shared love of Bach, and discussed various recordings
with her, with almost professional enthusiasm and
knowledge.
Kate felt Marc’s eyes upon them from time to time,
probing, curious, watchful. He was flirting lazily with
Marie-Louise most of the time, fencing easily with her
when she tried to provoke a show of jealousy by referring
to her many admirers in Paris.
Her boasts of her conquests made Kate wonder if Marc
were wise in not marrying her quickly. She could not
believe that Marie-Louise did not desire to marry him.
Everything she said, every look, said that she was ready
and eager to be his wife. But was Marc not content,
perhaps, merely to own the lovely French girl? Did he
want to be certain of her fidelity? Perhaps he took her
boasts of conquests too seriously, not seeing them for
what they were—a blatant attempt to make him declare
himself jealously.
After dinner Marie-Louise put a sleepy record on the
turntable and she and Marc danced in the lounge, her
black head upon his shoulder, leaning close to him.
Jean-Paul leaned over and asked Kate to dance. She
smiled and stood up, going into his arms. She caught the
exchange of looks between Pallas and Sam, her brother’s
raised eyebrows and grin. But Pallas was not looking as
triumphant as she ought to do if she was really
indifferent to Jean-Paul. She was, interestingly,
frowning.
Jean-Paul looked down at Kate. “How am I doing?” he
asked, with a mischievous grin.
“Is this part of your plan?” she asked, laughing. “To
use me as a tease for Pallas?”
“You object?” he asked anxiously. “Your fiancé will
mind, perhaps?”
“No,” she said quickly, smiling, “he won’t mind. And
neither do I. It’s in a good cause.”
Jean-Paul looked relieved, and pulled her closer,
bending his head to whisper in her ear, “You are a most
unusual girl, Kate.”
She smiled, then met Marc’s glance over Jean-Paul’s
shoulder. Marc was not smiling. He was looking savagely
angry again, the arrogant features dark and saturnine,
the grey eyes biting.
Kate looked away. He was angry with her, of course,
for flirting with his sister’s promised husband. He
probably thought her contemptible for attempting to
steal Pallas’s lover. She felt chilled, but tilted her chin
defiantly. Let him think what he liked. She and Jean-
Paul were going to set Pallas free to choose for herself.
Later, Jean-Paul spoke discreetly to Marc, who looked
a little surprised, but gestured politely towards the part
of the house in which his office lay. They walked out, in
quiet conversation. Jean-Paul returned alone. He spoke
softly to Kate, his face grave. “I have done it. I told Marc
I had changed my mind.”
“What did he say?” she asked involuntarily.
He shrugged. “He said very little—I was rather
surprised. But he seemed displeased. Of course, there
had been no official announcement. It was just an
understanding between us, so there can be no gossip.”
“Did he ask you why?” she queried, wondering what
Marc had thought of Jean-Paul’s unexpected change of
heart. She could imagine him being very angry,
particularly after the savage way he had looked at her
while she was dancing with Jean-Paul.
“No, he seemed very thoughtful. Perhaps he has some
business worry on his mind. Marc and I are old friends,
but I felt a certain ... how shall I put it? ... distance,
between us. I did not explain my motives to him, since I
know he would try to persuade me to change my mind.”
Jean-Paul grinned at her. “He is an autocrat, as you
must have realised. The Lillitos family obey him without
question. And his business interests are so vast ...” he
lifted his shoulders in a Gallic gesture, “it is not
surprising he is so dictatorial at times.”
“It is irritating, though,” she said, “and I don’t think
one should pander to his god complex. He isn’t a tinpot
little divinity, whatever he thinks.”
Jean-Paul looked both astounded and deeply amused.
“A tinpot little divinity? Is that how you see him?” He
stared into her blue eyes, smiling. “As I said before, you
are a most unusual girl.”
Next morning the sky was a little overcast and Kate
decided to take the opportunity of sitting out on the
beach again, while the sun was not so hot. Pallas and
Sam walked down with her, carrying vast sun umbrellas,
beach balls and towels, and they spread themselves out
in luxury on the deserted sand of the little bay.
There was a pearly mist on the water, hiding the sun,
but there was no wind, and Kate stretched out on a
towel, gingerly lowering herself in case her back began to
hurt again.
Her peeling skin was well coated with the doctor’s
soothing lotion. She slipped sunglasses on and lay with
her face in the shade of a multi-hued umbrella, a plastic
air cushion under her shoulders.
The sea murmured soothingly, flinging white-capped
fingers upwards towards them, then falling back again in
little ripples, leaving the sand ribbed and pale.
Pallas was reading the life of Beethoven, Sam was
playing chess with himself and occasionally commenting
rudely on his own weak moves. Kate did nothing at all,
feeling her whole body limp and relaxed in the soft air.
She felt Pallas stiffening beside her, and looked up to
see Jean-Paul and Marc coming down the beach.
“You look very comfortable there,” Jean-Paul told
Kate, lowering himself beside her, “but should you be out
here in the sun so soon?”
She peered up at the sky. “The sun is still hidden in
cloud,” she pointed out. “I have to venture forth
sometimes, you know. I can’t live in a tunnel like a
mole.”
He laughed and picked up her lotion. “Let me rub
some of this into your arms before the sun comes out,
then.”
She had already done so, but she meekly allowed him
to do as he pleased.
“Your skin is so fair,"’ he murmured, his hand slowly
stroking up to her shoulder. “It is like peaches and
cream—I always thought that a silly expression, but now
I know what it means.”
Pallas leapt impatiently to her feet, sending up a
shower of sand. “Sam, come and play beach ball!”
Obediently, Sam closed his pocket chess game and
followed her down the beach.
Marc was leaning on one elbow, watching Kate and
Jean-Paul like a cat at a mouse-hole, his grey eyes
narrowed. She found his unmoving, unreadable gaze
disconcerting. What was he thinking?
Pallas and Sam were running closer to them, shouting
as they threw the ball from one to the other. Suddenly
the ball landed with a thu
d on Jean-Paul’s back, sending
him sprawling over Kate. He landed, a hand on either
side of her, almost knocking the breath out of her body,
and they both began to laugh, after the initial shock.
“I’m so sorry,” Jean-Paul apologised. “I hope I did not
hurt you.”
“Not at all,” she smiled.
He withdrew slowly, looking down at her with a
crooked smile. Over his shoulder Kate saw Pallas’s
sullen face as she took back the ball. Jean-Paul was
about to lie down again when Sam said cheerfully, “Care
to join us, Jean-Paul? Beach ball is more fun with three.”
Pallas turned away, her dark hair swinging as she
tossed her head, as though to emphasise her indifference
as to whether Jean-Paul played or not.
He hesitated, his face uncertain. Kate smiled at him,
“Yes, do play—I mustn’t because of my back. I think I’ll
go to sleep for a while.”
He stood up and slowly joined the other two. Pallas
flung the ball at him, very hard, and it hit him in the
stomach. Kate knew that Pallas had done it deliberately
and felt like shaking the girl. But Jean-Paul
straightened, looking steadily at her, and threw the ball
back without a word.
Kate pulled her straw hat over her face and let her
body relax. The sound of the sea, the balmy air, made her
drowsy. Vaguely she heard the high voices of the ball
players drifting away. The sea murmured on, gulls cried
overhead and the sun came out mildly, caressing her
skin. Behind her closed lids a warm orange flood of light
seemed to focus, spreading through her like wine. She
was lazy and content. Even the silent presence of Marc
seemed distant.
Then she heard a movement beside her. Sand
scattered over her bare legs. She opened her eyes and
saw Marc, lying on one elbow still, but casually ladling
handfuls of sand over her, like a child.
“What are you doing?” she asked resentfully, lifting
her leg so that the sand fell away.
“What are you doing?” he asked, with an odd
emphasis.
“Trying to sleep,” she snapped. Was it impossible to
stand still in any relationship? she wondered. One
always seemed to move either forward or back, certainly
in a friendship with the opposite sex. With Marc she
moved between hostility and attraction. Were the two
interchangeable? Like two sides of one coin? Today,
again, she did not like him.
“Last night,” he said conversationally, “I had a rather
startling discussion with Jean-Paul.”
Kate closed her eyes, straightening her leg again.
“Oh?” She tried to sound bored, even indifferent.
“He was unofficially betrothed to Pallas,” Marc said
softly, “but last night he told me he had changed his
mind.”
“Really?” Kate yawned, flapping her hand over her
mouth in a lazy gesture, her body stretching pleasantly
with the movement. “Well,” she went on, “Pallas is
rather young for a man like Jean-Paul, I suppose.”
Marc moved like a spring uncoiling, a hand on each
side of her, bending to whisper forcefully. “What do you
know of a man like Jean-Paul—you only met him
yesterday!”
She could not pretend to be sleepy now. She lay
staring up at him with a suddenly dry mouth. He was
very close to her, his dark face tense and menacing, the
strong muscles in his brown shoulders rippling as he
pressed his hands down on the sand. He looked very
handsome, very dangerous, and more attractive than she
could bear.
“What does any woman know of any man she meets?”
she countered warily, grateful for the sun glasses which
helped mask her expression. “I just made a snap
judgement, I suppose.”
“You walked in the garden with him for an hour,” he
said bitingly. “I saw you from my office window. He
kissed your hands. Rather fast work on his part—he was
never the wolf type. You must have given him a lot of
encouragement.”
He was furious because Jean-Paul had broken his
engagement to Pallas, she thought. But why take it out
on me? He’s looking for a scapegoat, but I’m not a
volunteer.
Aloud, she said, “He is a Frenchman, isn’t he? They
kiss hands to be polite.”
“He hasn’t been able to take his eyes off you since he
arrived,” Marc said tightly, his lips curling at the edges.
“Is that my fault?” she retorted. “What am I supposed
to do? Hang out a sign saying don’t look?”
“You put up one saying don’t touch,” he sneered.
“That was only for your benefit,” she flung, suddenly
too angry to care, and then realised, with a sinking
heart, that she had gone too far, and made him blazingly
angry.
His dark face tightened as though she had struck him.
He glared down at her, eyes glittering like points of steel,
and his mouth swooped, closing on hers savagely, his
hands gripping her sore shoulders.
For a second her heart seemed to stop, then it
thundered into life again, pounding in her ears. Her eyes
seemed darkened and aching. Her fingers curled
imploringly, held rigid at her sides, as she fought the
impulse to reach up and touch him.
Whatever happened, she must not let him guess what
that cruel, punishing kiss had done to her. As he drew
away, breathing hard, she kept her eyes and lips tightly
closed. After a moment she heard him walking away, his
feet crunching on the sand.
Tears began to trickle down her face. So now she
knew—what she had always known since their first
meeting. She loved him. But now she had been forced, by
her body’s treachery, to admit it to herself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When the others came back she pretended to be asleep, and
let them wake her, so that her silence could be put down to
the drowsiness of someone suddenly dragged back to a
wakeful condition. She trailed after them, back to the villa,
dreading the first meeting with Marc, but when they
arrived they found Sophia busily supervising the laying of
the table, and she told them that Marc had taken Marie-
Louise to Epilison to visit Pyrakis.
Kate felt a pang of unbearable jealousy at the news. She
knew that Marc had only been reacting angrily, when he
kissed her, to what he believed to be her interference
between Pallas and Jean-Paul. The furious glitter of his
eyes had confirmed that. But she stupidly felt hurt that he
should take Marie-Louise to see Pyrakis so soon after
taking her there.
She went up to change for lunch and chose a plain green
linen dress which somehow expressed her depressed mood.
After lunch she played cards with Helene Lillitos, who
was bored. She found the other woman quite pleasant, out
of the company of Marie-Louise. Helene seemed to make an
&
nbsp; effort to be polite to her. Kate had noticed that she always
wore black or lavender, and wondered if she were still
mourning for her husband. But Paul Lillitos had died
several years ago, so perhaps it was just that Helene knew
that the sombre colours suited her.
Occasionally, Helene’s slight French accent was tinged
with an American twang, which reminded Kate of her usual
residence in the United States.
She asked Helene where she lived when she was in
America, and Helene explained that she had two homes.
“An apartment in New York and a little place in the hills
in California. New York used to be an exciting place, but it
is becoming a nightmare. One hardly likes to go out after
dark, and never goes out alone.” She shuddered. “So many
of my friends have been mugged—you know?—robbed in the
street. It is incredible that such things happen in such a
civilised city.”
Kate asked her about California, and Helene went on to
describe her other home. “In the spring and autumn it is
beautiful, but it is too hot in summer.”
“The Americans call autumn the fall, don’t they?” Kate
asked.
Helene laughed. “Yes, the fall.”
“It is such a descriptive word,” said Kate. “It conjures up
falling leaves, the dying summer, everything.”
Helene looked at her carefully. “You like words?” Then
she smiled. “Of course, you are a schoolteacher.”
Kate flushed at the slight condescension of the words. “I
teach music, not English literature,” she said, a little more
sharply than she meant.
Helene said quickly, “I am sorry, I did not mean to offend
you.”
Kate relaxed. “I shouldn’t have snapped,” she apologised
in her turn.
Marc and Marie-Louise returned just before dinner. Kate
saw them walking up towards the villa, holding hands and
talking with animation, and she had to fight down a wild
impulse to run away.
She was sitting beside Sam on the verandah, drinking an
aperitif, and wearing her white voile dress. The weather
had been rather sultry that afternoon. When the early
morning mist lifted the sun was revealed, like a brass coin,
in the sky, and as the day wore on the heat grew more and
more oppressive.
Sophia darkly prophesied a thunderstorm that night, and
Kate was inclined to agree with her. The lowering sky, the
humidity, seemed to make one inevitable. Something of the
Follow a Stranger Page 11