by Penny Jordan
‘It is time that Marisa learned that if she insists on behaving like a child, she will be treated as one. However, what happens between my sister and myself need not concern you. I find your apparent sympathy for her curious—in the circumstances, and bearing in mind the accusations you have heaped upon her head.’
‘Do you?’ Chloe muttered bitterly. She wasn’t going to explain that her sympathy for Marisa was simply of that of one woman who had experienced intense pain for another woman hurt by the same man. Leon had been unnecessarily cruel, she thought.
They dined in a heavy silence, broken only by the soft-footed entry and exit of the servants. Chloe made a pretence of eating, more for their sakes than Leon’s, but if someone had asked her what she was eating she doubted that she could have answered properly.
After dinner Leon insisted on joining her to drink his coffee. ‘I meant what I said to Marisa,’ he said abruptly at one point. ‘I shall expect you to play the part of my newly reunited wife to the full, Chloe.’
‘And if I find the role too taxing?’ she enquired sweetly.
‘In that case we must ensure that you get sufficient coaching, mustn’t we? Actions, after all, speak louder than words. As I recall, your eyes are most expressive, my love. I well remember how they looked after a night in my arms. That, I think, should suffice to convince my guests!’
Ten minutes later, her coffee cup empty, Chloe made her excuses and got up, declining Leon’s suggestion that she stroll round the gardens with him.
‘Why?’ she demanded flippantly. ‘So that you can show me yet again the excellence of your defence system? Thanks, but no, thanks. I’m already convinced.’
‘Perhaps it is not so much the strength of my defences you fear, but the weakness of your own, mm?’ Leon challenged softly, his mocking laughter lingering in her ears long after she had left the drawing room behind her and exchanged it for the privacy of her own bedroom.
Not that she was allowed to enjoy that privacy for very long. She had barely stepped out of her dress, this time managing all the tiny buttons, and into the cream silk negligé Gina had left on the bed for her, than her door was thrust open with a bang loud enough to wake the dead.
‘Preparing yourself for Leon, are you?’ Marisa demanded angrily, her eyes on the cream silk. ‘He doesn’t really want you, you know. All he wants is a son. You’re just the means of getting one.’
‘So you’ve already said,’ Chloe agreed dryly, surprised to see how easily she was holding on to her own temper. Before Marisa had always seemed to hold the upper hand, always been able to panic her into rash retaliation which she afterwards regretted. Perhaps it was merely that now she had nothing to lose, Chloe reflected, but whatever the reason, she was glad to be able to turn and face the other girl calmly, and even had time to feel sorry for her as she took in the tear-streaked cheeks and tumbled hair.
‘You know why he’s forcing me into this marriage, don’t you?’ Marisa hissed. ‘He’s obsessed with this desire for a son. Nothing else matters. Not me, not his business affairs, and especially not you. But it won’t always be like this. When you’ve given him his son everything will change, you will see.’
‘It needn’t be like that,’ Chloe said slowly, an idea suddenly coming to her. ‘Help me to leave this island, Marisa. You can’t want me here.’
‘I don’t,’ the other girl admitted frankly, fear suddenly replacing hatred, and she gnawed at her bottom lip. ‘But there’s no way you could leave without Leon knowing. He won’t let you go until you’ve given him a child….’
‘To replace the one he believes I deliberately destroyed,’ Chloe said evenly. ‘But we both know that wasn’t true, don’t we, Marisa? You destroyed my child, you pushed me down those steps….’
Chloe sighed as yet again her bedroom door was slammed. She should have known better than to expect Marisa to admit to the truth. And that was the truth. Marisa had quite deliberately pushed her down those steps.
She walked over to the dressing table and started to brush her hair with long, rhythmic strokes, the action soothing, her thoughts winging back to the past.
She had been nervous of meeting Marisa, of course—as Leon’s closest living relative she held an important place in his life, and during the flight from Paris to Athens Chloe had plagued Leon with questions about her.
He had answered her in monosyllables and she had thought his reticence was caused by tiredness—he had had business to complete in Paris before they left for Greece where he had an apartment. All she had known about Marisa before meeting her was that the Greek girl was the child of Leon’s father’s second marriage. Thirteen years younger than Leon, she had been in his sole care ever since the death of her parents. Her upbringing had been more modern than that permitted to most wealthy Greek girls. For one thing, she had been educated abroad—in England and then Switzerland—and could have gone on to university had she shown any wish to do so.
She had been waiting for them in the apartment—and Chloe, overwhelmed by the sheer magnificence of the entrance hall and drawing room of her new home with its priceless antique furniture and beautiful Oriental rugs, had been able to do little more than register a certain coolness in Marisa’s welcome.
As the days went by the coolness grew worse—always more marked when Leon was absent on business—until Chloe could not ignore it any longer. By this time she was sure that she was carrying Leon’s child but had kept the news from him, wanting there to be no doubts before she told him.
He had been in Paris for a week. She could remember quite clearly how much she had missed him. How thrilled she had been to receive the note from the doctor she had been seeing, confirming that she was carrying Leon’s child. Marisa had been even more difficult than usual, critical and sarcastic about Chloe’s unfamiliarity with the things she herself took so much for granted—like walking into an exclusive boutique and calmly ordering whatever caught her eye without even bothering to check the price.
‘Only parvenues need to do that,’ she had sneered on one occasion when Chloe had insisted on knowing the price of a velvet evening gown before buying it.
Now such rudeness wouldn’t worry her the slightest little bit, Chloe reflected, but then she had been so deeply insecure, so desperate to gain Marisa’s approval, almost as though already she suspected the truth but was trying to blind herself to it; trying to convince herself that there was nothing unhealthily obsessive about the possessive manner in which Marisa regarded her half-brother.
Chloe remembered that she had been anxious enough to mention her unease to Leon once or twice before he left for Paris, but on both occasions he had brushed aside her anxious words, shrugging and telling her that she was imagining things, taking her in his arms and making Marisa, and every other person in the universe apart from themselves, fade into insignificance beneath the pleasure of his lovemaking. If she hadn’t been so naïve, so much in love, she might have suspected then from Leon’s very unwillingness to talk about Marisa. He wasn’t, after all, an inarticulate or silent man, and indeed, on many occasions had surprised her by his ability to put into words so vividly what she could only feel.
However, it wasn’t until the day that she received the news about the baby that Chloe learned the truth. Later she realised that Marisa must have read the doctor’s note, and since she was never exactly placid, the news that Chloe, her hated rival, was to bear Leon’s child had driven her into one of her furious rages.
Chloe had been in the beautiful gold and bronze bedroom she shared with Leon when Marisa burst in. The bedroom had been decorated before Leon and Chloe married, and he had given Chloe carte blanche to change the mainly Oriental-inspired decor if she wished, but Chloe hadn’t wished. She loved the intricate Chinese lacquer-work; the objets d’art and the beautiful, delicate silk wall panels; richly plumaged birds in bronze and turquoise on a pale gold background; just as she loved the whole ambience of the room.
She had been about to take a shower, having spent the mo
rning shopping, and had been surprised to see Marisa, who she had understood from the servants was lunching with a friend.
Marisa hadn’t beaten about the bush. She came straight to the point, her dark eyes spitting hatred and jealousy as she told Chloe the unpalatable truth: she and Leon were lovers and had been for almost two years.
At first Chloe had simply been unable to believe it, but Marisa had smiled at her, her full lips twisting bitterly, and asked, ‘Would I tell you such a shameful thing if it wasn’t true? Can you not guess how I feel, knowing that I can never live with him as his wife? That I must always be kept in the background as his “sister”? Why do you think he married a little nobody like you?’ Marisa had flung at her. ‘Not because he fell in love with your too thin body or your pale blonde hair, whatever he might have told you at the time. No, he married you to protect me! Already I am past the age when most of my contemporaries are married. Soon people will begin to talk. It was to protect me from this talk that Leon married you. A marriage for me, now, is out of the question. No Greek man will take goods despoiled by another, and in the event of someone marrying me, Leon would be called upon by his family to explain how I had come to be despoiled. I cannot see even Leon being able to proffer a satisfactory explanation for that, can you?’
In spite of her fury Chloe had sensed a certain element of satisfaction beneath Marisa’s words, but she had been far too distraught to dwell upon it Leon and Marisa. Leon marrying her simply to protect his half-sister; Leon…. No…! And yet it all made sense. Horrible, heartbreaking sense, but sense nonetheless. The way he had insisted that they were married almost before she’d had time to catch her breath. His dislike of talking to her about Marisa, and what she had naïvely considered a one-sided and potentially dangerous obsession the younger girl had for her older brother.
Hadn’t she herself, in Paris, marvelled and wondered about the fact that someone like Leon should choose her out of all the women who he must have known at one time or another? That was something she hadn’t imagined either. She had seen the way in which women looked at him in restaurants; in the streets; and each time a tiny thrill of mingled pleasure and fear had shot through her as she looked up into his darkly male features and wondered what he saw in her.
Now she knew. She had possessed one quality which more than any other had made her a suitable candidate to wear his wedding ring. She was naïve. Add to that the fact that she was desperately in love with him and completely inexperienced and sexually unawaken, and it was no wonder that Leon had urged her into such a precipitate marriage.
And now she was carrying his child!
Marisa must have guessed what was going through her mind, for she pounced, her eyes malicious as she purred acidly:
‘Leon won’t be pleased. A baby is the last thing he wants—from you! How could he want your child when he knows that he can never re-create himself within the body of the woman he loves?’
‘No!’
The despairing protest had been torn from Chloe’s throat, but Marisa had ignored her, pressing home her point as she stressed how much Leon loved her and how little he cared about Chloe.
Dimly Chloe remembered stumbling out of the bedroom—no longer a loved retreat where she and Leon could be alone—trying to drag clean, fresh air into lungs suddenly full of cloying nausea.
Marisa followed her, right to the head of the stairs—the apartment was on two floors; bedrooms and staff quarters on the upper storey and reception rooms and kitchen on the lower.
Chloe had hesitated there, trying to clear her brain of the swirling, clogging thoughts, concentrating all her energies on simply trying to stifle the pain which seemed to be a living, breathing entity within her.
Quite how it happened Chloe could not properly remember. One moment she was standing at the top of the stairs, the next she felt Marisa push her sharply and she was falling, screaming out in fright as her body bumped against the stairs.
Her screams had alerted the staff. The housekeeper reached her first. Chloe remembered looking up, her hands clasping her stomach while the older woman looked at her first in horror and then in urgent question, while Marisa hung white-faced on the periphery of her vision, crying and wringing her hands.
Everyone had done all that could be done. In the hospital they were more than kind. Marisa remained at her bedside until Leon got back from Paris—they had insisted on sending for him despite Chloe’s protest.
She thought she would never forget how he looked at her when he walked into the ward. She had had to turn her head away so that he wouldn’t see the two slow tears rolling down her cheeks. Marisa had gone to him, and they had talked. Then Leon was at her bedside, his expression grim.
‘Why?’ he had demanded bitterly. ‘Why did you destroy my child?’
Chloe knew that the nurses could not understand why, when she had borne so much so bravely, the sight of her husband should cause her to dissolve into tears, but they had had the desired effect. Leon had been bustled discreetly away—not that he showed any desire to linger. No doubt he was anxious to be alone with his mistress, Chloe had thought bitterly, and she had refused to see him the next time he came to the hospital.
On her third day in hospital Leon had insisted on seeing her. He had to return to Paris he told her, but they would talk on his return.
They never did. When she was sure he was safely out of the country, Chloe had discharged herself from hospital and returned to the apartment, where she had taken enough money from her account for her airfare home and her passport, leaving behind her everything but the clothes she stood up in and the plain gold band Leon had placed on her finger the day they were married. Her engagement ring, a huge solitaire diamond, she left on her dressing table with the other jewellery he had given her, and once she returned to England she had removed her wedding ring.
Removing the outward signs of her marriage had been much easier than disposing of the inner ones. It was a year before she could sleep properly at nights, and almost as long before she stopped waking up in the morning with tears on her face.
She replaced the hairbrush and checked that the bedroom door was firmly closed. There was no way that she could lock Leon out if he did decide to come to her, but she was determined not to be caught off guard; not to allow her body to give in to the persuasive spell which she knew, to her cost, Leon could weave so well.
Leon was an extremely sexually attractive man, she acknowledged, but he was also a liar and a hypocrite. He had never wanted the baby she had lost, but now—now when he was apparently obsessed with the idea of wanting a child, the loss of that child was her fault! She had told him when he came to the hospital what had happened, hoping against hope that Marisa had been wrong, that he did care about her, but he had simply stared at her with cold eyes and compressed lips, his voice metallic with curtness as he said flatly, ‘Marisa warned me that you would try to blame her. The guilt is yours, Chloe, and you know it. If you hadn’t been so eager to rush out and spend my money you might have been more careful.’
The accusation was so unjust that Chloe had simply gasped, and by the time she had collected her thoughts it was too late. Swept by an emotional storm of grief, she had been incapable of doing anything but begging Leon to go and leave her in peace.
CHAPTER FOUR
CHLOE wasn’t sure what had caused her to wake up. Propping herself up on one elbow, she tensed instinctively; searching the darkness of her room, the fine hairs on her bare arms prickling atavistically.
‘Leon?’
‘You were waiting for me? How flattering. But then you’re not a young innocent girl any longer, are you, Chloe? You’re a woman, with a woman’s desires and needs!’
‘Which don’t include you!’ Chloe flung furiously at him. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘At the moment, merely removing my clothes,’ came the coolly amused reply, Leon’s voice suddenly taking on a biting quality as he added harshly, ‘You know full well why I’m here, Chloe, and the soone
r….’
‘The sooner it’s over, the sooner you can have your child and divorce me?’ Chloe flung at him, dismayed for some reason to find herself close to tears. Perhaps they had something to do with the fact that a tiny part of her had never stopped grieving for the small life she had lost, and she knew with a sudden blinding flash of insight that there was no way, if Leon succeeded in forcing himself upon her, that she would allow him to take her child from her. Which made it all the more imperative that there should be no child. Biting her lip, she sought desperately for a means of defeating Leon, her concentration constantly disturbed by the small, intimate sounds of clothing being removed, and someone moving about outside the periphery of her vision.
The bathroom door opened and closed; she heard the sound of running water as Leon turned on the shower, and groped hastily for her robe. If she left the bedroom while he was away…. Leon’s pride was a Greek’s pride, as she was fast coming to realise; a man who had felt the lash of his friends’ curiosity and pity over a missing wife was hardly likely to pursue that same wife and force her back to her bedroom where any quarrel could be overheard by his staff.
When she reached the security of the drawing room, Chloe snapped on the lights, heaving a sigh of relief. Clear sharp light flooded the room. On a glass coffee table she found a selection of glossy magazines and picked one of them up, flicking through it, sure that even if Leon followed her, he was hardly likely to force a confrontation in so public a place, especially not when he knew that she herself was not going to mask her unwillingness to return to the bedroom with him.
It was not going to be so difficult after all, she reflected when fifteen solitary minutes had passed without a single sound outside the door. All she had to do was to play a waiting game to match Leon’s. He no doubt, remembering the past, thought that all he had to do was to make her aware of him and then wait. He was relying on the power of her old adoration of him, but that had gone. As he had so mockingly remarked, she was a woman now, and she would play him at his own game. If she could just keep him at bay until the Kriticos family arrived, surely she could find some means of leaving the island with them when they left? The excuse of a shopping trip to Athens, perhaps, something that Leon could not publicly veto. But he still had her passport. She would cross that bridge when she came to it, Chloe reflected tiredly. All at once events were beginning to take their toll upon her. She settled back on the settee, the magazine sliding unregarded to her feet, from where it was removed several minutes later by the tall, dark male figure who had entered the room and dimmed the brilliant blaze of lights. He watched the sleeping, vulnerable figure before him for several seconds, an unreadable expression on his face, before some sixth sense penetrated her dreams and Chloe opened her eyes, Leon’s grey ones giving her back her own shocked reflection.