‘I can’t help thinking about the poor baby. Silas, we must do everything we can to make sure it’s going to be safe. Once she knows you aren’t going to leave me and marry her, she might not want it any more.’
‘Julia, it might not be my child.’
‘But it might, and if it is it’s only right that we should do everything we can for it. Do you think she’d let us adopt him, Silas? We could bring them both up together? I can’t bear to think about the poor little thing growing up thinking you don’t care and feeling unwanted. Even if she won’t let us adopt him you can make sure that he knows you, and that he comes to stay with us...’
Silas started to shake his head.
‘There’d have to be DNA tests first.’
‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ Julia protested.
‘Why not?’
‘Silas, Aimee is having this baby because she thinks it’s yours. If it turns out that he isn’t, she might just reject him. Then he’ll have no one. You can’t do that to him. It’s too cruel.’
He had thought he knew her, Silas acknowledged, but now he realised that he had not known her at all. He had thought in his arrogance that he was her superior—intellectually, emotionally, and morally. Now he knew that the opposite was true. She had just shown him such a breadth of wisdom, such a depth of compassion and such a wealth of love that he felt humbled and shamed.
‘You must think me the worst kind of fool for giving that damned sperm in the first place,’ he told her bleakly.
Julia shook her head.
‘No, I don’t. Actually, Silas I admire you tremendously for it. It makes you human and caring. I think it is emotional and meaningful and a very special thing to have cared enough to want to give another person the gift of a child they cannot have for themselves.’
‘Oh, Julia, don’t. I love you too damn much as it is, without you making me love you even more.’
Julia stared at him, her lips parting.
‘Would you mind saying that again?’ she gulped.
A thin red tide was creeping up under his skin. ‘Why?’
She started to pleat a piece of the bedspread with nervous fingers.
‘Well, for one thing I want to make sure you actually did say that you love me before I tell you that I love you too. And...’
She was smiling at him, that lovely, light-filled Julia smile that felt like sunshine touching his heart.
‘Did you really tell your mother you were going to marry me all those years ago?’
‘Yes. But I didn’t realise the real reason why I wanted to until a whole lot later.’
‘How much later?’
‘When all that mattered to me was seeing you smile again after Blayne had drugged you. When I knew that your happiness was more important to me than anything else in my life. I knew then that it wasn’t practicality, it was love.’
‘But you told your mother...’
‘I told my mother that you would make me the perfect wife. And so you do. Hell, Julia, I couldn’t tell my mom that I loved you when I hadn’t even told you yet.’
‘You were so stiff and scratchy with me after your mother left that I thought you didn’t want me any more.’
‘I was scared stiff of touching you in case I lost control and told you how I felt. And how could I do that when you’d told me that you agreed with my reasons for marrying you?’
Julia reached up and touched his face tenderly.
‘I love you so much.’
‘Is there any chance of me having a practical demonstration of that?’ Silas asked softly.
Julia gave an ecstatic sigh of happiness and held out her arms invitingly to him.
‘No chance—just total certainty,’ she managed to whisper in between the passionate kisses and hot words of love, with which he was claiming her as his own.
EPILOGUE
‘O
H
, S
ILAS
,
look—it’s snowing!’
Julia was snuggled up on the faded velvet-covered sofa, in Amberley’s winter parlour, her six-month-old son, and eventual heir to Amberley and its history, lying fast asleep in his travel cradle next to her.
It had been Silas’s idea that Henry Peregrine Gervaise Carter, to give him his proper name—or baby Harry, as his family called him—should be christened at Amberley Church on the anniversary of the day his parents had reaffirmed their marriage vows there. And of course Julia had been only too delighted to agree.
The birth of his great-grandson seemed to have given the Earl a new lease of life, and he was insistent that he intended to live long enough to sample the special wine he’d had laid down when Harry was born at his great-grandson’s coming of age.
‘It’s early for snow. Oh, you don’t really call this snow, do you?’ Silas teased as he went to the window to look outside and then came back to sit down next to her. ‘How’s Lucy getting here? If she’s coming by train, I could pick her up from the station.’
‘I spoke to her earlier. She says she’s going to drive down. I’m so glad she’s agreed to be one of baby Harry’s godmothers. She’s had such a terrible time of it this last year. First finding out that Nick was having an affair and him demanding a divorce, and then all the problems she’s had to face with the business.’
‘Personally I think she’s far better off without Blayne, although I agree that it can’t have been easy for her dealing with the financial mess he left behind.’
‘I wish she’d let you help her with that, Silas. I hate thinking of the struggle she must be having when we’ve got so much money.’
‘She’s got her pride, Julia, and we’ve got to respect that. I did have a word with Marcus, though, to tell him that he can always call on us to help her out. Where did that come from?’ Silas demanded suddenly, as he saw the copy of
A-List Life
magazine lying on the floor next to Julia.
‘I bought it when I went into town this morning,’ Julia confessed. ‘I haven’t read it yet, though. I fell asleep after I’d finished feeding Harry. I have to tell you that your son has a very healthy appetite.’ She reached down to pick up the magazine, flicked through it and then tensed, her eyes widening as she stared at one of the pages.
‘Silas, look at this!’
‘What?’
‘This!’ she told him, showing him the page that had caught her attention and reading aloud from it. “‘One of New York’s wealthiest heiresses announces her engagement. Millionairess Aimee DeTroite has just announced that she is to marry her personal astrologer, Ethain LazLo, the society stargazer who claims to be descended from Rasputin and who sports a similar hairstyle. Aimee and Ethain plan to marry on Twelfth Night, a date that Ethain has deemed to be predestined to unite them.”’
‘Well, I wish them luck with one another. They’re certainly going to need it. Still, if he’s as good at telling the future as he likes to claim, no doubt he’ll already know what’s in store for them.’
‘Silas, that’s not very kind,’ Julia protested, but she didn’t press the matter. She knew that Silas still felt angry about the way Aimee had behaved.
After claiming that she was having Silas’s child she had refused to attend any of the medical appointments Silas’s legal team had made for her, claiming publicly that she was afraid that the well-known and highly respected gynaecologist Silas had nominated to confirm her pregnancy was being paid by Silas to force a termination on her.
However, Silas’s legal team had then spoken with the doctor who ran the sperm bank to which Silas had contributed his own sperm, and he had insisted that his donors’ anonymity had never been compromised or their confidentiality breached, and that, whilst Aimee
had
contacted him and begged him to supply her with Silas’s sperm, he had made it clear to her that this was not going to happen. In fact in the end, because he had been so concerned about Aimee’s mental state, he had advised her that he felt she should undergo a course of extra counselling in addition to the pre-conception counselling all those to whom he supplied sperm had to undergo.
In a private letter to Silas he had further announced that in the fifteen-plus years since Silas had donated his sperm, technology had made such huge advances that he had decided to dispose of any sperm over three years old and start afresh. Therefore, even if he had been willing to help Aimee, he would have been unable to do so.
Four months after telling Julia that she was carrying Silas’s child Aimee had announced via her lawyers that she had made a mistake and that she was not pregnant after all.
‘You don’t think that she was, and that once she knew that trying to force you to marry her wouldn’t work she had her pregnancy terminated, do you?’ Julia had asked Silas unhappily at the time.
‘Trust you to think that—and to break your heart over it.’ Silas had sighed. ‘No, Julia, I don’t think that—and neither do my lawyers. I must admit I was surprised that Aimee didn’t try to claim she had miscarried, rather than admitting she had lied, but the attorneys say that the reason she didn’t do that was because her own lawyer would have advised her that if she did we could ask to see medical records as confirmation of her claim. Miscarrying at six or even seven months isn’t like miscarrying at three, after all—we’d have been talking about the death of a fully formed child. Even her own lawyers admit that this isn’t the first time she’s tried to pull this particular trick. There was a similar situation when she was seventeen, but then she claimed the guy raped her as well.’
Baby Harry had woken up and was gurgling happily to himself. Immediately Silas reached down and lifted his son out of the cradle, holding him expertly in his arms. The look of doting male pride and love in his eyes made Julia smile as she watched father and son communicating with one another.
The anxiety they had suffered because of Aimee’s lies had brought them even closer together, and to Julia’s delight Silas had not only been totally open with her, telling her everything that was happening, he had also asked for her opinion and taken it on board, so that all the decisions they had made had been made jointly.
They were a team now, a unit, bonded firmly together by their love for one another.
‘I’ll have the final arrangements to make for the fundraiser when we get back to New York,’ she reminded him. ‘I hope it’s going to be a success.’
New York’s society hostesses had an enviable reputation for the excellence of their charity fundraising events, both in terms of money raised and exclusivity, and Julia knew that whilst on the surface she had been welcomed and accepted by the wives of Silas’s peers, the success or lack of it at her first personally organised fundraiser was the real test she needed to pass.
She had spent the last six weeks sitting for the portraitist Silas had commissioned to paint her wearing the Maharajah’s jewels, with baby Harry lying on her lap, holding one of the priceless bracelets.
The portrait was to be unveiled for its first public viewing on the night of her fundraiser, along with the jewels themselves, and Julia felt that the jewels alone should guarantee her event was in a class of its own.
Her charity of choice was one for orphaned and homeless children, and she had deliberately chosen to have displayed, alongside her own portrait and some beautifully done photographs of the jewels, a set of hauntingly painful photographs of children living in the most desolate of circumstances—obscene riches portrayed alongside equally obscene poverty. Her aim was to raise for the charity a sum that equalled the ten million dollar value of the Maharajah’s jewels—for surely no material possession should ever be held to be of more value than the life of a child?
‘Thank you,’ Silas murmured as he leaned forward to kiss her.
‘What for?’
‘For everything. I was right all those years ago. You
are
the perfect wife for me—perfect in every single way there is. And I love you more than I can ever find the words to say.’
* * * * *
Blackmailing the Society Bride
CHAPTER ONE
‘S
O
WHAT
you’re saying is
that my ex-husband has damaged my business so badly that it and I are both
virtually bankrupt?’
Lucy stared at her solicitor. A deepening sense of sickening
shock and fear was gripping her, a feeling that the situation she was involved
in was so frightening and unbearable that it could not possibly be real.
But it was real. She was here, seated in front of Mr McVicar,
while he told her that her ex-husband had so badly damaged the reputation and
financial status of the event organisation company she had set up with such
enthusiasm and delight prior to their marriage that it was no longer viable.
Nick had cheated her sexually and financially all through their
brief marriage...but then, hadn’t she done some cheating herself? A guilty
conscience wasn’t going to help her now, Lucy warned herself, as she struggled
with the massive weight of the problems she now faced.
‘I’ve got some commissions for events for the rest of this
year,’ she told the solicitor, crossing her fingers behind her back and hoping
that he wouldn’t ask her how many, since in reality there were so few. ‘Perhaps,
in view of that, the bank...?’
Her solicitor shook his head. He liked his pretty young client,
and felt very sorry for her, but in his opinion her nature was too gentle for
the unforgiving world of business.
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he told her. ‘As you’ve already said
yourself, several potential clients have cancelled their events and asked for
their deposits back already, and I’m afraid... Well, let’s just say we live in a
harsh world, where confidence is something no one can put a price on.’
‘And because of what Nick has done no one will have any
confidence in Prêt a Party any more—is that what you mean?’ Lucy asked him
bitterly. ‘Even though Nick is no longer a part of the business, or my life, and
I was the one who started it up in the first place?’
The solicitor’s sympathetic look was all the answer she
needed.
‘I dare say I shouldn’t blame clients for backing out. After
all, I suppose in their eyes if I was stupid enough to marry Nick then I can’t
have much credibility,’ Lucy said with bitter humour. That was certainly what
Marcus believed. She knew that well enough.
Marcus. If there was one person she would like to somehow
magically remove from her life and her memories for ever, that person wasn’t
Nick, but Marcus.
‘Is there nothing I can do to save the business?’ She appealed
to her solicitor.
‘If you could find a new partner—someone of probity and known
financial stature, whom people respect and trust, and who is willing to inject
enough capital to settle all Prêt a Party’s outstanding obligations...’
‘But I intend to pay those off
myself
. I still have money in my trust fund,’ Lucy interrupted
fiercely.
‘Yes, of course. I realise that. But I’m afraid that clearing
Prêt a Party’s debts, whilst a very honourable thing to do, will not revive
client confidence in you, Lucy. Regrettably, the actions of your ex-husband have
damaged the reputation of the business virtually beyond repair, and the fact
that both your partners have left Prêt a Party—’
‘But that’s because they both got married and have other
responsibilities now, that’s all. Not because of anything else! Carly’s pregnant
and has her son to look after, as well as working alongside Ricardo with the
orphanages he has set up, and Julia has a new baby to look after—plus she’s
involved in the Foundation—’
‘Of course.’ Her solicitor soothed her sympathetically. ‘I know
all this, Lucy, but unfortunately the eyes of the outer and greater world—the
world from which you hope to attract new business—do not see it. I really am
sorry, my dear.’ He paused. ‘Have you thought of approaching Marcus? He—’
‘No! Never! And I absolutely and totally forbid you to say
anything about any of this to him, Mr McVicar.’ Lucy spoke fiercely, standing up
so abruptly that she almost knocked over her chair. Panic and misery gripped her
by the throat as powerfully as though it were Marcus himself closing his fingers
around it. How he would love this. How he would love telling her that he had
warned her all along that this would happen. How he would look down that
aristocratic nose of his with those ice-cold eyes while he ticked off a list of
all that she had done wrong, all the ways in which she had failed.
Sometimes, in the eyes of her family and Marcus, Lucy felt as
though she had spent the whole of her life failing. For a start she had been a
girl and not a boy, a daughter and not a son—a daughter to be married off and
not a son to be an heir. And, even though her parents had gone on to have a son,
Lucy had somehow always felt she had let them down by being born first, and the
wrong sex. Not that her parents had ever said that she was a disappointment to
them, but Lucy had been born with a sensitive kind of nature and did not need to
be told what people felt. She had sensed her parents’ disappointment—just as in
later years she had recognised Marcus’s impatient irritation with her.
Not that anyone ever needed to
guess
what Marcus thought or felt. She had never known anyone more
capable of or uncompromising about saying exactly what he thought and felt. And
he had made it plain from the first moment he had confronted Lucy across the
large desk in his London office that he did not approve of the fact that her
late great-uncle had left her such a large sum of money.
‘I suppose that’s why you agreed to be my trustee, is it?’ Lucy
had accused him. ‘Because you don’t approve of me having the money and you want
to make life as difficult for me as possible!’
‘That kind of remark merely confirms my concern about your late
great-uncle’s mental state when he made his will,’ had been Marcus’s caustic
response.
‘I suppose you were hoping he would leave his money to you?’
Lucy had shot back.
In response, Marcus had given her a look that had made her face
burn, and made her feel as though she wanted to crawl into a corner.
‘Don’t be so bloody infantile,’ he had told her coldly.
Of course, she hadn’t realised then that Marcus had millions,
if not billions of his own, tucked away in the vaults of his family’s merchant
bank, of which he was the CEO.
Mr McVicar watched her sympathetically. He knew perfectly well
of the tension and ill feeling that existed between his client and the
formidably wealthy banker her late great-uncle had appointed as trustee for the
money he had left her.
That money had nearly all gone now—swallowed up by the greed
and fraudulent actions of Lucy’s ex-husband and the failure of her
once-successful small business.
But in his view there was still no one better placed to help
her in her present difficult situation than Marcus, whose business savvy was
both awesome and legendary. Mr McVicar himself had urged her not to agree to her
bank’s request that she secure Prêt a Party’s finances by pledging her
inheritance, but she had refused to listen to him. Morally Lucy was beyond
reproach, but unfortunately she had been too gullible for her own good, and she
was paying the price for that now.
He returned to the problem at hand. ‘If you could attract a
wealthy business partner who would be prepared to put money into the business,
then—’
‘Actually, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.’
As soon as the words had left her mouth Lucy wondered what on
earth she was doing. Was it Mr McVicar’s reference to Marcus that had prompted
her into lying to him and creating a fictional potential backer? Lucy closed her
eyes in helpless acknowledgement of her own vulnerability. Somehow just hearing
Marcus’s name was enough to goad her into a fury of defensiveness.
Mr McVicar looked both relieved and surprised.
‘Well, that is really excellent news, Lucy. It puts a different
complexion on matters entirely,’ he told her enthusiastically, looking so
pleased that her guilt increased uncomfortably. ‘The very best outcome one could
have hoped for, in fact. But obviously it is something we shall need to discuss.
I think we should set up a meeting with your proposed partner and his or her
legal advisers just as soon as we can. Oh, and of course we must let your bank
know what is in the wind. I am sure that they will be inclined to be far more
flexible once they know that fresh capital will be injected into Prêt a Party. I
also think it would be a good idea to go public, even perhaps take a half-page
announcement in those papers most frequently read by your clients stating once
again that your ex-husband now has no access to or involvement with any aspect
of Prêt a Party’s business, and that moreover you now have a new partner. That
should do a tremendous amount to offset the upsetting effect Nick’s fraudulent
behaviour has had on the business.’
Lucy felt as though she were trapped in ever-deepening mud of a
particularly sticky and clinging consistency. Why on earth had she let the
thought of Marcus’s disapproval propel her into such stupidity? What on earth
had she done? How could she admit now to Mr McVicar that she had lied—and
why?
‘Er, I can’t tell you who he is at the moment, Mr McVicar,’
Lucy began uncomfortably. ‘It’s all very much a secret. Negotiations
are...um...well, you know how it is...’
‘Of course. But I must urge you to remember, Lucy, that time is
very much of the essence here.’
Nodding her head, Lucy made her escape as quickly as she could.
How could she have lied like that? It went against everything she believed in.
Now she felt sickeningly guilty and ashamed of herself, and she had to blink
away her self-pitying tears as she stood outside her solicitor’s Mayfair office
in the bright autumn sunshine.
What on earth was she going to do? It would take a miracle to
save her now. Automatically, she turned the corner and hurried into Bond Street,
not bothering to glance into the windows of the expensive shops lining the
street. Designer label clothes were not really her thing. She liked vintage
clothes, salvaged from street markets and family attics. Their fabrics were so
lush, the feel of them against her skin something she treasured and loved: real
silk and satin cashmere; sturdy wool; cool cotton and linen. Man-made fibres
might be more practical for modern-day city living, but in many ways she was an
old-fashioned girl who craved a return to a quieter, more gentle way of
life.
The truth was that secretly she would have loved nothing more
than to marry and produce a large brood of much-loved children whom she and her
husband would raise in an equally large and loved country house. She envied her
two best friends their happy marriages and new young families more than they or
anyone else knew—after all, she had her pride, just like anyone else. It was
that pride that had led her into setting up Prêt a Party in the first place. The
very same pride that had just led her into telling that stupid, stupid lie, she
reminded herself miserably.
The magazines on a nearby newsstand caught her eye, and she
stopped to study them. To the forefront, as always, was
A-List Life
. Lucy started to smile.
Its eccentric owner and editor Dorland Chesterfield had been
such a good friend to her, using Prêt a Party to organise several of the events
he had hosted—events attended by the world’s top celebrities. She might even
have considered turning to
him
for help to get her
out of the mess Nick had left her in were it not for the fact that she knew if
there was anything guaranteed to overwhelm his genuine kind-heartedness it was
his love of passing on gossip. The last thing she needed right now was to have
the story of her downfall spread over the pages of
A-List
Life
.
Of course both her friends—now ex-partners in Prêt a Party—had
extremely wealthy husbands, and both of them had in turn come to see her and
gently offered financial help, but Lucy could not accept it. For one thing there
was that wretched pride of hers, and for another it was not just money she
needed, but someone to work in the business with her. Being given money to clear
Prêt a Party’s debts was a kind gesture, but she wanted—
needed
, in fact—to prove that she was not the silly fool everyone
obviously thought her, and that she could make a success of her business.
Yes, marrying Nick had been a mistake, and, yes, she had—as
Marcus had unmercifully pointed out to her—rushed into the marriage, but she’d
had her own reasons for doing that. Reasons she could never, ever allow Marcus
to discover.
She picked up a copy of
A-List Life
and handed over some coins, giving a reciprocal smile to the newsstand vendor
before turning to cross the road. The sunlight glinting on her shoulder-length
naturally blonde hair caused the driver of a large, highly polished,
diplomat-plated Mercedes to slow down and study her appreciatively.
As she regained the pavement Lucy flipped open the magazine and
quickly checked the contents—more out of habit than anything else. It was over
three months now since Prêt a Party had managed a large event of any kind, never
mind one glitzy enough to merit page-space in Dorland’s magazine, but to her
astonishment she suddenly saw Prêt a Party’s name beneath the words:
‘A-List Life
’s Favourite Party of All Time.’
Bemused, she turned the pages, her eyes widening as she
recognised the photographs covering the entire mid-section of the magazine. They
were from the huge summer party Prêt a Party had organised for
A-List Life
the previous year.
Tears stung her eyes. It was so typical of Dorland to do
something so generous—and it
was
generous of him to
republish those photographs, even if at the same time it was also a way of
blowing his own trumpet.