Lark in an Alien Sky

by Rebecca Stratton

  Lark in a Alien Sky - Rebecca Stratton

  Had she said yes much too quickly?

  Corinne had met Gregori on a holiday in Paris. Older than she, he was a lover who swept her to heights she'd never dreamed of. She had vowed to meet him in Greece and marry him there. She had promised to become part of his threateningly close-knit, powerful family. Now it was too late to wonder if she had been foolishly impulsive. But standing under the wedding garlands with her proud, exultant bridegroom, Corinne was overcome by a sense of dread....

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  Other titles by REBECCA STRATTON

  IN HARLEQUIN ROMANCES

  1942—THE FIRE AND THE FURY 1955—MOON TIDE 1976—THE GODDESS OF MAVISU 1991—ISLE OF THE GOLDEN DRUM 2006—PROUD STRANGER 2018—CHATEAU D'ARMOR 2036—THE ROAD TO GAFSA 2050—GEMINI CHILD 2078—GIRL IN A WHITE HAT 2091—INHERIT THE SUN 2106—MORE THAN A DREAM 2131—SIGN OF THE RAM 2141—THE VELVET GLOVE 2154—DREAM OF WINTER 2173—SPINDRIFT 2180—IMAGE OF LOVE 2201—BARGAIN FOR PARADISE 2222—THE CORSICAN BANDIT 2261—LOST HERITAGE

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  Original hardcover edition published in 1979 by Mills & Boon Limited

  ISBN 0-373-02274-3

  Harlequin edition published July 1979

  Copyright @ 1979 by Rebecca Stratton.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  ON such a lovely day Corinne knew she should have been feeling happy and lighthearted, especially in view of the fact that she had received a letter from Gregori. Instead it was his letter that caused her to feel so troubled and unsure of herself.

  It was five weeks since she had heard from him last, and for the first time she was ready to admit that, almost without realising it, she had begun to have doubts about the wisdom of the step she had taken—now when it was almost too late. Gregori had written to say that he would be arriving in London on the twenty-first to take her back to Greece with him as his affianced bride.

  It was typical of Gregori, she realised, that he stated his intentions firmly without even mentioning the possibility of her having different ideas. It was true that she had no family ties in England, and there was no sound reason why she should not be married in his country as they had agreed, but she would like to have had the chance of changing her mind.

  Corinne had loved his confident, almost dominating manner, and had accepted it as being part of his character without taking exception to it—until now. Only now did she find herself feeling vaguely resentful at the way he informed her of his intent without seeking her present opinion.

  It seemed scarcely possible it was only two months ago that she and Gregori had met for the first time in Paris. Corinne had been on holiday, and wandering around an open-air art exhibition on her first day there. She had been having a little trouble making herself understood by a persistent young artist who spoke no English, but still managed to make his meaning quite clear, and Gregori had come to her aid. Speaking fluent French, he told the young man exactly where he got off and, too surprised to say anything, Corinne had accepted his intervention without ever letting him know that she had been more amused than fearful of her unknown admirer's approach.

  She had been attracted to Gregori even in those first few moments, for he was a man that women were bound to notice. In the bright and noisy gaiety of the narrow street, among the artists and their would-be clients, she had told him her name, Corinne Thomas, and he had looked vaguely puzzled for a moment until she repeated it.

  Their first laughter had been shared over his confusion. The fact that her two names together, as she had said them, sounded very much like the Greek word for lark. It had become a habit from then on for him to call her 'my lark' whenever he used an endearment, and he had used that endearment, and others in his own tongue, with increasing frequency during the next three weeks.

  After that first meeting he had escorted her back to her hotel and taken her to dinner that evening, and from then on they had seen one another every evening as well as whatever time Gregori had free from business meetings. It had seemed inevitable that their companionship should lead to romance.

  He was a serious man for the most part, though not

  without a sense of humour, and quite a lot older than she was, but Corinne found him irresistible. He was so different from any man she had known before, and his attractions became more apparent on closer association. He was a new and exciting experience.

  Brown-skinned, black-haired and dark-eyed, he had seemed to bring the passion and warmth of another world into her life, and aroused in Corinne such emotions and desires as she had never known before, which she thought of now with a slight sense of diffidence. It had been all too easy to fall in love with Gregori, and when he had asked her to marry him on the last night before she had to fly back to London, she had accepted without hesitation because it seemed the natural conclusion to those perfect weeks together.

  She had felt quite sure that she could never love anyone else as she did that mature and stunningly attractive man. It was not until she received his latest letter that she felt a definite doubt. She had, she realised, gradually reached the conclusion that she and Gregori had experienced nothing more than a holiday romance, inspired by the romantic atmosphere of Paris, no matter how real it had seemed at the time.

  Because Gregori, as head of his family's shipping and export business, had to return to Greece, and Corinne had to serve out her notice with the company that employed her as a secretary, parting on a temporary basis had been inevitable, but in the beginning she had had no doubt at all about committing herself. Only now when it was almost too late to go back did it occur to her how much of a stranger he still was, and she felt a sudden panic at the thought of his being there any moment now.

  It was Robert's suggestion that she was acting much

  too impulsively that had set her thinking along the lines she was now, she had to admit. But there was truth in his suggestion that she had jumped in at the deep end, as he put it, and if she was going to pull out she must do it now, when Gregori came for her.

  He knew she was free of her commitments by now, he said, and that she would have made all the necessary arrangements to accompany him home to Greece. Such arrangements, she knew, he would not normally have left to a woman, but he knew her to be an efficient junior secretary; she had told him that herself.

  He could not come sooner, she realised that, he was a very busy and important man, but she wished he had given her more than the two days he had. Given longer she could have sat down and written him a sensible and well considered letter, and explained how she felt. As it was he would be with her any mo
ment now and she still was not ready for him. Nor would he be pleased about her changing his plans for their meeting.

  But she chose the park because she could not be certain her flatmate would give them the privacy their meeting required, for Vanessa was inquisitive, tactless and quite often malicious. Corinne dared not risk trying to explain her present doubts to Gregori with the fear constantly on her mind that they might be interrupted. Here in a public park they could enjoy a curious kind of detachment while still surrounded by people, and the weather was warm and sunny.

  She could visualise his black frown when he got the message with no time to reply or to change the venue again, and she tried to stop her hands from trembling as she sat on a bench under the trees and told herself she was doing it for both their sakes. Those five weeks seemed suddenly like a lifetime, and the ten minutes she had sat there even longer.

  If only she could not so easily recall every detail of his features and the long easy stride as he came towards her, impatient for their reunion. The remembrance of that bright dark gaze confidently noting the responsive smile he knew would be there on her face when she saw him. And the touch of his mouth like a burning brand on her senses made her feel suddenly afraid. So much so that her stomach churned sickeningly, and she could not tell if it was sheer panic or the same kind of wild excitement he had always aroused in her.

  It was a second or two before she realised that the familiarity of his face and that long-legged stride were no longer merely in her memory. Getting swiftly to her feet as he came towards her across the grass, she slid the tip of her tongue anxiously over dry lips and clasped her hands tightly together to stop them from trembling. She had anticipated his frown, and sure enough his black brows were drawn into a line above gleaming dark eyes that searched for some clue to her reason for changing his plans.

  Lithe and sun-tanned, virile and sensual, but perfectly controlled until desire released a man of passion and gentleness; a lover who could sweep her to heights she had never dreamed of until she knew him. And it was against the memory of those times that she steeled herself as he came towards her.

  `Corinne!'

  He took her hands in his and Corinne's senses responded in an instant to the strong pressure of his fingers and the deep caressing warmth of his voice. He looked deep into her eyes so that she hastily averted them, her smile wavering.

  `How are you?'

  His manner was formal enough, but not his touch, and she took a second or two to bring her emotions under

  control before she answered him. 'I'm fine, thank you, Gregori. Are you?'

  He nodded briefly, then turned and looked around at the sun-dappled paths and the people in their immediate vicinity, and his frown deepened. 'Where would you like to go?' he asked, and Corinne shook her head.

  Nowhere—I thought we could talk here.'

  `Out here in the park?'

  Obviously he did not understand her in this mood and Corinne felt a momentary twinge of conscience for making their meeting so public, but it was too late to do anything about it now. 'We can walk or sit down,' she told him, 'I don't mind which. It's very warm and I thought the sunshine and -' She glanced at him uneasily. 'I suppose it isn't a very conventional place for what we have, to talk about, but I thought— Would you rather go somewhere else?'

  He looked around once more, then shrugged his broad shoulders and sat down on the bench, pulling her down with him and still holding her hands. 'I do not understand,' he said, and there was an edge of steel on the normally velvet smooth voice. 'I understand nothing of this, Corinne I ask that you be ready to leave with me and instead I find you sitting here in a public park, as if you have merely come out for an afternoon walk!'

  'I can explain, Gregori— '

  'I hope that you can!' His stern air of authority was something new to her, although she had noticed it briefly when he dealt with that persistent young man in Paris, on their first meeting. 'Very obviously you are not ready to leave as I expected, and just as clearly you have something on your mind which I suspect you know I will not like! I do not understand any of it, Corinne, and I wish you would explain it to me.'

  He had made no attempt to kiss her; though whether it was because he sensed something of what was in her mind or whether he felt a certain reticence after so long, she could not even guess. But it was because she did not want to see a look of hurt in his eyes when she told him her decision that she kept her own averted.

  'I don't quite know how to begin,' she confessed in a breathless voice that must surely have given him an inkling of her predicament. But he neither encouraged nor discouraged her.

  She eased her fingers free of his hold because she found the touch of him too disturbing and she needed to keep her wits about her if she was to be as firm, as she must. It was so much more difficult than she had anticipated, and she was much too aware of him there beside her; he 'brought back too many memories. He was tall, she had forgotten just how tall, and he seemed to tower over her even sitting on the park bench, with his black head slightly bowed and waiting for the words she was finding so difficult to say.

  'I—I want you to understand that—I've thought a lot about this and I'm sorry, Gregori. I'm sorry, but I just can't go on with it.' He said nothing and she wished he would. If he would berate her, lose his temper, anything but sit there while she struggled on, using her hands to make small, helpless gestures of appeal. 'I'm sorry, but I can't go through with the marriage!'

  He reacted at last, taking possession of her hands once more in a grip so cruelly tight that she winced and caught her breath. `So that is it!' That cutting edge was on his voice still and Corinne shrank from it. Until now she had never been the subject of his displeasure, only of his love, and she felt suddenly very small and uncertain. 'You are telling me that you have changed your mind.

  that it is all over, yes?'

  He was going to make it even harder for her, and she felt so utterly miserable that it was hard to believe she was the one trying to make the break. I'm sorry.' She repeated the apology because there seemed so little else she could say at the moment, and Gregori made a short, sharp impatient sound as he squeezed her hands.

  'You have such a short memory, Corinne!' The deep voice was relentless, scourging her with its scorn, and she shook her head in silent protest when he went on, `Do you find it so easy to forget how you loved me? To forget those weeks in Paris when we were, or so I believed, the whole world to one another? I would have taken an oath that you loved me then—you fooled me very successfully!'

  `Oh no, I didn't!' Her voice wavered uncertainly. 'It's just that—I'm no longer sure how I feel, Gregori, that's the trouble!'

  He looked around the park at the people taking the sunshine and frowned more darkly than ever, as if he resented their proximity. `So you chose a public park for our meeting, to make quite sure that I did not attempt to persuade you to change your mind, eh?'

  'Oh, Gregori, please don't!'

  She found his scorn the hardest thing of all to take and stirred uneasily. They sat close together and touching, like lovers, and yet they were a world apart at this moment and Corinne felt strangely lost. It was a reaction she did not attempt to understand and she shook her head in that vague, helpless way once more.

  'I wasn't sure where to suggest,' she told him. 'I couldn't be sure that my flatmate wouldn't come barging in while you were there, and a place like this does have a kind of privacy because no one takes much notice of

  people in parks.' She glanced up briefly at his dark, frowning face. 'I seem to remember that you liked St James's Park when we came here on your last visit.'

  From the way his eyes gleamed she thought he remembered the last occasion very well, and his hold on her hands tightened for a moment. `Ah, so you do still have some feeling left for me, Corinne?' He caught her eye and for a moment she was caught up in the warm passionate glow of remembrance. 'You have not completely dismissed me from your life if you remember such little things!'

&nb
sp; It was a point she had not considered and she hastily evaded his eyes once more as she made her explanation. 'I'm sorry, Gregori, I should have written to you and told you how I felt. It would have been much easier and saved us both a great deal of embarrassment. I just didn't think when I suggested you meet me here.'

  Even to her own ears it sounded much too blunt and unfeeling, and not at all as she had meant it to be. She had not the slightest wish to hurt him or to be brutally frank, only to let him know that she at least had been brought back to earth by a return to ordinary everyday life. That an affair such as theirs had been could only live in the rarefied atmosphere of Paris in the spring, and she was no longer so sure of either herself or of him.

  But 'Gregori's eyes were exploring her face slowly, feature by feature, lingering on the full softness of her mouth that trembled uncertainly, and the sweep of brown lashes that shadowed her cheeks, and she felt her heart responding as it had always done before, to the promise in his eyes.

  `And do you really believe that I can simply be put away with a few lines of written explanation?' he asked, his voice softened for a moment. 'After what we knew in

  Paris, do you think I could be so easily dismissed, Corinne? Could you forget how I loved you then, my sweet lark? I have had no change of heart, I feel the same passion and desire for you that I felt when I asked you to become my wife. I still wish to make you my wife, it is for that reason I am here.'

  Corinne stirred uneasily. Her fingers were cramped by his strong grip and she felt the kind of excitement making her blood leap that she had not known since their last meeting. Obviously he could still touch her senses and arouse in her, emotions that no other man ever had, and she sat for a moment trying to still the thudding beat of her heart while he watched her, his eyes steady and challenging between their thick lashes.