The Right Bride?

by Sara Craven

  Oh, heavens. What was to stop him making capital in any way he could from what she had so unintentionally revealed? She doubted that after tonight’s little episode Tony would feel any loyalty to her.

  Needing action of any kind, she went and brushed her teeth. Then ran a comb through her hair. But she was so unable to settle she began to pace up and down. For herself she could not care less what Tony told his press contacts. For Silas…She could not think. The whole thing was a nightmare.

  She continued to pace up and down, but as the hands on her watch neared half past eleven it came to her that there was only one thing she could possibly do. She had to warn Silas! There was no way around it; she had to warn him.

  Hoping that he was in—and for all his statement that he took his vows seriously it would not stop him from living it up somewhere—Colly went and found his home number.

  When the phone was not answered straight away she was sure he must be out. But then, doing nothing for the agitated mass she was inside, the phone was picked up and, ‘Livingstone,’ he answered.

  ‘It—it’s Colly,’ she stammered.

  Silence for a moment, before, ‘You make a habit of telephoning men when they’ve gone to bed for the night?’ he questioned tersely.

  And she was glad he was being vile. It made some—not all, but some—of her nerves subside. ‘I have it on good authority that you’re in bed alone!’ she retorted snappily. But was immediately unsure, sick inside with jealousy, and nervous again. ‘You are, aren’t you? I m-mean, I haven’t…?’ She could not finish.

  An agonising moment or two of silence followed, until, ‘You haven’t,’ Silas confirmed, and his tone thawing a little, ‘To be quite honest, petal, I have to get to the airport for a business trip very soon—I wouldn’t mind a few hours’ sleep before then.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry—I’m sorry,’ she apologised. But, as the import of what he had just said hit her, ‘You’re going away!’ she cried.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself—I’m coming back.’

  Smug pig. ‘This isn’t funny!’ she exclaimed furiously.

  ‘Presumably you’re going to get to the point of this call—before my plane takes off.’

  ‘You weren’t smacked enough as a child!’ she flew, feeling very much like redressing the balance had he been near.

  His tone changed again, was warmer again. ‘You’re in a tizz about something?’ he guessed.

  Colly promptly folded. ‘Oh, Silas,’ she mourned. ‘I’ve done something so dreadful I hardly know how to tell you.’

  ‘Sounds—serious,’ he commented.

  ‘It is. It—um—won’t wait until you get back.’

  Silas was decisive. ‘I’d better come over.’

  ‘No, no,’ she protested. ‘I’ve enough guilt without adding any more. You get what sleep you can. I’ll come to you.’ She put the phone down before he should persuade her differently.

  A short while later she was ringing the doorbell to his apartment, and still had not been able to find a way of telling him what she knew she urgently had to share with him.

  He was wearing shirt and trousers when he opened the door. ‘You needn’t have dressed,’ came tripping off her tongue, she having assumed that, having got up from his bed, he would be robe-clad.

  ‘Now, there’s an invitation,’ he said dryly, leading the way to the drawing room.

  She gave him a speaking look, but as he indicated she take a seat and then took a seat facing her, so Colly saw the opening that she needed. ‘That’s the thing about invitations,’ she began, searching for words and finding a few, ‘I invited a friend to dinner tonight—and got things very badly wrong.’

  ‘Tony Andrews?’ Silas guessed, a hard kind of glint all at once there in his eyes.

  ‘I do know other men,’ she stated, a touch miffed that he seemed to think Tony was the only man who asked her out. But she was in the wrong here and she knew it; this was not the time to get shirty. ‘But, yes, Tony.’

  ‘Where did you eat?’ Silas wanted to know.

  She suspected he already knew. ‘At the apartment,’ she owned.

  ‘My grandfather’s apartment?’ he asked toughly.

  ‘It’s where I live!’ she snapped.

  ‘Andrews often dines there with you?’

  There was no let-up on Silas’s toughness, she noted. But after what she had done she wasn’t in a position to take exception to anything. ‘It was the first—and the last—time,’ she confessed.

  Silas had an alert look in his eyes, but his tough tone was fading as he commented, ‘It sounds as if you sent him home with a flea in his ear?’

  ‘I—it…not quite. But—’ on reflection ‘—similar.’ Then suddenly she wanted this all said and done. If Silas was going to rain coals of fury down on her head, and she was sure he would go ballistic, then the sooner it was done the better. ‘Well, the thing is, I—er—invited him to dinner out of friendship. But he—um—seemed to think I’d invited him for an—er—intimate dinner, and…’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you that dinner for two at your place might be construed as a touch intimate?’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to take his side!’ she erupted heatedly. But again remembered that she was the one in the wrong here. ‘No,’ she changed tack to answer, ‘it didn’t cross my mind that—that I was on the menu with the petit fours.’

  ‘He came on strong and you didn’t like it?’ Silas guessed, his expression stern.

  Colly flicked her glance from him. She did not want to tell Silas how she had tried to respond to Tony. But in all honesty she could not make Tony out to be the villain of the piece. ‘It—er—was all right at first,’ she admitted, but hurried on, ‘Then I said no, and…’

  ‘You said no?’ Silas questioned. Her ears felt scarlet. ‘Because you didn’t want to? Or because you’re married to me?’ he persisted. By no chance was she going to let Silas know that other men stood no chance—because of him. But she could feel herself getting het-up again at the thought that Silas might guess at her feelings for him.

  Unable to sit still, but with no idea of where she was going, she was on her feet. ‘Would you like me to make you some coffee?’ she offered.

  ‘Because you didn’t want to or because of your marriage vows?’ Silas insisted.

  She felt cornered. ‘Because I just don’t sleep around!’ she said heatedly, and saw that Silas looked somewhat shaken by her confession.

  ‘You don’t?’ he queried, on his feet too. ‘Hmm—you have, though?’ She would not answer, but then found he was persistent if nothing else. ‘At some time you have—experimented—fully?’

  She still did not want to answer. Silence reigned until, dumbly, she shook her head, finding the carpet of great interest. ‘How old-fashioned is that?’ she asked, and, expecting some derisive remark that at twenty-three she still hadn’t left the starting blocks, she turned her back on him.

  But to her surprise Silas made no derisive remark, but came over to her and, taking hold of her upper arms, turned her to face him. Gently then he drew her against him. ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ he instructed softly.

  ‘I feel stupid,’ she confessed, and for long wonderful seconds was held in his gentle hold.

  Then, unhurriedly, he lowered his head and gently kissed her. ‘You’re not stupid, you’re lovely,’ he assured her, and led her back to her chair. ‘So what happened when you rejected Andrews’ advances?’ he asked.

  Feeling a little bemused—Silas’s light kiss just now had had far more effect than the assault of Tony Andrews’ kisses—she endeavoured to think straight. ‘Well, he wouldn’t take no for an answer—’ she began, but was stopped from saying more when, on the instant enraged, Silas cut her off.

  ‘He assaulted you? He sexually assaulted you?’ he roared. ‘Where does he live?’ he demanded, on his feet and seeming about to charge off to Tony Andrews’ address and flatten him.

  ‘No. No,’ Colly said quickly, realising that Silas’s protec
tion of her stemmed only from the fact that he had given her the right to use his name. It was the reaction of any decent man, but there was nothing more personal in it than that. Though she did so hope that Silas liked her. ‘I think I told him no a couple of times, and he wanted to know why not—he thought I was playing hard to get,’ she rushed on. ‘I should never have invited him to the apartment, I can see that now. Anyway, he couldn’t see why I wouldn’t. Oh, heavens, this all sounds so sordid.’

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ Silas encouraged, his fury in check. ‘You’re getting there,’ he added, as though recalling how over the phone she had said that she had done something so dreadful. And, as though to encourage her further, he retook his seat and stayed quiet until she was ready to go on.

  ‘Well, Tony was—well, you know—and wanting to know what was to stop us. He said that he was unattached, and that I was free, and…Well, anyhow, I was starting to feel a touch out of my depth, so I must have grabbed at that “out”, and I told him I wasn’t free.’

  ‘You told him you were married?’

  ‘Not in so many words, I don’t think. But then I got all over the place in my head, and all I knew was that no one must know about our marriage.’

  ‘You weren’t making a very good job of it,’ Silas butted in.

  ‘It gets worse.’

  ‘I’ll brace myself.’

  ‘By then I was panicking.’

  ‘Poor love,’ he said, as she at one time, she clearly recalled, had said to him.

  She felt a little heartened. Sufficiently, anyway, to be able to carry on. ‘I knew at once that I’d said the wrong thing. Instinctively knew, I suppose, that I had to say something to counteract that I’d just as good as said I was married. She swallowed. ‘I then went and dug myself into an even bigger hole.’

  ‘You told him you were married to me?’ Silas guessed.

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t have to. Tony guessed. He must have remembered that night you two met. You know, that night when…’

  ‘When I commented on the fact that you’d had a hand in nursing me?’

  ‘Such as it was—my nursing, I mean,’ she said, thinking how all she had done was dole out his medication. But as she recalled waking up in bed with him, so she blushed scarlet.

  ‘A-anyhow…’ she tried to rush on. ‘Anyhow, from that Andrews deduced that the man you were married to must be me,’ Silas took up, with a not unkind look at her blushing face. ‘Is that it?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘I said it gets worse,’ Colly reminded him quietly. And, wanting it all said and done, she hurriedly added. ‘Tony works in PR. He knows all sorts of press people—’ She broke off when she spotted the sharp look that came to Silas’s eyes.

  ‘You foresee a problem?’ He was ahead of her; she knew that he was.

  This was it. She had to tell him. She took a deep breath, but had she been hoping it might steady her, she knew it had failed. She was shaking inside as she blurted out, ‘I was panicking, and I knew I had to do something to counteract that I’d as good as told him that I was married. I just wasn’t thinking,’ she confessed, ‘and I told him that we were—um—getting divorced.’

  Silas stared at her as if he could not believe his hearing. ‘You told him that you and I were going to divorce?’ he questioned harshly. ‘You actually told this man with press connections that you and I were divorcing? When you know, have always known, that that is the last piece of information I want broadcast—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she cut in miserably, watching as Silas, as if needing to be on his feet, left his chair. ‘I was in panic, as I said—trying to make good something I’d inadvertently let slip—that I wasn’t free.’

  Silas seemed gone from her, his look thoughtful. She would dearly love to know what was going on behind his clever forehead. ‘What chance is there that Andrews won’t make capital out of this?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘I’ve no idea. He was pretty mad at me when he left, so I don’t suppose he’s likely to want to spare me. Shall I ring him?’ she asked. ‘Appeal to him not to—’

  ‘No!’ Silas answered decisively. And, his thoughts and conclusions soon reached, he resumed his seat, and looked her straight in the eye as he informed her, ‘I want you to have nothing whatsoever to do with Andrews in the future.’ And, his chin jutting slightly, ‘Is that understood?’ he stressed.

  ‘I’m not so keen myself,’ she agreed, and was rewarded with a near smile. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked, hoping Silas would not say that in his view she had done more than enough.

  He did not say anything of the sort. But nor did his smile make it when he let her into his deliberations. ‘All things considered, there is only one thing we can do if I’m to be able to continue to make long-term plans for Livingstone Developments.’ Her eyes were fixed on nowhere but him when, coolly, he brought out, ‘Thanks to you, my dear, I believe the time has come to reveal that we—you and I—are married—happily married.’

  Her mouth went dry. She had no idea what any of that might mean, yet knew that figuratively she hadn’t a leg to stand on. She had known the rules when she had married Silas—she had known in advance that divorce was a forbidden word. She it was who had broken the rules, and it was she who had messed the whole of it up.

  ‘Y-you intend to tell your grandfather?’ she asked hesitantly.

  ‘My father,’ Silas corrected. ‘He’s an early riser. I’ll phone him from the airport and ring my grandfather when I get back. By then he’ll know from my father that you and I are married, and that despite what they might read in the press neither of us has any intention of being divorced.’ And, having told her how it was to be, he stood up. She guessed he was keen to get to bed and get what sleep he could before he went to catch his early flight. Colly stood up too, and Silas escorted her to the door. ‘Agreed?’ he thought to ask.

  Colly stared unhappily up into his searching dark blue eyes. She had no idea what sort of complications this turn of events might bring. But she had brought this sorry state of affairs about, so how could she not agree?

  ‘Agreed,’ she answered, and again wanted to apologise for whatever chain of events she had set in motion by her agitated ‘I’m not free’ to Tony Andrews. She did not apologise, but felt so down just then that she would dearly have loved it had Silas held her for a moment or two in a gentle hug.

  But Silas did not give her a hug. Nor did he attempt to kiss her cheek. She supposed he must be as fed up with her as she was with herself.

  ‘I’ll be in touch when I get back,’ he told her.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ she replied, and left.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  COLLY spent the next two days searching the various newspapers for any reference to the fact that she and Silas Livingstone were married—there was none.

  But, oh, what had she done? By now Silas’s father, and his mother too, of course, would know that their son was married. And, by the look of it, Colly realised, she had panicked unnecessarily. With nothing in the papers there had been no need for any of his family to know that he had a wife! By now Silas’s grandfather probably knew as well—but there had been absolutely no need for anyone to know! And Silas would hate her.

  In an agony of torment from not knowing what, if anything, was going on, Colly felt very inclined to ring Tony Andrews and ask him if he intended to use that snippet that Silas Livingstone was married. Against ringing Tony, though, was her fear that if he had not already been in touch with his press pals, any call she made might prompt him to do so. And anyhow, Silas had been adamant that she should have nothing more to do with Tony; she supposed Silas knew more about these things than she did.

  She left her bed on Thursday, wishing she had some idea of when Silas would be coming home. Oh, what a hornets’ nest she had stirred up! And yet she’d had to warn him, hadn’t she? And it had been his decision to, as it were, go public. And in all fairness, looking back to last Monday, when she had gone to see him, Colly still did not se
e how she could not have told him what she had.

  To add to her inner turmoil there was nothing in the papers that day either. She had no idea if Silas would call or phone. ‘I’ll be in touch when I get back,’ he’d said. She wished now that she had thought to ask when that would be. As it was, not wanting to miss his call, she had spent most of her time since yesterday more or less glued to the apartment.

  He did not phone that day either, but it was around nine o’clock that evening when someone knocked on her door. Silas! It could be one of her neighbours, of course. She was acquainted with several of them by now, but as her heartbeats raced she somehow knew that it would be Silas.

  Which caused her to take a very deep breath before she opened the door. It was him! They stared at each other. Colly sought to find her voice, but the ‘Hello’ she found came out sounding all husky and, to her ears, weird. ‘Come in,’ she invited, and left him to follow her into the sitting room. She turned. He was business-suited. ‘You’ve come from the airport?’ she enquired politely.

  ‘I got in this afternoon. I thought I’d better spend some time in the office.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  If he could tell she was nervous he did not refer to it. ‘I have, but I wouldn’t mind taking you up on your offer to make me a coffee,’ he replied pleasantly.

  Colly was relieved to escape to the kitchen. They had been at his apartment when she had volunteered to make him coffee. Her relief was short-lived, though, because a few seconds later Silas joined her in the kitchen.

  ‘Andrews been in touch?’ he asked conversationally.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’m flavour of the month there,’ she responded.

  ‘Does that upset you?’

  ‘You know better than that!’ she replied shortly. But then folded completely and blurted out, ‘Oh, Silas, I got it all wrong, didn’t I?’