High Society (14 page)

She must not start howling now, Julia warned herself as she opened the villa door, and she blinked fiercely, firmly straightening her shoulders.

Silas removed his frowning concentration from the e-mail he had just received on his BlackBerry for long enough to watch as Julia hurried away from the villa. She was wearing a long black dress that clung sensually to her body. Round her hips she had wrapped what looked to Silas very much like the Hermès scarf his mother had given her for her birthday, and over that she had fastened a heavy belt set with turquoise stones. The whole effect was
very
Julia, Silas decided.

His frown disappeared and his mouth started to turn up at the corners. She would look stunning in the Maharajah’s jewels, and she would probably devise some innovative way of wearing them that would shock the purists rigid. The sound of his own laughter startled him, and then made him frown slightly as he put down his BlackBerry.

There was no getting away from the fact that Julia had the most extraordinary effect on him. By rights he ought still to be angry with her, but instead he was laughing—and he was tempted to drop the BlackBerry and race after her. She was the most ridiculous, infuriating woman there could possibly be, aggravatingly sunny-natured and welded to those rose-tinted glasses through which she seemed to view humanity. She was illogical and stubborn and sometimes just plain crazy. And she made him feel...

Feel? He did not ‘feel’ things. He analysed and dissected them; he applied practical reasoning to them—just as he had applied practical reasoning to their marriage. But how could you apply practical reasoning to a woman who wanted to know if a multiple orgasm counted as one or not; a woman who referred to your penis as a ‘gorgeous, sexy hunny-bunny of a shag shaft,’ cooing the words in between stroking and kissing it; a woman who asked you in all seriousness if you thought that, if she whispered a few words to them, ‘all the sperm in your baby gravy’ would paddle like mad to make her pregnant.

Practical reasoning and Julia were poles apart—at opposite ends of any scale—which was why she needed him to keep an eye on her. And that, of course, was the only reason why he was going to get showered and changed and go and join Dorland’s ridiculous ego fest of a party.

* * *

It was nearly midnight, the party had been going on for hours, and she still hadn’t seen any sign of Silas—even though she had spent what felt like the whole night looking for him.

‘Julia.’ She stiffened as she saw Nick approaching with a group of louche-looking young men—the sons of some of Dorland’s older guests, Julia recognized, most of whom looked rather the worse for drink.

‘I’ve brought a few of your admirers over to say hello to you.’

The boys—for they were little more, Julia decided—blushed and brayed and generally behaved as male teenagers do under the influence of drink and raging hormones.

‘Are you enjoying the party?’ Julia asked them in a kind voice, at the same time looking round discreetly to see if she could spot Silas anywhere.

‘Any one for more champagne?’ Nick demanded, revealing the unopened bottle he was carrying.

‘Not for me, thanks,’ Julia refused, showing him her already half-full glass.

‘Rubbish—of course you want some,’ Nick insisted, taking it from her and turning away to put it on a table while he opened the bottle, then filling it and topping up everyone else’s glasses. ‘Here you go.’

Julia took a polite mouthful of the drink and tried to keep up her smile as the men gathered around her, making drunken attempts at wit and charm.

‘Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got great tits?’ one of the boys asked her.

Pretending she hadn’t heard him, she moved slightly away from him. She finished the champagne and put her glass down on a nearby table, wanting to get away.

‘Is that Silas over there?’ Nick asked Julia, and watched in satisfaction as she turned her head to look where he was indicating, towards the marquee.

In the darkness on the other side of the large people-packed stretch of gardens that separated him from Julia, Silas frowned as he saw her with Nick and a group of young men. As he watched, she put down her glass and seemed to be trying to edge away from the group.

She had her back to him, and something about her stance made Silas think of a young fox surrounded by out-of-control baying hounds. Blayne was obviously saying something to her, because she suddenly turned her head to look in the opposite direction from the table. Behind her back, one of the group of young men refilled her glass while another dropped something into her drink.

Anxiously, and oblivious to what was happening, Julia continued to look in the direction Nick had indicated, even though she could see no sign of Silas.

‘Julia!’ Even though he knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him, Silas still called out her name in sharp warning as he started to thrust his way through the crowd towards her.

‘Come on, Jules—drink up,’ Julia heard Nick urging her affably, as he proffered a second glass of champagne. Reluctantly she turned to face him, taking a polite sip. ‘I really have to go now,’ she told him. ‘Dorland will be wondering where I am.’

‘Oh, but we aren’t going to let you go yet—are we, boys? Come on, drink up. That’s right.’

There was a look in Nick’s eyes that was quite frightening, Julia saw uncomfortably. A mixture of excitement and cruelty that made her desperately want to get away from him. And the boys with him, although no doubt charming as individuals, in their present overheated and drunken state reminded her far too much of hungry, mob-minded pack animals.

Nick was already holding on to her arm now, and the boys were pressing much closer to her than she liked.

Anxious to get away from them without any unpleasantness, Julia took a gulp of her champagne.

‘Come on—you’ve got to drink it all. Hasn’t she, lads?’ She could hear Nick speaking, but oddly the words seemed to be reaching her from a distance. Even more oddly, her mouth seemed to be going numb, whilst her body felt heavy and all she could see were blurred images.

She was being sucked down into a vortex of darkness. Darkness and harsh mocking laughter, whilst hands reached for her and tugged at her clothes.

* * *

‘What have you given her?’

Silas was standing cradling Julia’s inert body in one arm, Nick’s blood crimsoning the knuckles of his free hand, whilst Nick himself lay where he had fallen, in a tangle of wrought-iron chairs and pot plants, nursing his bruised jaw. The least drunk of the young men were rapidly sobering up, and looking white-faced with fear.

‘Liquid X—you know, GHB,’ one of them volunteered, shamefaced. ‘Couple of doses, I reckon, ’cos Nick put some in too.’

Nick glowered at Silas silently.

‘Blayne told us she was up for it,’ another of them insisted. ‘Said he’d see us all right if we helped him.’

Whilst Silas’s attention was on them Nick managed to struggle to his feet. Damn that bloody bitch Julia. He had been determined to have his revenge on her, and to make sure that no one would ever take any accusations she might make seriously. If Silas hadn’t intervened right now the Honourable Julia would have been on her way to becoming the Dishonoured Julia, in the cheap apartment Nick was renting. He had already set up everything he would need to film Julia enjoying the intimate attentions of the drunken youths he had planned to incite to take full advantage of her and the situation she was in.

By tomorrow morning he would have had a video of the whole thing that would have earned him a small fortune and humiliated and humbled Julia. No way would his sanctimonious wife have believed a word her precious friend had to say once his video became public property.

Silas could see Nick scuttling away, but he wasn’t prepared to leave Julia to go after him.

He had reached her just as she collapsed, and had heard her terrified whimper of protest as she felt his hands on her body, her own trying desperately to push him away.

The images inside his head of what her fate would have been if he hadn’t witnessed what was happening and got to her in time, filled him with fury and anguish. His arms tightened protectively around her as she lolled helplessly against him.

‘You—go and find a doctor and bring him here,’ he instructed the most sober of the youths grimly. ‘There should be one at the first aid station. And as for the rest of you...I won’t forget what nearly happened here tonight.’

CHAPTER TEN

S
ILAS
stood sombrely beside the bed watching Julia as she slept. He had spent most of the night catnapping in an armchair so that he could both watch over her and be there should she wake and need him, and now the golden bars of morning sunshine striping the bed in honeyed warmth contrasted sharply with the darkness of his thoughts. Yes, Julia was here, and safe, but she might so easily not have been. And that would have been his fault. He could have made up their small quarrel before she had left the villa, but he had chosen not to do so, deeming it practical that she should be punished just a little for raising issues he did not want to discuss.

His fault. A surge of aching emotional anguish battered savagely against his once impervious belief in his own rightness.

Julia made a small sound and immediately he leaned towards her. The doctor who had seen her the previous night had assured him that there would not be any lasting long-term effects from the drug she had been given.

‘But,’ he had warned Silas gravely, ‘in the short term it may well be that she will suffer from physical symptoms such as nausea and dizziness—and, more unpleasantly, emotional and mental panic, flashbacks, even paranoia. She will feel vulnerable and sometimes threatened. Fortunately, because you were able to rescue her, you will be able to reassure her that she has nothing to fear from what she can’t remember.

‘One of the most harrowing aspects of the way certain depraved and vicious men are using this drug against women is the fact that their victims cannot remember what happened. They have flashbacks, dream sequences of events, but these are shadowy and insubstantial, and it is my experience that a woman who has suffered rape via this kind of drug tortures herself over what she cannot remember as much as what she can. In fact, in one particularly traumatic and tragic case I had to deal with some months back, the young woman concerned actually took her own life. Your partner has been very fortunate.’

Silas made a small abrupt movement, unable to continue with his own train of thought, and then sat down on the side of the bed.

Immediately Julia opened her eyes and looked at him, starting to smile, her eyes alight with warmth and love. And then, as though a protective seal had been torn from her, her expression changed, all the joy leaching from it, as swiftly as dry fine sand running through a man’s hand, leaving behind it an empty hollow that quickly became filled with darkness and pain.

Silas could see the fear and confusion filling her—sense it almost like a cold, thick, impenetrable fog. Automatically he touched her arm, wanting to comfort her, his heart thudding with the violence of his emotions as she recoiled from him.

‘No, Silas, please,’ she whispered. ‘You mustn’t touch me. Something horrible has happened.’

Her eyes were filling with tears and the look of agonised shame she gave him ripped at his heart.

‘Julia, it’s all right...’

‘No. No, it isn’t. You don’t know what’s happened.’

As she wept Julia lifted her hands to her face, pressing her fingers against her temples.

She felt so weak and confused, somehow aware that something unbearably dreadful had happened to her but unable to remember what it was. Images flashed through her head like lasers. Nick looking at her with a vicious cruel smile. Sounds: the braying laughter of men. Sensations. Hard male hands touching her. And, woven through them all, binding her with icy fear, the most terrifying and intense surges of panic.

‘Jules, it is all right, I promise you.’ Silas could hardly speak himself, his voice thick with a mingling of anger, guilt and an emotion he didn’t recognise but that ran as pure as liquid gold, carrying only his desire to protect and comfort her.

‘No!’ Julia shook her head and wept. ‘Nothing can ever be right again, Silas. You don’t know what happened. Nick...’

As she shuddered and closed her eyes Silas took hold of her, binding her to him. ‘Nothing happened,’ he told her thickly.

‘Yes, it did. But I can’t remember what. All I can remember is that Nick made me drink some champagne. I didn’t want to, but he insisted. And then...I can’t remember what happened, but I know it was something horrible. And I’m afraid... You’ll have to divorce me, Silas.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve heard about things like this happening...women being drugged and then... You don’t know what’s happened, because you can’t remember, but you just get sort of flashbacks, and the men always claim that you were willing... Nick hates me, and if he...if they...’

The look in her eyes shocked and tormented him into speechlessness.

‘If there were to be a child...’ she whispered rawly, hanging her head. ‘I don’t know if I could—’

‘Julia, you mustn’t torment yourself like this. There’s no need. Nothing happened!’

‘You keep saying that, but you don’t know—’

‘I do know! I saw Blayne slip the drug into your drink. By the time I got to you it was too late to stop you from drinking it, and you were on the point of collapsing, but that was all that did happen.’

‘But I will never know that, will I?’ Julia told him quietly. ‘I’ll never know if that’s true or if you’re just saying it to protect me. And I’ll have to live the rest of my life wondering if you’re married to me because you want to be or because you feel honour-bound to be. I can’t do that, Silas. I can’t live like that. And I can’t bear thinking about what might have happened. They
were
touching me!’ Julia wept. ‘I felt their hands...’

‘Those were my hands.’

Julia pulled away from him and looked up at him, her eyes dark with despair.

‘Julia, I give you my word that what I am telling you is the truth. I understand how you must feel, and why you feel it, but I have to say that I don’t like thinking that you neither believe me nor trust me.’

‘I feel afraid, Silas, and...and dirty. And... How can I ever have sex with you again when I don’t know what might be happening inside my own body? When I don’t know what might have happened—what things could—’

‘Your body is no different this morning than it was yesterday afternoon when you left the villa. I am not in any way unwilling to have sex with you, Julia, because I know there is no reason for me not to do so other than my concern for you. And if you want me to prove that to you...’

‘Where is Nick now?’ Julia asked, without responding to his challenge.

‘I have no idea. Dr. Salves has already advised me that if you want to press charges against Blayne, then—’

‘No!’ Julia stopped him violently. ‘How can I do that when he is married to Lucy?’ she demanded, adding weakly, ‘My head hurts, and I feel sick...’

She was trembling almost violently, and Silas didn’t waste time, simply scooping her up out of the bed and carrying her to the bathroom.

* * *

Julia looked out of the bedroom window towards the patio area of the villa, where Silas was sitting beside the pool, wearing only a pair of shorts despite the fact that it was already almost dusk. She could hear his voice, although not what he was saying, as he spoke into his BlackBerry. It was nearly a week since she had been drugged. Dr. Salves had told her two days ago that physically she was fully recovered, and she had told him truthfully that her feelings of acute panic and terror had begun to lessen. But, despite that, she was still haunted by the fear that Silas, out of kindness, had lied to her when he had told her that nothing had happened to her.

A little shakily she turned round and headed for the open patio doors.

When he saw her walking towards him Silas switched off his BlackBerry and stood up without moving, letting her walk to him instead.

‘Silas, tell me again what happened with...when... I can’t bear it that I can’t remember!’ She choked out in a tortured voice, stepping back as Silas reached out for her.

‘Nothing happened.’

‘You keep telling me that, but how can I believe it when I can’t remember? How can I know that it’s the truth and that you aren’t just saying it to protect me?’ Julia demanded emotionally. ‘Dr. Salves says I may never have total recall, so how can I know if I can’t remember?’

She flinched as Silas took hold of her left hand, clasping it between his own, but he refused to let her go.

‘When I married you I took on certain responsibilities,’ Silas began sombrely.

‘Yes, I know, and it’s because of that that I’m afraid you are just protecting me,’ Julia burst out.

‘One of those responsibilities,’ Silas continued, as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘at least for me, is to ensure that our relationship, our
marriage
, has the strongest foundations it can possibly have. And for me the strongest foundations any relationship can have are those of trust and honesty. Trust is a two-way thing, Julia. A person may give it freely, or it may have to be earned. But both the person who gives it and the one who takes it have an irrevocable duty to honour it. I trust you to honour our marriage because I know the person you are, and I know without it having to be said that having married me, you will give your responsibilities to our marriage and to me priority above everything else. I give you that trust because I know that I can—because, if you like, I
know
you.

‘And I promise you that you can have the same trust in me. Yes, I do believe it is my responsibility to protect you, and I blame myself for not being there to prevent what happened right at the start. But I would not be protecting you now if I lied to you about what happened and left your fears and doubts to fester. A clean, sharp, open wound always heals better than one that is hidden away. Had you been physically abused in any kind of way I would have told you. But you were not. I reached you as you collapsed and the only hands to touch you were mine. You were not abused, and you were not raped, and that is the truth. I promise you that on my word as your grandfather’s heir. I cannot give you back the memory you have lost, but I can and do give you my promise that you can and will always be able to trust me to tell you the truth—just as I already know that I can and do trust you to be equally honest with me and for me.’

Julia’s eyes stung with bittersweet emotional tears. How could she reject the precious gift Silas was offering her? She remembered how only this morning she had twisted away from him, refusing to let him kiss her, explaining reluctantly that she still felt contaminated and afraid, even though Dr. Salves had assured her that she was perfectly healthy.

‘Julia?’

Unable to speak, she shook her head and then turned and ran back to the villa.

From their bedroom Julia watched as Silas walked to the far end of the pool. The subtle nightscape lighting illuminated the privacy of their enclosed patio and pool area and showed her the clean hard lines of his body, the strongly toned width of his shoulders that she had loved so much because they were so male and made her feel so safe, the nicely muscular firmness of his torso, arrowing downwards in a perfect V shape. Silas was muscular enough to look healthy and fit without looking mirth-provokingly like a contestant in a Mr. Muscle contest.

The shorts he was wearing, hip-hugging and long-legged, in black and white patterned cotton, were the kind favoured by surfers, and secretly she thought them far more sexy than the tight, skimpy posing pouches favoured by some men.

She wanted him so much, but at the same time she was filled with an unfamiliar sick fear at the thought of having sex with him. Silas might assure her that neither Nick nor anyone else had raped her, but Nick had certainly raped her of her delight in her physical relationship with Silas. And that physical bonding was such an important part of what had made things good between them.

But was she really going to let Nick do that to her? Was she really so weak and doubting that she was going to let him destroy their marriage? Or was she strong enough to trust in Silas, to truly trust in him from the depths of her being? The choice was hers.

Outside, Silas was swimming lengths with a powerful driving crawl that barely rippled the surface of the water.

Julia stepped back from the window.

* * *

Marriage obviously changed a man’s thinking at some deep and profound level, Silas decided. There was certainly no other practical explanation for the way he was feeling and behaving right now. Logically, until Julia had overcome her present problems, it made sense for him to return to New York, where he had any amount of work waiting for him, rather than remain here. Practical explanations and solutions must always be any right-thinking man’s preferred choice. And yet here he was, ploughing up and down a swimming pool, trying to work off the physical ache of his desire for her, and totally unable to find any kind of exercise that would do the same for the mental turmoil he was experiencing.

To say that he felt guilty and helpless and filled with savage anger came nowhere near to describing just what he did feel. He wanted to take Julia in his arms and hold her protectively safe. And at the same time he wanted to take her with his body and somehow bring back to life the happy, sexy, joy-filled lover who, he was only now beginning to realise, had completed and satisfied him as no other woman ever had. He wanted to tell her that nothing could ever happen to make him want to end their marriage. It couldn’t; he simply couldn’t envisage his life without her. But he also wanted to tell her that he ached and needed to have back the Julia she had been—the Julia who had laughed and joked and filled the hours they shared with her own special unique sunshine. And he missed that sunshine just as he missed waking up in the morning with her cuddled up against him, just as he missed that special feeling of male satisfaction and triumph that came with holding her tight whilst their heartbeats slowed to post-orgasm normality.

It seemed incredible to him that he could think of nothing and no one else other than Julia, that she filled his thoughts to such an extent that there simply wasn’t room for anything or anyone else. It was because she represented a problem that needed a solution, he told himself. Because the way things were now was interrupting the smooth flow of the life and the future he had planned for them. Because this morning, when she had backed away when he had tried to kiss her, her eyes filling with tears, he had damn near wanted to cry himself.