Читать книгу Four Christmas Treats - Пенни Джордан, Jessica Hart - Страница 20

‘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?’

‘No, that’s not true. It can’t be! There’s been some mistake,’ Tilly protested, white-faced. ‘Please tell me this isn’t true,’ Tilly begged, turning to face Silas.

‘Yes, there has been a very big mistake.’ Cissie-Rose laughed unkindly. ‘And you’re the one who’s made it, Tilly. Of course I saw right through you in a minute, Silas,’ she said. ‘Which is why I’ve had Dad’s lawyers doing some digging on you.’

‘Silas?’ Tilly begged. Why wasn’t he denying what Cissie-Rose had said?

‘Tilly, I can explain everything,’Silas told her fiercely.

Tilly stared at him. Where was the denial she had expected to hear? She couldn’t bear to see what she was seeing in Silas’s eyes. She wanted to run and hide herself away from the pain of it. She could feel herself starting to tremble violently inside. Nausea gripped her stomach, and a pain like none she had ever previously known tore at her.

‘How could you? How could you?’ She was still holding onto Silas’s hand, but now she released it, not caring what anyone else might think as she ran towards the door and headed for the stairs.

She had to escape from their mockery and contempt. She had to escape from her own pain and humiliation. But most of all she had to escape from Silas. She wanted to lock herself away somewhere private and dark while she tried to come to terms with what she had just learned. She would have defended Silas against all accusations Cissie-Rose had made against him, just as she would have given him her trust and her belief unquestioningly if he had denied what Cissie-Rose had said. But instead he had shown her with his plea, and more tellingly with the look in his eyes, that everything Cissie-Rose had accused him of was true.

She could hardly think or reason logically for the pain that was swamping her. What a fool she had been—to believe his lies about falling in love with her. And no wonder he had been so keen to talk with Art. A mirthless smile twisted her mouth. How ironic it was that she had been stupid enough, dense enough, besotted enough to praise him for his kindness. The pain tightened its grip, raking her emotions raw.

Silas caught up with her outside their bedroom door, refusing to let go of her when she tried to drag her wrist free of his imprisoning grip, bundling her inside the room and closing the door, enclosing them in what was for Tilly its tainted and treacherous intimacy.

‘Let go of me,’ she demanded.

‘Not yet. Not until you’ve listened to me. I know you’re upset, and I understand how you must feel—’

‘How dare you say that to me? You know nothing. If you did you would never…You used me. You lied to me. You pretended to care about me when all the time—’

‘Tilly, no!’

‘So it’s not true? You’re not this James Connaught?’

Silas’s mouth compressed. Why the hell hadn’t he followed his own instinct and his heart and told Tilly the truth earlier? ‘I do write as James Connaught, yes.’

‘And you also moonlight as an out-of-work-actor, hiring yourself out as an escort?’

The bitterness in Tilly’s voice made him want to hold her as tightly as he could, until he had absorbed her pain into himself.

‘No,’ he told her quietly. ‘It was my half-brother Joe who was supposed to come here with you. He asked me to stand in for him because he’d had an accident. At first I refused, but then when he mentioned Art—’

‘You changed your mind.’

It wasn’t in Silas’s nature to lie, especially not to someone who was as important to him as Tilly. ‘Yes.’

‘And when you accused me of hiring you for sex you were just testing the water, were you? Seeing how far you’d have to go to get what you wanted?’

‘That had nothing to do with my hope that I could get closer to Art. I was concerned for Joe. He’s young and impressionable, and I wasn’t convinced that the outfit he was working for was as above board as he claimed.’

Silas took a deep breath. What he had to say to her now was going to be the hardest thing he had ever had to say. He knew his honesty was going to hurt her, but the truth had to be told, so that they could move on from today.

‘That first night here, when you threatened to end our “engagement”, I did think in terms of establishing a relationship with you to ensure that I stayed.’

‘You used me,’ Tilly accused him, her voice flat and devoid of the emotion she was desperately afraid might overwhelm her. ‘You deliberately lied to me, pretended that you were falling in love with me, when all the time I meant nothing to you.’

‘No, that’s not true.’

‘You’re right,’Tilly agreed. ‘The fact that I was falling in love with you was quite important to you. After all, it made everything so much easier for you, didn’t it?’

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it. You can’t really believe that I would lie to you about loving you?’

‘Why not? You’ve lied to me about everything else, haven’t you? If you’d really cared about me, Silas, you would have told me the truth.’

‘I intended to.’

Tilly laughed mirthlessly. ‘When? After you’d got your story?’

‘I should have told you. I admit that. But I felt…I didn’t want to risk spoiling what was happening between us.’

Tilly could hardly bear to listen to him. The rawness in his voice made her eyes sting with fierce tears. He sounded so genuine, but of course he wasn’t.

‘As a matter of fact, I was about to tell you earlier—just before your mother interrupted us.’

Tilly frowned, her heart missing a heavy beat as it clung desperately to the fragile hope of his words. She remembered that he had been on the verge of saying something to her. She ached with longing to be able to believe him, but she wasn’t going to let herself give in to that weakness. Not a second time. Her was using her, manipulating her vulnerable emotions, just as he had done all along.

‘If you had really loved me you would have been honest with me right from the start.’

‘Life is not like that, Tilly. I didn’t know I was going to fall in love with you. I didn’t even realise at first that was what I was doing. By the time I did, it was too late. You’d already accepted me as what you believed I was. And, rightly or wrongly, I felt that our love was still too new and too fragile to bear the weight of the kind of revelations I would have had to make. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t plan to tell you everything. I did. I love you, Tilly, and you love me. Surely that love—our love—deserves a chance?’

Tilly gave him a cynical look. ‘You really think you can go on lying to me, don’t you? I may have been stupid enough to fall for your lies the first time round, Silas, but I’m not stupid enough to fall for them again now. You don’t love me. And as for me loving you—the man I thought I loved doesn’t exist, does he? You’ve still got the hire car here. I think the best thing you can do now is pack your things and leave. There’s nothing here for you now.’

Silas felt the shock of her rejection slicing through him, snapping the chain with which he had been leashing his own emotions. ‘Nothing? Then what exactly is this, then?’ he demanded.

He was still holding her wrist, and so he was able to catch her off balance enough to drag her into his arms and then cover the furious protest she made with the fierce heat of his mouth.

She wanted to resist him. She fought to do so. But something stronger than pride or pain was wrenching control of her responses from her, so that instead of closing into a tight, hard line against him her lips were opening under his, to return the full fury of his anguished passion. Somehow it was as though this was the only way she could show him the damage he had done—by violating the memory of what he had told her was love but what she now who knew was a lie.

This was all they had shared. Not love, not tenderness, and most certainly not the kind of almost spiritual emotional bond she had so stupidly deluded herself into thinking they had. Just this ferally savage physical need, poisoned with bitterness and deceit. Let it have its way, then; let it take her. Let it take them both and destroy itself as it did so, Tilly decided furiously.

Somehow he would break down Tilly’s anger and resistance. Somehow he would find the right way to show her that their love was strong enough to survive the damage he had inflicted on it and on her. He had to find it. Because he couldn’t endure the thought of losing her, Silas acknowledged as he tried to gentle the fierceness of his need and bring tenderness back into their intimacy.

He wanted to take Tilly and show her everything he felt—his remorse and regret, his pain and despair, his sorrow that he had hurt her and his reasons for having done so. He wanted to hold her in his arms, body to body, skin to skin, and to kiss the tears from her eyes. He wanted to beg for her forgiveness and to heal the wounds he had inflicted with the salve of his true love. He wanted to wipe away everything that had gone wrong and give them a fresh start. But most of all he wanted her to know that his love for her was hers for ever.

And this wasn’t the way to show her that, Silas warned himself as he fought against succumbing to the drug of his own need. If he took her now, like this, when she was acting out of anger and bitterness, he would be damaging them both. He knew that, and yet at the same time he ached to take the chance that somehow he could mend things between them by showing her physically how much she meant to him.

The fire was dying out of her anger now, leaving behind a void that was filling with pain. Tilly shivered in Silas’s hold.

‘Tilly…’

‘Just go, Silas. Please, just go.’