Catherine’s mother looked surprised when she opened the door to find Silas and Honor outside.
‘Jane, I’m sorry to do this to you but something very urgent’s cropped up. Can Honor stay with you for…until I can get back for her…?’
‘Of course she can,’ she agreed warmly, ushering Honor inside. What, she wondered, was going on? There had been a lot of whispering being done between the two girls recently and Catherine was rather obviously ‘big with news’, as the saying went, announcing importantly to anyone who would listen that she and Honor had a special secret.
Having coldly inclined her cheek for her father to kiss, Honor marched inside with all the regal bearing of a grand dowager—a highly offended grand dowager, Jane Alders reflected ruefully.
Silas, however, was looking far too grim-faced for her to think of questioning him.
Verity was just finishing pegging out the last of the washing she had abandoned when Honor had arrived when Silas came back, walking soft-footed across the grass so that she had no inkling of his presence until she suddenly saw his shadow.
‘Si…Silas…’ To her chagrin the unexpected shock of seeing him made her stammer. ‘Wha…what do you want? What are you doing here?’
‘Do you want the abridged version?’ Silas asked her tersely and then, shaking his head without waiting for her to respond, he demanded abruptly, ‘Why did you tell Honor that you came from New York to tell me how much you loved me?’
‘Because it was the truth,’ Verity admitted huskily. Why on earth was he asking her that? What could it possibly matter now?
‘No, it isn’t,’ Silas argued flatly. ‘Your uncle told me the truth. He told me that you had asked him to tell me that you didn’t want to see me again; that it was all over between us.’
Verity stared at him. Suddenly she felt extremely cold.
‘No,’ she whispered, her hand going to her throat. ‘No, that’s not true, he couldn’t have told you that. I don’t believe it…’
‘Believe it,’ Silas told her harshly, ‘because I can assure you that he did. Not that I was in any mood to listen to him. Not then. I even wrote to you begging you to change your mind, pleading with you to write back to me, giving what I suppose was an ultimatum in that I wrote that if I didn’t hear from you then I would have to accept that it was over between us.’
Verity badly needed to sit down.
‘Is this some kind of joke?’ she asked Silas weakly.
His mouth hardened.
‘Can you see me laughing?’ he demanded.
Verity shook her head. She could see that he was telling her the truth, but the full enormity of just
what her uncle had done, of what he had set in motion, was still too much for her to fully comprehend.
‘I never got your letter,’ she whispered. ‘There was a murder in the apartment block and my uncle insisted that I had to move out. He promised me that he would give you my new address and telephone number. I… I waited and waited for you to get in touch and then, when you didn’t…for a while I…You were right. Our love was more important than doing what my uncle wanted. I… I came home to tell you that. To tell you how much I loved you and…’ To her horror Verity felt hot tears spill down her cheeks as she relived the full trauma of that time.
‘I read about your marriage in the taxi on the way from the station. After that I knew there was no point in trying to see you,’ she told him bleakly.
Verity looked down at the ground. Why was he doing this to her, dragging her through this…this humiliation? What could it matter now?
‘Look, let’s put aside the issue of my marriage for the moment,’ she heard Silas telling her huskily. ‘I want to concentrate on something else, on something far more important…Did you really love me so much, Verity?’
For a moment she was tempted to lie, but why should she? Proudly she lifted her head and looked at him.
‘Yes. I did,’ she acknowledged. ‘I…’ Quickly she swallowed, knowing that she could not admit to him that she had never stopped loving him; that she still loved him and that, if anything, that love was even deeper and more painful to her now than it had been then.
‘I didn’t marry Sarah because I loved her,’ she heard Silas telling her rawly. ‘I married her because she was pregnant.’
Disbelievingly, Verity focused on him.
‘But…’ she whispered, shaking her head. ‘You would never do something like that. You would never make love to someone you didn’t…you didn’t care about…’
‘I didn’t make love to her,’ he told her bluntly. ‘We just had sex.’
Briefly, without allowing her to stop him, Silas told her exactly what had happened.