The Realms of Gold

by Elizabeth Hunter

  ‘My husband will only come to me when I want him to!’ she defied him, trembling a little.

  ‘He’d be a poodle, not a husband, to allow that!’

  She put her hands on his, trying to undo his clasp, but her strength was puny compared to his. As fast as she wrenched one finger apart, another closed against her. He blew on the back of her neck and turned her to face him. The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled as if he were looking into the sun, but there was no clue in his face as to what he was thinking.

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘I am no poodle, Emily. Did you think I was?’

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘When I am ready, not before. What are you afraid of?’

  ‘You’re hurting me!’ she declared with a burst of spirit.

  ‘Am I? Think again, agape. You are hurting yourself! Are you still cold? No, I thought not. Will your lips be cold too, or will they rejoice in the warmth of mine?’ He bunched her hair in his hand and pulled back her head to meet his kiss. His mouth was hard and demanding, searching for a response as avidly as his hands explored her frame, cupping her breasts and pulling her hips close against his own. His whole attitude was one of command, intent on bending her to his will, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of breaking. He was not her master and he was never going to be—not if she could help it! Yet all pretence at resistance faded from her mind as his kisses changed tempo and took on a more seductive note, moving from her mouth to her throat and back again.

  ‘You are mine, Emily.’ She heard his voice as though from a distance, as he went on in a rush of Greek which she didn’t understand.

  ‘No, no,’ she pleaded. ‘You promised, Demis.’

  ‘Such a promise one makes to comfort a young girl, but no woman would take it seriously. You were not so foolish as to believe that I didn’t intend to claim my wife as soon as I was ready to do so, were you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ Her voice caught in the back of her throat and she felt weak at the knees.

  ‘Now what does that mean? That you knew all along you were destined to be my woman?’

  She shook her head. ‘I believed your promise,’ she whispered.

  His only answer was to kiss her again, while she clung to him to save herself from falling. ‘And now?’ he asked her. ‘What do you believe now?’ His breath was warm against her skin, making it impossible for her to think of anything but him.

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘There were other appetites you were meant to satisfy, my Emily, that appeal to me more than this restaurant of yours.’ The barely concealed triumph in his words shook her to the core. It was his mouth, his voice, his arms, that were controlling her every movement now.

  ‘Demis—’ The moment was broken abruptly as Chrisoula’s voice floated down the beach towards them. ‘Demis! There is someone here for you! What’s the matter with you? Are you both deaf? Demis, are you coming?’

  Demis put Emily away from him, sheltering her from his sister’s inquiring glance as the girl came running towards them.

  ‘Who is it?’ he called back. ‘Tell them to come back later.’

  ‘This one you will have to tell yourself,’ Chrisoula declared. ‘Hermione will never listen to anything I say.’

  Emily felt a devastating feeling of pain within her. Hermione! What was she doing in Nauplia? Come running to her lover, no doubt!

  ‘A promise is a promise,’ she said in cool, brittle tones to her husband’s back. ‘I shall expect you to keep yours to me, Demis Kaladonis. I hate you, do you hear me? I hate you!’

  His eyes were as cold as the English sea and much the same colour. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the time or the place to discuss our personal affairs. I’ll see you at lunchtime. Chrisoula will take you into Nauplia if you wish to go—’

  ‘I don’t!’

  He put up a hand and touched her cheek in a possessive gesture. ‘There will be other times, agape. You will need more than a little ice to keep me away from you now!’

  Emily watched him walk away with stinging eyes. ‘I don’t like her either,’ Chrisoula said with a shrug, ‘but she has her uses as far as Demis is concerned.’ Of course she had! And Emily could have told her exactly what those uses were! At least she would have more pride than to allow him to use her in the same way. She was already appalled at the intimate way he had handled her, but she was quite determined that it would never happen again. She was more resolved than ever that she would leave him at the first possible moment and would open her own restaurant, anything that would allow her never to set eyes on him again.

  ‘I must go and get dressed,’ she said.

  There was no sign of Demis at lunchtime. Emily could imagine him sharing his meal with Hermione in some restaurant, and humiliation burned within her. When he did finally come home and found her sitting, reading, in the garden, she barely looked up when he said her name.

  ‘Emily, I have bad news,’ he said. His tone was unaccustomedly gentle. ‘Your father wishes to see me and I must fly to England immediately.’

  She was on her feet, her grievance temporarily forgotten. ‘I’ll come with you!’

  But he shook his head. ‘He is in no danger. He wishes to get the transfer of the business tied up, though, so that there will be no difficulties if anything should happen to him. He has your mother to consider, agape, as well as all of you.’

  ‘But I want to see him!’

  ‘Not this time, Emily. This time only I can put his mind at rest. You will wait in my house for me to come back to you—’

  ‘As a Greek woman would, I suppose?’ she shot back at him.

  ‘As my wife must learn to do,’ he amended. And he kissed her hard on the mouth. ‘Yineka mou, it has a sweet sound to it,’ he added.

  ‘Has it?’ she retorted. ‘But I shall never be yours!’ But he was gone, leaving her alone in the garden with the book she had been reading lying where it had fallen at her feet.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Emily went to Nauplia alone. She liked walking, and the distance between the Kaladonis house and the small town was well within her capacity. Although she had complained bitterly to Chrisoula about being forced to go swimming in January, she had been refreshed by the experience and, not for the first time, she regretted that she had had such limited time for exercise in London. At least she would have every opportunity for that in Greece.

  Nauplia, she knew, had been the first mainland capital when the Greeks had been fighting for their independence a hundred and fifty years before. There were small signs of that former glory now, but it was a pretty place with one of the nicest harbours that Emily had ever seen and some pleasant souvenir shops which, she was to find, the Greeks stocked with more imagination than many host countries to the annual spate of holidaymakers from more northerly climes.

  Since she was dressed in a pair of jeans and a pullover, there was nothing about her to proclaim her own nationality, and she was startled, when she sat down at a cafe overlooking the harbour, to be addressed in her own language.

  ‘What will you have, madam?’

  ‘A coffee,’ she decided. ‘Not Greek coffee, though.’

  ‘Nescafe with milk?’

  She nodded, relieved" at the lack of difficulty of getting what she wanted. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  She was the only one there at first, sitting out in the wintry sunshine which seemed more than warm enough to her. She watched a caique coming into the harbour, admiring the clean lines of the boat. One day, perhaps, she would suggest to Demis that they should take such a boat all round the Greek Isles, stopping wherever the fancy took them and exploring where few people had ever explored before. She caught herself up hastily. Why should she want to go on such an adventure with Demis? She must be mad!

  The coffee came and she paid for it while the waiter was there. What was Demis doing now? she found herself wondering. Was he already in an aeroplane, flying to England, to visit her family without her? Or was he
lingering on the way to Athens, with Hermione by his side, an eager, expectant Hermione who would know all about his lovemaking in a way that she, his wife, never would.

  Across the harbour was the miniature fortress of Bourtzi, which in its time had been put to some strange uses. Once, it had housed the executioner who had exercised his function on the prisoners who had been kept in the Palamidi fortress that rose high above the city; later, it had been a luxury hotel and, for all that Emily knew, it still was, though she wondered how the guests came and went from their favoured site.

  She glanced about her, aware that she was no longer alone. The cafe had another customer, a man dressed in clothes that were the male counterpart of her own, who raised a languid hand in greeting as soon as he saw her looking in his direction. He heaved himself to his feet and came over to her table, grinning.

  ‘I was hoping you would notice me,’ he said artlessly. ‘You don’t mind if I join you, do you?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Any reservations she might have felt had been put to flight by the instinctive knowledge that Demis would have disapproved of such free and easy ways.

  ‘I’m English too. My name is Keith Forest. I live in Birmingham.’

  Emily smiled. ‘Emily Thorne,’ she supplied. ‘Well, Emily Thorne Kala—’ She broke off. It wasn’t Kaladonis, she thought. She was almost sure that the feminine ending was something different. ‘Emily Thorne,’ she said again. ‘I live in London—mostly. My family live in Kent.’

  The young man eased himself into a chair, wincing a little as though he were stiff. ‘This is the best time of the year to come to Greece, if you don’t mind being cold and wet occasionally. I hate being one of the herd.’

  Emily sipped her coffee. ‘I went swimming this morning.’

  ‘Did you? Walking is my thing. I walk everywhere if I can. It’s the only way to see a country. I’m a bit out of training, as a matter of fact. I only started my holiday yesterday and it takes a little while to smooth the knots of a mostly sedentary job out of my muscles.’

  ‘Few of us get enough exercise nowadays,’ she agreed.

  He leaned forward, looking pleased, putting his arms on the table. They were white from lack of sun and not as strong looking as a certain other pair of arms. Emily blinked and averted her eyes.

  ‘I’m glad I ran into you,’ he said, sure that she had been equally glad to have him come over to her. ‘We could go for one or two walks together, if you’ve nothing better to do?’

  Emily bit her lip. What would Demis say to that? ‘In the next few days?’ she probed cautiously, for some reason feeling unaccountably guilty. ‘I’d have to meet you in Nauplia itself. The people I’m with don’t care for walking and they’d probably make some other suggestion for my entertainment if they knew.’

  ‘You’re staying with a Greek family?’

  ‘My family knows them,’ Emily explained.

  ‘Well, that’s all right with me, if that’s the way you want it. I can imagine it might be rather trying for you having to fall in with their ways. The Greek girls know seem to lead a pretty cloistered life, but I suppose they know their own countrymen best. A beautiful girl like you wouldn’t be safe for a moment with any of them, that’s how they’d see it. They don’t know our English girls, do they?’

  ‘Are we so special?’ she asked.

  ‘Most of you seem to know how to look after yourselves,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s all a matter of being used to standing on your own feet.’

  Emily eyed him curiously. ‘Are we any better off, do you think?’

  He was surprised that she should ask. ‘I should say so! Surely you wouldn’t want to hand over your freedom to make your own decisions to anyone else?’

  ‘No.’ She sounded uncertain even to her own ears. ‘But I think my sister would. She thinks her husband unmanly because he leaves all the decision-making to her. Or, at least, she often gives that impression.’

  ‘Can’t they decide things together?’

  ‘In theory,’ Emily agreed. ‘In practise that often means that nobody ever decides anything. Perhaps, ideally, one should take it in turns.’

  Keith laughed. ‘Okay, that’s how we’ll arrange our walks. You can decide where we go the first time, and I the second, and so on. When will you be able to get away?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said at once.

  He smiled amicably at her. ‘And where shall we go?’

  She fluttered her eyelashes uncertainly in a gesture unconsciously borrowed from her sister. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed.

  His smile grew wider. ‘Epidaurus,’ he suggested. ‘You’ll love it!’

  Even to herself, Emily was not sure why she did not want to go to Epidaurus with Keith.

  ‘No, not Epidaurus,’ she said. ‘We could walk to Tiryns, or take a bus to Mycenae, or even go to Corinth, but not Epidaurus. I don’t want to go there.’

  ‘Okay, lady, your wishes are my command. We’ll walk to Tiryns tomorrow. I’ll get my landlady to make up a packed lunch for the two of us and then we needn’t hurry.’ He put his hand over hers. ‘It’s made all the difference meeting you. I’m going to really enjoy this holiday! I can feel it in my bones.’

  Emily wished she could feel a corresponding happiness at the prospect, but all she felt was a creeping despair that everything was always going to be too difficult for her to manage by herself in the future. She was behaving very badly, she knew. She ought to tell Keith that she was married, that she wasn’t the simple English holidaymaker he imagined, but she didn’t even know how to go about that. And she, if anyone, ought to know what that kind of deception could lead to, she thought with self-contempt. All her troubles had sprung from her pretending to be in love with Demis, and now it was only too likely that a similar disaster could overtake her because she was denying him.

  ‘Keith, I don’t just know this family I’m staying with. We’re related—in a kind of way. You see—’

  He gave her a kindly look. ‘You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,’ he cut her off; ‘Family life is often complicated these days.’ He stood up and smiled down at her. ‘I’ll see you here tomorrow at about nine o’clock. Will that suit?’

  Emily never said a single word. She nodded her head and watched him walk away. If he didn’t want to hear, there was no reason why she should tell him, she supposed. After all, it wasn’t a real marriage. It wasn’t as though she was really Demis Kaladonis’ wife—or that she ever would be.

  There was a certain amount of excitement in the Kaladonis house that night. Chrisoula said Barbara had telephoned to say that she and her husband would be back the following day.

  ‘Oh? What time?’ Emily almost hoped it would be at a time that would interfere with her proposed visit to Tiryns, but Chrisoula crushed that hope with an indifferent smile.

  ‘Not until after dark. They won’t expect us to meet them, unless you particularly want to. Demetrios is Barbara’s pet. She doesn’t have much time for me.’ The girl didn’t sound in the least sorry for herself, merely as if she was stating a fact about which there could be no possible argument. ‘Demis has always been my special member of the family,’ she went on. ‘He has promised that when I’m eighteen he will find a husband for me. It’s less than two years now and I worry sometimes that he hasn’t begun to do anything about it.’ The Greek girl turned to Emily, her eyes wide and pleading. ‘Could you remind him, Emily, that I don’t want to go on being Barbara’s shadow for ever? I want a home of my own!’

  ‘I don’t suppose Demis would listen to me,’ Emily said.

  ‘Why not? Did you want a house of your own too—away from all of us? You haven’t much hope of that, you know, until Demetrius and I are grown up. Demis takes his responsibilities as head of the family terribly seriously.’

  Emily frowned, considering this. ‘What about Barbara? Will she like me, do you think?’

  ‘Oh yes! Barbara would like anyone who will stand between her and Demis. She’s afraid of hi
m, and so is Giorgios. Demis tries and tries to put them at their ease, but the more he tries, the worse it gets.’

  ‘But aren’t they much of an age?’ Emily asked.

  Chrisoula nodded. ‘That’s part of the trouble. He was just as particular about the way she behaved herself as he is with me, and then she walked in in the middle of one of his sessions with a girl-friend. She’s treated him as though he has feet of clay ever since. And she doesn’t like the girl he was with either.’

  ‘But why should she mind so much?’

  ‘She was in love with Giorgios and she didn’t think much of there being one rule for Demis and another for her. She’s awfully silly at times—as you’ll find out.’

  ‘I don’t think much of that myself,’ Emily commented.

  Chrisoula laughed. ‘You’re bound to be jealous of Demis’ other girl-friends,’ she chuckled. ‘But you don’t have to worry, this one hasn’t been in the lists since she went for Barbara like the shrew she is. Demis would have nothing to do with her after that.’

  ‘How loyal of him!’ Emily saw the young girl’s shocked reaction to the sarcasm in her tone. ‘I don’t think you should tell me about Demis’ other loves. Not that it matters in this instance. It’s most unlikely that I shall ever meet her.’

  ‘But you have met her! That was the awful thing. It wasn’t just any girl, it was someone whom in other circumstances he might have married. Barbara thought he was going to marry her. That’s what all the trouble was about. If he treated his fiancée like that, why shouldn’t she have a little fun with Giorgios?’

  ‘I see,’ said Emily. ‘It was Hermione Kaloyeropoulou, I suppose?’

  ‘Of course. I told you Barbara is stupid. As if Demis would ever have married anyone so awful! Besides’—she gave Emily a droll look—‘Demis would never marry a girl who had known other men, or who had allowed him to go too far before the wedding. He would never be able to trust her, and that wouldn’t suit Demis at all. He’d take what he was offered and marry elsewhere, which was precisely what he did. The funny thing is that I always thought English girls were so permissive these days, but I don’t suppose you’re really so very different from us after all.’