The Realms of Gold

by Elizabeth Hunter

  The fire in his eyes burned high. ‘It’s a risk I’m prepared to take. Well, Thorne in my flesh, what do you say? Are you going to marry me?’

  She took a sip of wine, knowing that she had to refuse him. Her self-respect was at stake, and her cherished independence, because, whatever he might say now, he would expect to control her life as a matter of course if she once gave way to him. He expected it now—

  ‘What if I don’t?’ She asked the question aloud, but she was really asking it of herself. He might buy out her father anyway, but she doubted if he would trouble himself further with the Thorne affairs. She would go back to London, of course, and go on working towards her goal, but it seemed a lonely existence and one that she couldn’t find any appetite for continuing after all. It was what she had always wanted, but thinking about the room where she lived and the College where she taught, it seemed a grey, uninteresting way of life! How could she have changed so drastically in a few minutes? Was the appeal of Greece really so great for her?

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. She looked up at him. ‘I don’t like being taken for granted,’ she added.

  ‘Have I done so?’ he demanded. ‘Come, Emily, admit that you want me to make up your mind for you. Independence is for men; women need to be cherished and protected from the harsher aspects of life. You will be far happier when you have me to turn to. You will have time to blossom into the lovely woman you were meant to be, and you will be glad then that you listened to me.’

  ‘Will I?’ Her voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else. ‘You don’t understand! It was a terrible thing to do, to pretend that I had fallen in love with someone in London. It was worse still to borrow your name and for you to arrive like that. It would be even more improper to marry you for my father’s sake, and to allow you to keep me when I shan’t be giving back anything to you, for I’m not in the least bit in love with you. How can I agree?’

  ‘But you would like to come to Greece with me?’

  She paused. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Greece,’ she said.

  He put his hands across the table, grasping her fingers in his. ‘Won’t you trust me to look after you, my little Thorne?’ he asked her. ‘I promise you, you will not regret it.’

  She couldn’t say anything at all. She tried, but the words caught in the back of her throat. His touch was warm and comforting. He was very strong, but he was gentle too, and the pressure on her fingers was almost a caress. She blinked away the tears that had rushed into her eyes and nodded her head.

  ‘You will marry me?’ he insisted.

  She nodded her head again. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.

  Strangely, the thing that frightened her most was telling her own family that she had agreed to marry Demis Kaladonis. How would she explain her volte-face to them? What would they think of her for meekly agreeing to be the wife of a man she had met only once before, and that fleetingly on the train? They would think her completely mad, and she wasn’t at all sure that they wouldn’t be right!

  But her family did not think her mad.

  ‘You could have confided in your own mother,’ Mrs. Thorne had complained with ill-concealed triumph at this turn in her daughter’s affairs. ‘Anyone would think you didn’t want to share your happiness with us.’

  ‘She always was selfish!’ Margaret had chimed in, managing to sound both sulky and envious in the same breath. ‘She’s always pretended that she hasn’t a romantic bone in her body. It isn’t fair!’

  Demis had looked very knowing. ‘I believe she is the most romantic-minded of you all,’ he had said, and Emily was very conscious of his glance. ‘Woe betide me if I disappoint her!’

  ‘You won’t!’ Margaret had assured him, with a discontented look in Peter’s direction. ‘It’s far more likely to be the other way round.’

  And he hadn’t denied that, Emily had noticed, and she knew then that he thought it too. He had weighed her up and had found her wanting as a woman. If her father’s business hadn’t been thrown in on her side of the scales, he would never have given her a second look. She ought to welcome the fact that there was no danger of his wanting her as a woman, she thought, but she was now far from sure about this.

  She watched her sister flirting with Demis Kaladonis with all her customary ease and wondered what would happen if she, Emily, were to treat him to the same display of fluttering eyelashes and pretty half-pouting movements of the mouth. Would he think her more of a woman then?

  ‘And how is your mother?’ Mrs. Thorne threw into the general conversation suddenly. ‘Emily mentioned her yesterday. Coronis, didn’t you say her name is, dear?’

  Emily held her breath, feeling a perfect fool. ‘I was joking, Mother,’ she murmured.

  ‘Coronis? Coronis!’ Demis stood up and advanced across the room towards her. ‘Now what made you think of her and me in the same breath, I wonder?’ His eyes, which had a trick of reflecting any light that was going, rested on her briefly. He could well have been the son of Apollo who brought light to men. Hadn’t she read somewhere that the Greeks to this very day would greet the new-born day with a kiss for Apollo? And there had been a German archaeologist who had denied Apollo his eminent place among the gods, dismissing him as one who had only lesser powers of no account. Worse still, he had made his statement at Delphi, the god’s own shrine, and had lost his way out walking and had been found dead later on, slain by the sun, for he had died of heatstroke. ‘Do you think I look like the god of healing?’ Demis asked her.

  She did her best to make an easy reply. ‘Not really. You haven’t got a beard. Asklepios always has a beard.’

  ‘You didn’t tell us that yesterday,’ Margaret pointed out. ‘You told us he was the colour of gold and that he always felt warm. Not a very accurate description, since he has black hair and nobody could help being cold on such a freezing day!’

  Demis seemed amused. ‘Do you know why Asklepios is always warm?’ he asked Emily.

  She shook her head. ‘I only know that Coronis rejected Apollo for the love of a mortal man, only a crow betrayed her to the god, who changed the bird from white to black for his pains. He had his twin sister, Artemis, shoot Coronis with her arrows and afterwards her body was burned, but it was remembered that she was about to give birth to Asklepios and he was rescued from the pyre and given to the Centaur, Chiron, to be brought up by him.’

  ‘But the fire of his birth warms his blood to this very day.’ There was a curious ring in his voice. ‘Like his father, he has a way with beautiful young women. You had best beware, if you think I am anything like him!’

  ‘It’s too late to tell my daughter that,’ Mr. Thorne said. ‘I prefer the tradition that says the god-hero was born in the vicinity of Hieron of Epidaurus, on Mount Myrtion, which has been called Titthion ever since, meaning “the mountain which gave the breast”.’

  ‘I prefer it too,’ Demis said. ‘Perhaps because I, too, was born at Epidaurus.’

  The colour drained from Emily’s face. ‘And what was your mother’s name?’ she asked.

  He looked at her quickly. ‘What did you suppose? Her name was Coronis also.’

  ‘And I suppose your father was Apollo, too!’ Margaret taunted him, bored by all this talk of something she didn’t really understand.

  Demis smiled easily. ‘No, my father’s name was Spyros. He is dead now, so, you see, both my parents were mortal.’ He turned back to Emily, the smile dying away. He sat down beside her on the sofa, running his arm along the back of it behind her head. It was a peculiarly possessive gesture that she supposed she would have to grow used to. As it was, she was intensely conscious of the golden skin of his hands and face and the aura of masculine warmth that came from his body. He touched her hair with his fingers and she tossed her head away from him.

  ‘What else do you know about the Greek gods?’ he asked her.

  ‘That they are dangerous to play around with,’ she said coolly, not looking at him.

  ‘Very dan
gerous if you displease them,’ he replied, ‘but they can be kind. You will have to walk warily in Greece and make us all love you.’

  ‘It depends who all of you are,’ she retorted, a little frightened by the prospect.

  His fingers returned to her hair. ‘You had best start with the men and graduate to the gods, agapi. There’s not a man in Greece who won’t think himself a hero if you smile on him!’

  It was an impossibly romantic thing to say, and she guessed he only did so because her assembled family expected him to pay her compliments.

  ‘I thought you already were a hero.’ She turned the tables on him.

  The light in his eyes grew brighter still. His hand fell from her hair to her chin, turning her face towards him. ‘To you I mean to be more than a hero, a god!’ he said. And he kissed her lightly on the lips.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was difficult to tell anything about Greece from the airport at Athens. Huge airport buses gobbled up the passengers and disgorged them outside some buildings that were in the process of being rebuilt. From there they were ushered up a flight of stairs to pass through passport control and customs. To Emily nothing seemed quite real, least of all herself.

  I shouldn’t have done it! I must be mad! she thought to herself. She shuffled along in the queue behind Demis, frozen with fear as to what she might have agreed to in the safety of England. She was not in England now. She was in a strange land, where they spoke a strange language, and where she knew nobody—nobody at all, for least of all did she think she knew Demis Kaladonis!

  He had her passport with his own. It was new and shiny, but reassuringly British. He had changed so many things that she had been half afraid he would insist on her changing her nationality too, but surprisingly he had not.

  ‘I like to think I shall have an English wife,’ he had said. ‘The English and the Greeks have always gone well together.’

  She doubted the truth of that herself. Her father had told her many stories of united Greek and British efforts during the war, in which he himself had participated. That had been where he had first learned the Greek language and when he had made the valuable contacts that afterwards had been the basis of the import/export business he had set up. But they had all been men together, and she had grown up knowing that a Greek’s attitude to women was very different from the British one. In Greece, women were the servants of their men and they behaved accordingly. The fact that in return they were valued and protected as much because they were women as in their own right seemed very small consolation to Emily at that moment.

  She stood to one side while Demis changed some traveller’s cheques at the airport bank.

  ‘There is someone over there trying to attract your attention,’ she told him when he finally turned away from the counter, stuffing the notes into his wallet.

  He looked over where she was pointing and a wide smile broke over his face. It was seldom that he smiled, she thought. If something amused him, his eyes would brighten and she would know that he was laughing deep down inside, but his expression would remain as stern as ever. Not for the first time since that moment when he had put his ring on her finger, she wondered if she weren’t secretly afraid of Demis Kaladonis—and if she hadn’t been right from the first moment she had set eyes on him on the train taking her home.

  ‘Is she one of your sisters?’ she asked him.

  ‘Good heavens, no! That’s Hermione. She’s an old friend of mine. Come and meet her.’

  Emily thought he must be very fond of her to smile at her like that, and she could see why. The other girl was beautiful, with the tawny eyes that some Greeks have and a skin that had been out in the sun too much to be termed delicate, but which a careful use of cosmetics had done much to hide. But she was more than beautiful, she was the most vivacious, outgoing creature that Emily had ever seen.

  She could scarcely wait for Demis to get through the barrier before she had flung her arms round his neck and kissed him warmly on the cheek and mouth. A flood of Greek welcomed him home, but was soon cut off by his answer.

  ‘Hermione, this is my wife, Emily.’

  The Greek girl looked completely overset. ‘Your wife, Demis?’ she said in English. ‘You are married to this girl?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Demis said easily.

  Emily felt the Greek girl’s pain in her own heart. She hadn’t given a thought to Demis’ previous life in Greece, she realised. Of course there had been many girls in his life, but possibly this one was the only one who had had hopes that he would marry her. It might have been friendship on his side, but it had plainly been considerably more than that on hers.

  ‘Hermione Kaloyeropoulou,’ Demis introduced her. ‘You’d better call her Hermione as we all do.’ He smiled again at the Greek girl, a warm, devastating smile such as Emily had never hoped to receive from him. ‘In Greece women seldom use their family names,’ he added over his shoulder. ‘Most people will call you Emily, or Kyria Emily if they don’t know you well.’

  ‘My father is Spyros Kaloyeropoulos,’ Hermione put in, her eyes pebble hard. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of him?’

  Emily shook her head. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘He owns an international airline—among other things,’ Hermione drawled. ‘Until today he had hopes that Demis was going to go into partnership with him. But’—she shrugged—‘now that he has married you, he probably has other plans?’

  Emily was shocked by the other girl’s frankness. ‘We don’t pay much heed to a girl’s dowry in England,’ she said.

  ‘So? What makes you think I was discussing my proika, Kyria Kaladonou? Is that why Demis married you?’

  ‘Probably,’ Emily admitted, deciding that whatever she said Hermione was unlikely to believe her.

  Demis gave her an impatient look. He didn’t relish having his private affairs discussed by mere females, Emily noticed. But what did he want her to say? That she had married him to preserve her father’s peace of mind?

  ‘Is it why?’ Hermione pressed him, hugging his arm to her in what Emily privately considered was a shameless display, the more especially as she watched her husband take full advantage of the implicit invitation that was being offered to him as he entwined his hand round her waist and caressed her body through the thin material of her dress.

  ‘You should know me better than that,’ he answered huskily. ‘It was enough to see Emily to know that I had to have her for my own. She is very lovely, ne?’

  Hermione pretended to shiver. ‘But too cold for anyone as hot-blooded as you, Demis! Does she respond to you as ardently as a Greek girl would?’

  Emily strove to disguise her disgust. That she failed was revealed by her husband’s open amusement at the expression on her face.

  ‘You must behave, Hermione. My little English wife is easily embarrassed. She isn’t used to these things being talked about openly. Isn’t that so, Emily mou?’

  ‘I have always been told that Greek women are more demure than we are,’ Emily murmured. ‘Yet I can’t imagine asking a man such a thing in England. At least, I hope I wouldn’t.’

  Hermione broke into delighted, throaty laughter. ‘She has claws, this wife of yours!’ she exclaimed. ‘And she is not afraid to use them! You must remember, Emily, that Demis and I are very, very old friends. We have seen life together. How should I restrain my tongue with such a person? It would be impossible. We are too much part of one another for that.’

  ‘That was in the past.’ Demis actually smiled at her. ‘We’ve both moved on since those days.’

  But had he? Looking at the two of them together, Emily doubted it. Not that it mattered to her what lay between them. Or, at least, it shouldn’t have done, but it did. It was a matter of hurt pride, she supposed. She might not want Demis for herself, but neither did she want to have his past flaunted so obviously before her. She had, after all, taken his name as his supposed wife, and she found that she didn’t like to think of anyone knowing that she was something less than h
is wife in fact.

  ‘I left the car across the way,’ Hermione was saying when Emily came out of her day-dream. ‘Your car, that is. I’m going home with somebody else.’

  Demis patted her cheek affectionately. ‘Anyone I know?’

  Hermione pouted. ‘If you do, you shouldn’t!’ she gurgled. ‘Your wife will think you’re jealous of me if you ask such questions.’

  He frowned. ‘If he’s who I think it is you’d better watch your step, my girl. Your father wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘He didn’t approve of you either, but that never stopped us! I live my own life, my dear, as you should be the first to know.’

  He laughed, shaking his head at her. ‘Be careful you don’t go too far. Money doesn’t buy everything, koritsi.’

  ‘So I have learned today, Demis mou. I had hoped—but there, we’ll always be friends, won’t we?’ Emily noted that her husband avoided answering that. Instead he drew her to him, rather as if he had belatedly remembered her presence, and dropped a kiss on the point of her nose. ‘We must be going. I want to get to Nauplia tonight if it’s possible.’

  ‘Are you going by road?’ Hermione asked him. ‘It takes much longer.’

  ‘The yacht has gone to Aegina. Giorgios—that’s my brother-in-law,’ he added for Emily’s benefit, ‘is worried about some of the pistachio trees. He’s overseeing some new spray they’re trying out on them. Barbara has gone with him—to keep him company, or so she says.’

  ‘Will you leave your wife behind when you go on your travels?’

  Emily felt Demis’ eyes on her face and met the suddenly fierce look in their depths as confidently as she could, head on, lifting her chin in a gesture of defiance.

  ‘There is no time when a man doesn’t want his woman by his side when she is loving,’ he said inscrutably. ‘I am no different from any other husband in wanting that.’