by Anne Mather
"I'm sorry, Laura. No, no. That's fine, thank you."
"What time would you like lunch?" Laura persisted, obviously reluctant to leave them, but Alex intervened.
"Miss Mortimer will not be in for lunch," he stated firmly.
Laura's eyes widened in dismay. "Not in? After I made this good food? Is that right, Charley?"
Charlotte shook her head, trying to shake away the dazed feeling of unreality which had enveloped her with increasing speed since Alex Faulkner's arrival. "I - what? I don't know, Laura. Am I lunching out?" She turned to stare at Alex.
"Yes. We'll eat at my apartment," he replied, ignoring Laura's exclamation of protest. "Oh - and by the way." He glanced at Charlotte and then transferred his attention to the daily. "Miss Mortimer is getting married in a few days. She may wish you to stay on here, if she decides not to sell this house. Otherwise, she'll let you know."
"What? What's this?" Laura stared disbelievingly at the girl she had known for five years. "Is this true, Charley? You getting married? Why didn't you tell me?"
Charlotte swallowed convulsively. "It's not as simple as that, Laura." She cast a furious glance in Alex's direction. "Nothing's settled yet. Nothing's arranged."
"On the contrary, everything's arranged," returned Alex smoothly. "Your - er - your employer is a little - bemused by her good fortune, that's all."
"Why, you - " Charlotte bit back an epithet as realization of what a denial would mean struck her. This was really happening, he really expected her to go through with it. The moment of decision had come.
Laura waited for Charlotte to go on, but when she didn't, she said imploringly: "Charley, I don't understand all this. You never said a word to me." She looked Alex up and down. "I never seen this man before, and I don't think you did, too."
Charlotte felt as if she was nearing the end of her tether, and it was almost a relief to hear Alex say: "We've been -corresponding with one another. You know - pen-friends, that sort of thing. Miss Mortimer's father knew all about it. He - he would approve."
Charlotte clenched her fists and turned away, unable to meet Laura's accusing stare. Patently, she didn't believe Alex, but equally she had no proof to the contrary. Besides, sooner or later she would have to believe it. It would be an indisputable fact.
She heard Alex dismissing the West Indian woman, and then he gestured to the coffee. "I like mine black, with sugar, two spoons," he directed her coolly. "You might as well begin to learn your wifely duties here and now."
Charlotte sank down wearily on to the couch. "You really expect me to go through with it, don't you?"
"I know you will," he said, seating himself in the armchair opposite, legs apart, hands hanging loosely between. He had nice hands, she noticed inconsequently, long-fingered brown hands, rings on each of his little fingers. One was a kind of signet ring, gold, inset with a ruby; the other was filigree silver, thick and broad, a useful weapon in a fist fight.
"So," he said, deliberately intercepting her gaze. "Let us have the coffee, then perhaps over lunch you'll think of things you need to know."
Charlotte drank her coffee without tasting it. When she got to her feet, he rose also, and she looked at him apprehensively. "I - I need to change," she told him shortly.
"Very well. I'll- wait here." He lounged into his chair again, but his eyes were watchful. "Don't be long."
Charlotte made no reply, her lips clenched mutinously as she left the room, slamming the door behind her. In the hall, she breathed deeply. She desperately wanted to escape, to run away from the situation that was developing without her volition. What would he do if she disappeared? Employ detectives to find her, without doubt. Where in the world would she be safe from a man like him? There was no answer to that.
Laura put her head round the kitchen door. She had obviously heard the slamming of the door and when she saw Charlotte she left the kitchen and came purposefully towards her. "What is all this?" she hissed impatiently. "What is that man doing here? I don't believe he knew your father."
"Oh, he did, believe me," Charlotte assured her wearily, realizing that she could not confide even in Laura. If she had to go through with this, no one must know at what cost. She could not bear sympathy on top of everything else. Somehow, she would do it, though be should not find it the easy path he imagined. And afterwards she would take him for every penny she could squeeze out of him!
"And you're thinking of marrying him?" exclaimed Laura, in dismay.
"Yes." Charlotte's tone was flat, but Laura didn't notice.
"And what about me?" she demanded. "You selling this house?"
Charlotte shook her head. "No. No. I don't know. I don't think so." She sighed. "Laura, you don't have to worry, whatever happens. I'll see you're all right. You and Jess and Billy. I - well, I just may keep this house on. I mean, you never know when a house can come in handy. You could be sort of - caretaker, if you like. I'd pay you, of course."
Laura folded her arms and shook her head. "There's more to this than meets the eye, Charley, and you know it. I wasn't picked off the banana tree yesterday. I ain't that green!"
Charlotte had to smile, even though she felt more like crying. "Laura, I've told you the truth. What more can I say?"
Laura sniffed. "All right, have it your way. I just never thought there'd come a time when my little Charley told me liesl"
"They're not lies, Laura." Charlotte spread her hands. "Honest to God, I'm not about to enter a harem or anything. He - " she gestured with her thumb, "he wants to marry me. Is that so strange? Am I so unattractive?"
"You're deliberately misunderstanding me, Charley. You know you're the prettiest girl I know. Too thin, of course, but that's natural, in the circumstances." Laura stared at the girl anxiously. "You going to be happy, Charley? This man got lots of money? He treat you good?"
"I - hope so," said Charlotte, bending her head so that Laura should not see the tears in her eyes. "Now - excuse me. I must get changed."
Charlotte was aware of Laura's reproachful eyes following her up the stairs, but there was nothing she could say to assuage her anxiety. Besides, she could not shoulder Laura's worries. She had more than enough of her own.
The car that waited outside for Alex Faulkner was a chauffeur-driver Mercedes, the kind of car which hitherto Charlotte had only glimpsed around the town. A second man was seated beside the chauffeur, and both men got out at their approach.
"Vittorio Santos, my chauffeur," Alex indicated offhandedly. "And his brother, Dimitrios, my - bodyguard."
A bodyguard! As the luxurious vehicle rolled away, Charlotte stole a glance at the man seated so indolently beside her on the wide back seat which left fully two feet between them. Until then, she had not given a thought to the possibility that this man could well be a target for unscrupulous revolutionaries requiring a hostage. If - when - she became his wife, would she require a bodyguard as well?
His wife! Even those words were startling. Mrs. Faulkner! It didn't sound real. Not to her. And then other, more intimate thoughts entered her head. To be this man's wife would be to submit herself to his every demand. He would have the right to share her bed, to make love to her whenever he chose, to deny her even the smallest privacy.
She trembled violently. The intimacies between a man and a woman were as yet unknown to her. Oh, she had listened to the girls in the school dormitory at night whispering about their experiences. She had attended biology' classes and had the whole sexual act explained to her in detail. But what was the spoken or written word when compared to actual experience? The whole thing seemed vastly overrated, and although she had had boy-friends and indulged in kissing and a little mild petting, she had never felt any urge to explore further. The very idea seemed slightly indecent to her. To imagine this man, this stranger, seeing her without her clothes. ... She shrank a .little further into her corner. If it did come to that, and she supposed that one day it would have to, she would make sure she was adequately clothed in pyjamas o
r a nightdress, and safely under the bedcovers.
Alex's apartment temporarily allayed her fears in a surge of pure admiration. The rooms at the house in Glebe Square had not been small but these rooms were enormous - wide and spacious, with expanses of soft carpet where one could stretch at will. The lounge had long windows, with slatted blinds, there were soft velvet couches in shades of blue and green, modern Swedish-style furniture cheek-by-jowl with what were obviously antiques and silky off-white carpeting.
An elderly man greeted them. Alex introduced him as Potter and it soon became apparent that Potter was a resident at the apartment, catering for his employer should it be necessary, although there was an excellent service restaurant on the ground floor of the block, and caretaking in his absence. Alex introduced her to the old man as his fiancée, much to Charlotte's dismay, and it was Potter who suggested that she might like to see all the apartment.
To her relief, Alex said he had some telephone calls to make and disappeared into a room which Potter explained was his study. Then they went on a tour of inspection.
Charlotte had never seen such luxury. There were three bedrooms, all with colour televisions and hi-fi equipment as well as the usual fitted units. There was a panelled dining room with a long table capable of seating more than a dozen people in the soft, velvet-seated chairs. The kitchen, too, contained eating facilities, and was sleek and modern.
Charlotte asked, half reluctantly, which room Alex used, but Potter seemed to find nothing strange in this. Indeed, he had taken her arrival in his stride, and she wondered whether he found anything odd in his employer producing as his fiancée a girl he had never seen before.
"This is Mr. Faulkner's room," he said, indicating the second largest bedroom, a room designed in shades of coffee and cream, with thick apricot satin curtains at the window. All the rooms had bathrooms adjoining, and Charlotte looked into Alex's bathroom with a certain desperation. What had she expected to find here? she wondered, looking at the coffee-coloured bath and basin, the cream tiled shower cubicle. No man could imprint his personality on somewhere he used so fleetingly. The whole apartment was beautiful, but that was all it was. A shell - which only occasionally housed its occupant.
She entered the lounge again alone, Potter having excused himself to go to the kitchen, and found Alex lounging comfortably on one of the velvet couches examining some papers he had taken from a briefcase beside him. He looked up at her entrance, however, and thrusting the papers aside, got to his feet.
"I have ordered lunch to be sent up," he told her smoothly. "I hope you like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I always eat English food when I'm in England. It never tastes the same elsewhere."
"I don't think I could eat a thing," Charlotte retorted tautly.
''Nonsense." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Food can be a delight as well as a necessity, and the restaurant here can be recommended. Your clothes reveal that you've lost weight. Perhaps we should do something about them this afternoon."
"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" she demanded resentfully, looking down at the navy wool suit which she had last worn at her father's funeral. "I'll have you know this suit was made to my design at a boutique where I - where I worked before..."
"You haven't worked since your father's death," Alex stated calmly, revealing a closer knowledge of her affairs than she had imagined. "And many of the clothes sold there are cheap and badly finished."
Charlotte caught her breath. "You don't know that"
"I assure you, I do. Besides, you don't suit that flat shade of navy. Royal blue would suit you far better."
"Have - have you been spying on me?"
"Not personally, no. I left my binoculars in Greece."
"Don't make a fool of me!" Charlotte shifted restlessly. "Well? Have you had someone watching me?"
Alex sighed resignedly. "In my position it's necessary to investigate everybody I come into contact with - " "Oh, God! That's terrible!" "But necessary, I do assure you." Charlotte turned away, biting her lips. "I could never be like that."
"You may have to be," he replied quietly. Then, as the doorbell chimed: "This sounds like lunch."
They ate in the lounge from the folding table sent up from the restaurant, seated by the windows which allowed one a panoramic view far beyond the Thames, to the expanse of green which was Richmond Park. During the meal, Alex talked, general things mostly which Charlotte answered in monosyllables but which nevertheless relaxed her sufficiently to enjoy at least a part of the meal> and she guessed that this was his intention^ A clear vegetable broth was followed by the roast beef he had promised, and to finish there was a chocolate sponge pudding. He smiled when Charlotte refused the dessert, and had a second helping.
"You must forgive me," he said, pouring custard from a jug. "Sponge puddings have always been my favourite form of dessert and I always indulge my weakness when I am in London. Henri, the chef downstairs, keeps this on his menu especially for me."
"I'm surprised you don't have a food taster," remarked Charlotte rather spitefully, and Alex's smile deepened.
"It may come to that," he conceded dryly. "Are you as venomous as you sound?"
Charlotte sighed frustratedly. "Well!" she said defensively. "Private investigators, bodyguards! It's archaic! I'm surprised they don't live in the apartment!"
"Oh, but they do," Alex told her mildly.
"But - we left them downstairs ..."
"I didn't want to alarm you," he replied, finishing the wine in his glass and getting up from the table wiping his mouth with the table napkin. "I thought we would take it slowly."
"Slowly! Slowly!" Charlotte stared at him angrily. "You call forcing someone to marry you taking it slowly?"
Alex shrugged, regarding the array of bottles revealed by the opening of the cocktail cabinet with apparent consideration. "I would suggest you started accepting that situation and considered the advantageous aspects of it."
"What advantageous aspects?"
Alex held up a bottle of cognac, but Charlotte shook her head quickly and with an indifferent gesture he poured some into a balloon glass. Then he walked back to where she was still sitting at the table in the window, cradling the glass in his hands.
"Let me tell you about Lydros, hmm?" He paused. "It is an island approximately fifty miles off the mainland of Greece, in the group of islands known as the Cyclades." He swallowed a mouthful of his cognac, ignoring Charlotte's apparent disinterest. "We are very lucky on Lydros - there is an adequate water supply and we are able to grow much of our own produce. Old Spiro Santos, the father of those two brothers who also work for me, makes wine, and it is rich and sweet, like the grapes from which it is squeezed."
"I'm really not interested," retorted Charlotte tightly, but Alex merely smiled that infuriating smile and Charlotte could have slapped him,
"You will be," he assured her. "You will be living there in a little less than two weeks. I have to leave for New York tomorrow. I shall be away approximately ten days. I hope to be back in England on the fourteenth and we are to be married on the fifteenth."
Charlotte's breath seemed to be stuck in her throat. "But why?" she appealed, his confidence panicking her ail over again. "Isn't there anything I can say - anything I can do to make you change your mind?"
"No." His expression hardened abruptly. "You have the choice - marry me, bear my child, and, in possibly a year, I'll set you free. Deny me that right, and I will not be responsible for the consequences."
"You're - you're a beast! Inhuman!"
"Why? Because I choose to make you honour your father's agreement?"
"No. No, because — well, because you don't need to do this. You - " She bent her head. "You're an - attractive man. I'm sure you could find some other woman equally suitable - "
"Why should I go to the trouble of doing that when I already have you?" He put out a hand and lifted her chin, and she flinched from the touch of those hard impersonal fingers. "Do not alarm yourself, little
one. I shall not trouble you often. Only as long as it takes."
"But - what if I don't - what if we can't - " Her voice trailed away as her cheeks blazed with colour.
His hand fell away. "It's all arranged. While I am in New-York, you will have certain - tests. I have already had them."
"You mean - you mean to see whether - whether I can?"
"Yes."
Charlotte uttered a gasp of horror. "Well, I hope I can't !" She spat the words at him.
His sardonic smile returned. "Don't tempt me to find out. for myself, Charlotte. As my wife, you will have certain rights. As my mistress, you would have none at all."
Charlotte could feel a wave of hopelessness sweeping over her. "But - but I know nothing about you," she protested ; bitterly.
"What do you want to know? I have not refused to answer your questions. I am almost forty years of age, almost senile, I suppose that seems to you," he added shortly. "My father was killed by terrorists when I was twenty-four, and my mother died soon afterwards."
Charlotte hid the shock the news of his father's death had given her. Until then, the simple precautions he took had seemed rather dramatic and ridiculous. But suddenly they were not, and she felt a reluctant sense of shame.
"I am of English-Greek extraction," he went on flatly. "My grandmother on my father's side of the family comes from Eastern Macedonia. She is still alive and lives with me on Lydros."
Charlotte digested this uneasily. "Will she - continue to do so?"
"After our marriage, you mean? Oh, yes. Do not be alarmed. She does not live in my house. She has her own villa across the island."
Charlotte shivered, but she couldn't help it. The reality of it all was gradually getting through to her.
"Is - is it a big island?" she asked, in a low voice, not wanting to dwell on the thought of meeting his grandmother.
"Not big, no. About five miles long, and two miles across at its widest point." He finished his cognac, and as he lowered the glass he looked at her over the rim. "It is a beautiful island. I was brought up there. As a boy I learned to swim and fish from its beaches; I explored its caves, and got trapped by the tide, so that Spiro had to come with his boat and get me out. My father taught me how to sail. He bought me a dinghy, and I used to spend hours trying to get back into shore after the wind had changed." His smile was not sardonic now. "There are only a few people on the island, the Yannis, and the Philippis and the Santos. We are not troubled by tourists, and the rocky coastline makes it impossible for large vessels to get inshore. It is very hot - very white - very beautiful. The sea is an unbelievable colour, always warm and soft. At night the only sounds come from the cicadas. Then occasionally, just occasionally, they are silent, and the stillness is uncanny."
