‘A vibrator’s okay, but no way can it compare with being with you. It was really good for me, Silas,’ Julia told him softly. ‘In fact...’ She hesitated, her fingers curling into the soft hair on his chest, her lashes sweeping down to conceal her expression, but Silas could still see the heat warming her face.
‘In fact?’ he encouraged, noting in fascinated male bewilderment that
now
she was blushing.
The dark lashes lifted and she was looking at him with those huge amazing eyes of hers.
‘In fact, it was the best sex I have ever had,’ she admitted huskily.
A sensation that was both physical and emotional, and so strong that momentarily it almost stopped his heartbeat, gripped Silas by the throat. It had to be caused by the realisation that he was being given the perfect opportunity to achieve his goal, he told himself practically, before saying, ‘Really? Good enough to make it worthwhile turning this fake engagement of ours into a real marriage?’
‘What? You’re joking!’
Silas shook his head. ‘No. I’m completely serious,’ he told her truthfully.
‘But...but why on earth would you want to marry me?’ Julia demanded, her forehead pleating into a small frown.
‘Oh, the usual reasons,’ Silas told her lightly. ‘You turn me on. You give good head. And I love the way you yell, “Siii—lasss!” when you come.’
Julia giggled and punched him playfully on his arm.
‘Those are not good reasons.’
‘I can’t think of any better,’ Silas told her. ‘Unless it’s the pleasure I get from filling you with baby gravy.’
Julia laughed, and then stopped, her face anxious.
‘Silas, you don’t think...?’
‘I don’t think what?’
Julia started to chew her bottom lip.
‘We didn’t use a condom, and I’m not using any contraception. What are we going to do?’
‘You want kids, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ And that speaking of them as ‘we’ had turned her heart to melting chocolate, Julia realised.
‘So, what are we waiting for?’
‘Silas!’ Julia protested as he turned to reach for her.
‘Okay, maybe it would not be such a good idea for you to walk down the aisle wearing a tent. We’d better buy some condoms—and bring the wedding forward.’
* * *
Quite how it was possible over the course of two short days for her to go from thinking of Silas as someone she preferred to see as little of as possible to knowing that she was passionately in love with him and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, preferably making babies, Julia was far too blissed-out and far too sexed-out to worry about.
All she needed to make her whole world perfect was Silas. Silas and a bed. Silas and a shower large enough for two people. Silas and a magical walk along the seashore, with shadows deep enough for them to hide in body to body whilst their shared passion drove them to forget everything but one another. Silas, whose taste she still had on her tongue and whose scent she could still smell on her skin and in her hair. Silas, who always gave that funny little grunt before he gave in to his own orgasm. Silas who filled her and thrilled her, who satisfied her and aroused her, as no other man ever had done or would do.
She was obsessed with him, Julia admitted cheerfully to herself, her mouth curving into a wide, happy smile. Obsessed with him and totally, totally besotted by him. She felt like a particularly smug Bridget Jones-type singleton. The kind who would write deliriously in her diary,
2 days and 20-plus shags
. Silas had to be the world’s best lover, even if he protested generously that her partisan enthusiasm was encouraging him to previously unreached heights.
Only this morning he had cupped her face and kissed her nose as the sweat of passion dried on their damp bodies, and told her softly, ‘Don’t ever take off those rose-coloured glasses you view me through, will you.’
Rose-coloured glasses? As if! The wonderful thing about falling in love with Silas was that she already knew everything there was to know about him, so there couldn’t be any unpleasant shocks waiting to wreck their relationship.
‘Julia, my dear, have I told you how wonderful all of this is?’ Mrs. Silverwood enthused emotionally as she left her guests to come and stand with Julia. ‘And all thanks to your wonderful fiancé. I do not know what we would have done if he hadn’t managed to persuade the hotel manager to relent.’
On the other side of the restaurant Silas, whom the Silverwoods had insisted on including in their dinner party, finished his champagne and enjoyed himself watching Julia. He had laughed more in these last two days than he had laughed in the whole of the rest of his life. Laughed more and loved more too.
He sincerely hoped that their children would inherit their mother’s blithe spirits and sense of humour. Their children. Desire hardened his body, causing him to move discreetly back into the shadows. Sex with Julia was like no sex he had ever had before. He simply couldn’t get enough of her, and when his body did cry enough he was filled with a sense of such intense satisfaction that he had no past experience in his life he could compare it to.
This sexual hunger for one another that had overtaken them both had brought a whole new urgency to his determination to marry Julia. The end of the year was way too long to wait. He wanted to tie her to him now, as tightly and permanently as he could. Which was why he had spent hours on the telephone this afternoon, whilst she had been checking over the final arrangements for the dinner. The result was worth the time he had spent, though, even if he
had
had to twist the arms of both the American and British Ambassadors just slightly in order to get what he wanted. Now all he had to do was persuade Julia.
* * *
It was four o’clock in the morning, and the streets of Positano were empty as Silas and Julia walked arm in arm back to their own hotel.
‘The Silverwoods seemed pleased with the way the event went,’ Silas commented.
‘Yes, thanks to you. I nearly died when the hotel chef threw that tantrum yesterday and threatened to walk out. That was really quick thinking on your part, to let him think that the chef from the Arcadia would be happy to take over.’
Silas laughed. ‘Quick thinking, maybe, but not entirely true. Still, it did the trick. Am I right in thinking that now we’ve got ten days before we need to be in Marbella for Dorland’s party?’
‘The party isn’t for another ten days,’ Julia agreed. ‘But we’ll have to be there well before that in order to make sure everything is properly organised.’
‘How well before?’ Silas asked. ‘Will three days be enough?’
‘At a pinch,’ Julia agreed. ‘Why?’
They had almost reached the hotel and Silas stopped walking, drawing her into the shadows with him as he leaned back against a convenient wall, his hands on her hips, guiding her between his parted legs.
Just the scent of him was enough to turn her on. Julia pressed closer to him and lifted her face for his kiss.
‘Let’s not wait to get married.’
His voice was thick and raw, sending a shudder of pleasure jolting through her whilst her heart thudded out a stunned tattoo.
‘What—what do you mean?’ she demanded uncertainly.
‘I mean, let’s not wait to get married. Let’s do it now. Here in Italy.’
His words fell honey-sweet against their ears; her heart lifted in excited pleasure. So far neither of them had spoken the ‘L’ word, but, knowing him as she did, that he should feel such an urgency to commit to her told her just how he felt about her. Even so...
‘Silas, we can’t,’ she protested.
‘Of course we can. I’ve already checked it out. We could be married within the week—less, if I put some more pressure on our Ambassador.’
‘Why the rush?’ she teased him. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
Silas laughed. ‘Yes, I trust
you
. But I’m not sure that I trust the condoms to withstand the rigours we’ve been subjecting them to.’
Julia giggled.
‘Silas, we couldn’t...could we?’ she breathed excitedly.
‘You want to?’
She closed her eyes and then opened them again.
‘Do I want to be your wife and have guaranteed wonderful sex for the rest of my life? Of course I do,’ she told him extravagantly. ‘But what about the family...what about Gramps?’
‘We could still have a religious blessing in Amberley Church, and even a reaffirmation of our vows and a formal post-wedding breakfast afterwards, if that is what you want.’
‘What I want? All I want is you,’ Julia told him simply, and she raised herself up on her toes to kiss him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I
STILL
can’t believe we’re actually doing this,’ Julia whispered nervously to Silas as they stood side by side waiting for their papers to be checked. The American Embassy had recommended that they consult an Italian official well versed in the complexities of the correct procedure to enable other nationals to marry in Italy, and, with a speed that had impressed Julia, all the necessary paperwork had been assembled and submitted. And here they were, just an hour or so short of five days after Silas had suggested they do so, actually about to be married to one another.
‘It will be a civil ceremony,’ Silas had told her.
‘Oh, but that will make whatever we do at home all the more special,’ Julia had told him in delight. ‘It would be really cool if we could reaffirm our vows at Amberley, like you suggested, Silas. Almost like having a second wedding.’
Since the Monckford Diamond was still in New York, Julia had no engagement ring to wear with one of the matching plain gold bands she and Silas had chosen in a small jeweller’s, down a narrow side street in Rome.
Emotional tears filled Julia’s eyes as they stood together and made their vows. In some strange way being alone together actually made exchanging them all the more special.
As she slid Silas’s ring onto his finger she bent her head and brushed it with her lips, promising him silently,
I shall love you for ever.
She had discovered that Silas was not a man who found talking about his emotions easy. But she was sure he loved her, even though he had not said so. He had married her, after all. A small naughty smile curved her mouth. Before they celebrated their first wedding anniversary she would have taught him to say that he loved her, and that was a promise to herself she was not going to break.
They had agreed that they wouldn’t wear their rings until they could go back to England and tell her grandfather what they had done.
‘I don’t want him to hear about it via Ma’s cleaning lady and Dorland’s wretched magazine,’ Julia had told Silas when they had been discussing the matter.
‘Fine—that’s okay by me,’ Silas had agreed.
* * *
Her husband. Julia looked up at Silas, her face glowing with happiness. They would have one night together here in Rome before they flew to Spain tomorrow, and Silas had booked them into the most wonderful hotel.
‘I thought we’d go straight back to the hotel,’ Silas told her now. ‘Unless you’d prefer to do something else?’
‘What? Rather than go to bed with you? No way,’ Julia told him, shaking her head.
It was so refreshing to be with Julia, Silas acknowledged. She never tried to play controlling mind games, and he loved the way she was so open with him about her sexual desire for him. Not that their mutual sexual desire for one another was the only thing they shared. She was passionately committed to seeing Amberley preserved for future generations—but not, as she had put it, ‘...like some kind of museum. Amberley—the real Amberley, as it is today—is what it is because of the way each generation had lived in it, because it has been a real home. Not because it has been kept exactly as it was when it was first built. I know Gramps opens it to the public for several months a year, and I know that the state rooms are too grand really to live in...’
‘So what would you do with them?’ Silas had asked.
‘Oh, all sorts of things. We could hold musical evenings in the green salon, so that young musicians could play Handel in the kind of setting for which he wrote his music. We could have literary readings in the library. We could do things with the house and for it that would benefit other people as well. Imagine what it would mean to children learning to play an instrument to be able to have some of their lessons in the green salon, for instance. And then there’s the home farm. It know it’s a bit run down now, but there’s more than enough land for us to have rare varieties of free range hens and ducks...’
‘My life is focused on New York,’ he had reminded her. ‘I have a duty and a responsibility toward the Foundation.’
‘I know that. But we could travel between Amberley and New York, couldn’t we?’
‘Of course.’
She had wrinkled her nose at him in that delicious semi-teasing way she had, and then said hesitantly, ‘Silas, I’m afraid I don’t know very much about the workings of the Foundation. You’re going to have to explain to me exactly how it runs and what
if anything
I can do to help you.’
Yes, he had every right to congratulate himself on his perspicacity in deciding to marry Julia, Silas decided. She was, as he had told his mother on Julia’s eighteenth birthday, the perfect wife for him.
The hotel Silas had booked them into was old and elegant, hidden away down a maze of narrow streets which opened out into a quiet piazza, where an ornamental fountain splashed water down into an ornately carved marble basin and equally ornate marble statues stood on marble plinths. The austere grandeur of so much marble was broken up by huge classically shaped urns filled with a tumbling mass of flowers.
Their own suite had a balcony that overlooked the piazza, and Julia glanced up towards it now, a delicious thrill of excitement gilding her happiness as she anticipated what lay ahead.
Having sex with Silas was always wonderful, but this time would be extra special—because this time they would be doing it as husband and wife.
She looked down at her ring. She couldn’t wear it permanently yet, of course. If she did someone was bound to see it.
‘I thought we’d have dinner in the suite tonight,’ Silas told her as they walked into the hotel foyer. ‘But first there’s something I want to show you.’ He took hold of her arm, guiding her down a dark vaulted corridor, suddenly stopping to demand, ‘Where’s your hat?’
‘Here,’ Julia told him, showing him the hat she was holding in her other hand. She had thought that he would laugh, or even object, when she had insisted on wearing the pretty semi-formal straw hat for their marriage, but instead he had actually given a small nod of approval.
They had reached a set of highly polished heavy wooden doors, which Silas opened for her.
Beyond them lay another corridor, its walls plain, almost roughly hewn stone, and Julia shivered as she felt the cold coming off them, turning to look enquiringly at Silas.
‘The hotel has its own private chapel, where the family who owned the original house used to celebrate Mass. It was a condition that the family made when they sold the house that lighted candles would always be kept burning in the chapel, and that it would always be open to those who wanted to come here to pray and to give thanks.’
They had reached another set of huge double doors. A little hesitantly, Julia looked at Silas.
Smiling at her, he reached out and took her hat from her, and set it very gently on her head.
‘That is why I have brought you here, Julia. So that I can give thanks, and because I sensed when we were being married that a part of you was thinking of the church at Amberley.’
Silas was opening the doors. Beyond them Julia could see candlelight, blurred by her own emotional tears.
Taking hold of her hand, Silas led her into the chapel, their footsteps echoing on the worn stone floor.
Silently they walked past the empty pews towards the altar, beyond which an ancient stained glass window reflected the light of the candles. The air smelled of age and damp and that indefinable smell of old churches: a mixture of incense and peace and faith, all bound together with humility and acceptance.
Julia bowed her head. Silas was still holding her hand. She watched as he removed both their rings and then handed her his own.
Silently they exchanged rings. Could there be anything more profound or meaningful than this? Julia wondered. Automatically she knelt in prayer, as she had been taught to do as a small child. This might not be her family church, or her religion, but its spirituality reached out to her and touched her like angels’ wings. Even Silas was standing with his head bent, as though he too felt the same sense of awe and humility she was experiencing.
* * *
‘Silas, thank you.’
They had just walked into their suite, and as he locked the door Silas cocked an enquiring eyebrow and demanded, ‘What for?’
‘For what you just did. The chapel. My hat. Understanding how I felt. Everything.’
‘You’ve got just under an hour to get changed before dinner.’
It was silly of her to feel disappointed, and even more silly of her to feel hurt because Silas was changing the subject—cutting her off, almost, as though her emotional words irritated him. She had felt so close to him in the chapel, but now she was suddenly aware of how he was distancing himself from her.
His mobile started to ring, and he turned away from her to answer it, but not before Julia heard a girlish female voice exclaiming, ‘Silas, darling—surprise! It’s me—Aimee!’
Automatically Julia stiffened, but Silas was already walking away from her, his voice too low for her to hear what he was saying as he stepped out onto the balcony.
Aimee DeTroite was a high-maintenance New York socialite heiress, whose sexual adventures had been the subject of a great deal of celebrity gossip. Private videos of her having sex with a variety of male partners—consecutively and concurrently—had apparently been stolen from her apartment and then shown over the Internet to whoever was prepared to view them. She had the reputation of being an extremely difficult and very spoiled young woman, who claimed that her famous tantrums were not caused by an over-fondness for the white powder, as some articles had claimed, but instead by the fact that she was ‘bi-polar’.
Of course Silas knew other women, and had women friends—had had other lovers, Julia told herself stoutly. The fact that one of them had chosen to telephone him now might be bad timing, but she was hardly to be blamed for that, and neither was Silas. And calling a man ‘darling’ hardly meant anything at all any more! Everyone did it. Even Silas when he was talking to her—in public.
Outside on the balcony Silas’s fingers tightened on his mobile. He had no idea how Aimee had managed to get hold of his new mobile number, but he wasn’t going to waste any time asking her.
‘Silas, how could you do this to me? How could you get engaged to someone else when you know how much I love you? I won’t let her have you—you know that, don’t you? You’re mine, Silas. Mine!’
Her voice had started to rise in familiar hysteria. As Silas switched off his mobile, cutting her off, he could hear her starting to scream at him. Grimly he looked into the bedroom, wondering if Julia had heard. If she was upset... He started to frown, his earlier unfamiliar mood of lighthearted tenderness flattened by Aimee’s unwanted telephone call. Of course it made sense for practical reasons that he didn’t want Julia to hear another woman telephoning him on
their
wedding night. But that didn’t totally explain the anger he was feeling because Aimee had intruded on his privacy with Julia.
‘Is everything all right?’ Julia asked as lightly as she could when Silas stepped back inside the room.
‘Everything’s fine.’ Silas’s voice was curt, and she could see that he was frowning. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason.’ Julia fibbed.
Her earlier happiness had vanished, and she was miserably aware both of Silas’s withdrawal from her and the fact that another woman was responsible for it.
He was handling things very badly, Silas acknowledged as he registered Julia’s small intake of breath and the look in her eyes.
‘I’d forgotten I’d promised Aimee I’d buy some tickets for a charity benefit she’s organising.’
Julia forced herself to smile. ‘I know you dated her at one time.’ Thanks to Nick, who had made a point of telling her.
‘I have
never
dated Aimee,’ Silas denied forcefully. ‘I simply know her, that’s all.’
‘But what about that video when you and she—’ Julia blurted out.
‘That was—’ Silas broke off, and tried to control the angry thumping of his heart. Was he going to be forever pursued by Aimee’s malice and the lies she had told about him and their supposed relationship? A relationship that was nothing more than a figment of her own fantasies.
‘I just don’t want to talk about this, Julia. I am married to you, and that should tell you all you need to know about my relationship with you.’ Silas’s voice was clipped and sharp.
Julia didn’t say anything, but it perturbed her that Silas should be so angrily vehement—almost excessively so, in fact. It was so out of character for him. The action of a man with something to hide?
She didn’t want to pursue such thoughts, Julia told herself firmly, and she wasn’t going to do so.
* * *
They had eaten—a delicious meal—and talked, and Julia rather suspected that she had drunk just a little too much champagne. And now every bit of her was fizzing with anticipatory excitement as Silas reached for her hand and drew her towards him.
The phone call he had received earlier and the woman who had made it had been firmly and determinedly banished from her thoughts. This was, after all, her wedding night,
their
wedding night, and no way was she going to let another woman spoil it.
‘I still can’t believe that we’re married,’ she whispered. ‘You and me, of all people!’
Silas was cupping her face in his hands and it was impossible for her to say any more, because he was slowly and deliberately kissing her mouth with individual kisses that tasted every curve and angle of her lips. His tongue-tip began to probe deeper, making her moan and cling tightly to him. All she was wearing was a pretty silk chiffon wrap, which she had tied around herself, half uncertain about whether or not she had gone too far in deciding to leave off her underwear.
Now, though, the knowledge that there was so little to come between her flesh and Silas’s touch was a potent aphrodisiac that added to her excitement and arousal.
‘You are a complete and total sensualist. You know that, don’t you?’ Silas demanded thickly as he rubbed his palm slowly over her chiffon-covered nipple, enjoying watching the pleasure darken her eyes as much as he was enjoying the feel of her hard nipple, growing tighter between his rhythmically plucking fingers.