Claiming His Shock Heir

‘Philippa.’

The sleep-drugged, warm male voice stopped her abruptly, forcing her to turn even though she didn’t want to.

‘Where are you going?’ Scott was frowning, pushing irritated fingers into his hair, his legs bare beneath the robe he had pulled on.

‘To wake Simon up and tell him that we’re leaving,’ Philippa managed to respond evenly. She couldn’t meet his eyes. If she did he was bound to read her feelings there. ‘That was the arrangement wasn’t it, Scott?’ pride impelled her to ask. ‘You did agree that we could leave once you had the contract? In fact we… celebrated my departure last night.’

‘Last night.’ His voice was harsh. ‘And this morning you were going to sneak away without.…’ He had closed the distance between them and Philippa knew without conscious thought that if he reached out and touched her there was no way she could conceal her love. Instinctively she tensed, arching away from him, forgetting the stairs behind her.

‘Philippa.’

Scott’s sharp warning came too late. She had already stepped back, the sensation of emptiness under her foot disorientating her, Scott’s fingers biting into her arm. She raised her free hand automatically, driven by an emotion more powerful than her fear of falling and in that instant saw Simon poised on the stairs above them, his scowl mirroring Scott’s as he ran towards them.

‘Let go of my mother, you’re hurting her.’

She opened her mouth to tell Simon that he had totally misread the situation, but it was too late. ‘I hate you,’ he stormed childishly at Scott, who still maintained his grip on her arm. ‘I wish I’d never found out that.…’ Some sixth sense warned Philippa of what was to come. She cried out his name, but it was too late to stop him, and her senses whirled in a mixture of anguish and mortification, Simon’s voice shrill where it had been hoarse, as he concluded ‘… you are my father.… I hate you… I hate you.…’

‘Simon.…’ Simon rushed towards her just as Scott released her wrist, his face pale with disbelief, his eyes demanding an answer to the question she knew he was going to ask, but suddenly the landing seemed to move giddily around her. She stepped backwards, forgetting the stairs, and the last thing she remembered was the sound of Simon’s voice, frightened and full of pain as he screamed out, ‘You’ve killed my mother.…’

* * *

‘Ah… you’ve come round at last.’ Philippa opened her eyes. She had been having the most unpleasant dream, but what was Eve doing in her room? She glanced towards the window and saw that the sun was high, and apprehension trickled coldly down her spine. ‘It wasn’t a dream was it?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘I really did fall down the stairs, and Simon.…’

Eve avoided her eyes and got up from the chair, moving restlessly around the room. ‘I must go and find Scott, dear. He told me to fetch him when you came round. There’s nothing wrong. You didn’t break anything, but Doctor Forbes thought it best to give you a tranquillising shot. He said he thought you’d had a bad shock, and of course poor Simon was practically hysterical.

‘Simon!’ She tried to sit up, wincing as her bruised spine protested.

‘He’s all right now. He’s with Scott.’

Scott! Simon had said he hated him!

‘I’d better go and get him.’

‘No, please.…’ Philippa reached out to touch the other woman’s arm. ‘Please, I don’t want to see him yet.…’

‘I’m afraid you don’t have much choice.’

She glanced towards the communicating door and tensed as she saw Scott framed in it. He was wearing black jeans and a soft white silk shirt open at the neck. He looked tired and drawn, but his eyes when he looked at her held an implacable purpose that warned her that he was not going to allow her to escape.

‘Simon’s in the kitchen, Mother, why don’t you go down and have lunch with him?’

Philippa thought that Eve gave her a vaguely sympathetic look as she left the room, but her senses were too acutely attuned to Scott for her to be aware of anything else.

He came towards her, pulling up a chair and dropping into it, leaning back, the soft silk of his shirt pulling tautly across his chest.

‘Now,’ he said softly, ‘you and I have some talking to do, and before you start lying to me, Philippa, Simon and Mother have already told me most of it.’ He got up and walked over to the window, his back to her, his hands in his pockets, moving restlessly, pacing the floor, suddenly turning to face her, the dark anger in his eyes taking her breath away as he said harshly, ‘My son! You deprived me of my son. For God’s sake, Philippa, why? You knew I wanted to marry you. You knew that Simon was mine, and yet you deliberately let me think that.…’ A tiny muscle twitched against his jaw, his body tensing as he moved, and came and sat down again. ‘Why?’

‘Didn’t your mother explain?’

‘She gave me some cock-and-bull story about my grandfather telling you he wanted me to marry Mary Tatlow but I can’t believe you fell for that. You knew I loved you.’

‘You loved Garston as well,’ she said quietly. ‘I was seventeen, Scott, very deeply in love with you and very naively idealistic. Can’t you see?’ she said bitterly, ‘I wanted what was best for you? I couldn’t endure the thought that one day you might regret our marriage; that you might resent the fact that you had to give up Garston for me. I didn’t know about Simon then, and then when I did.…’ she bit her lip. ‘You didn’t argue when I told you I couldn’t marry you.… You never tried to persuade me to change my mind.’

‘You told me you had another lover, damn you.’ He stood up, towering above her, his face dark where it had been pale, his eyes glittering with an intensity of emotion that was mirrored in the high flush of colour along his cheekbones and in the taut rigidity of his muscles. ‘And I did try to persuade you. I even offered to marry you believing you were carrying someone else’s child, if I remember correctly. You weren’t the only one who was idealistic and naive.’

Suddenly it hurt to swallow. She didn’t want to be reminded of the people they had been. Somewhere along the way they had lost it all; the love; the naiveté; the unselfishness. ‘Was he ever your lover?’

He wasn’t looking at her, and it could hardly matter now. He had made it more than plain how he thought about her. ‘No,’ she said tiredly. ‘Never … but it was the only thing I could think of that would make you believe that it was all over between us.…’