confiscated, censored, and concealed his sister's song sheets when she still lived in the mill house. In a state of long-suffering torment, the man had struggled to spare his poor bleeding ears from the torture of being subjected to her strident singing and God-awful playing. John cringed to recall the numerous afternoons when he had been forced to flee his house after hearing Fanny's fingers smacking down and offending the blameless keys with tasteless and talentless gusto, the amateur pianist murdering Mozart and causing the composer to spin in his grave.

As John continued his hunt beneath the bed, snorting privately at the memories of his bygone bachelor days and thanking God that he was no longer alone, the master raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment as his exploring hand discovered something. 'What do we have here, then?' he declared friskily, his fingers curling around it.

Margaret stifled a giggle. Oh! She had been sitting above her surprise all this time. How masterfully sneaky of him!

With teasing and taunting unhurriedness, John slowly began to draw something out from his secret lair of mysteries. At last, once his hand had emerged from beneath the bed, a burst of bright colours and fragrant smells flooded Margaret's senses. With the air of a medieval knight offering a token to his lady on bended knee, John protracted an arm to bestow upon her a glorious posy of yellow, red, and white roses, the spray speckled with springs of baby's breath.

Margaret gasped.

'Oh, John!' she cried, a hand flying to her mouth in astounded awe.

'It may not be as grand as your crown, Meg,' John admitted, nodding to the regal garland of wild floras upon her head, a hint of regret to his reticent tone. 'But I hope you will still appreciate the humble sentiment, love,' he said eagerly, the man having faith that Margaret, ever his sweet and sentimental girl, would.

Margaret nodded and sniffed as a few glistening dewdrops of tears soaked her eyelashes. Of course she understood the gesture, a perfectly meaningful and romantic one. Letting her eyes scan the beautifully arranged bouquet, she took in every subtle yet significant detail of the floral shades and varieties, features which spoke of a personal and passionate history that was private between a man and his wife. Certainly, Margaret did not need to trawl her memory to recall that the relevance of these blossoms had not begun to bud during their marriage, no, it had been twelve days before that joyful union, during an unforgettable evening when John had come to the Hale's home for tea, a night which would set off a chain of events that would lead to their unexpected engagement two days later. Nonetheless, the happy occasion of their betrothal had not come before the pig-headed lovers had both inflicted and endured many a heartbroken misunderstanding, miserable muddles that were borne of their inexperienced mistakes. Nevertheless, with the shrewd mediation and wise counsel of Mrs Hale, the pair had managed to resolve their grievances, confess their feelings, and welcome their blessed reconciliation, mutually choosing to put all the hurt and humiliation of the past behind them and move into a future stably formed on the foundations of faith, honesty, and loyalty.

Goodness! Was that really ten years ago?

Margaret reached out a hand to lightly fondle the folds of the sleek petals. Red, white and yellow roses. It was exactly the same, an emblem of that unforgettable and bittersweet night many, many moons ago when Margaret Hale had first realised that she was in love with John Thornton, only to have him dash her hopes on the doorstep, with no one but the moon to witness her broken-hearted tears.

But the night had not started out so cruelly, no, quite the opposite. Even now, Margaret could picture John's embarrassed face, even after all these years, a look of sheer mortification when he had tensely and timidly proffered her the posy in her parent's parlour, praying desperately that she would accept them and not laugh at this painfully awkward, (and oddly enough, accidental), attempt at romance. Bless! ─ how endearingly uneasy he had been, the usually calm and collected businessman who was more accustomed to working with facts and figures finding himself like a fish out of water when it came to dealing with his restrained feelings.

Margaret chuckled to recall how charmingly nervous he had been. To be sure, the poor man had near enough walloped her on the nose as he thrust out the arrangement in a panicked jerk, a blunder that had helped Margaret to glimpse the coy, profound, and considerate heart that beat beneath that grave mask of solemnity, one which she knew was just a façade to protect the insecure soul trapped inside.

Dear John! Her dear, silly boy.

With an apathetic scowl engraving his face, the mill master had attempted to salvage the last scraps of his already depleting dignity, the prideful man in him struggling hopelessly to convince her that this was merely a meaningless act of northern civility, and was most categorically not a meaningful offering of chivalry, a prince trying beyond all hope to woo his princess as if in some farfetched fairy-tale, a woman who had already decisively refused his hand and heart.

But it had not been so, for as much as he had tried to pretend that he was unconcerned to see and speak with her, unmoved by her beguiling beauty and benevolence, it had been as clear as day that this modest act of affection had been a rejected man's shy declaration of steadfast love for the woman whom he had pined for with pitiful longing all these lonely months. Indeed, the flowers had been anything but hollow in their consequence, but rather, they had been a bold statement of John's consecrated commitment to the extraordinary girl who had by some unknown means, entered into his insipid life, breached the battlements of his bachelorhood, scaled the walls of his isolation and indifference, stolen his guarded heart, and taken his soul as her most willing prisoner. Yes, these three unassuming flowers, they had been John Thornton's diffident yet decisive act of dedicated devotion to Miss Margaret Hale, the woman whom he would forever worship, even if his unswerving love was doomed to be eternally unrequited and wretchedly one-sided, (or so he had presumed).

Yes, red, white and yellow.

'If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever,' John whispered, his voice hoarse, his resonant timber made rough by his overpowering reverence for this sweet creature who had chosen, for some unfathomable reason, to make his protective arms her permanent home.

Margaret's eyes trained up from the blossoms and John's heart skipped a beat as he saw the love shining out from those hypnotic orbs, pools of bluey-green that he could quite willingly lose himself in all day.

Margaret blushed, that adorable flush tinting her cheeks and chest, causing John to let out a small huff of satisfaction at her irresistible charm. 'How could I forget?' she replied, her eyelashes fluttering demurely.

Red roses for the passion he bore for her. White roses for the unblemished integrity of his intentions towards her. And yellow roses because of how happy he had believed they could make each other, if only she would allow it, and because he had instinctively known that yellow was her favourite colour.

John smiled nostalgically. He remembered too, of course he did, how could he ever forget that fateful night? Looking at the roses, he nodded. Yes, they were exactly the same, he thought. Well, almost the same, since the baby's breath was a symbol of something quite different, something which had come later, Margaret's first pregnancy. It had all begun when Margaret had been sitting in bed a few days after Maria, their firstborn, had been welcomed into the world. Despite her blissful happiness at the keenly anticipated arrival of their daughter, Margaret had been feeling rather exhausted by it all, constantly crying with no apparent cause and worrying that she would be a terribly inept mother. As the baby had wailed and Margaret had struggled to feed and soothe her, the new mother had felt utterly overwhelmed and had thought she would never learn what to do.

John, who had been trying helplessly to console his distressed wife and babe, had wandered out one morning before the household woke and ventured for a quiet walk so that he might clear his cluttered mind. As the sun had risen and peeked above the rooftops of Milton, the jaded husband and father had spotted a florist selling flowers from his cart, and John had brought home a bunch of floras for his girls, and amongst them, stood a freckled abundance of baby's breath, a sight and smell which brought Margaret some much-needed comfort and confidence. It reminded her that she loved their Maria with all her heart, and now, whenever Margaret was with child, John would bring them to her, time and time again, reminding her that no matter what doubts they confronted as parents, they would always face them together.

Holding the bouquet in her hands, Margaret dipped her nose so that she could sniff the sweet aromas that wafted up her nostrils, and in turn, John felt his passions stir at this sight, his heart pounding against his ribs. There was something divinely sacred about simple moments such as these that he and Margaret shared. In this instance, he thought of all the times he had conversed with Miss Hale, irrationally desperate for this intriguing newcomer to town to like him, only to despair when the southern lass raised her chin in supercilious defiance to him, that lovely little nose of hers creasing in disdain at his uncouth ways. But here, now, that same chin and nose were lowered in love, buried in his bouquet of roses.

'I have something else,' John announced bashfully, bringing Margaret back to the moment.

She grinned, flashing a row of pearly-white teeth. 'Do tell.'

But alas, John replied with his customary shake of the head, implying that it was her turn to guess yet again.