Four Christmas Treats

Through the fierce contractions of her orgasm Tilly felt Silas’s final deep thrust as he joined her in the soaring ecstasy that was binding them both together and taking them to infinity.

Silas moved away from the window and looked towards the bed. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. He hadn’t been able to do anything since they had made love except go over and over inside his head the now familiar journey that had led from his first meeting with Tilly to this. He felt as though his whole life had suddenly veered off course and gone out of his control. How was it possible for him to have changed so much so quickly? How was it possible for him to feel so differently?

He made his way back to the bed. Not being within touching distance of Tilly made him feel as though a part of him was missing, that he was somehow incomplete.

As he slid back the duvet he realised that she was awake.

‘You know what’s going on, don’t you?’

‘I think so, and it isn’t something I wanted to happen,’ Tilly answered, trying to make her voice sound light and careless but hearing it crack as easily as he’d cracked apart the protective casing she had put around her heart.

‘Falling in love wasn’t exactly on my agenda either,’ Silas told her dryly.

‘Perhaps if we try really hard we can stop it.’

There was enough light from the moon for her to see the cynically amused look Silas was giving her. ‘Like we’ve already tried once tonight, you mean?’ he derided, causing Tilly to give a small shiver.

‘Silas, I don’t want to love you. I don’t want to love anyone. Loving someone means being hurt when they stop loving you.’

‘I won’t stop loving you, Tilly. I couldn’t.’ It was, Silas recognised, the truth.

‘This is crazy,’Tilly whispered, but she knew that her protests meant nothing and that her own emotions were overwhelming her.

‘Love is crazy. It’s well known that it’s a form of madness.’

‘Maybe it’s just the sex?’ she suggested. ‘I mean…’

Silas shook his head.

‘No, it isn’t just the sex,’ he assured her. ‘You can trust me on that.’

‘There can’t be love without trust. And honesty,’Tilly whispered solemnly.

This was all so new to her, and so very precious and vulnerable. Acknowledging her feelings felt like holding a new baby. Her heart did a slow high-dive. A baby. Silas’s baby.

Trust and honesty. Silas reached for Tilly. He was going to have to tell her the truth about himself, and his reason for taking Joe’s place.

But not tonight. Not now, when all he wanted to do was hold her and kiss her and feel the responsive silky heat of her body, taking him and holding him, while he showed her his love.

Tilly glanced anxiously at Silas. He had hardly spoken to her as he drove them back to the castle, and whatever he was thinking his thoughts didn’t look as though they were happy ones.

‘Second thoughts?’ she asked him lightly.

‘About the wisdom of returning to the castle? Yes. About us? No,’ Silas answered her truthfully. ‘What about you?’

‘I rather think I’ve made it obvious how I feel.’ They had made love again before breakfast, and now her body ached heavily and pleasurably with an unfamiliar, satisfied lassitude. She touched the comfortable weight of the ring on her left hand and then coloured self-consciously when she saw the gleam in Silas’s eyes.

‘I wish we could go back to London and get to know one another properly, instead of having to go back to the castle,’Tilly admitted. ‘And I can’t help worrying about my mother. It’s obvious that Art’s family doesn’t want him to marry her.’

‘My guess is that if they don’t manage to break them up before they marry, they’ll make her life hell afterwards. To be honest, I’m surprised she can’t see that for herself.’

‘Ma only sees what she wants to see,’ Tilly told him. ‘She can be very naive like that. I just don’t want her to be hurt. When her last marriage broke up she was desperately unhappy. It was the first time she hadn’t been the one to end things. If Art decides not to go ahead with the wedding, I don’t know what it will do to her. Ma’s one of those women who doesn’t feel she’s a viable human being unless she’s got a man in her life.’ Tilly smiled ruefully. ‘That’s probably more than you want to know. I’m sorry. But this is the first time I’ve felt close enough to someone to be able to be talk honestly about how I feel without thinking I’m being disloyal.’

‘What about your father?’

‘Oh, I love Dad, of course. But he disapproves of Ma, and they don’t see eye to eye. I’d feel I was letting her down if I told him how much I worry about her, and why. They were so unsuited—but that’s the trouble about falling in love, isn’t it? You don’t always know until it’s too late that you aren’t compatible. And sometimes even when you are it isn’t enough.’

‘Sometimes a couple meet and are fortunate enough to recognise that what they share goes far beyond mere compatibility,’ Silas told her. ‘Like soul mates.’

Tilly felt a fine thrill of the most intense emotion she had ever experienced run through her as he turned to look at her.

It moved her beyond words that Silas should say such a thing to her, almost as though he already knew how vitally important it was to her that the love growing between them should be perfect in every way.

And yet the closer they got to the castle the more she sensed that Silas seemed to be distancing himself from her, retreating to a place where he didn’t want her to follow him. His answers to her efforts to make conversation became terse and unencouraging, giving her the message that he preferred the privacy of his own silence to any attempt to create a more intimate mood between them.

She told herself that she was being over-sensitive, and that what to her felt like a distancing tactic was probably nothing more than a desire to concentrate on his driving.

The closer they got to the castle the more Silas recognised the dual agenda he would now be operating under. From the outset he had been totally clear to himself about his purpose in stepping into Joe’s shoes. He had told himself that deceiving a young woman he didn’t know, while regrettable, would be justified by the exposure that would be the end result of his research. But he hadn’t anticipated then that the impossible would happen and he would fall in love with Tilly.

Now that he had, his deceit had taken on a much more personal turn. He was now in effect lying by default to the woman he loved. He was lying to her about his real identity, the real nature of his work, the fact that he was using her as a cover to screen his own agenda.

For each and every one of those lies he had an explanation he believed she would understand and accept—after all, he had not set out with the deliberate intention of deceiving her. But the highly emotionally charged atmosphere of the castle, where they would be surrounded by Art and his family, was not, in Silas’s opinion, the best place for him to admit totally what he had done, or his reasons—even though normally his first priority would have been to tell her the truth. For that he felt he—they—needed real privacy, and the security of being able to discuss the issue without any onlookers.

Knowing Tilly as he believed he did know her now, he couldn’t ignore the instinct that told him that if his suspicions about Art’s involvement in Jay Byerly’s underhand dealings were confirmed, Tilly would at the very least want to warn her mother about the true nature of the man she was planning to marry. And if she did that, Silas thought it entirely likely that Annabelle would go straight to Art and beg him to deny the accusations being levelled against him.

Silas knew the last thing his publishers would want was to be threatened with a lawsuit by some expensive lawyer before his book was even written. And he certainly had no intention of putting himself in a position where the truths he had already worked so long to make public were silenced before they had been heard.

Tilly would, of course, be hurt, and no doubt angry when he told her the truth on their return to London, but he felt sure that once he had explained the reasons he had not been able to confide in her she would understand and forgive him. But while logically it made sense not to say anything to Tilly yet, loving her as he did meant that he wanted to share his every thought and feeling with her. It was for her own sake that he could not do it, he reminded himself. She was already doing enough worrying about her mother, a woman who in Silas’s opinion ought to recognise how truly fortunate she was to have such a wonderful daughter.

Something was on Silas’s mind, Tilly decided. In another few minutes they would be reaching the castle and the opportunity to ask him would be gone. She took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘You look rather preoccupied. Is something wrong?’

Her awareness of his concern caused Silas to turn his head and look at her, and to go on looking at her. ‘Yes,’ he told her truthfully, adding, not quite so truthfully, ‘The closer we get to the castle the more I wish I could snatch you up and take you somewhere we could really be on our own. There’s so much I want to learn about you, Tilly. So much I want to know about you and so much I want you to know about me. And, selfishly, I want you all to myself so that we can do that. I’ve never thought of myself as a possessive man, but now I’m beginning to realise how little I really know myself—because where you are concerned I feel very unwilling to share you with anyone else.’

‘Don’t say any more,’ Tilly begged. ‘Otherwise I’ll be pleading with you to turn around and drive back to the hotel.’

‘The first thing I intend to do when we reach the castle is take you upstairs to our room and make love to you,’ Silas told her thickly.

‘I rather think that we’ll be called upon to explain ourselves to Cissie-Rose first, and apologise for putting her to the trouble of having to drive back alone,’ Tilly warned him wryly. ‘She won’t be happy to see us together, Silas.’ That was the closest Tilly felt she wanted to go in telling Silas that she was aware that Cissie-Rose’s interest in him was sexual and predatory.

‘We don’t owe her any explanations. She chose to leave in a strop and abandon us because I’d shown her that I wasn’t interested in what she was offering.’

Tilly heard the hardness in his voice and winced a little.

Silas saw her small movement and shook his head. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy on her, Tilly. She doesn’t deserve it.’

‘I can’t blame her for wanting you when I want you so much myself,’ Tilly told him honestly.

Silas drove in to the courtyard, turning to look at her as he stopped the four-wheel drive to say softly, ‘Promise me something, Tilly?’

Something? Her heart was so filled with love and happiness she wanted to promise him everything. ‘What?’ she asked instead.

‘Promise me that you’ll always be as honest and open with me as you are now. I love it when you tell me that you want me. And, just as soon as we get the chance, I intend to show you just how much.’

‘Yes, poor Tilly needs to go and lie down. She started with a headache on the way back—didn’t you, darling?’

Tilly shot Silas a reproving look, but he was too busy convincing her mother that she wasn’t going to be well enough to emerge from their bedroom for at least a couple of hours.

‘Well, I’m sure that Art and the boys won’t mind keeping you company in the bar, Silas,’ Annabelle told him, before turning to Tilly to say reproachfully, ‘I wanted to show you my dress and the sketches Lucy has done for the flowers. Perhaps if you just took a couple of aspirin you wouldn’t need to lie down…?’

Tilly wavered. She was so used to answering her mother’s needs when she was with her, and Annabelle was looking at her like a disappointed child deprived of a special treat, making her feel wretchedly guilty. But Silas had reached for her hand and was very discreetly, but very sensually, caressing the pulse-point on the inside of her wrist. Her desire for him was turning her bones and her conscience to jelly.

She looked at her mother and lifted her free hand to her forehead. ‘Silas is right, Ma.’ she told her. ‘I really do need to lie down.’

Five minutes later, when Silas locked the door to their room and leaned on it for good measure, taking her in his arms and drawing her very deliberately into the cradle of his hips so that she could feel his arousal, Tilly shook her head at him.

‘I don’t believe I’ve just done that. I’ve never lied to my mother before…’

‘When there’s a conflict of interests I’m delighted that you opted to choose me,’ Silas teased her.

Tilly didn’t respond to his smile as readily as he had expected. ‘Loving someone shouldn’t mean abandoning your own moral code. Telling my mother I had a headache when I haven’t…’

‘What would you have preferred to do? Tell her that we wanted to make love?’

Tilly exhaled in defeat. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But it still doesn’t make me feel good.’

‘Maybe this will, though.’

Silas was teasing her with small, unsatisfying kisses that made her reach up for him and pull his head down to hers…

‘You remember that TV show Dallas? Well, I’m telling you that was nothing compared with the reality of how the oil business was in my father’s time. I started working in the family business straight out of school. My father said that was the best way to learn.’ Art reached for his drink and emptied his glass, demanding, ‘Come on Dwight, I thought you were playing bartender. Set them up again, will you?’

It was almost dinnertime, and to judge from his slurred voice and red face Silas suspected that Art had been drinking for the best part of the afternoon. He had greeted them affably enough when they had finally come downstairs dressed for dinner, and had then begun reminiscing about the early days of his family’s oil business. Silas, sensing that this might be the breakthrough he needed, had encouraged him to keep talking by asking him judicially timed questions. He suspected from the bored expressions on the faces of Art’s sons-in-law that they had heard all Art’s stories before.

‘I imagine you must have known all the big players in the old oil world?’ Silas suggested casually.

‘Sure did,’ Art agreed boastfully. ‘I knew ’em all.’

‘Even Jay Byerly?’

‘Yep. He was some guy, was Jay. He had a handle on just about everything that was goin’ on.’

‘I know that the shareholders voted him off the board of his own company in the end, but no one ever said why.’ While they had been talking Silas had filled up Art’s glass, making sure that he didn’t fill up his own.

‘For goodness’ sake, no one wants to hear all those old stories all over again. Poor Annabelle will be so bored she’ll change her mind about wanting to marry you if you don’t change the subject,’ Cissie-Rose exclaimed with acid sweetness, sweeping into the room in a dress that was more suitable for a full-scale diplomatic reception rather than what was supposed to be a quiet family dinner. ‘You really mustn’t encourage him, Silas,’ she added, giving Silas and Tilly the kind of posed and patently artificial smile that showed off her excellent teeth and the cold enmity in her eyes. ‘Are you really sure you’re over your headache, Tilly?’ she asked. ‘Only, if you don’t mind my saying so, you really don’t look well. There’s nothing like a headache for making a person look run-down.’

‘Annabelle, why don’t you girls go and talk wedding talk in one of the other rooms?’ Art suggested.

Tilly suspected that he had been enjoying basking in the attention of Silas’s good-mannered social questions, and that he wasn’t very pleased about Cissie-Rose’s interruption. Although he wasn’t exactly slurring his words, he had had what to Tilly seemed to be rather a lot to drink. Her doubts about the wisdom of her mother marrying him were growing by the hour.

‘Silas is just being polite, Dad. Why on earth should he be interested in what happened over thirty years ago? Unless, of course, someone’s thinking of making a film of Jay’s life and you’re hoping to be invited to try for the lead part, Silas.’

Cissie-Rose’s claws were definitely unsheathed now, Tilly recognised. The other woman’s cattiness made her want to place herself physically in front of Silas to protect him. Although the thought of Silas needing anyone defending him, least of all her, made her smile to herself.

‘Ignore her, Silas,’Art instructed, giving his daughter a baleful look. ‘You’re right. There was a scandal Jay was involved in that threatened to blow him and the business sky-high. Luckily a few of the big old boys called in some of their debts and managed to get it all quietened down. Jay had been buying up oil leases and then—’

‘Daddy, I don’t think you should say any more,’ Cissie-Rose interrupted her father sharply. ‘It’s all in the past now, anyway. Annabelle, I have to say that those sketches you were showing me for the flowers are just so pretty.’

It wasn’t worth pushing Art any further, Silas decided. There would still be plenty of opportunity for him to pick up their conversation between now and the wedding on New Year’s Eve. All he had to do was to make sure he mixed Art a jugful of extra-strong whiskey sour.

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘CHRISTMAS EVE and I’ve already had the best present I could ever have,’ Tilly told Silas emotionally.

They were in their bedroom getting ready for dinner, having spent the afternoon outside in the snowy garden playing with the children. Or rather Tilly had played with them while Silas had watched.

‘It’s kind of you to be so patient with Art, Silas. His face positively lights up when you walk in and let him tell his stories. He must be exaggerating some of them, though.’ Tilly gave a small shiver. ‘It seems wrong that men like Art should have had that kind of power and abused it the way they did.’

‘Things are different now,’ Silas agreed. ‘But as for Art exaggerating what happened in the past…’ He paused, all too aware of what he knew that Tilly did not. ‘If anything,’ he told her heavily, ‘I suspect that Art is using rather a lot of whitewash to conceal some of what went on. Of course most of those who perpetrated the worst of the crimes are no longer around, but that doesn’t mean the world doesn’t need to know about them.’

‘I’m so lucky to have met you,’ Tilly said spontaneously. As he looked at her Silas felt his heart turn over inside his chest slowly and achingly as his love for her overwhelmed him. He reached for her hand, entwining his fingers with hers. He still found it hard at times to come to terms with the speed with which his life had changed so dramatically. And all because of one person.

‘You’re a saint for putting up with everything the way you have.’

‘A saint! That’s the last thing I am. In fact…’ He had to tell her the truth, Silas decided, even though he knew that in doing so he would be subjecting her to divided loyalties. He was finding the deceit that he knew lay between them increasingly burdensome, plus he wanted to share his work with her now that he recognised that she was the most vital and important part of his life. Not involving her in what he was thinking and planning somehow felt like being deprived of the ability to work the way he wanted to do. He wanted her input and her support. He wanted her to know, to understand, and to accept what he was doing and why. He wanted, Silas recognised, to lay not just his heart but his very soul at her feet, so that she could know his every strength and vulnerability.

‘Tilly, there’s something—’he began, and then had to stop when there was a brief knock on their bedroom door and they both heard Tilly’s mother calling out anxiously.

‘Are you ready yet?’

‘Almost,’ Tilly answered, giving Silas a rueful look as she slipped from his arms and went reluctantly to open the door.

‘Oh, you must hurry, then—because Cissie-Rose has just rung through to our room to say she wants us all downstairs now, because she’s got something important to say. Do you think she could possibly be expecting another baby, Tilly? Wouldn’t that be lovely? Oh, you both look fine. Come on, we may as well go down together. Art’s already down…’

‘You said we’d have the buffet at seven,’ Tilly reminded her. ‘It’s not even six yet.’ She had been looking forward to having some private time with Silas before they had to join the others, but it was obvious that her mother wasn’t going to leave without them.

He would tell Tilly later, when they came back up to their room, Silas promised himself. Preferably in bed, when he was holding her in his arms.

The familiar ache of his body for hers began to speed through him.

As they descended the stairs Tilly could hear the sound of familiar Christmas carols filling the hallway.

‘I remembered to bring a CD of carols with me,’ Annabelle told Tilly proudly. ‘You used to love them so much when you were a little girl.’

The children were all in one of the smaller salons, watching television and trying to guess what Santa would be bringing them.

‘There you are, Silas.’ Art’s voice boomed out. ‘You’re already a couple of drinks down on us.’

Tilly shook her head when Dwight offered to make her a drink, knowing from previous experience how strong it would be.

‘So what’s this news Cissie-Rose has for us, Dwight?’ Annabelle asked excitedly. ‘And where is she?’

‘She’s upstairs, taking a call.’

‘If I know Cissie she’s probably checking up on Hal to make sure he’s got the wording of our pre-nup right,’ Art joked.

Tilly looked anxiously at her mother, worrying about how she might be taking this less than romantic comment from her husband-to-be.

‘Sorry to have to keep you all waiting, but I just wanted to make sure I had all my facts right before I came down.’ Cissie-Rose paused dramatically in the doorway, and then slowly made her way over to Tilly. ‘That’s a mighty pretty engagement ring you’re wearing, Tilly. Pity that neither it nor your engagement is real, though. In fact there isn’t much that is real about you—is there, Silas? You see, Silas here isn’t Tilly’s fiancé at all. Are you, Silas?’

White-faced, Tilly reached for Silas’s hand and drew on the warm comfort of its reassuring grip. This was awful—dreadful. And she could hardly bear to look at her mother. There was no doubt in Tilly’s mind that this was Cissie-Rose’s revenge on them for Silas’s rejection. But Tilly still had no idea how on earth she had found out about them.

‘Tilly thinks that Silas is an out-of-work actor she hired to come here and pretend to be her fiancé, so that we’d think she was a clean-living girl who was about to get married. Poor Tilly,’Cissie mocked, giving her a malicious smile. ‘I really do feel sorry for you. Look at you, clinging on to him. How sweet. But I’m afraid there’s worse to come. Isn’t there, Silas?You see, Silas has been deceiving us all about the true purpose of his being here.’

‘You don’t understand,’Tilly protested fiercely. ‘Yes, I admit that I originally hired Silas as an escort to accompany me here. But since we’ve been here…’ She turned to Silas and gave him an anxious, pleading look that twisted his heart with pain.

‘Since you’ve been here what?’ Cissie-Rose taunted her triumphantly. ‘He’s taken you to bed and told you he wants you? Poor Tilly. I’m afraid it is you who don’t understand. Because if that is the case then he’s been lying to you as well as to us, and he’s made a complete fool of you. There’s only one thing he wants—only one reason he’s come here—and it’s got nothing to do with wanting you, has it, Silas? Or should I call you James? You see, everyone, this is James Silas Connaught.’

Tilly, who was battling to take in what Cissie-Rose was saying, saw the swift look of recognition Art and Dwight were exchanging, and something as cold as death started to creep through her veins like poison.

‘Yes,’ Cissie-Rose confirmed. ‘The journalist who has been trying to get an interview with Dad for the best part of a year. That’s right, isn’t it, Silas? He must have thought it was his lucky day when you gave him the opportunity to use you, Tilly. Of course he took you to bed. He’s known for being a journalist who always gets his story—aren’t you, Silas?’