Black Lion of Skiapelos

by Annabel Murray

  Black Lion of Skiapelos

  By

  Annabel Murray

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  'Helena, are you trying to avoid me?' Marcos's eyes were no longer on the horizon, but on her face in curious scrutiny. 'I have seen nothing of you alone these past few days. Have I offended you in some way?'

  'N… no, of course not. How could you?'

  'Then prove it by staying with me, hmm?' He looked down at her. 'I do not want you to be nervous, Helena.'

  'Nervous? Of what?' Nothing could be more nerve-racking, she thought, than being close to this man, wanting him with a ferocity of desire of which she hadn't known herself capable.

  'Of meeting my grandfather. He is not a monster.'

  'Just a tyrant,' she riposted.

  'A tyrant, maybe,' he agreed, 'but a loving tyrant, as you will see.' As Marcos would be some day, she knew with a sudden certainty. But if he was going to follow in his grandfather's footsteps he was leaving it a little late to found his own dynasty. He must be around thirty-five. Before she could prevent it, the question popped out.

  'Why have you never married, Marcos?' The answer was as disconcerting as her own temerity.

  'I have been waiting for my bride to grow up.'

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  ANNABEL MURRAY

  SYMPATHETIC STRANGERS

  After the death of her husband Sandra had to make a new life for herself and her young twins, so it seemed a godsend when she was asked to go and help some of her mother's friends in Kent. The local lord of the manor, Griff Faversham, seemed to like her—but the last thing Sandra wanted was another marriage to a wealthy man…

  A QUESTION OF LOVE

  When Venna's half-sister died, Venna willingly assumed the role of mother to Shelagh's baby girl, Gemma. What she didn't enjoy was pretending to be Shelagh—with her reckless nature—in order that Keir Trevelyan should leave her in peace!

  DON'T ASK WHY

  Who was the stranger in the astrakhan coat? And why was he following her husband? Giana was determined to find out, but her search soon led her to greater confusion and to a life of lies and subterfuge in the employ of the semi-reclusive Breid Winterton…

  First published in Great Britain 1989

  by Mills & Boon Limited

  © Annabel Murray 1989

  Australian copyright 1989

  Philippine copyright 1989

  This edition 1989

  ISBN 0 263 76304 8

  For Tom—as always.

  CHAPTER ONE

  'I was really, really happy.' Lena Thomas paced the living-room of her London flat as she voiced her bewildered distress. 'I had a wonderful job, a wonderful family and—I thought—a wonderful man.' Her full lower lip trembled suddenly and her cornflower-blue eyes were enormous pools of misery in the wan oval of her face. 'Petros and I seemed to have so much in common, not just our work but leisure too. We hardly ever rowed. Where did it all go wrong, Sally?' she entreated her friend, who shrugged helplessly.

  'I wish I knew. I'm so sorry.' Curled up in one of the comfortable leather armchairs, Sally sighed sympathetically. Lena turning to her for an opinion was an unusual situation. Until today there had been a tinge of envy in Sally's regard for her friend, literally a golden girl on whom the sun had always shone with such determination. 'It's a crying shame you felt you had to hand in your notice. But with your qualifications you shouldn't have any trouble getting another job, and you still have your marvellous parents,' she concluded in an attempt at comfort.

  'But for how much longer?' Lena was in a uncharacteristically pessimistic mood. 'They're not getting any younger.'

  'I bet old Domenicos isn't very pleased with his precious great-nephew,' Sally hazarded. She thrived on gossip and longed to extract every detail from the situation. 'He won't like losing you. He always says you're the best PA they've ever had.'

  Though Lena was small—five feet nothing in stockinged feet with a waist men yearned to span—she had an astute brain. Her will to succeed and her sparking nervous energy had taken her to a position of trust within the London-based Greek shipping firm of Theodopoulos and Theodopoulos which operated a large fleet out of England.

  Lena's tiny proportions, the long, wilful blonde hair and her tremendous sex appeal made it difficult for those who knew no different to visualise her as a high-powered executive. But over the years Sally had seen her in action, firing questions, delivering answers on shipping and oil companies, drawing at least a dozen threads of her employer's business at once into a neat pattern.

  For the past five years Lena's working day had been one of propositions, deals and contracts. News of the Greek firm's activities commanded front-page headlines without losing any of the mystery and intrigue with which such famous names conducted their operations.

  Domenicos Theodopoulos prided himself on hearing about big business deals before they were completed, new financing techniques and technical advances before they were perfected, political situations before they arose. Single-minded in his dedication to business, he had never married, and his great-nephew, Petros, was his junior partner and natural successor.

  Thus Lena's engagement to Petros Theodopoulos had taken her into a gilded world of the parties her gregarious and hospitable Greek employer loved. The parties were a means to an end, of course. The talk was still of ships, ships, ships, of big coups and even bigger money, of advantageous marriages—which were in effect business mergers. It was a world where art treasures, racehorses and real estate were discussed and collected as avidly as ships. It was a fascinating and enjoyable world. So now that Lena was no longer to marry the younger Theodopoulos she had lost more than her career.

  'I suppose you could ask Domenicos for your job back,' Sally suggested. 'Since it means so much to you. Tell him you've changed your mind?'

  'No.' Lena paused in her pacing and shook her honey-coloured head. 'He's already got my replacement lined up. Besides, I wouldn't want it back, even if Petros wasn't going to be there.' A shudder ran through her slight frame. 'It would be too humiliating. Everyone knowing what happened, pitying me. I've got to get away, right away where nobody knows me. I shall sell this flat, and make a clean break.'

  'I'll miss you. Oh, I could kill Petros Theodopoulos for what he's done to you,' Sally said savagely. However much she might have envied her friend in the past, she hated to see her like this, she realised, Lena's bubbly effervescence deflated, her bright, courageous nature defeated.

  In their friendship Lena had always been the strong one to whom Sally had turned for help and advice in numerous crises. It was Lena who, three years ago, had obtained Sally her present secretarial position with the Greek shipping firm.

  They'd been friends since schooldays. Both came from the same Essex village, Lena the daughter of a well-to-do farmer and Sally, whose father's shop supplied the village with its groceries. Lena's parents had paid for her to attend the prestigious girls' school. Sally had obtained a scholarship, though only by the skin of her teeth, and had thereafter continued to scrape through exams.

  Lena had sailed through them and gone on to obtain a first-class honours degree in business studies.

  An only child of elderly parents, she was a high achiever in everything she tackled. Yet Lena always pooh-poohed any suggestion that she was brainier than average. 'It isn't qualifications that count,' she often told her friend. 'It's the will to do things, to really want to ge
t to the top.' And now the fruits of her ambition were to be thrown away.

  'Damn Petros!' Sally muttered.

  'I suppose it's not really his fault.' Despite her distress, Lena struggled to be fair. She ceased her restless movement and slumped into the other armchair, her whole attitude one of dejection. 'I suppose he couldn't help falling in love with someone else. It could have happened to anyone.'

  'It didn't happen to you, though, did it?' Sally was still indignant. 'And heaven knows you've had enough opportunities. Men swarm around you like bees round a honeypot,' she said with all the feeling of a plainer girl. 'But you stuck to Petros.'

  'I loved him,' Lena said. She swallowed convulsively, the nearest she'd come to cracking up since her fiancé had broken the appalling news. For the past two days she'd lived in a numb daze, a sense of unreality possessing her. Now, relating the facts to Sally, unreality became real. She fought back the threatening tears. 'I still love him. That's another reason why I have to go away. I couldn't bear to keep bumping into him and Eva.'

  'Well, I wouldn't go on loving a man who ditched me a week before the wedding,' Sally pronounced.

  'I can't hate him,' Lena told her. It would have been vastly better, she reflected, to have had the luxury of hatred. 'He didn't do it on purpose. He was genuinely upset when he told me.'

  'I bet!' Less charitable than her friend, Sally was still cynical. 'Of course, it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Eva's father is a big man in the Texas oil world? You know what these Greeks are like when it comes to making money! However rich they are, they never seem satisfied. Just think, you could have been filthy rich, too. I reckon you ought to sue him for breach of promise.'

  'Sally! Surely you don't think that's all that matters to me? I wouldn't have cared a damn if Petros had been some nine-to-five clerk. It's not his money I'm in love with.'

  'No, well—' Sally sounded a little ashamed, but knew she could not have discounted wealth so easily. She looked around the comfortable flat that she'd so often coveted. 'So Petros just walks away and gets on with his new romance, leaving you to sort this lot out?' A sweep of her hand indicated the vast clutter of wedding presents, some still unopened, the wedding dress, still in its polythene wrapper, now slung carelessly across a chair.

  Lena shrugged slender shoulders that looked suddenly frail instead of capable.

  'Thank goodness that's one thing I won't have to do. Dad's farm secretary's going to come up to town and deal with all this. I rang home just before you arrived, and Dad suggested it.'

  Sally had come back from holiday only that afternoon, eagerly anticipating being chief bridesmaid to her best friend at what would surely have been the society wedding of the year, only to find a message saying the marriage was off.

  'What on earth did your parents say?' she was avid to know.

  'They wanted me to go home, of course. Dad was stunned at first, then furious. He said if he'd been twenty years younger he'd have come up to town and punched Petros on the nose. It was the first time—' she made an odd hiccuping sound, half-sob, half-laughter '—that I've been glad I have elderly parents.'

  'And shall you go home?'

  'No.' It would have been very easy to run away to her parents comfortable old Essex farmhouse; easy to be a child again in the beloved familiar rooms, with their rough-cast natural stone walls. It would have been comforting to pour out her heart to her mother in the peace and quiet of the chintz-upholstered living-room with its vast inglenook fireplace, hung with Mary Thomas's collection of blue and white china. That was the weakling's way out. Lena was determined to overcome this numbing misery by her own efforts.

  'What will you do, then?'

  'I'm going abroad for a while. I've always enjoyed travel. In time I might even look for work abroad.'

  'You're lucky you don't really need to work,' Sally couldn't help commenting.

  'Oh, yes, I do!' Lena was very positive about that. 'Money isn't all you need for happiness. You need self-respect, too. I'd hate to live an idle existence just because my parents could afford to support me. But that's not the only reason. If I can't be happy, then I've got to keep busy, get tired, so tired that I'll turn off, sleep at night instead of thinking about Petros and Eva— together.'

  'Old Domenicos must have heaps of contacts abroad,' Sally pointed out. 'Why not ask him if he knows of anything?'

  'He's already suggested it,' Lena admitted.

  The elderly Greek had been coldly angry with his great-nephew, concerned, sympathetic and immediately helpful to Lena.

  'You must know, Helena—' he always insisted on using her full name '—how sorry I am to lose you, both as an employee and a future member of my family. You wish to go abroad, hmm? Unhappiness does not last forever, my child, and then you will come home. But since you wish to travel there is a great service you can do for me if you will, which could keep you out of England for an unspecified period of time.'

  'It sounds exactly what I want.'

  'I would like you to go to Athens on my behalf. But I should understand, of course, if you wanted nothing further to do with Greece or Greeks.'

  Lena brushed this suggestion aside.

  'That would be very silly of me. I've received nothing but kindness from you.'

  'It is not work, you understand, but nevertheless you will be paid.'

  Lena listened with interest as Domenicos Theodopoulos explained.

  'Living on the outskirts of London there is a Greek woman, the daughter of…' he hesitated then, 'of a very old friend of mine. Against her father's wishes, Irini married an Englishman. Since then, she has never revisited her home. Now she has to go into hospital for a serious operation.' Domenicos's deeply lined face was grave. 'The prognosis is not good. It is too late perhaps for her to be reconciled with her father, but she wishes her children to visit their Greek relations, in case…' He did not need to go on. 'Irini asked me to accompany her son and daughter, but there are reasons…' He spread his hands in a gesture with which Lena was familiar. It meant he did not intend to enlarge on the subject. 'Instead I promised to find a suitable companion. Working for me, you have learned much about Greece and Greek ways.'

  'What about Irini's husband?'

  'Dead. Killed in an accident just before the birth of the younger child. It is since then that Irini's health has deteriorated.'

  Sally saw them off at the airport.

  'You will keep in touch?'

  'I'll write,' Lena promised.

  'Remember, I'll want to know all about the dishy men you meet. The quickest way to get over a broken romance is to find yourself another one.'

  'Love on the rebound? No, thanks,' Lena said drily. 'I think I'll avoid men for a while.'

  However many times she travelled, Lena always marvelled at the almost magically swift transit from one country to another. It seemed that the taste of her very British cup of tea had scarcely faded from her palate when she was engulfed by the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a foreign airport.

  This flight was no exception, she thought as, only three and a half hours after leaving London, islands and places that she knew only as enchanted names rose out of the sea below—tiers of brown, grey and violet mountains and the huge, towering mass of Parnassus.

  As a child, and even into her teens, a romantically inclined Lena had been fascinated by tales of Greek mythology. For a long time she had been promising herself a trip to Greece. Working for a Greek firm had increased her curiosity to see that country, but until now there had been no opportunity. In previous years, as an only child, she had felt duty-bound to accompany her parents on family holidays. Not that it had been an irksome duty. She loved her parents and enjoyed their society, but the Thomases were not fond of overseas travel.

  Then, when she'd become engaged to Petros, he'd persuaded her to wait until their honeymoon—'on one of our idyllic islands', he'd promised. That idyll had not transpired.

  Many girls in her situation, Lena supposed, might have avoided scenes t
hat should have held such happiness. But she was unlikely to be doing any island-hopping. Athens would be about the limit to this visit. And, as she'd told Domenicos, despite Petros's defection, she felt no bitterness towards his country or his countrymen.

  For the most part the journey had been a pleasant one. Irini's children were quiet and well behaved. There was a considerable difference in their ages. Stephen, the younger, was not yet five. To him the journey to meet his Greek relatives was an adventure. To his sister Chryssanti, taller than Lena and nearing her eighteenth birthday, it was more of an ordeal. Unlike her brother, she was not in blissful ignorance of her mother's poor health, and she was finding it hard to control her fears and unhappiness.

  'I know Mum's seriously ill,' Chrys, as she preferred to be called, told Lena when Stephen was out of earshot. And, with a little quiver in her voice, 'I think she knows she's going to die.' Despite her own knowledge, Lena felt bound to make an exclamation of protest, but the girl nodded her red-gold head. 'Otherwise why would she be so keen for us to go to Greece to our "rich relations" after all these years? I don't want to meet the Mavroleons after the way they treated Mum when she married Dad. I didn't want to be out of England while Mum had her operation. I'd rather have stayed with Nan and Gramps Forster, my father's parents. They're not very well off, but they love Stephen and me—and Mum. They're not prejudiced against Greeks the way my mother's father was prejudiced against Dad.'

  'I don't think it was a question of prejudice,' Lena told her gently. 'It's just that it's the custom in Greece for marriages to be arranged. Mr Theodopoulos told me your mother was to marry a neighbour's son, but she refused and ran away with your father.'

  'Good for her,' Chrys retorted. 'I'd just like to see anyone try to make me marry someone I didn't fancy. They couldn't do it.'