by Lynne Graham
CHAPTER FIVE
A CHâTEAU in the Loire Valley...what else for a Terzakis? Sarah asked herself as the limousine wafted them at a stately pace down an avenue girded on both sides by a marching procession of huge lime trees, their graceful, pendent foliage shimmering as the light breeze played with the leaves.
‘How long have you lived here?’ Sarah was entranced enough to speak freely as a resplendent building, fashioned of pale creamy stone and built in the classical tradition, began to come into view at the foot of the avenue. ‘Gosh...it’s huge!’ she gasped when she belatedly absorbed the two wings curving back in symmetrical style from the three-storey-high central block.
‘This was my mother’s family home.’
‘She was French? When did she die?’ Sarah asked, suddenly thirsty for information.
‘When I was a child,’ Alex retorted in a quelling tone that suggested she was trespassing on forbidden territory.
Sarah bent her head, suddenly embarrassed by her own adolescent excitement. But she had never been abroad in her life before, hadn’t even crossed the Channel on a day trip to Calais. It was very difficult to take her abrupt change in circumstances coolly in her stride when she was faced with a fabulous château looking like something out of a fairy-tale.
Without warning, Alex leant forward to stare out incredulously at the female figure surging out of the palatial main entrance towards their car as it drew to a halt. He ground out a stifled imprecation in his own language and then groaned out loud. Momentarily, beneath Sarah’s astounded gaze, he looked like a male waiting for an express train to drive over him—helpless.
‘If you dare to betray by even a hint that Nicky is not our child, I will kill you,’ Alex hissed half under his breath.
And the way he looked at her, Sarah believed him. ‘But who is—?’
She got no further. The chauffeur opened the car door. The small blonde woman, waiting impatiently, enveloped her straight into an enthusiastic and affectionate embrace.
‘I’m your mother-in-law,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Sarah, this is Vivien, my stepmother—’
‘Always so precise when anybody could tell you that I’ve loved him like my own for over twenty years,’ Vivien sighed.
‘You’re English,’ was all Sarah could find to say weakly, feeling engulfed.
‘Alex, I know I’m more than a little out of order just landing like this on your wedding night,’ Vivien was appealing with pleading eyes while Alex stood there towering over her like a monolith carved out of stone. ‘But you do see that I simply couldn’t wait to meet Sarah, who is going to make you astonishingly happy...and how can I tell that before I get to know her? She hugged me back. Pounced on by a total stranger and she hugged me back because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings!’
‘Vivien,’ Alex attempted to insert a word into the endless flood.
‘No hug?’ Vivien looked expectant.
Alex bent down to peck the proffered cheek.
‘I see he still counts you as an audience, Sarah. He’s usually a little more enthusiastic... Well, where is he?’
‘Who?’ Alex breathed.
‘Alex, what’s the matter with you? Your son. I am just dying to get my hands on him!’
The other car drew up. Nanny emerged, complete with Nicky. Vivien surged over and then slowly retreated a step.
‘Let us go into the house. I will have you shown to your room.’ Alex anchored a hand like a vice to Sarah’s elbow, dragging her in his wake, evidently keen to remove her from his charming stepmother’s radius.
But Vivien cut them off. ‘Nanny says he’s asleep and mustn’t be disturbed,’ she stage-whispered with a grimace. ‘Bit of a dragon, isn’t she? Your choice, Alex?’
‘Yes,’ Sarah confirmed.
‘Your son is gorgeous, Sarah.’ Vivien patted her arm warmly. ‘You are a clever girl, and so slim again so quickly. Looking at you, nobody would ever dream you’re a very new mother. Are you breast-feeding?’
Sarah reddened fiercely. ‘No.’
‘I’ll take Nikos up to the nursery, madam.’ Nanny sailed past.
‘She’s like a tank, isn’t she?’ Vivien remarked. ‘I can see her putting up barricades to keep us out.’
Sarah giggled. ‘Can’t you just?’
‘Alex, I am not going to stay...I promise you. I won’t even be staying to dinner. I’m flying straight back home again as soon as I leave. But really, Alex,’ Vivien lamented, leading them into the château, ‘it’s all your own fault. That ghastly hole and corner wedding you subjected this darling girl to today! No friends, no family, no reception...not even a honeymoon—shabby. I could have done it in style. I do want you to know that I pleaded with him, Sarah. Even with only three weeks to play with, I could have made it the wedding of the year.’
A line of staff was assembled in the vast entrance hall. ‘I know, positively medieval, isn’t it?’ Vivien whispered sympathetically, reading Sarah’s dismay.
Alex performed the introductions, but all formality was swiftly banished by Vivien, who also concluded the interlude by linking her arm with Sarah’s, saying, ‘Now I expect you’d like to freshen up,’ and carrying Sarah with determination towards the grand stone staircase.
‘Bit of an atmosphere between you two, isn’t there?’ Vivien commented with a sigh. ‘I adore Alex but it does take two to tango, doesn’t it? And it happens even in the best of families. And who could call such a gorgeous baby an accident? Frankly, I’d call him a miracle...Alex saved at the eleventh hour from deep-freezing himself into eternity with that dreadful Elise—you do know about her, don’t you?’
‘A little.’
‘A little’s more than enough. She’s the most frightfully perfect woman. Speaks several languages, is an accomplished artist, owns one of the most famous vineyards in the Loire and can trace her family tree back for yonks and yonks. Incredibly beautiful too. But she’s very superior—treats me like the proverbial dumb blonde, which I’m not...and she would have undone all the hard work I put into unfreezing Alex. Elise doesn’t have any emotions. I think she had them vacuumed out in a special operation so that she could function more like a robot!’
‘But she must have been hurt...’
‘Not at all. She doesn’t love Alex any more than he loved her. They were going to get together some day and hatch a dynasty, probably in a test tube...I really couldn’t imagine her doing it the normal way. She might get her hair mussed. Thank God your birth control let you down!’ Vivien asserted. ‘You saved Alex from a fate worse than death!’
Vivien’s constant chatter allowed Sarah to picture exactly what the older woman had been told. Alex had admitted he was making a shotgun wedding, purely for the sake of legitimising his child, it seemed. At least there was no need to put up a front of being a joyous and adored bride.
Vivien pressed her into a huge and opulent bedroom, festooned with white flowers everywhere she looked. ‘Got it all ready for you behind his back,’ she confided.
Sarah focused on the colossal carved oak four-poster. It was also hung with masses of fresh flowers, resembling some fantastic scene from a film, she thought, on the edge of hysteria. She could barely breathe for the heaviness of the perfume in the air.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she mumbled as Vivien regarded her. ‘Stunning,’ she added weakly.
‘Alex said I wouldn’t like you. I was terrified,’ Vivien admitted. ‘I mean, someone worse than Elise after all the plotting and planning I’ve been doing to keep her at bay! And Alex acting like he had been trapped... It would take an Amazon to trap Alex!’
The Amazon moistened her dry lips. ‘It wasn’t a trap but I did employ pressure,’ Sarah heard herself saying, desperately wanting to be as honest as possible.
‘You had to do that?’ Vivien’s pretty, animated face looked astonished. ‘With Alex? The rat!’ she exclaimed. ‘I always thought Alex could be depended on one hundred per cent to do the decent thing—’
‘Oh,
he can be—’ Sarah backtracked hastily.
‘He has a very strong sense of honour and responsibility. Makes him a bit pious sometimes.’ Vivien pulled a face. ‘But he adores children.’
‘Yes.’
‘Got rather rigid ideas, though. I spoilt Damon—that’s Alex’s younger brother—dreadfully. He was such a charmer when he was a boy...not that I don’t still love him but he does worry me sometimes.’ Vivien leant back against the massive footboard of the bed, looking abstracted and troubled. ‘You know, you’ll laugh, but when I first heard there was a baby I actually thought Alex might be trying to cover for Damon.’
Sarah had frozen. ‘Oh?’ was all she was capable of saying.
‘And it would totally have broken Andy’s heart, and she had been looking a bit peaky and strained lately. Worships the ground Damon walks on—’
‘Andy?’
‘My daughter, Androula.’
‘Your daughter is married to Alex’s brother?’
‘I was a widow with a little girl when I met Alex’s father,’ Vivien explained, with a far-away look in her eyes. ‘My first husband was also Greek. I worked in Nikos’s office. I couldn’t take dictation for tacks but he was always asking for me! Not that he had honourable intentions, let me tell you. Nikos had me earmarked as his next pillow-friend—’
‘His what?’ Still reeling from the shock that Damon’s wife was this woman’s daughter, doubly a part of the Terzakis family because she must have grown up with both brothers as a stepsister, Sarah was none the less fascinated by Vivien’s story.
‘A little Greek euphemism for mistress.’ Vivien wrinkled her nose. ‘I said no and no and no again for an entire year and always kept a desk between us. At the end of it he was on his knees begging me to marry him but hating me too, if you know what I mean. So we married and it took me another two years to get rid of what you might call the baggage from his previous life-style—’
‘Baggage?’
‘The mistress he did have. He just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t have us both.’ Vivien fixed bright blue eyes ruefully on Sarah. ‘I presume you are aware that Alex keeps his left luggage in Athens and Paris?’
‘Er...yes.’
‘Greek men have double standards,’ Vivien muttered with rich sympathy. ‘Want to know how I kicked out the baggage?’
‘Love to,’ Sarah said truthfully.
‘I made him jealous. A dangerous game, that, but for me, it worked. All of a sudden he realised how I felt and he never strayed again, he was so busy watching my every move. I loved him to death but boy, did I keep him on his toes. What are your plans?’
‘Plans?’
‘You need a strategy if you want to decimate the opposition. Remember, I’m always at the end of the phone and I come to Paris all the time. I’ll be here in a fortnight again to see my grandson properly.’ Vivien was already drifting to the door. She turned back for a second and smiled. ‘Alex has a conscience...play on it...and of course that.’ She indicated the bed meaningfully beneath Sarah’s embarrassed gaze. ‘I’m sure you’re already quite aware that what happens in here is more important than anything else right now. Don’t let the sun go down on a row...’
Sarah nodded dumbly in receipt of her instructions.
‘See you next week.’ The door shut on Vivien.
Sarah collapsed down on a chair, feeling as though she had tangled with a whirlwind. She was beginning to understand why Alex had looked momentarily helpless. Vivien was a miniature dynamo. And the poor woman was actually rooting for this crazy marriage to work because evidently Sarah was viewed as a lesser evil than Elise!
But Vivien was the mother of Damon’s wife. That opened up whole new areas of conjecture. Talk about keeping it in the family! Slowly Sarah shook her buzzing head. The extent of her own ignorance was colossal and frustrating. She knew nothing about the Terzakis family that Callie had not chosen to tell her and she had not seen Alex once in the three weeks which had come between his agreement to marry her and the actual ceremony today. No wonder Alex had been shaken by the sight of his stepmother’s descent! Naturally he did not trust Sarah, who had been so vitriolic with him, to keep her mouth shut with Vivien.
Androula...’looking a bit peaky and strained,’ according to her mother. Sarah broke out in a cold sweat of discomfiture. Dear God, she had been so wilfully blind in refusing to see the view from the other side of the fence! Sarah had been outraged when she’d realised that Damon had gaily married another woman while Callie was carrying his child—it had been the final insult in Sarah’s book! She had regarded Androula as her sister’s triumphant rival.
But how triumphant could a newish bride be, faced with the knowledge that another woman was having her husband’s child and then ultimately being presented with the demand that she take on that same child and bring it up as her own? Sarah wasn’t a bit surprised that Vivien’s daughter was looking strained. After all, at what point had Androula learnt of Callie’s condition? Before or after the wedding?
Sarah groaned out loud. Suddenly she was being forced to face yet again that there was another side to the coin of her own bitterness. Clearly Androula was suffering too and she was an entirely innocent party. Damon, she reflected grimly, spread misery wherever he went, it seemed.
Her luggage was brought up by a manservant and then a maid arrived to tell her that dinner would be served in an hour. The maid stayed to unpack. Sarah hovered, uneasy at being waited on for the very first time in her life, and in the end took refuge in the en-suite bathroom to freshen up and change for dinner. That achieved, she employed her schoolgirl French to the task of asking directions to the nursery.
Nanny had put up the barricades all right. Nicky was tucked into a great brass cot, fed, changed and put down for the night. ‘He’s settled...finally,’ the older woman stressed before Sarah could cross the threshold of the room.
‘Great...’
‘It wouldn’t be a good idea to disturb him.’
Gritting her teeth, Sarah withdrew again. If she disturbed her nephew and he started to cry, she would be leaving Nanny to cope while she went down to dinner.
‘And I’ll be retiring now, Mrs Terzakis. I’m very tired.’
‘I’ll see to his night feeds,’ Sarah said cheerfully.
Nanny looked at her in amazement. ‘Not at all, madam. There is no necessity for that. I’ll manage tonight and tomorrow, I believe, some help will be arriving—a young girl to step in for the late feeds and cover for my time off.’
Glory be. Nicky was going to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance! Sarah went downstairs at speed, her wide green eyes furious. Nicky was being taken over by staff hired by Alex. Sarah was being replaced and made superfluous.
A hovering manservant, evidently awaiting her arrival in the hall, flung wide the door of the dining-room.
‘I hate unpunctuality.’
Alex was standing by a massive fireplace, cradling a drink in one brown hand. As she took in his immaculate appearance in a tailored dinner-jacket, Sarah tensed, acknowledging her first social error. She should have put on the single evening gown she had purchased. Did he dress up every night to dine?
She took her seat at one end of the long, polished table, lit by an ornate set of silver candelabra, and ran an uncertain hand through her tumbling hair, intimidated, though the sensation ran strongly against her natural spirit.
‘Your stepmother’s very nice,’ she murmured. ‘Astonishingly nice actually. She made me feel very welcome.’
Alex’s expressive mouth twisted sardonically. He signalled the manservant. A minute later all the candles on the table had been doused and the great chandelier above had been illuminated to shed blinding light on the vast contours of a room which had been romantically shrunken into intimacy by the candles.
‘The staff may believe we have something to celebrate; I do not.’
Sarah appraised his darkly handsome features, an odd tugging pulling at the pit of her stomach and interfering wi
th her thought processes. But his gesture of cynical rebellion against the expectations of his servants made her want to throw something at him. The staff were not to know that this was not a normal wedding night, and the exquisite flowers adorning the table made it obvious that Alex’s staff, presumably encouraged by Vivien, had gone to a lot of effort.
Alex took one outraged look at the oyster starter delivered and swore only half under his breath. Oysters were supposed to be an aphrodisiac, Sarah reflected, her fine complexion wreathed by sudden colour. She wondered if Alex was thinking what she was thinking. Vivien had been very busy. Not that she could eat the oysters anyway. Sarah had once had a very strong allergic reaction to seafood and she hadn’t touched shellfish since.
‘How does it feel to be my wife?’
It was a rough demand. Startled, Sarah glanced up from her untouched plate. She was shaken by the seething quality of his glittering golden eyes. They seemed to reach down the table and threaten to go for her throat. All of a sudden she was very grateful that they were seated a ludicrous distance apart.
‘How?’ he prompted with lethal persistence.
‘Alex...I don’t feel like your wife, so don’t let it worry you,’ she responded with a forced laugh. ‘All I want to be is the best mother I can be for Nicky. I have no intention of interfering in your life in any other way.’
‘Soft words,’ Alex countered with rich derision. ‘You seem to have been in the process of retreat ever since you got that ring on your finger.’
‘I don’t know where you got that impression.’
‘You told me that what I deserved was a wife who made my life a living hell. A real bitch—I believe that was your expression,’ he drawled. ‘But now you appear to be changing your game plan...playing the devoted mother to the best of your severely limited acting ability—’