The Virgin s Wedding Night

by Sara Craven

  It had also been a surprise, at a totally different level, to find that the tray Toula placed, beaming, on her night table was set with a pretty bone china teapot, patterned with briar roses, together with a matching cup, saucer and milk jug.

  A present from the staff, Toula explained, in honour of the kyria’s birthday, and she departed, sending them a glance of twinkling approval over her shoulder.

  ‘A reminder of England for you.’ Roan threw back the covers, and left the bed, adjusting his towel as he did so. ‘And their own idea.’

  ‘How—lovely of them.’ Harriet strove for normality, her pulses going wild. ‘But it makes me feel such a fraud. You should have stopped them.’

  ‘I doubt that I could.’ He shrugged. ‘They wish to show you goodwill, Harriet mou.’ He glanced at her ironically. ‘And when Toula tells how she found us in bed together, your stock will rise even higher.’

  She stared at the briar roses. ‘Isn’t that setting a dangerous precedent?’

  ‘No.’ And as she glanced at him, taken aback by the bleakness of his response, he added, ‘You had better get ready. My father and Kyrios Flint will be joining us for breakfast.’

  She said, her voice subdued, ‘I—I hadn’t forgotten.’ And watched him walk into the dressing room and close the door.

  She lay still for a moment, conscious that she was missing that brief and unexpected warmth of him beside her. His longed-for nearness in a bed that, as she’d realised from the first, was very much smaller than the one they’d shared at the hotel, and not even as large as her own at the flat.

  It was just an ordinary double bed, she thought, the sort that married couples all over the world occupied together. So what on earth was it doing here—unless, of course, Panayotis had mistaken Roan’s instructions.

  Or was it just another temporary measure for the duration of the marriage, and something he’d never had any intention of using himself?

  Sighing, she finished her tea, and began to make her preparations for the day.

  Her meeting with her grandfather the previous afternoon had not been the most promising of reunions, she reflected. Gregory Flint had arrived tired from the flight, and querulous with the heat.

  ‘You look drawn, child,’ he’d told her, standing back for a critical inspection after his initial embrace. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  Maybe I should wear a badge, Harriet thought, saying, I am not pregnant. She forced a smile. ‘No, I’m fine—really.’

  Dinner had proved a stilted affair. Prompted by her questions, Mr Flint had mentioned the company—‘Young Audley’s performance seems to be improving now he’s out of your shadow.’ The garden—‘Not enough rain, and another damned hosepipe ban.’ And Mrs Wade—‘Thinks she’s got arthritis, and keeps talking about retiring—moving near her sister in Cheltenham. I’ve told her the winters can be bad in Gloucestershire, and she won’t like it.’

  ‘You mean you won’t like it.’ Harriet had smiled at him, trying to coax him into a better mood. ‘Because you’ll have to train up someone new.’

  He’d grunted. ‘Perhaps it’s time I considered making other changes, too.’

  He had not, however, spoken directly about Gracemead, and not long after that Constantine Zandros had suggested courteously that his guest might appreciate an early night, and taken him away to the Villa Dionysius, leaving Harriet feeling oddly relieved on both counts.

  However, she’d spent a restless night, and as she showered and dressed in a pale green skirt and a scooped-neck white top, she was aware of an indefinable sense of unease, as if a storm was gathering. Which was nonsense, because the sky was its usual untroubled blue.

  Breakfast was served with champagne, and there were presents to be opened. Her grandfather had brought her the latest thing in digital cameras, but from Constantine Zandros she received a small framed watercolour of the beach below, with the initials ‘VA’ in the bottom right-hand corner.

  She did not need Roan’s quietly delighted, ‘Papa…’ to alert her to its significance. She looked at her father-in-law, and saw that the dark, autocratic face had softened, become almost wistful.

  He said, ‘Roan’s mother left some paintings here, which I—kept. I thought you might like this scene that you know well. Chronia pola! Happy birthday.’

  She said gently, ‘It’s a wonderful gift, and I shall treasure it always.’ She smiled. ‘Efharisto.’

  He inclined his head. ‘Parakalo, pedhi mou.’

  Roan’s present was in a long narrow box that could only mean jewellery. He did not consider, apparently, that her embargo applied to birthdays, she thought, bracing herself for the flash of diamonds as she opened the velvet case.

  Instead, she found herself looking down at the exquisite simplicity of a plain gold cross and chain, and caught her breath.

  Her eyes blurred as she lifted it from its satin bed. ‘It’s—so beautiful,’ she told him huskily. ‘It’s absolutely perfect. Will you put it on for me?’ And, as he hesitated, ‘Please?’

  She bent her head, thrilling to the remembered brush of his fingers against the nape of her neck as he fastened the little clasp, letting the cross settle at the base of her throat.

  He said in a low voice, with a note in it she’d never heard before, ‘May it protect you always, my Harriet.’

  She looked down at the soft gleam of the gold, then turned to face him, lifting a shy hand to touch his cheek, and raising her mouth for his kiss, aware that his cool lips trembled a little as they took hers.

  It had been such a long time, she thought, and found herself wishing urgently—desperately—that they were alone. That she could wind her arms round his neck and hold him close, so that their kiss could deepen to intimacy, and she’d feel his mouth exploring her neck, and the first swell of her breasts. That she could close her eyes, and forget everything in his arms.

  But in reality he was already lifting his head, and stepping back, and the others were smiling and raising their glasses, Constantine with a certain irony, so the moment was over.

  It doesn’t matter, she thought. Whatever else the day brings, I can remember that, for an instant of time, I was truly happy.

  When breakfast was over, however, Harriet discovered she was going to be left pretty much to her own devices. Constantine was whisking her grandfather away for a sightseeing tour of the peninsula, and the immediate hinterland, while Roan announced abruptly that he needed to return briefly to Athens, adding that he would be back in plenty of time for the evening celebration.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if she could go with him, but she simply nodded in acquiescence, and a while later she heard the helicopter depart.

  Surplus to requirements all round, she thought, changing into her swimming gear, so she would spend the morning on the beach as usual. A day like any other day—and yet…

  As she went down the steps, she wondered, not for the first time, why Roan had never joined here there, even when he was at home. He went down to swim, she knew, sometimes early in the morning, often last thing at night.

  But never when I’m around, she thought bleakly. Maybe because he prefers to remember the bay when there was someone else to share it with him—someone passionate and uninhibited. Maybe he’d dispensed with the little table and chairs in that first painting because they were still reminders of past unhappiness.

  She slipped off her wrap, straightening her shoulders, and flicking her hair back with restive fingers. To hell with the past—and her, she thought. I’m going for a swim.

  The sand was already too hot to walk on, so she used the straw matting that was laid down each morning as a pathway to the sea. She waded in until she was waist deep, then turned into a crawl, setting herself the kind of lengths to cover she would find in a swimming pool.

  Her serious exercise completed, she came back to the warm shallows, and spent a little time lying there, letting the water ripple over her, thinking almost idly as she did so what a paradise this would be for ch
ildren, then realising with a pang that she couldn’t afford to fantasise like that.

  She’d blotted the water from her body, and was rubbing her hair with a towel, when she heard the sound of an outboard motor, and saw a dinghy coming round the headland, and heading towards the shore with two people on board.

  Surprised, Harriet shaded her eyes to watch. Boats passed, of course, but this bay was strictly private property, she thought, and no one ever landed uninvited.

  But today’s visitors seemed oblivious to that, and she realised reluctantly that she’d have to be polite but firm with them.

  As the dinghy neared the beach, the engine cut out, and a man wearing shorts and a checked shirt jumped into the water and began to drag it up on to the sand. Then he turned to help his passenger, who climbed out and stood for a moment, adjusting her filmy violet pareu, her cropped hair glittering like silver in the sunlight.

  And suddenly Harriet realised just who this newcomer was—this unexpected and unwelcome intruder, swaying up the beach as if she was parading along a catwalk.

  ‘Kalimera.’ Under the pareu, she was wearing nothing but a thong, and her body gleamed as if it had been oiled. She looked Harriet up and down, her gaze mocking as she studied the demure lines of the chainstore bikini she was wearing. ‘So you are the girl Roan brought from England as his wife. A choice, it seems, he now regrets.’

  ‘And you are Ianthe Dimitriou,’ Harriet returned pleasantly. ‘Forgive me. I hardly recognised you with your clothes on.’

  ‘That is English humour, ne?’ The other shrugged, her breasts jutting under their thin veiling. ‘It does not amuse me.’

  ‘Good,’ said Harriet, briskly. ‘Then we have no need to prolong our acquaintance. Perhaps you’d tell your friend to take you back where you came from.’

  ‘Friend?’ Ianthe echoed incredulously. ‘He works for Maria Chrysidas, at whose house I stay. He drives a boat. He is no one. And I am here only to get back my portrait that Roan painted. Now he has achieved success, it could be valuable, and I want it. So it is up to you when I leave.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re out of luck.’ Harriet tossed her towel on the lounger, and reached casually for her sunblock. ‘Because your asset went up in smoke the day I arrived.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That Roan had it put on a bonfire, along with the bedding your accomplice ruined.’

  For a moment, Ianthe looked almost murderous, then she gave a harsh laugh. ‘Well, if it is gone, so be it. It achieved much that I had hoped for. Your husband was reminded of all that he had lost, while you—you slapped his face and refused him your body.’

  She clicked her tongue. ‘The act of a fool, kyria. You think he will ever forget such insults? In spite of his mother’s blood, he is a Greek, not a pallid Englishman who allows a woman to rule him.

  ‘Already, he is planning to be rid of you, and find a wife more to his taste, and the whole world knows this and pities you. So why wait until you are told to leave. Why not—just go?’

  ‘With you waiting in the wings to take my place, I suppose?’ Harriet said scornfully.

  ‘No,’ the other girl said slowly, her mouth tightening into a hard line.

  ‘That will not happen. As soon as I walked away from him, I knew that it was finished. That he would never look at me again. Because that is the way of the Zandros men.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘You think I did not try?’

  She added with sour triumph, ‘And you will be forgotten also, as if you never existed, when he sends you away, back to your own country.’

  Harriet threw back her head. She said coldly and clearly, ‘I am Mrs Roan Zandros, and this is my country.’ The words seemed to come out of nowhere, but they burned with a conviction that stunned her. ‘Now, get out of here, before I call my staff and have you removed.’

  ‘Brave words, kyria.’ Ianthe shrugged again. ‘But you will be weeping soon, and then you will remember that I told you so.’

  Harriet waited, unmoving, until the dinghy was out of sight, then she sank down on to the nearest lounger, wrapping her arms round her body.

  ‘I can expect nothing from you as my wife.’ His words. And, even more damningly, ‘Then there is no more to be said.’

  Is that what he’d meant—that he was drawing a line under something that was finished and turning away? ‘The way of the Zandros men.’ Because everything he’d said and done over the past days seemed to confirm it.

  Those brief minutes in bed with her this morning had set no precedent, because he knew she would not be here. Because in his own mind she had already gone.

  ‘I can manage alone.’

  But I can’t, she cried out in silent anguish. I need him. I love him. I can’t live without him.

  Yet she might have to. This was what she now had to face. That she might have alienated him to such a degree that there was no way back for her.

  And, if so, she knew that she had brought this on herself, by stubbornly refusing to accept the truth that her heart was telling her. That she’d seen him and wanted him, and everything else in her universe paled into insignificance beside that.

  Even, she realised, Gracemead.

  I used the house, she thought, as a barrier to keep him away because I was scared of what I felt for him. Because I dared not focus on my real feelings and how they were shifting. And, because of my mother’s life, it was safer to love a pile of stones in the country than a living, breathing man who might break my heart. I thought I could not take the risk.

  But that day at Tessa’s I knew—I saw so very clearly what I wanted my life to be—yet even when I knew the truth about Lucy, and there was nothing to keep us apart—still—still I went on fighting. Fighting myself, and pretending that I was at war with him.

  And now it could be too late. Too late.

  She touched the cross at her throat. ‘May it protect you always, my Harriet.’

  I didn’t know it, she thought, but he was really saying goodbye. And so much for my moment of happiness.

  Back at the house, she went in search of Panayotis.

  ‘I need to talk to Kyrios Roan.’ She forced a smile. ‘Has he left any contact numbers with you, please? I—I forgot to ask him earlier.’

  ‘He was to visit the office of his lawyer, kyria, but by now I think he will have left. Do you wish me to enquire?’

  His lawyer… So, the process of separation had already begun, she thought, her heart dead and heavy, like a stone in her chest. He’d wasted no time. But why should he? He wanted this—hiatus in his life dealt with so that he could plan his future. He’d told her he was tired of pretending, so it was the practical thing to do.

  ‘No,’ she said with an effort. ‘I think, after all, I’ll wait.’

  She would not beg. That was the only real conclusion she arrived at in the course of the longest day she’d ever spent.

  When he told her his decision, she would accept it without a murmur. If nothing else, she would make sure their parting was dignified. No tears, no scenes, or useless recriminations. The last great pretence.

  And whatever his lawyers offered her, she would refuse.

  But she couldn’t altogether figure what she’d be going back to. Her flat was let for a minimum of six months, and it was clear there’d be nothing for her at Flint Audley.

  Perhaps, if Mrs Wade does call it a day, Gramps will take me on as housekeeper, she thought, with a sigh. Not that I’ll be much good. Maybe, instead of sunbathing, I should have asked Takis to teach me to cook. Got Panayotis to show me how the house was run. Then I’d be worth a living wage.

  But I kept aloof from all that quite deliberately. I couldn’t afford to become too attached to anything here—or anyone. To involve myself too closely. But somehow, without my knowing, this place got under my skin.

  So that when I’ve been at my loneliest and most confused, I’ve found something in the rocks, the earth, and this eternal sky that’s comforted me, and given me hope.

  And when I go
away, I shall be leaving hope behind.

  Outwardly, she got on with her life—preparing for her birthday dinner with apparent tranquillity. She washed her hair, gave herself a manicure, and applied a face pack which made Toula squeak with alarm when she saw it—all the things she used to despise as unnecessary pandering to male appetites.

  Now, she knew she owed it to herself. She would never be beautiful, but if this was to be her last evening as Roan’s wife, she would make sure she looked as good as possible.

  She chose a dress in white silk chiffon, low-cut, with narrow straps, and a full floating skirt. A dress for romance, she thought, and for a woman who expected—and wanted—to be undressed by her lover. And felt a sob rise in her throat.

  But when he joined her on the terrace, lithe and heart-stoppingly glamorous in the formality of dinner jacket and black tie, she awarded him a cool smile as she sat, an untouched glass of wine in front of her.

  ‘Is it time to go?’

  ‘Presently.’ Roan took a chair opposite, setting his glass of ouzo on the table. ‘Panayotis tells me you wished to speak to me today.’

  She’d hoped it wouldn’t be mentioned. Fortunately, she could improvise, and she shrugged. ‘I thought you should know that a friend of yours paid us a visit today.’

  He frowned, not even bothering to query the caller’s identity. ‘Here—at the house? I was not told.’

  ‘Down at the beach. She wanted her portrait back. I explained it wasn’t possible, and she seemed a little miffed. Maybe you should offer to paint her again.’

  ‘And maybe I would rather lose my hair, and half my teeth.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘Were you upset?’

  ‘Dazzled,’ she said promptly. ‘It was like seeing that picture in action replay. I imagine the boatman who brought her found it difficult to keep his hand on the tiller.’

  He gave a reluctant grin. ‘But it was not for you to deal with her. I should have been here—for all kinds of reasons.’ He paused. ‘Unfortunately, my business in Athens was urgent.’ He drank some ouzo, watching her reflectively. ‘And also something that we need to discuss.’