A Terrible Beauty

by Tasha Alexander

  The last morning of our voyage saw the steep cliffs of Santorini—Thera, as it was called in ancient days—rising from the ocean, puzzle-piece white and blue and buildings clinging impossibly to their sides. Because it was still spring, lush greenery covered the dark volcanic rock of the island, with yellow, white, and pink wildflowers dotting the view. We pulled into the port below the small capital city of Fira, where a well-tended group of donkeys stood ready to transport us and our baggage up the six hundred steps to the top. Mrs. Katevatis, whom I had hired as a cook on my first visit to the island, had taken on so many additional duties at the villa after her husband died some years ago that to call her “housekeeper” would not begin to encompass all she did for me. Her twenty-year-old son, Adelphos, who had tutored me in modern Greek, was in charge of the donkeys, and took exquisite care of them. From ancient times, these beasts of burden were the only reliable way to move supplies and people on the island. The jovial sound of their bells welcomed us to our Greek home.

  I kissed Adelphos on both cheeks. “Aγαπητέ μου αγόρι, είναι τόσο καλό που σε βλέπω,” I said in my best modern Greek—which, I must confess, is more dreadful than my worst Ancient Greek. “My dear boy, it is so good to see you.”

  “You are lucky to arrive today, Lady Kallista,” he replied, using the nickname bestowed on me by Philip and used now only by my friend Cécile du Lac and Adelphos; I had not yet been able to persuade him to stop using my title. “We had terrible storms last night. You will want to get to the villa as quickly as possible. My mother is eager to speak with you.”

  The sun blazed down on us as the donkeys made their way slowly up to town. Once we had reached Fira, I planned, as was my habit, to abandon the beasts to Adelphos and walk the rest of the way. The house, in the village of Imerovigli, abutted the cliff path that connected the two towns, skirting the edge of the island nearly nine hundred feet above the sea and providing spectacular views with every step. Jeremy balked, insisting he wanted a bath and a whisky, and Adelphos took my friend’s side, imploring me to succumb to his request. His mother was waiting anxiously, he reminded me, and speed was of the essence.

  Speed had never before entered into any conversation in which I had taken part in on the island. If anything, on Santorini things required so much longer to be accomplished it would not have been unreasonable for one to draw the conclusion there was a mandate forbidding haste. The languid pace endeared the place to me, and Adelphos’ desire to rush struck all the wrong chords.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked. “Was the villa damaged in the storm?”

  “Oh, no Lady Kallista, the villa, it is unharmed. It is simply my mother. She—”

  Misunderstanding his words to mean that his mother was ill, I urged my donkey along the path without letting Adelphos complete his sentence, and worried the entire way to the house. Margaret, who had been with me on the island many times before, did her best to distract me, flinging her final salve as we approached the house.

  “I do love this place,” she said.

  “You have been complaining about it nonstop all morning,” I said. “What about wishing Vesuvius could have been relocated so that it had destroyed Imerovigli instead of Pompeii? And what about the Cycladic nightmare?”

  “I was only goading you.” She glared at me, but her eyes danced with amusement. “You are quite entertaining when all riled up.”

  The villa, like the other houses along the cliff path, all but spilled onto it. Unlike a prim and neat English home, this structure consisted of a series of rectangles and arches built one on top of the other, its walls gleaming with fresh whitewash, its shutters, doors, and all bits of roof that weren’t flat painted bright blue. The main section, in the center, had a flat roof we used as a terrace, and the bedrooms—all of which faced the sea—had balconies of their own. I had renovated a few years prior and decorated them each in a manner reflecting a different historical period: Classical, Mycenaean, Etruscan, Archaic, et cetera. Philip had kept his collection of Impressionist paintings in the house. Their colors and use of light blended exquisitely with the natural beauty of the location; I had kept them there and continued to add to their number. From the windows, the incomparable view stretched across the caldera to the remains of the volcano that had radically changed the topology of the island long before the age of Pericles and to the two small islets, Palea and Nea Kameni, that had once been part of a larger whole.

  Outside the front door, Mrs. Katevatis stood, ready to greet us, with the rest of our staff. At a glance, I could see the flush of health on her cheeks and felt a flood of relief, but nonetheless I hurried to embrace her.

  “You are well?” I asked. “Adelphos wanted us to hurry. I was worried.”

  “I am well,” she said, kissing my cheeks. “I am glad you have arrived. There is … we have had … I hardly know what to say, Lady Emily.”

  “What is it?” Colin asked as he stepped forward.

  “Oh, Nico! You are more handsome than ever!” She was the sole person on earth my husband let use any diminutive of his full name other than Colin. Only his father, who had died long before I met the son, had ever called him Nicholas. Colin kissed her on both cheeks and murmured a greeting in Greek.

  “What is it you need to tell me, Mrs. Katevatis?” I asked. She recognized the anxiety in my voice and took me by the hands.

  “The Viscount Ashton is here.”

  Philip

  London, 1891

  Ashton had never felt more alive than when he arrived back in London. Spring was turning to summer and the city brimmed with activity. He had never much cared about the social season before, but now welcomed it, as its arrival meant Kallista would be in residence at their house in Berkeley Square. Discreet inquiries told him his sister had not moved his young nephew, the new viscount, into the family home, preferring instead to let her widowed sister-in-law remain. He did not want anyone to see him before his wife did—he could not wait to see her expression when she realized he had come home. He could already see the surprise in her bright eyes, the flush that would spread across her smooth cheeks, and the way she would bite her lower lip, just as he often pictured her having done when he had proposed to her.

  Or so he told himself, over and over. In truth, his anxiety about their reunion had not subsided. Twice he had started for the house, but both times fear consumed him and he fled. Reiner had taken rooms for them near the British Museum, Ashton vowing to reimburse him for expenses the moment he had access to his accounts. They went to the Reading Room at the British Library and pored over the newspaper stories recounting his disappearance and alleged death. He then turned to coverage of the subsequent trial of Andrew Palmer, the man eventually convicted of killing him. No one else had suspected foul play, but Kallista, suspicious, had pursued the case herself, desperate to find justice for her late husband. She had impressed even The Times with the clever scheme she employed to trick Palmer into confessing to the crime. It took the better part of a day to read through every sordid detail reported by the press.

  “Andrew’s father, Lord Palmer, was like a second father to me,” Ashton said. “I must go to him; his son, profligate though he may be, was not guilty of murder.”

  “It is too late to rescind his sentence,” Reiner said. “Would it not cause the poor man even more grief to know that his son was wrongly executed?”

  “He will know the truth eventually, regardless of what I do. I feel I owe him the decency of calling on him and speaking to him myself.”

  “Before you go to your wife? You have been insistent that she see you before anyone else.”

  “Yes, but Lord Palmer will keep my visit confidential. And it is likely he would hear of my return from another source after I see her; once I move back home, the gossip is sure to spread like wildfire.”

  “You are delaying again,” Reiner said. Ashton shook his head. His plan, however, proved impossible to carry out. When they reached Lord Palmer’s house, they
were told the family had moved more than a year ago and left no forwarding address.

  “I do hope the old man is holding up,” Ashton said with a sigh. “Losing Andrew will have been a blow to him.”

  “A blow that, for the moment, you must put aside,” Reiner said. “Your wife should not be kept waiting any longer.”

  They hailed a hansom cab, alighting from it in Berkeley Square, opposite the house. It felt good to be back on the familiar paths of the park, pavements Ashton had trod from the time he was a small boy, holding his nanny’s hand when they returned from a walk to see the ducks in St. James’s Park, a favorite excursion of his until he grew too old to fully appreciate the charms of water fowl.

  The sun was sinking in the sky, and the evening had grown chilly. Yellow light glowed from the windows of the house. The curtains in the library were not yet drawn, and he could see the tall walnut shelves inside, lining the walls, filled with the books he and his father and his grandfather before had added to the family collection. He recalled the first time his grandfather had brought him into the room and given him a copy of The Iliad in the original Greek. The old man had pressed the leather-bound book into his hands and told him the pages contained the stories of the greatest heroes ever to have lived. At eight years old, Philip could not yet read the ancient language, but he determined to learn it as quickly as possible when he arrived at Eton in the autumn. This, of course, had been precisely his grandfather’s goal.

  His vision blurred as he relived the pleasant memory, but a flutter of movement beyond the window brought him back to the present. Could it be her? Was Kallista in the library? He stepped closer, still in the park, and wished he had a spyglass, ridiculous though it was to be peeking into one’s own home. Surely it was a maid, come to tend to the curtains and the fire. Kallista would be in a drawing room.

  He slunk back and leaned against a tree, continuing to watch the house. Reiner elbowed him. “You can’t wait forever,” he said.

  Ashton pulled himself up straight, brushed the front of his overcoat with his hands, and took a deep breath. “I ought not be this nervous.”

  The door to the house opened. Ashton warmed at the thought of seeing his butler, Davis, after so many years. Instead, an immaculately dressed gentleman held the door himself and stepped outside, followed to the threshold by a slim figure in an ice blue gown. Ashton bit the inside of his cheek; it was her, his Kallista. She had a soft shawl draped around her, but must have felt the chill of the damp air. She shouldn’t be standing so near the open door.

  “Why, that’s Hargreaves,” he said, smiling. “To find them both at once is a blessing.” He nodded to Reiner. “This will be a reunion to be remembered.”

  He stepped forward, then stopped, paralyzed by the scene before them—his wife being kissed by Hargreaves, full on the lips.

  5

  “The Viscount Ashton? The boy?” Colin asked, referring to Philip’s young nephew, who had inherited the estate.

  “No,” Mrs. Katevatis said, “the other one—the one who was your friend.”

  “Lord Philip Ashton?” Colin asked, the color in his face heightening. I had never seen him look so stunned. I did not react in similar fashion. My mother insists—rather emphatically, if not quite hysterically—that respectable wives should have the decency to faint when about to be confronted by a spouse long thought to be dead. It should surprise no one of my acquaintance to learn I failed her on that account. My knees did not so much as sway at Mrs. Katevatis’s news. While I would like to credit my strong constitution, my dislike of affectation, and the generally imperturbable quality of my character, it would be somewhat dishonest to do so. This is not, as Colin suggests, a result of my having an incorrect grasp of the definition of imperturbable, a term he insists suits him far better than me. Rather, it was due to having been barraged with thoughts of Philip even before we left England.

  After receiving the mysterious envelope addressed to The Viscountess Ashton, finding Philip’s journal on my desk, hearing his name spoken aloud in the London Zoo, and twice having thought I saw him since leaving Britain, I was all but primed for his appearance.

  “Yes, Nico. He arrived last night with a friend. There had been an accident of some sort—”

  And then, as if he had never been gone all these years, a figure stepped into the doorway, interrupting her. “I imagine it would be best if I took things from here, Mrs. Katevatis, ευχαριστώ … Thank you.”

  My feet felt as if they had been encased in lead while some evil force drained all the blood from my body. He stood not quite so tall as I remembered, but I recognized his sandy hair. There had been a time when I could not recall whether his eyes were blue or gray, and I had asked Colin to remind me, but now, seeing their pale cornflower again, they were instantly familiar. His nose was not quite as I recalled, but those eyes were unmistakable. My jaw went slack, and I felt myself start to sway. I have always prided myself on not fainting, but if ever an occasion called for it, it was this. However, I did not succumb and was already steadying myself when Colin reached out to assist me just as Philip—but it could not be Philip!—stepped forward, his arms stretched before him.

  “Er—I—perhaps—” Colin stumbled over the words. I could not remember when I had last heard my husband reduced to incoherent inanities.

  “Quite,” the man replied with a grin. “I could not have said it better myself.”

  “I require no assistance,” I said, backing away from both of them. “I merely—”

  “Whisky,” Margaret said. “At once.” She put a firm arm around my shoulder and pushed me into the house.

  Most of the interior of the villa adhered to Cycladic tradition, except for the main sitting room, just to the left of the entrance, where Philip had ordered enormous windows to be placed in the thick walls. Colin, who had been with his friend during much of the construction, had told me Philip did not care that this would make the room warmer in the summer. He wanted the view and would suffer any resulting heat. Margaret and I sat across from these windows on a long, wooden settee I had covered with plump, brightly embroidered cushions made by one of the village women. My friend stayed close and kept her arm around me. The gentlemen followed a moment later, but none of them sat. Colin paced—his usual reaction to stressful situations—Jeremy leaned against the wall perpendicular to the windows, and the newcomer, standing in front of me, clutched his hands behind his back and breathed out a long sigh.

  “I have anticipated this for so long and rehearsed the scene in my head countless times, yet now that it has arrived…”

  “Whisky, Jeremy. Now,” Margaret ordered. Jeremy sprung to life and filled five glasses from the decanter on a narrow side table and distributed them to us all. The newcomer raised his.

  “Hargreaves.” He focused cold eyes on my husband. “Kallista.” The sound of him speaking the name—a name he had never called me to my face during our short marriage; a name I learned about only after his death while reading his journal—was too much. I burst into tears, flung my whisky aside, and flew out of the room. Colin followed on my heels, but I turned and stopped him.

  “No. Let me go. I must be alone.” I ran from the house and along the cliff path, thinking for a moment I would go to Oia, a town larger than Fira and preferred by wealthy ships’ captains. The walk would take at least two hours. I toyed with the idea of booking passage on a ship at the port there. I wanted to get as far from Santorini as possible—I could go to Russia, perhaps—and never return. I had made it no further than half a mile from the villa when I halted, lowered myself onto a convenient rock, looked over the caldera, and dropped my head in my hands, sobbing. Eventually, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder and looked up, expecting to see Colin.

  “They didn’t think I should be the one to come, but I saw no other option,” the apparition of my dead husband—he could not be real, could he?—said. “I never meant to cause you such grief, after having already caused you such grief all those years ago.”


  I recoiled from his touch and rose to my feet. “Please, sir, I—”

  “Kallista, my love, my heart, I know this comes as a terrible shock, and I am all too well aware of the difficulties facing us, but at the moment I cannot think of any of that. It has been more than a decade since I have seen your lovely face, and now as I gaze upon you I consider myself the luckiest of men.”

  I could not speak. Tears spilled from my eyes and I ran again, this time back to the house. He followed, but at a respectable distance, and when I crossed the threshold, I flung myself into Colin’s arms. He pulled me close. I breathed his scent in deep—cinnamon and tobacco and a hint of shaving lotion—and buried my face in his chest, the strong muscles tense.

  “We will get through this together, Emily,” he whispered into my hair. “One way or another.”

  A sense of calm returned to me. I sniffed and wiped my eyes. “I should like that whisky now.” Jeremy poured me a fresh glass, the one I had previously discarded having disappeared. I sat down next to Margaret and looked directly into the newcomer’s blue eyes. “You cannot expect us to believe you are who you claim. Philip Ashton died in December 1888, more than a decade ago.”

  “I realize you all believe that,” he said, looking only at me. “Perhaps it was foolish of me to think those closest to me would recognize me at once after all these years. Time has not been kind to me.” His features, which I remembered as refined, no longer appeared to be those of a gentleman. A thin scar marred his chin and his skin was rough and lined.