Four Christmas Treats. Jessica Hart

are you doing?’ she demanded crossly, when he removed her fake ring with one deft movement.

      ‘You don’t really imagine that this is going to deceive the daughters of a billionaire, do you?’he taunted, shaking his head as he put it in his pocket. ‘They’ll know straight away it’s a fake, and it’s only a small step from knowing your ring is a fake to guessing our relationship is fake.’

      Tilly couldn’t conceal her dismay. His confidence had overpowered her own belief in the effectiveness of her small ploy.

      ‘But I’ve got to wear a ring,’ she told him. ‘We’re supposed to be engaged, and it’s as her properly engaged daughter that my mother wants to parade me in front of Art and his daughters.’

      ‘Try this.’

      Tilly couldn’t believe her eyes when Silas reached into his jacket pocket and removed a small shabby jeweller’s box.

      Uncertainly she took it from him. He couldn’t possibly have bought a ring.

      ‘Here, give it to me.’ he told her impatiently, after he’d watched her struggle with the catch, and flicked it open so easily that she felt a complete fool. Warily she looked at the ring inside the box, her eyes widening in awe. The gold band might be slightly worn, but the rectangular emerald surrounded by perfect, glittering white diamonds was obviously very expensive and very real.

      ‘Where—? How—?’ she began.

      ‘It was my mother’s,’ Silas answered laconically.

      Immediately Tilly closed the box and tried to hand it back to him.

      ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘I can’t wear your mother’s ring.’

      ‘Why not? It’s certainly a hell of a lot more convincing than that piece of cheap tat you were wearing.’

      ‘But it’s your mother’s.’

      ‘It’s a family ring, not her engagement ring. She didn’t leave it to me with strict instructions to place it only on the finger of the woman, if that’s what you’re thinking. She wasn’t sentimental, and I daresay she had stopped believing in Cinderella and her slipper a long time before she died.’

      ‘Do you always carry it round with you?’Tilly asked him. Her question was uncertain, and delivered in an emotional whisper.

      Silas looked at her. He couldn’t remember the last time he had met a woman who was as absurdly sentimental as this one appeared to be. Silas didn’t do sentimentality. He considered it to be a cloying, unpleasant emotion that no person of sound judgement should ever indulge in.

      ‘Hardly,’ he told her crisply. ‘It just happens that I recently had it revalued for insurance purposes, and I collected it from the jewellers on my way over to you. I was on my way to the bank to put it in my safety deposit box, but the traffic was horrendous and we couldn’t miss the flight. If one were to assess the odds, I should imagine it will be safer on your finger that it would be in my pocket.’

      He sounded as though he was telling the truth, and he certainly did not look the sentimental type, Tilly acknowledged.

      ‘Give me your hand again.’ He took hold of it as he spoke, re-opening the box and obviously intending to slide the ring onto her finger. Immediately she tried to stop him, shaking her head.

      ‘No, you mustn’t do that,’ she said. A small icy finger of presentiment touched her spine, making her shiver. She could see the mix of derision and impatience in the look he was giving her, and although inwardly she felt humiliated by his obvious contempt, she still stood her ground.

      ‘What’s wrong now? Worried that you’re breaking some fearful taboo or something?’ he demanded sarcastically.

      ‘I don’t like the idea of you putting the ring on. It seems wrong, somehow,’ Tilly admitted.

      ‘Oh, I see. My putting my ring on your engagement finger when we aren’t engaged is wrong, but pretending that we are engaged when we aren’t is perfectly all right?’

      ‘It’s the symbolism of it,’ Tilly tried to explain. ‘There’s something about a man putting a ring on a woman’s finger…It might sound illogical to you—’

      ‘It does, and it is.’ Silas stopped her impatiently, taking hold of her hand again and slipping the ring onto her finger.

      Tilly had told herself that it couldn’t possibly fit, but extraordinarily it did—and perfectly. So perfectly that it might have been made for her—or meant for her? What on earth had put that kind of foolish thought into her head?

      ‘There, it’s done.And nothing dramatic has happened.’

      Not to him, maybe, Tilly acknowledged, but something had happened to her. The worn gold felt soft and heavy on her finger, and inside her chest her heart felt as constricted as though the ring had been slipped around it. When she looked down at her hand the diamonds flashed fire. Or was it the tears gathering in her own eyes that were responsible for the myriad rainbow display of colours she could see?

      This wasn’t how a ring like this should be given and worn, and yet somehow just by wearing it she felt as though she had committed to something. Some message, some instinctive female awareness the ring was communicating to her. A sense of pain and foreboding filled her, but it was too late now. Silas’s ring was on her finger, and they were coming into Segovia, the lights from the town illuminating the interior of the car.

      ‘What was she like?’ Tilly asked softly, the question instinctive and unstoppable.

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Your mother.’

      Silas wasn’t going to answer her, but somehow he heard himself saying quietly and truthfully, ‘She was a conservationist, wise and loving, and full of life. She died when I was eight. She was in a protest. Some violence broke out and my mother fell and hit her head. She died almost immediately.’

      Tilly could feel the weight of the silence that followed his almost dispassionate words. Almost dispassionate, but not quite. She had sensed, even if she had not actually heard, the emotion behind them. She looked down at the ring and touched it gently, in tribute to the woman to whom it had belonged.

      Silas had no idea why he had told Tilly about his mother. He rarely thought about her death these days. He was very fond of his stepmother, who had shown him understanding and kindness, and who had always respected his relationship with his father, and he certainly loved Joe. Damn all over-emotional, sentimental women. A wise man kept them out of his life, and didn’t make the mistake of getting involved with them in any way. There was only one reason he was here with Tilly now, and that was quite simply because she was providing him with the opportunity to get close to Art. And if that meant that he was using her, then he wasn’t going to feel guilty about that. She, after all, was equally guilty of using him.

      ‘I hadn’t expected the castle to be quite so remote,’Tilly admitted, nearly half an hour after they had driven through Segovia, with its picturesque buildings draped in pretty Christmas decorations. ‘Nor that it would be so high up in the mountains.’

      They had already passed through the ski centres of Valdesqui and Navacerrada, looking as festive as a Christmas card, and although the snow-covered scenery outside the car was stunningly beautiful in the clearness of the early-evening moonlight, Tilly was surprised that her mother, who loved sunshine and heat, had chosen such a cold place for her wedding.

      They turned off the main road onto a narrow track that wound up the steep mountainside, past fir trees thick with snow, towards the white-dusted, fairy-tale castle perched at its summit, lights shining welcomingly from its many tall, narrow windows. The castle was cleverly floodlit, heightening the impression that it had come straight out of a fairy story, and the surrounding snow was bathed in an almost iridescent pale pink glow

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ Tilly murmured appreciatively. Silas