by Sara Craven
‘You did?’ he asked, seeming not to know what she was talking about.
‘You won’t know, being out of the country and everything, but there’s been nothing in the papers about—about us—being married!’
‘I know,’ he surprised her by saying. So she could only suppose he had read the foreign editions while abroad. Either that or he had found time to scan them since his plane had landed that afternoon.
She sighed heavily. ‘I’m sorry. I rather jumped the gun, didn’t I—coming to see you like that? But,’ she excused, ‘I felt you had to know.’
‘You did the only thing possible,’ he assured her.
‘I did?’
He smiled then, and it so lit his face that her heart turned over. How dear he was to her. ‘There hasn’t been anything in the press yet, but there will be tomorrow,’ he said succinctly. ‘Shall I carry that in?’ he suggested, taking up the tray of coffee.
They were back in the sitting room—she seated on the sofa, Silas having taken the chair opposite, with the highly polished table in between. He relaxed back, seemingly enjoying the coffee he had apparently been parched for. She ignored her own coffee; there were things here that she felt she ought to know.
‘You—um—seem pretty certain the—papers will be printing—’
‘Just the financial ones, I suspect,’ Silas chipped in, and went on to dumbfound her as he explained, ‘I got in touch with my PA first thing on Tuesday. I suspected that before our marriage—or divorce—was made news, someone would contact my office for verification. At the end of my instructions Ellen knew to confirm, if pushed, that I was happily married, to laugh at any suggestion that a divorce might be in the offing, and to then transfer the call to my own PR department, who would quote that which I had dictated to Ellen.’
Colly stared at him. ‘Forward planning has nothing on you,’ she said faintly. And, endeavouring to recover, ‘And someone did ring?’
‘Several people,’ he confirmed.
‘Am I allowed to know what this piece of dictation was?’
He shrugged. ‘I kept any details about us to a minimum by saying that Columbine Gillingham and I had married quietly on account of your father’s recent demise. And from there I took the limelight off you and me by giving details of your father’s brilliant engineering brain and mentioning some of his more spectacular achievements.’ Silas paused. ‘I hope that doesn’t offend you, Colly?’
How could it? It was true that they had married quietly, shortly after her father’s death, even if his recent death was not the reason for their quiet wedding. Nor could she be offended that Silas had referred to her father’s brilliant engineering brain; it heartened her that her father’s engineering achievements were not forgotten.
‘No,’ she said simply, ‘I’m not offended.’ And, realising then that with the press having contacted Silas’s office she had done the right thing after all in contacting him, she reached for her coffee and took a sip. A trace nervously, she had to admit, she moved on to enquire, as calmly as she could, ‘You—rang your father from the airport? You—um—said you would.’
‘I rang him.’ He nodded, and his lips twitched a little. ‘My mother was ringing my hotel in Italy before I got there.’
Oh, crumbs. ‘They—your parents—they’re all right about it?’
‘You mean their not being present at our wedding?’
She had not meant that, though supposed they had a right to feel a touch annoyed. ‘I mean more about you being married.’
‘They couldn’t be more pleased. Not to put too fine a point on it, my mother is overjoyed.’
‘She is?’
‘She is,’ he confirmed. ‘She remembers speaking to you on the phone—and says you have a lovely voice.’ Colly stared at him. ‘My father,’ he went on, ‘is just pleased that I’m happy.’
‘You—are happy?’ Colly queried.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
Why indeed? The future of Livingstone Developments appeared secure, and the future of the company was what he cared about. ‘Have your parents told your grandfather yet, do you think?’
Silas looked at her solemnly, and she felt he hesitated a fraction before he confirmed that his grandfather did indeed know that he had taken himself a bride. ‘My grandfather is delighted,’ he revealed.
But Colly had a strange feeling that there was more than that. ‘And?’ she pressed, a touch apprehensively, she had to admit.
‘And,’ Silas replied calmly, ‘my grandfather wants to meet you.’
‘No!’ She did not even have to think about it. ‘No,’ she said again, though less forcefully this time. Silas said nothing, but just sat watching her. And then Colly did start to think about it, even if she did not like the idea any better. ‘When?’ she asked.
‘He’d like us to visit this weekend.’
This weekend! Weekend? ‘Weekend?’ she questioned faintly. ‘You mean a whole weekend?’ Well, that wasn’t on. Whatever excuses Silas had to make, he could jolly well get them out of it.
‘He’s very lonely since my grandmother died.’ Silas, whether he knew it or not, jangled her heartstrings. ‘But, in view of our other commitments, I said we’d arrive on Saturday—rather than the Friday he suggested—and stay just the one night.’
Stay one night: Colly did not feel any happier, but something else Silas had just said caused her to forget that for the moment and follow this new trail. ‘Our—other commitments?’ she queried warily—and was right to be wary, she very soon discovered.
‘Quite naturally my parents will be most offended if they don’t get to meet you first,’ Silas explained.
Colly did not think very much of his explanation! She owned that her brain did not seem to be working at full capacity just then, but it very much appeared that if she was to meet Silas’s grandfather on Saturday—and bearing in mind that today, or tonight, was Thursday—then at some time between now and then she must first meet Silas’s parents.
‘This is getting much too complicated,’ she complained, casting a belligerent look over to the man she had ‘quietly’ married.
He bore her look pleasantly. ‘What’s complicated?’ he asked, and sounded so reasonable she could have truly done with hating him.
Particularly since she could not come up with much of an answer. ‘Why can’t we just tell your parents the truth? That we are married, but—’
‘Because to do so would put them under an obligation not to tell my grandfather the truth,’ Silas cut in heavily. ‘This is my situation, not theirs.’
Reluctantly Colly could see that. To involve his parents in the way she had suggested would just not be fair to them. But she protested just the same. ‘I don’t like deceiving people,’ she said woodenly.
‘How are we deceiving anyone?’ he asked, and she truly did hate him that while she was starting to feel all stewed up he could continue to sound so reasonable. She gave him a look of dislike. It bounced off him. And he was still insufferably reasonable when he drew her attention to the facts. ‘My grandfather wants to meet my wife—you, Colly, are my wife.’
You are my wife. She found it hard to hate him while her heart took a giddy trip at those words. But, though those lovely words sounded beautifully possessive, she knew full well that Silas stated them as merely fact. Colly pulled herself sternly together. ‘I didn’t sign up for any of this when I agreed to marry you,’ she reminded him snappily.
‘Neither did I!’ he returned bluntly. And, his expression harsh, ‘As I recall, it was you who let the cat out,’ he reminded her.
He had her there. If she had not let Tony Andrews know she was not free, and then gone on to compound that error by telling him she was getting divorced—giving him space to speculate on whom she might be married to—none of this would be happening. As it was, Silas had been forced into taking what action he had to when she’d triggered off that which could have led to disaster.
She was in the wrong, and she knew it. Colly took a defe
ated breath and, as graciously as she could in the circumstances, enquired, ‘When do I meet your parents?’
His harsh expression faded. ‘We’re having them over for dinner tomorrow evening.’
‘Over at your place?’ she asked, her voice barely audible—keep reminding yourself that you’re the one in the wrong, Colly.
‘Over at our place,’ he corrected.
‘You’re not expecting me to move in with you?’ she asked in sudden alarm.
He looked cheered. ‘Oh, your face!’ he exclaimed, but sobered to let her know, ‘As far as anyone else knows we live together, but at this stage I see no need for us to go that far.’
Why did she feel miffed at what he said? She did not want to live with him, for goodness’ sake—well, not under the present circumstances, she qualified.
‘We must be thankful for small mercies, I suppose,’ she offered dryly, and saw his lips twitch, felt a moment’s weakness where he was concerned, but hurried on, ‘I’m cooking?’
‘Mrs Varley will attend to that. My parents will be at my place around seven, but just in case they should be half an hour early, if you could be there around six?’
‘You’ll be there—at six?’
‘I’ll finish work early,’ he said, and suddenly Colly was feeling dreadful.
‘I’ve caused one almighty giant upheaval, haven’t I?’ she said apologetically.
‘Oh, Colly, don’t be too upset,’ Silas said gently, leaving his chair and coming over to take a seat on the sofa with her. And, his tone friendly, not sharp, as she felt she deserved, ‘One way and another you have done me a favour.’
She turned in her seat to look at him, her heart pounding to have him so close. ‘How?’ she asked with what sign of normality she could find. ‘If I hadn’t—’
‘I find it next to impossible to tell lies to my family,’ Silas cut in. ‘So when my father asked me outright if I’d thought any more about what he’d confided about grandfather altering his will I was able to calm his anxieties and truthfully tell him I was seriously involved with someone.’
‘You meant me?’
‘You,’ Silas confirmed. ‘By then you and I were married.’
‘I don’t suppose you can truthfully get more seriously involved than that,’ she mumbled.
‘Everything slotted in for both my father and my mother when they recalled how, when I was in hospital, you were allowed in to see me. How, when I got out of hospital, you were at my apartment staying with me. My mother really started to get her hopes high then, by the way. When, less than a couple of months after that, said cat bolted out from the bag, it didn’t seem so far-fetched to them when I explained that we had quietly married.’
‘They didn’t think it at all odd that we didn’t invite them to our wedding?’
‘Not so much when I told them your maiden name—who you were. My father at once recognised your name. He had been with me, paying his respects at your father’s funeral. My mother, while a triftle put out, it has to be said, at the same time understood when I said I didn’t want to wait but wanted to marry straight away. That, with your father’s death so recent, we’d agreed we did not want a big tell-the-world type of wedding.’
Colly knew, for all her heart had given a little flutter, that she could not get excited about that ‘I didn’t want to wait’. Silas had wanted that marriage certificate with all speed—she, his bride, was incidental to his forward planning.
‘Um…’ she murmured, and saw she had his full attention. ‘Er—this dinner tomorrow…’ she began, hardly knowing how to continue. Silas looked at her, but was not saying another word, and she felt forced to continue, ‘I mean, do your parents think ours is a love-match?’ There—it was out.
‘I haven’t said so in as many words. But my mother certainly will be sure that ours is a love-match. Or—’ suddenly he was grinning a wicked grin ‘—or at least that no woman could know me and not love me.’
‘Which just goes to show how terribly blinkered mothers really are!’ Colly said acidly. And because it was so true that she did love him, so very much—only he was not to know it—she got up from the sofa commenting, ‘I just thought I ought to know—er—whether I’m supposed to—um—show a bit of affection for you.’
‘Well, if your feelings really do get too much for you, and you feel you just have to hold and kiss me…’ he began to tease. Then, seeing how tense she suddenly seemed, he left the sofa and came to stand next to her. ‘Nervous about tomorrow?’ he asked kindly.
Petrified, if you must know. ‘You could say that,’ she replied, and suddenly found herself in the loose hold of his embrace.
‘Don’t be,’ he said softly, as her heart went into overdrive. ‘My parents will love you. Just be yourself and everything will be fine.’
She wished she could believe him. The truth was, she did not feel she knew what was herself any more. She shook her head in some kind of bewilderment. ‘All I did on Monday night was say I wasn’t free, add that I was getting divorced—and now look where we are!’
‘Things have moved on at something of a pace,’ Silas agreed quietly.
‘Something of a pace! They’ve positively galloped!’
‘Don’t fret about it. What’s done is done.’
And she was the one who had done it. ‘I’m throwing you out,’ she told him, knowing she quite desperately needed to get herself more of one piece. Just being held in the loose circle of his arms was making her head chaotic.
‘I thought you might be,’ he replied, lightly kissed her cheek, and then walked to the door.
Colly did not sleep well that night. In her head she imagined all sorts of disasters at Friday night’s dinner—when she would meet her in-laws. The only way she was able to get any rest at all was by repeatedly reminding herself that Silas would be there too. She would have his support.
But it was while she was showering on Friday morning that the trepidation of her thoughts about that evening let up to let in an even bigger cause for worry. And it had nothing to do with that evening—but the following one.
Because only then did something she had been too preoccupied to think about suddenly jump up and hit her. What about tomorrow evening? Or, more specifically, tomorrow night? Only then did it dawn on her that, unless Silas Livingstone Senior lived in a house that had a separate suite for overnight guests, tomorrow night she was going to have to share a room with Silas!
There was one thing about this new source of inner conflict, she discovered, it certainly transferred some of her agitation away from that evening’s dinner party. She hoped with all she had that Silas had plans to sleep elsewhere. But, bearing in mind they’d barely been married four months, she could imagine his grandfather looking askance at the mere idea of them sleeping in separate rooms.
She was glad when later that morning her phone rang, and a difficult conversation with Henry Warren gave her head some respite from her concerns about meeting her in-laws—both in London and in Dorset.
‘Is it true?’ Henry Warren asked.
She knew what he was talking about and realised she should have guessed he would take a financial newspaper and might pick up that which Silas had dictated.
‘Yes, it’s true,’ she replied. ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Henry, I should have told you. But…’ But what? He had been untold good to her, and must think her silence about something as important as this very strange. ‘I’ve been a bit—um—mixed up,’ she added lamely.
‘Because of your father?’
‘I—er—Silas was at my father’s funeral.’
‘You met him that day?’
Sort of. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’ She felt she had to apologise again. ‘But Silas and I, we wanted a quiet wedding. His parents didn’t even know about us until quite recently.’
That seemed to mollify him a little. But, maybe out of duty to his old friend, he still had questions to ask. ‘But what are you doing living in that apartment alone?’
‘The apartme
nt belongs to Silas’s grandfather, but he doesn’t use it and doesn’t wish to sell it so we sort of keep the place aired. Silas goes abroad on business from time to time, but for the moment when he’s home he likes to sometimes stay here.’ Colly was not at all happy about embroidering the truth the way she was doing. ‘And,’ she hurried on, forestalling what she anticipated would be his next question, of why she had been so relieved when he had got some funds through for her, ‘Silas is more than generous,’ she explained—she still had ten thousand pounds of his that he was refusing to take back—‘But I felt such a pauper going to him penniless; it was a pride thing, I suppose. I was so grateful to you when you were able to get me some money of my own.’
‘You always were a proud little thing,’ he commented when she had finished, and while she was swishing around in guilt he went on more warmly—perhaps he more than most was aware of the joylessness of her existence prior to her father’s death. ‘You deserve some happiness, Colly.’
She thanked him and, while regretting she could not be entirely open with him, felt better that their phone conversation had ended in a friendly and affectionate way.
By four that afternoon, however, thoughts of the impending evening had taken most other thoughts from her mind. She supposed it was usual for most women to be apprehensive on meeting their in-laws for the first time. Though everything, she felt, about this meeting was unusual.
Because of her fidgety unable-to-settle feelings, Colly left the apartment ten minutes before she should. She hoped to feel better once everything was under way. She was wearing an emerald-green chiffon-over-silk evening trouser suit and, having noticed an absence of flowers in Silas’s home, was carrying a sizeable bouquet of flowers when she rang his doorbell.
She wondered who would answer the door—Silas or Mrs Varley. It was Silas. He had said he would leave work early, and had. But while she thought he looked absolutely wonderful, he seemed impressed that she had made a bit of an effort herself.
‘You look just a touch gorgeous,’ he said softly, not moving back to let her in, but just standing there, his eyes showing his admiration.