Tilly glanced anxiously at Silas. He had hardly spoken to her as he drove them back to the castle, and whatever he was thinking his thoughts didn’t look as though they were happy ones.
‘Second thoughts?’ she asked him lightly.
‘About the wisdom of returning to the castle? Yes. About us? No,’ Silas answered her truthfully. ‘What about you?’
‘I rather think I’ve made it obvious how I feel.’ They had made love again before breakfast, and now her body ached heavily and pleasurably with an unfamiliar, satisfied lassitude. She touched the comfortable weight of the ring on her left hand and then coloured self-consciously when she saw the gleam in Silas’s eyes.
‘I wish we could go back to London and get to know one another properly, instead of having to go back to the castle,’Tilly admitted. ‘And I can’t help worrying about my mother. It’s obvious that Art’s family doesn’t want him to marry her.’
‘My guess is that if they don’t manage to break them up before they marry, they’ll make her life hell afterwards. To be honest, I’m surprised she can’t see that for herself.’
‘Ma only sees what she wants to see,’ Tilly told him. ‘She can be very naive like that. I just don’t want her to be hurt. When her last marriage broke up she was desperately unhappy. It was the first time she hadn’t been the one to end things. If Art decides not to go ahead with the wedding, I don’t know what it will do to her. Ma’s one of those women who doesn’t feel she’s a viable human being unless she’s got a man in her life.’ Tilly smiled ruefully. ‘That’s probably more than you want to know. I’m sorry. But this is the first time I’ve felt close enough to someone to be able to be talk honestly about how I feel without thinking I’m being disloyal.’
‘What about your father?’
‘Oh, I love Dad, of course. But he disapproves of Ma, and they don’t see eye to eye. I’d feel I was letting her down if I told him how much I worry about her, and why. They were so unsuited—but that’s the trouble about falling in love, isn’t it? You don’t always know until it’s too late that you aren’t compatible. And sometimes even when you are it isn’t enough.’
‘Sometimes a couple meet and are fortunate enough to recognise that what they share goes far beyond mere compatibility,’ Silas told her. ‘Like soul mates.’
Tilly felt a fine thrill of the most intense emotion she had ever experienced run through her as he turned to look at her.
It moved her beyond words that Silas should say such a thing to her, almost as though he already knew how vitally important it was to her that the love growing between them should be perfect in every way.
And yet the closer they got to the castle the more she sensed that Silas seemed to be distancing himself from her, retreating to a place where he didn’t want her to follow him. His answers to her efforts to make conversation became terse and unencouraging, giving her the message that he preferred the privacy of his own silence to any attempt to create a more intimate mood between them.
She told herself that she was being over-sensitive, and that what to her felt like a distancing tactic was probably nothing more than a desire to concentrate on his driving.
The closer they got to the castle the more Silas recognised the dual agenda he would now be operating under. From the outset he had been totally clear to himself about his purpose in stepping into Joe’s shoes. He had told himself that deceiving a young woman he didn’t know, while regrettable, would be justified by the exposure that would be the end result of his research. But he hadn’t anticipated then that the impossible would happen and he would fall in love with Tilly.
Now that he had, his deceit had taken on a much more personal turn. He was now in effect lying by default to the woman he loved. He was lying to her about his real identity, the real nature of his work, the fact that he was using her as a cover to screen his own agenda.
For each and every one of those lies he had an explanation he believed she would understand and accept—after all, he had not set out with the deliberate intention of deceiving her. But the highly emotionally charged atmosphere of the castle, where they would be surrounded by Art and his family, was not, in Silas’s opinion, the best place for him to admit totally what he had done, or his reasons—even though normally his first priority would have been to tell her the truth. For that he felt he—they—needed real privacy, and the security of being able to discuss the issue without any onlookers.
Knowing Tilly as he believed he did know her now, he couldn’t ignore the instinct that told him that if his suspicions about Art’s involvement in Jay Byerly’s underhand dealings were confirmed, Tilly would at the very least want to warn her mother about the true nature of the man she was planning to marry. And if she did that, Silas thought it entirely likely that Annabelle would go straight to Art and beg him to deny the accusations being levelled against him.
Silas knew the last thing his publishers would want was to be threatened with a lawsuit by some expensive lawyer before his book was even written. And he certainly had no intention of putting himself in a position where the truths he had already worked so long to make public were silenced before they had been heard.
Tilly would, of course, be hurt, and no doubt angry when he told her the truth on their return to London, but he felt sure that once he had explained the reasons he had not been able to confide in her she would understand and forgive him. But while logically it made sense not to say anything to Tilly yet, loving her as he did meant that he wanted to share his every thought and feeling with her. It was for her own sake that he could not do it, he reminded himself. She was already doing enough worrying about her mother, a woman who in Silas’s opinion ought to recognise how truly fortunate she was to have such a wonderful daughter.
Something was on Silas’s mind, Tilly decided. In another few minutes they would be reaching the castle and the opportunity to ask him would be gone. She took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘You look rather preoccupied. Is something wrong?’
Her awareness of his concern caused Silas to turn his head and look at her, and to go on looking at her. ‘Yes,’ he told her truthfully, adding, not quite so truthfully, ‘The closer we get to the castle the more I wish I could snatch you up and take you somewhere we could really be on our own. There’s so much I want to learn about you, Tilly. So much I want to know about you and so much I want you to know about me. And, selfishly, I want you all to myself so that we can do that. I’ve never thought of myself as a possessive man, but now I’m beginning to realise how little I really know myself—because where you are concerned I feel very unwilling to share you with anyone else.’
‘Don’t say any more,’ Tilly begged. ‘Otherwise I’ll be pleading with you to turn around and drive back to the hotel.’
‘The first thing I intend to do when we reach the castle is take you upstairs to our room and make love to you,’ Silas told her thickly.
‘I rather think that we’ll be called upon to explain ourselves to Cissie-Rose first, and apologise for putting her to the trouble of having to drive back alone,’ Tilly warned him wryly. ‘She won’t be happy to see us together, Silas.’ That was the closest Tilly felt she wanted to go in telling Silas that she was aware that Cissie-Rose’s interest in him was sexual and predatory.
‘We don’t owe her any explanations. She chose to leave in a strop and abandon us because I’d shown her that I wasn’t interested in what she was offering.’
Tilly heard the hardness in his voice and winced a little.
Silas saw her small movement and shook his head. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy on her, Tilly. She doesn’t deserve it.’
‘I can’t blame her for wanting you when I want you so much myself,’ Tilly told him honestly.
Silas drove in to the courtyard, turning to look at her as he stopped the four-wheel drive to say softly, ‘Promise