Apollo's Daughter

by Rebecca Stratton

*You know me so well?'

  She shook her head more certainly this time. 'No, but I know your type.'

  He was almost certainly angry, it showed in his eyes and the tight firmness of his mouth, but he had himself firmly under control and his voice was almost coolly matter-of-fact. 1 am forced to the conclusion that you're not only sjx)iled but deliberately provocative on occasion,' he decreed, 'but don't try provoking me too far, Bethany, or you'll find yourself very, very sorry indeed!'

  Bethany did her best to keep a firm hold on her own fiery temper, but she was flushed and growing angry, resenting his accusations the more because they came uncomfortably near the truth in part. *I was just remembering that Papa referred to you as a traditionalist,' she told him. *I know you have different ideas about how people should behave '

  *I believe that people, and particularly young p>eople, should behave properly and with due respect for others,' Nikolas informed her curtly. 'My cousin was a very kindly man, and he was loved for his kindness, but he was in my opinion much too lax in the upbringing of his children.'

  'You mean he should have beaten us as you would have done?' Bethany guessed bitterly, and saw the watching dark eyes narrow into glittering anger.

  'I would remind you that it is still not too late to begin!' Nikolas threatened her.

  Flushed and shaking like a leaf, Bethany sought to steady herself by taking a long drink from her coffee cup and somehow managed to hold her tongue until she was more under control. He was impossible, even more impossible than she had feared, and she could not foresee there being any improvement in their situation as long as he persisted in treating her the way he would a fractious child. She had never, since she could remember, had any trouble making the few men she came into contact with see things her way, and Nikolas, being the exception, not only angered her but, she had to admit, intrigued her.

  Holding her cup between both hands, she studied his implacable face surreptitiously while he poured himself more coffee. Noting how the clear morning sun showed up fine lines at the corners of his eyes, and cast intriguing shadows below high cheekbones and thick black lashes, that were far too feminine for such a ruggedly masculine face. There was an almost oriental look about him that fitted his chauvinistic attitude, and she knew he would never be as amenable as Papa had been.

  It isn't going to work, Nikolas,' she declared impulsively, and met his eyes when he looked across at her suddenly. Tou and I under the same roof, it isn't going to work.'

  His gaze did not waver, but it was several seconds before he replied and Bethany barely suppressed a shiver at something she glimpsed in the depth of his eyes for a moment. 'It will work,' he told her with firm assurance. 'I will make it work—and so will you.'

  Bethany shook her head, though it was less in denial than at his incredible confidence, for despite her expressed doubts, she had the strangest feeling that he might be right.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was some time since Bethany had visited Pavlos's studio. She had done so quite often when her stepfather was alive, but she had never yet summoned the nerve to go in there since he died. It was as if she feared a recurrence of that dreadful sense of loss when she found he was no longer there to welcome her, and so far had avoided it.

  She wasn't certain just what prompted her to go on that particular morning, unless it was because she had passed outside the window earlier and a glimpse of the familiar room had drawn her to it unthinkingly. She hesitated before turning the handle and opening the door, and when she found it not deserted, as she expected, she gasped aloud, staring across at Nikolas sitting at the rough wooden table that had done Pavlos service for a desk on the rare occasions he needed one.

  Nikolas looked up when the door opened and his eyes narrowed slightly, so that she half expected a reprimand for intruding. He had a pile of papers in front of him and even from the doorway Bethany could recognise her stepfather's big, ungainly handwriting. It caught at her susceptible emotions for a moment, and she felt a flicker of resentment at the idea of Nikolas invading the privacy of the papers she knew Pavlos had kept in a steel box in one of the table drawers.

  'I didn't know you were here,' she murmured, and prepared to withdraw, but Nikolas shook his head, calling out to her as the door began to close.

  'Don't go, Bethany, come in and close the door.' Seeing her hesitate, he frowned and threw rather than put down the bundle of papers he had in his hand, before he sat down. *Aunt Alexia will be here in a moment, you have no need to look so apprehensive! Sit down, I'm sure we won't be very long waiting/

  'Why here?* Bethany asked, vaguely uneasy at the turn events had taken suddenly. *Why not in the living room where it's more comfortable?'

  *You find your stepfather's studio discomfiting?'

  She met his eyes, briefly surprised by the suggestion, then shook her head jerkily from side to side. 'Of course I don't, but '

  *Then please sit down; Aunt Alexia will join us when she is ready.' He met her eyes again and his gaze was boldly challenging, daring her to find further fault with the arrangement. *In fact it was Aunt Alexia's suggestion that we talk in here, since I was already here with all Pavlos's things on hand, and she had no objection to returning here.'

  Obediently Bethany drew up a chair and seated herself on the other side of the little table from him, heaving an inward sigh of relief when Alexia put in her appearance almost immediately. She smiled at them both with her usual benign assurance, and Nikolas at once got to his feet and set the most comfortable chair in the room for her, next to his own, while she watched him obliquely.

  It was odd to feel the room so familiar and yet so unfamiliar with Nikolas's intruding presence, and she found it hard to keep her mind on present matters when the room reminded her so much of Papa. It was a big sunny room untidily tacked on to the original building and having a long window that opened on to the small terrace where they ate most of their meals.

  Beyond it was the garden at the back of the house. A rambling untidy garden that ran riot with pink oleanders and scarlet hibiscus; where jasmine struggled to find the warming sun through rampant greenery, and great curtains of purple bougainvillaea trailed over the walls that enclosed house and garden. A thriving fig tree strayed over the wall, a struggling palm, almost defeated by so much opposition, and the big plane tree shading the terrace. A private jungle, her stepfather had called it, and remembering his laughter, Bethany smiled to herself.

  The room itself was workmanlike, filled with the usual stuff of the sculptor. The tools, left where they were last used, were a poignant reminder of their late owner, and several finished heads in marble as well as terracotta bore silent witness to the skill of Pavlos Meandis. The partially finished bust of a village child stood wrapped in wet cloths, waiting in vain to be finished, and that, perhaps more than anything else, brought home the cold, hard fact of his loss.

  On the wall facing Nikolas hung the portrait of her mother, painted by her true father, and as she mostly did when she came to the studio, Bethany half turned her head to look at it. The face was pretty but it lacked beauty, and there was a boldness in the grey eyes that, combined with a curious half-smile, had the same discomfiting eff^ect as the Mona Lisa if you looked at it for very long.

  Nikolas noticed her interest in it and briefly he too gave it his attention. 'That's your mother, isn't it, Bethany?' he said, and she nodded.

  She wasn't quite sure why his knowledge surprised her, for Papa was quite likely to have told him when he came that first time. 'My father painted it,* she told him, turning to look at the painting more fully. 'It's very good, isn't it? Don't you think she was pretty, Nikolas?'

  'She was pretty,' Nikolas agreed in a cool, offhand voice, 'but she wasn't beautiful, as her daughter is. Are you perhaps like your father, Bethany?'

  The unexpected compliment startled her into gazing at him uncertainly for a moment, for she saw such response as out of character for him. and she was unsure how to react. Aunt Alexia's blandly gentle face of
fered no solution, and she eventually shrugged in assumed carelessness, sidestepping his opinion of her own looks and simply answering his question as well as she could. Her father was a subject she knew virtually nothing about, though she was reluctant to admit it.

  'Probably I am,' she said.

  'Don't you remember him?'

  *I was only five when he left us/ she told him. 'Mother married Papa when I was seven and I've virtually forgotten everything before that.' She looked across at him with a gleam of defiance in her grey eyes. *I don't even know his first name, he was never mentioned.'

  Nikolas was spreading the papers out on the table in front of him while he spoke and seemed to be consulting them. 'Your mother died about three years ago, didn't she?' He glanced up suddenly, as if something had just occurred to him. *I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been quite so—abrupt about it.'

  'It doesn't matter.' She tightened her hands in her lap and shook her head quickly. *I never really knew her very well. She was killed in an accident, about three years ago, as you said.'

  'But you hadn't seen her for several years before that?'

  'No, I hadn't. She went off and left us, just as my father did.' She said it without bitterness, because neither of her natural parents had meant as much to her as Pavlos did, and she would have felt far more betrayed if it had been he who went off and left her. Nevertheless she felt oddly vulnerable for a moment and had a need to strike out in defence. 'You sound like a lawyer,' she accused, and ignored Alexia's faintly indrawn breath that should have warned her. 'Questions, questions 1 Just like a lawyer!'

  Nikolas was more than equal to the task of dealing with her, however, and his controlled quietness had the inevitable effect of bringing her swiftly back to earth. Leaning his elbows on the table in front of him, he steepled his long fingers and looked at her steadily either side of them. 'If you wished to be offensive, I'm afraid you've failed,* he told her. *I was trained in law school before I entered our family business, Bethany, so you're quite right. I do sound like a lawyer, for the very simple reason that I am one.*

  There was too much she didn't know about him, Bethany thought, and could not think why it seemed to

  go APOLLO'S DAUGHTER

  matter so much. She ventured an upward glance only when she thought his interest might be engaged elsewhere, but she had misjudged. He was watching her still with a deep, dark look in his eyes that she could make nothing of, but which brought a curious little shiver to her skin.

  *I didn't know,' she said, and quite unwittingly made it an apology.

  ^Obviously,' Nikolas remarked coolly. 'And now that you do will you allow me to continue, or shall I discuss these matters with Aunt Alexia only, and assume that you are, after all, too immature to be included?'

  Bethany flushed and her hands clenched into fists on her lap, but she knew Alexia was silently pleading with her not to quarrel with him, so she took a firm hold on herself, nodding without looking up. 'I'm sorry; please go on, Nikolas.'

  A brief nod acknowledged her apology, and he rested his elbows on the table while he talked. 1 ask all these questions simply because I know so little about you,' he explained. 'And since I am—in the position I'm in, I feel I should know all about you. You were about fifteen when your mother died, yes?'

  'Yes, she went off when I was about eleven and left me here with Papa, and it was about four years after that that Papa heard she'd been killed in a car crash in Rome. We—Papa had her brought back here and she was buried in the artists' cemetery; he was—I think he was still very fond of her.'

  She could not claim to have mourned her mother, and she thought he understood that, just as he understood that Papa had mourned her even after all those years, and that was why he still kept her portrait in his studio. 'I have been mother to both Pavlos's little ones for more than seven years now, Niko,' Alexia reminded him in her quiet, gentle voice, and Bethany noted how his expression changed whenever he looked at or spoke to his aunt.

  'I know, my aunt,' he told her, and there was a hint of dryness in his voice that matched the faintly sar-

  APOLLO'S DAUGHTER gl

  donic smile he gave her, 'and you have been more indulgent than most mothers. Have you always done everything yourself, without Bethany*s assistance?'

  'Only because I wished to,' Alexia assured him quickly. 'It isn't necessary for Bethany to do anything and I am accustomed to working alone, Niko. Bethany's time will come soon enough.'

  'Which is all the more reason why she should begin training for the part of wife and mother,' Nikolas insisted gently, and turned his head when he caught Bethany's hastily indrawn breath. 'How do you occupy your time, Bethany? Do you sew?'

  *A little.' She glanced anxiously at Alexia, for she disliked this particular trend of conversation intensely. 'Mostly I paint, or sculpt a little, when we're not swimming, or digging.'

  'Digging?'

  Bethany wondered if she should have mentioned that, for so far only she and Takis knew of their very amateurish efforts at archaeology, but she was glad enough to steer him away from the subject of her domestic shortcomings. 'There's a small hollow in the side of the hill above the harbour,' she explained, 'and Takis and I think there might once have been a temple there; to Apollo, we think. We've only done a little, but we've '

  'You have a permit?'

  Oh, that lawyer's mind! Bethany looked at him and then at Aunt Alexia. 'I didn't think it was necessary for the little we do.'

  'You still need permission.' he told her, then abruptly changed the subject. 'Takis is still at school, of course. Have you finished your schooling?'

  It was a matter she preferred not to talk about, for she felt sometimes that she had disappointed Pavlos with her academic record. Like all Greeks he had set great store by a good education, and she had not taken advantage of what opportunity she had. Rubbing her hands down her skirt, she did not meet his eyes.

  'I wasn't a very good pupil and sometimes I didn't

  go. Papa sometimes taught me a little instead, but he never scolded me, or not very much.'

  The dark eyes watching her gleamed with disapproval. 'You should have been made to go to school and punished when you did not,' Nikolas declared firmly. 'Discipline appears to have been non-existent, and my cousin appears to have indulged you to the point of foolishness. All of which is going to make my task even more difficult than I feared.'

  His air of authority as much as his criticism of Papa annoyed Bethany, and she looked at him down her nose, leaving her feelings in no doubt. 'I've already said you needn't concern yourself with me,' she told him pertly. I'm eighteen years old and I don't need a guardian!'

  *On the contrary,' Nikolas argued. 'Not only has your academic education been neglected, but your domestic training leaves a great deal to be desired. As for the rest, I have already p>ointed out to you that you are a Meandis, legally if not naturally, and as such you are my concern whether you like it or not.'

  'But you can't '

  'Be silent 1' Glittering dark eyes quelled her by the sheer force of the anger they suggested. But jie was a man who knew how to control himself as well as others, and he brought his obviously formidable temper under control remarkably quickly. 'I believe you have made some attempt to remedy the domestic situation, and the academic loss is beyond redemption now, so we will say no more about it. But from now on you will be expected to do at least half the work in the house, and what you do not know you will learn under Aunt Alexia's guidance. You will start learning to become a useful member of society, my girl, and less of a butterfly! Do you understand?'

  Bethany fumed. Her face was hot with colour and she clenched her hands tightly, and yet there was very little she could do at the moment. She would fare very badly if she was foolish enough to take herself off, as she had first threatened to do, for she had little ability

  for earning her own living. Looking across at Nikolas, she angled her chin and glared in futile resentment, but she did the only thing she could do at present.<
br />
  With a short jerky nod of her head, she accepted his ruling. 'Yes/ she said, *I understand perfectly!'

  He held her reluctant gaze for several seconds, then nodded, and she thought his tight lips relaxed just a little. 'Good,' he approved. 'I'm sure we shall get along much better now that we understand one another.' Bethany said nothing, but she doubted it very much. 'Now,' said Nikolas, giving his attention to the papers in front of him, 'we come to matters that concern you both to some extent.'

  'Papa's will,' Bethany dared to guess, for she recognised her stepfather's handwriting on the document at the top of the pile, and the heading was plain enough to see.

  Nikolas nodded agreement and said nothing about her interruption. 'As you know, my cousin, poor Pav-los, had very little to leave in the way of worldly goods, but what little he had is left to Takis for the most part, not unnaturally, and to—^his family in Rodos.' Bethany's head jerked up quickly and her eyes widened in disbelief, for she could not believe that Papa had ignored her completely. 'The contents of the studio go to Aunt Alexia to keep or dispose of as she prefers, and this house comes to you, Bethany, to be your dowry, as is the custom.'

  The traditional dowry of the Greek bride, Bethany realised, and appreciated the honour it did her even while a curious little chill trickled through her veins. She looked at Nikolas warily, seeking his reassurance and not even stopping to think that he was the last person she would have expected to turn to.

  'He didn't ' She passed the moistening tip of her

  tongue anxiously over dry lips. 'There's no mention of anyone—I mean, he didn't mention '

  'The man he wishes you to marry?' Nikolas enquired, so matter-of-factly that she felt a strange curling sensation in her stomach suddenly. 'It isn't written

  down, Bethany, but I know his wishes in the matter and if it's at all possible I shall see that they're complied with/

  'Islo!* She was on her feet, the dilapidated chair falling with a crash behind her as she faced him across the little makeshift desk. 'You know how I feel about arranged marriages, Nikolas, and you said you understood! I won't be—be handed over to just anyone you choose and spend the rest of my life standing at a kitchen sink and working like a slave for some man I don't even like! Even you wouldn't be so unfeeling as to force me into that!'