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‘I meant better from you, not better for you,’ his mother responded immediately, causing Julia to go into semi-shock. ‘And you know that. When you informed me on Julia’s eighteenth birthday that you planned to marry her not because you loved her but because from a practical point of view she was the perfect wife for you, I told you what I thought.’
‘You said that you didn’t believe Julia would accept me,’ Silas agreed.
His mother’s visit had come as a total surprise, adding more complications to what was already a very delicately balanced situation. He and Julia were married, but as yet no one knew. Julia naturally wanted to tell her mother and grandfather before they went public, and equally naturally she wanted to do it in person. Silas had given consideration to flying back to England before they went to Dubai, but at the moment he was reluctant to share Julia with anyone else at all. Plus, he had wanted to see her restored to her pre-Blayne sunny happiness before plunging them both into the emotional storm the news that they had married in secret was bound to cause—especially with Julia’s mother.
And then there had been that final consideration to make him hold back—that sharp, thorny, and very steep belief journey he had had to make from his denial that love was a concept even worth including in his calculations to admitting that it was a force that had rewritten his emotional and mental rule book.
Admitting to himself that he loved Julia had been the hardest thing he had ever had to do, and doing so had left him feeling acutely exposed and vulnerable. He needed more time to get accustomed to this new aspect to his personality, to feel comfortable with it and himself before he could go public and start telling the world that he was passionately in love with his wife. And he was damn certain that the first person he was going to tell was not going to be his mother. Especially not when those three small words he had been mentally sweating over for the last four weeks, whilst he imagined himself whispering them to Julia, had not actually been said yet.
Nope; so far as his mother was going to know, the status quo was exactly as he had told her it was going to be all those years ago.
But there was one thing he could safely say.
‘Julia is the perfect wife for me.’ Perfect in every way, but most of all in the joy she had brought into his life and the love he had for her.
Outside in the hallway, hidden from their view, Julia battled fiercely with her own feelings. Silas’s mother’s revelations had shocked and hurt her. But perhaps there was more of Silas’s practicality in her than either of them had realised. Either that or his attitude had begun to change the way she thought herself, she decided bleakly. Because honesty compelled her to admit that Silas had never said that he loved her. She had simply assumed that he must because of her own feelings for him—and because it had never occurred to her that he would marry her for any other reason.
Now she could see that she had been hopelessly nïve. So what was she going to do now? Throw an emotional tantrum and blurt out that she loved him? Demand a divorce because he didn’t love her?
But what was love? Did it always and only have to be the hearts and flowers outward trappings of romance familiar to everyone? Couldn’t it sometimes be something else? Perhaps…something like a practical man protecting the woman who was his wife. Like that same man scrupulously ensuring that he secured her future and that of their children. Like that same man giving a high priority to their shared sexual pleasure. Were these things not in their own way a form of love? Or was she deluding herself? Trust and honesty were to be the foundations of their marriage, Silas had told her. She had accepted that she could trust him. Could she accept the sharp bite of his honesty as well?
‘Well, right now, Silas, my concern is not how perfect a wife Julia will make you, but how happy a woman you will make her. I intend to wait for her to return, and when she does I intend to make sure that you have not pressured the poor girl in some way into agreeing to marry you…’
Julia took a deep breath, and then, before she could change her mind, she stepped out of the shadows and into the room, saying lightly, ‘I’m afraid I’ve been eavesdropping. I got back a few minutes ago, and didn’t want to break up your mother-and-son chat, but…’ Was her smile everything he wanted it to be? Calm and serene and very much that of a woman who admired the man who wanted to marry her because it was practical to do so?
‘I have to say, mother-in-law-to-be, that everything Silas has said makes perfectly good sense to me. In fact I totally share his feelings. I think we have more than enough in common to make our marriage work very well.’
‘But you are not in love with him?’
‘Being in love is not necessarily a prerequisite for a good marriage,’ Julia answered Silas’s mother firmly.
So far Silas hadn’t said a single word, and when she looked at him she was surprised to see that he was looking back at her almost blankly, as though somehow what she had said was unwelcome to him.
Automatically she moved closer to him and reached for his hand, before saying huskily, ‘Silas, I think we should tell your mother the truth.’
She knew that he loved her?
‘The truth?’
‘Yes,’ Julia agreed, facing her mother-in-law determinedly as she said quietly, ‘We haven’t told anyone else yet, but actually Silas and I are already married.’
Julia watched as Silas’s mother’s gaze dropped suspiciously to her stomach and then lifted to Silas’s face before switching back to her, and her own face grew pink as she read all the unspoken messages those three looks contained.
‘No, he did not have to marry me,’ Julia burst out indignantly, speaking the unspeakable as only she could, Silas decided ruefully.
His mother might have wrongly assumed that they had married in such haste because they had discovered that Julia was pregnant, but he doubted that she was likely to guess the real truth—which was, as Silas himself had only just come to recognise, that he had rushed Julia into marriage because quite simply he loved her and wanted to tie her to him in every single way that he could.
‘You might have backed me up when I told your mother that you didn’t marry me because I was pregnant, instead of laughing,’ Julia complained crossly to Silas as he poured her a cup of tea.
It was just over an hour since they had returned from seeing Silas’s mother off on her homeward flight, and Julia had begun to feel very tired.
‘I was in shock,’ Silas told her dryly.
‘You were in shock?’
‘I hadn’t realised that you had such a practical turn of mind.’
Julia knew immediately what he meant.
‘Well, I could hardly tell your mother that I wanted to marry you because you are quite simply the world’s best shag, could I?’ she asked lightly.
No way was she going to spoil what they had by bursting into tears and begging Silas to say that he loved her.
‘Maybe not in those exact words,’ Silas conceded. ‘Although I dare say she would not have been averse to hearing that you feel passionately about me.’ He knew that he certainly wouldn’t.
‘I do. Like I just said, I feel passionate about you being the most wonderfully orgasmic shag.’
Why did that make him ache inside with pain instead of with delight? Why was he suddenly feeling that sex on its own wasn’t enough, and that he craved a connection with her that went deeper and was more profound?
‘You don’t think she’ll say anything to Ma or Gramps, do you?’
‘About shagging?’
‘No. Silas, you know what I mean. Your mother won’t tell them that we’re married?’
‘No. Although I must admit I don’t really understand why you actually told her.’
‘I thought from the way she was acting that she might actually drag me back to New York with her to save me from you,’ Julia told him lightly.
‘And you didn’t want that?’
No! I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I can’t bear the thought of living any other way, Ju
lia thought. But of course she couldn’t say that to him.
‘Not really. Did you?’
‘What? And miss being woken up every morning by you holding a one-to-one conversation with my penis? What do you think?’
‘I think that the best place to drink a cup of tea is in bed.’ Her world might have come crashing down around her, but, Julia reminded herself sturdily, no one else was going to know that.
‘Mmm, nice thought—but maybe later,’ Silas told her lightly, immediately standing up. ‘I’ve got some e-mails to send…’
‘To Aimee?’ she challenged jealously.
Immediately Silas frowned. ‘Why on earth should I want to e-mail her?’
When Julia made no response, Silas exhaled and told her grittily, ‘I have no desire to either e-mail Aimee DeTroite or to bed her, if that’s what you’re worrying about. I do not want her, I have never wanted her, and I would not want her if she was the last woman left on earth. So far as I am concerned she is a neurotic whose behaviour borders on being dangerously destructive—to herself and to others. Now, if you don’t mind, I need a break from all this emotional self-indulgence.’
Julia put down her cup so that Silas wouldn’t see how much her hands were trembling. He might have denied wanting Aimee, but he had also rejected her hint to him that they have sex as well.
As he walked away from her Silas told himself that, feeling the way he was right now, there was no way it made sense to take Julia to bed. If he did he couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from showing her that sex simply wasn’t enough for him any longer. And no way did he want to do that after she had made it plain that it was all she wanted from him.
The irony of what had happened made him smile bitterly. He had been so wrapped up in his own desire to marry Julia for practical reasons that it had never occurred to him to question her motives for marrying him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
