oblivious to it?
Art’s daughters, Susan-Jane and Cissie-Rose, were stick-thin and must, Tilly imagined, take after their mother. There was nothing of their father’s heavy squareness about them. Their husbands, though, were both unpleasantly overweight. Art’s daughters were, according to Tilly’s mother, ‘Southern Belles.’ If so, they were certainly Southern Belles who had been left out in the sun so long that all humanity had been burned out of them, Tilly decided, as she listened to them deliberately and cruelly trying to destroy her mother with their innuendos and subtle put-downs.
At one point during the evening, when she had been obliged to listen politely yet again to Cissie-Rose praising herself to the skies for the high quality of her hands-on mothering, and complaining about the children’s nanny daring to ask for time off over Christmas so that she could visit her own family, Tilly had longed to turn round and tell her what she thought of her. But of course she hadn’t, knowing how horrified her mother would have been.
For such an apparently clean-living family, they seemed to consume an incredible amount of alcohol. Although very little food had passed what Tilly suspected were the artificially inflated and certainly perfectly glossed lips of Art’s ‘girls’, as he referred to them. Predictably, they had expressed horror and then sympathy when Tilly had tucked into her own meal with gusto, shuddering with distaste at her appetite.
‘Dwight would probably take a stick to me if I put on so much as an ounce—wouldn’t you honey?’ Cissie-Rose had observed.
‘No guy likes an overweight gal. Ain’t that the truth, Silas?’ Dwight had drunkenly roped Silas into the conversation.
‘Oh, you mustn’t tease Silas, Dwighty,’ Cissie-Rose had told her husband in her soft baby whisper of a voice. ‘He and Tilly are newly engaged, and of course right now he thinks she’s wonderful. I can remember how romantic it was when we first got engaged. Although I must say, Tilly, I was shocked when Daddy told us about the way you and Silas were carryin’ on earlier.’
‘T’ain’t right, doing that kind of thing in a house where there’s young ’uns around,’ Dwight had put in.
‘Which begs the point that presumably young ’un number one was sent away somewhere when young ’un number two was conceived?’ Silas had murmured indiscreetly to Tilly, on the pretext of filling her wine glass.
She had desperately wanted to laugh, only too glad of the light relief his dry comment had provided, but she hadn’t allowed herself. He had no business linking the two of them together in private intimate conversation of the kind only good friends or lovers exchanged.
Tilly didn’t think she’d ever seen two men drink as much as Art and Dwight. Art’s other son-in-law—Susan-Jane’s husband, Bill, a quiet man with a warm smile, hadn’t drunk as much as the other two—although Tilly suspected from the amount of attention he was paying her that either he and Susan-Jane had had a quarrel before coming down for dinner, or he was a serial flirt who didn’t care how much he humiliated his wife by paying attention to another woman.
Tilly tried not to show what she was feeling when she watched Art down yet another whiskey sour, but she was relieved to see that Silas wasn’t joining the other men in what seemed to be some sort of contest to see who could mix the strongest drink.
In truth, the only good thing about being downstairs was the warmth—and the excellent food. Had her room been more comfortable, and had she had it to herself, she would have escaped to it long ago, Tilly admitted as she tried and failed to smother a yawn.
‘Darling, you look worn out,’ Annabelle exclaimed with maternal concern. ‘Art, I think we should call it a night…’
‘You can call it what the hell you like, honey, but me and the boys are callin’ for another jug of liquor—ain’t that right, boys?’
Tilly’s heart ached for her mother when she saw her anguished look.
‘The staff must have had a long day, with everyone arriving. It would be considerate, perhaps, to let them clear away and get to bed?’ Silas spoke quietly, but with such firm authority that everyone turned to look at him.
‘Who the hell needs to be considerate to the staff? They’re paid to look after us.’ Dwight’s face was red with resentment as he glared at Silas.
Tilly discovered that she was holding her breath, and her stomach muscles were cramped with tension. But Silas had the advantage, since he had already stood up and was moving to her chair to pull it out for her.
‘You’re right. I apologise if I overstepped the mark.’ Silas ignored Dwight to address his apology direct to Art. ‘It was only a thought.’
‘And a good one Silas,’Tilly heard her mother saying heroically. ‘I’m tired myself, Artie, do let’s all go to bed.’
Tilly wasn’t at all sure that Art would have complied if a flustered young girl hadn’t come hurrying in to the room to tell Cissie-Rose that one of her children had been sick and was asking for her.
‘Oh, my poor baby!’ Cissie-Rose exclaimed theatrically. ‘I knew coming here was gonna make her sick. I told you—you know that I did.’
‘Come on. Let’s make our escape now, whilst we can,’ Silas muttered to Tilly.
She was tired enough to give in, going over to her mother first to give her a quick kiss, and then saying a general goodnight, while Art’s daughters were still protesting in high-pitched whiny voices about the disruption to their children’s routine.
‘Does your mother know what she’s letting herself in for?’ Silas demanded as they headed for the stairs.
‘I don’t know,’ Tilly was forced to admit. Her own concern betrayed her into adding, ‘She says she’s in love with Art, but I don’t see how she can be.’
By the time they reached the second floor her skin had broken out in goosebumps, and she was so cold that her longing to crawl into bed to try and get warm was overwhelming her apprehension about sharing it with Silas.
‘Do you suppose there’ll be any hot water up here?’ she asked Silas as he opened the bedroom door for her.
‘Potentially,’ Silas answered her dryly. ‘There’s an electrically heated shower in the bathroom, although my experience of it so far suggests that it isn’t totally efficient.’
‘Meaning what?’ Tilly asked him suspiciously.
‘Meaning lukewarm is probably as good as it’s going to get,’ he replied. ‘At least the bed should be warm, though. I went down to the kitchen earlier and borrowed a kettle and a couple of hot water bottles.’
Tilly’s eyes widened, and then blurred with tired tears. Somehow he wasn’t the type she had imagined doing something so domestic and so thoughtful.
He would be a fool to start feeling sorry for Tilly, Silas warned himself, hardening his heart against her obvious misery. His only purpose in being here was to get his story. And that was exactly what he intended to do, no matter what methods he had to use to do so.
‘I don’t think I can bear a week of this.’ Tilly was too tired to care about how vulnerable her admission might make her seem. ‘I hate the cold, and I hate even more the thought of not being able to have a decent hot shower whenever I want.’
Silas looked at her. ‘If that’s a hint that you’re expecting me to be a gentleman and offer to let you use the shower first, I’ve got a better idea.’
‘You mean I should use my mother’s bathroom?’ Tilly asked absently, as she stepped into the lamp-lit bedroom that looked cosier and felt slightly warmer than she had expected.
‘No, I was going to say that it would make sense for us to share the shower, to make the best use of what hot water it provides.’
Was he serious? He couldn’t be, could he? She looked at him, and then wished she hadn’t as her body reacted to the intimacy