Expecting the Playboy's Heir

‘Do you really need to ask?’ Julia challenged him as soon as she had got enough breath back to speak. ‘Silas, no way am I going to sleep with you.’

‘Sleep with me?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Julia told him crossly.

‘We’ll discuss it in our suite, shall we?’ Silas suggested in a gentle voice that felt like a very thin covering over very hard steel as it fell against her frazzled nerve-endings. ‘Unless, of course, you feel that having the hotel staff witness a potential quarrel between us is going to add reality to our relationship?’

Since he was already standing next to her, bending towards her in a way that no doubt looked sensually lover-like to their audience but, Julia nastily decided, was just another example of the dictatorial side of his nature she had always disliked, she didn’t have much choice other than to allow him to propel her towards the rackety lift.

‘I suppose this wretched suite is on the top floor,’ she complained as the lift started to lurch upwards.

‘Since Señora Bonita has assured me that it is possible to see the sea from its windows, I imagine that it must be,’ Silas concurred, so straight-faced that Julia had to look at him very carefully to catch the smallest of small betraying quivers lifting the corners of his mouth.

‘And you believed her? The sea is miles away.’

‘No doubt the señora assumes we will be far too busy gazing at one another to concern ourselves over her enthusiastic laundering of reality.’

‘This lift takes for ever, and I’m not even sure that it’s safe,’ Julia complained. For some reason she wasn’t prepared to explain, even to herself, it seemed a very good idea to keep her gaze concentrated on the lift door and not on Silas.

“‘A long, slow ride to heaven” was how the señora poetically described it to me.’

Forgetting her determination not to look at him, Julia turned round and accused him, ‘You’re making that up.’

Silas gave a small shrug.

‘Silas, why are you doing this?’ Julia demanded, then her eyes widened as the lift suddenly shuddered theatrically and then dropped slightly, throwing her off balance and against Silas.

Immediately his arms went round her to steady her, and equally immediately he released her and moved back from her.

‘Something wrong?’

Julia glared at him. What was he trying to imply?

‘This lift isn’t safe,’ she told him.

Silas watched the emotions chase one another across her face. She had always had the most expressive eyes, and they were telling him quite plainly now exactly what she thought. Fortunately, he was rather more adept at guarding his own expression, otherwise she would have been able to read equally clearly in his eyes exactly what he had really wanted to do when he’d had her in his arms.

Her grandfather’s gruff comment to him that he was worried about her had brought him here to Majorca, but ironically it was thanks to Nick Blayne that he was at last able to manoeuvre himself into a position of intimacy with her. Even if that intimacy was, for the moment, merely fictitious.

‘Silas, you can’t possibly really intend to marry Julia,’ his mother had protested unhappily the night they had both attended Julia’s eighteenth birthday.

‘I take it you don’t approve?’ Silas had challenged her.

‘Do you love her?’ his mother had demanded, equally sharply.

‘Sexual love is little more than an emotional virus, and in my opinion should not be used as the basis on which to build a relationship. I have thought for some time that Julia would be the perfect wife for me—once she has matured.’

‘Silas…’

‘I’ve made up my mind. After all, who could possibly be a better wife for me? She knows exactly what her duties would be once I inherit, both as a countess and as the mistress of Amberley. It will make the old boy happy—and tidy up a lot of loose ends. From a practical point of view, a marriage between us makes good sense. She’s too young at the moment, of course. But I don’t want to leave it too long.’

‘Good sense? Silas, you’re talking about marriage as though it’s a…a business deal.’

‘No, Mother, I’m merely being practical. As well as my responsibilities to Amberley, I’ve got to think of the Foundation as well. I don’t want a wife who is going to change her mind and demand a huge divorce settlement. Julia has been born into a tradition of arranged marriages that goes way, way back. She understands these things.’

‘Does she? My money is on her refusing you, Silas. Julia is a very feisty and passionate young woman. And an arranged marriage—that is so archaic!’

‘They worked very well for hundreds of years, and they kept families and property together.’

His mother had sighed faintly and told him grimly, ‘Sometimes you sound more like those dry dusty trustees you inherited from your father than a young man in his twenties. Don’t you care that you will be depriving Julia as well as yourself of sharing your lives with someone you love?’

‘Mother, love is merely an illusion—a delusion, in fact. A marriage built on mutual understanding and shared goals is far more practical, and far more likely to survive.’

‘I doubt that Julia will agree with you. Look at her!’ his mother had demanded, and dutifully Silas had looked across at the short spiky brown-and pink-striped head that had been all he could see of her over her dance partner’s shoulder.

‘Helen said that she came back from school with her belly button pierced and talking about having a tattoo—the family coat of arms, if you please.’

That had been the year Julia had fallen passionately in love with the leader of a local animal rights group, Silas remembered. The love affair might have been short-lived, but the results of it were still very much in evidence. The group, led by Julia, had defied her grandfather’s gamekeeper and ‘rescued’ the young pheasants he had been rearing, with the result that one could not travel within ten miles of Amberley now without encountering wandering cock pheasants.

It was also this relationship that had been responsible for the five engaging greyhounds Julia had ‘rescued’ and brought home and who now lived a life of luxury, having won her grandfather’s heart via their shared misery at winter rheumatism and their love of a good whisky before bed.

Julia wasn’t eighteen any more, though. And Silas had decided that it was time to put his plan into action. Julia’s grandfather was growing frail, and Silas was very fond of him. It would mean a great deal to him to see his granddaughter married to his heir, Silas knew. Like him, the old Earl was also a very practical man—and what could be more practical than for his heir to marry his granddaughter, tying together the two remaining strands of the family and securing the future of Amberley at the same time?

It was very fortuitous that fate had decided to weigh in on his side and assist him in bringing his plans to fruition. Not that Silas considered that he needed to have fate on his side. He was perfectly capable of constructing his own good fortune.

The lift had finally stopped its sawing motion. Julia got out with relief, not sure whether to be appalled or triumphant when she realised that the ‘penthouse suite’ was actually in the rafters of the house, and that the tiny window in the corridor beside the lift was so low that an adult would have to kneel down in order to be able to look out of it.

She watched whilst Silas inserted the key into the lock of the heavy-looking door, and then opened it.

The room that lay beyond it was furnished as a sitting room, its double doors open to reveal the bedroom that lay beyond it. And a huge bed.

‘Apparently there are two bathrooms,’ she heard Silas informing her. ‘And the sofa in the sitting room area converts to a double bed.’

‘In case we want a foursome?’ Julia couldn’t resist saying lightly.

There was a cold steeliness in the look Silas lanced in her direction.

‘The only kind of bed-sharing foursome I find acceptable is the non-sexual variety with a couple and their two children. And if Blayne’s been dragging you down into that kind of gutter—’

Julia’s face burned.

‘It was just a joke, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything…I suppose you’re expecting me to sleep on the sofa bed?’

‘No. You can take the bed. After all, I’m not the one who has the problem waking up in the morning, am I?’

It was true that she was more of an owl than a lark, Julia knew, and it was also typical of Silas that he wouldn’t have forgotten that as a teenager she had preferred to sleep late in the mornings—especially when she was on holiday.

‘Which side of the bed do you prefer to sleep on?’