Lark in an Alien Sky

by Rebecca Stratton

  sisted as he put a hand beneath her chin to bring her mouth up to him. His lips were lingeringly gentle and at the same time ardent enough to bring a response from her, and his dark eyes gleamed fervently as he looked down at her. 'Will you come with me, my lark?' he asked.

  Through her tears Corinne looked at the dark face, at once tender and passionate, and she could find no other response in her but to nod agreement. Drawing her close again he kissed her more fiercely, holding her so tightly that she felt her own body fused with the virile strength of his, and despite her tears, she clung to him desperately.

  `I'll come with you,' she whispered.

  They had driven several kilometres along the lovely pine-bordered coast road under the shadow of Mount Hymettus, and Corinne began to feel a stirring of excitement that she could not account for. She could not even begin to guess what Gregori had in store for her, but her heart urged her to trust him, that he did not mean her any hurt, and she gradually became more alert to the route they were taking as they drove along.

  There were houses built among the trees; huge villas that gleamed whitely amid the dark, scented pines and red rock, and Corinne glanced at him quickly from the corner of her eye when Gregori turned into a narrow road, very similar to the one that gave access to the Kolianos home. The house appeared to be slightly larger but of very similar design, and it sat, benignly inviting, in the hot summer sunshine.

  Corinne's heart began to beat more urgently as they drove right round in front of the double doors that stood in shade below an overhanging upper storey. The garden here was as big too, but a little less formal, and hibiscus,

  oleander and every other conceivable tree and shrub bloomed in riotous profusion right to the very walls of the house.

  There was a warmth about the place, an air of peace, and yet it seemed to suggest emptiness, and she gazed at it curiously while Gregori came round to help her from the car. Holding her arm, he stood and gazed with her at the rambling white house with its big wooden doors still firmly closed, then he bent his head slightly to speak close to her ear.

  `Does it please you, my lark?' he asked softly, and Corinne stared at him for a moment. His eyes gleamed darkly and a white smile beamed in the dark face. 'It is ours, Ogapimenos, I hope you like my choice of a home for us. It has few furnishings as yet, but we can choose them at our leisure, it is comfortable enough for the moment and lacks none of the essentials.'

  'Oh, Gregori ! '

  Her voice was a bare whisper of sound, and she felt tears in her eyes once more, though they were tears of happiness now. It was such a different kind of revelation from what she expected and she looked from the big house to his face in happy bewilderment. With an arm about her waist and obviously well pleased with her reaction, Gregori took her under the shadowy balcony to the front doors and ushered her in ahead of him—watching, waiting with an anxiety that sat strangely on him.

  The walls were bare of decoration, but they gleamed whitely and were barred and patterned with sunlight from a tall window, and there were rugs on the tiled floor, carpet softening the marble treads of the wide staircase. It was beautiful and Corinne loved it, immediately and unreservedly, because he had bought it for her. She could

  see it as their home; her and Gregori and the baby she carried, and she placed a hand quite unconsciously over the place where she felt so sure a new life was growing.

  'Well, my love?'

  Gregori's voice, soft and enquiring and vaguely anxious, brought her back to reality, and she turned to him with her eyes still hazy with the dreams she had been making, shining with a look of love that gave them a brightness and beauty they had never had before.

  'It's perfect,' she whispered. 'It's quite beautiful.'

  'As you are, my love.' He turned her into his arms and held her tightly, his dark eyes deep and gleaming and watching her mouth with the look of a man who knows a desperate hunger. He kissed her with such fervour that when he eventually let her go she clung to him breathlessly. 'You will be. happier in our own home, eh?' he asked, and kissed her once more before she could admit it. 'Oh, my lark, I have so longed to have you to myself, to find you here alone when I come back in the evenings; not to have to wait to love you until we can be alone!'

  The shade of Persephone stirred uneasily in the back of Corinne's mind for a moment, but she fought it back determinedly, lifting her mouth to his kiss once more. 'I love you,' she whispered. 'Perhaps more than you'll ever know.'

  His hands stroked and caressed her soft skin and she pressed closer to him, willing this moment to go on forever. 'I shall know, my love,' he murmured, his lips against her neck. 'You will show me how much you love me, agapiménos, you will see.' He kissed her mouth hard, then raised his head and looked down at her, an expression on his face that brought a momentary flutter of anxiety to her heart. 'But alas, not at this moment.'

  Corinne eased herself away from him, just far enough to see his face, and he bent and kissed her brow. 'The former owner is coming to see us. my sweetheart, to wish us well, and to assure herself that you like our new home.'

  'Herself?' A small cold finger of doubt traced its way shiveringly along Corinne's spine, but there was no time for explanations, for she could hear another car outside and she felt a fleeting moment of sheer panic as she looked up at him. `Gregori?'

  Persephone Chambi came into the hall after a preliminary tap on the door. Tall and elegant, she was smiling and obviously very happy, so that it was hard for Corinne to think logically as she watched her approach. When she was half way across the mosaic-tiled hall, she turned and called over her shoulder, something in Greek.

  A child came in, a little boy about eight years old. and close on his heels a man of middle height and slightly corpulent, with thick black hair going grey and a smile as wide and open and Persephone's. 'We all came.' Persephone said as she took the child's hand in hers. 'I hope you do not mind, Kiria Kolianos?'

  Too dazed to say anything and no longer sure that she was quite certain of her sanity. Corinne said nothing but merely shook her head, leaving Gregori to answer for her. He had an arm about her and she found his nearness reassuring as she listened to him welcome the newcomers, smiling at all three with equal pleasure.

  `Of course we are delighted, Persephone,' he told her, and proffered his hand to the man. 'Heracles, it is good to see you again, my friend! Such a pity you could not have been at our wedding, eh?'

  Broad shoulders shrugged resignedly, lips pursed. 'A business trip,' the man said. 'And Persephone had arranged to come with me. You should not do these things in such haste, eh, my friend?'

  Gregori's smile appreciated his laughter, and he looked down at the little boy standing beside his mother. 'And Miklos!' He shook the child's hand, speaking to him in Greek for a moment, and Corinne realised a little dazedly as she listened to him that he was giving her time to recover her composure. 'Corinne, agapitikos,' he said after a moment or two, 'you have already met Persephone; this is her husband, Heracles Chambi, and her son, Miklos. My wife.'

  He said the last with such unmistakable pride that Corinne's heart hammered wildly in her breast as she shook hands, murmuring polite greetings. She knew from Persephone's expression that she realised at last the reason for her behaviour at their last meeting, and colour flooded into Corinne's cheeks. But at the same time she felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her, and as she stood with Gregori's arm about her, she felt suddenly and for the first time that she was really his wife.

  `You like your house?' Persephone asked, and her eyes had the same friendly warmth that Corinne had noticed and resented the first time they met.

  'I love it,' she assured her. `Kiria Chambi—'

  `Persephone,' the gentle voice corrected her, and Persephone smiled. 'I have been friends with the Kolianos family for a very long time, and I would like to think that we could be friends also.'

  Corinne swallowed hard, thankful that Gregori was for the moment engaged in conversation with Heracles
Chambi. 'I'd like that,' she said. 'Thank you, Persephone.'

  Persephone's dark eyes looked at the tell-tale signs of weeping and she shook her head. 'It is a wonderful thing to be a cherished wife,' she said. 'I know you will like the house because Gregori bought it for you with love in his heart.'

  `It was yours?'

  Persephone nodded. 'My father left it to me in his will, but I have little use for it.' She smiled at her husband in a way there was no disguising. 'I too am a cherished wife, Corinne, and my husband provides the home I need. Gregori was so sure that you would like this one that he offered to buy it from me.'

  Holding tightly to her pride, Corinne looked at her steadily. 'It was to do with the house that you came to the office that day, of course,' she said, and Persephone put a hand on her arm.

  `Of course. These things take so long and require so much complicated dealing that we had to meet several times, although I tried not to intrude upon his working hours too often. But he was so afraid that you would discover his secret and spoil the surprise.'

  'Oh, if only I had known!'

  Persephone smiled understandingly and once more pressed a hand over her arm reassuringly. 'You realise now, eh?' she asked, and Corinne nodded. `So, now that I know you are going to be happy in your new home,' Persephone said, 'we will leave you to enjoy it. Kalo rizikor

  It was in something of a daze that Corinne watched them depart, and as their car disappeared along the narrow little road that cut them off from the main highway, she turned back to find Gregori immediately behind her. His hands on her arms, he turned her to face him and, knowing now how she had misjudged him, she kept her eyes downcast.

  `I'm sorry.' Her voice was small and barely audible, and she caught her breath when Gregori put a hand under her chin.

  `Because you suspected me of having an affair with Persephone?' he asked, and laughed as he bent to kiss her

  mouth. 'I had no idea that you thought me an adulterer, my lark, he told her with mock severity, 'or I might have treated you less gently!'

  'I thought—' She hesitated because her heart was thudding with breathtaking urgency and she had a wild longing to be in his arms, to erase the suspicion and anger she seemed to have harboured for so long. 'Zoe told me that you wanted to marry Persephone and that you still loved her. I—I hated her, at least—'

  'You tried to hate me too,' Gregori reminded her, 'but you are not made for hate, my lark, you are made for love; my love.' His dark eyes speculated for a moment on her response before he went on. 'I do not deny that had Persephone been free when we first met. I might have had an affair with her, she is a very beautiful woman and I have always been susceptible to beautiful women. But I have never had the slightest desire to marry her, not even if she had not been so devoted to her Heracles.'

  Ready and willing to believe him, Corinne was nevertheless puzzled by Zoe's attitude. 'Then why did Zoe'

  'Zoe what you call—hero-worshipped?—Persephone when she was much younger.' he told her with a wry smile, 'and she has never really grown out of it. Also, of course, she was trying to make me pay for stopping Iole’s affair with Takis Lemou; my sister is passionately devoted to our niece. She resented my marrying anyone but Persephone and obviously invented some story about my undying love for her. But not even for my beloved but over-spoiled sister would I marry a woman I did not love.'

  'And I believed her!'

  'And you believed her,' Gregori echoed softly, and lifted her face with a hand under her chin, his eyes

  searching her face for a hint of a smile. 'My brother Dimitri married the woman he loved,' he told her, 'and I vowed to do the same, even though my father once found a bride for me and meant me to marry her.'

  Corinne remembered how evasive Irine had been when she questioned her about Gregori ever having been close to marriage before, and she looked up at him. 'I spoke to Irine about you having been near to getting married before,' she confessed, 'and she neither denied nor confirmed it. I thought she knew about Persephone too.'

  'Oh, my love, how foolish you are!' He pressed her close and his lips brushed her neck while he talked. 'I have never wanted any woman for my wife other than the one I am married to—will you believe that?'

  'I believe it,' Corinne whispered, and lifted her mouth to him.

  He kissed her with a gentleness she found even more exciting than his fierceness, because it promised the passion she knew he was capable of, and his lips lingered on the eager softness of her mouth. 'And that son you carry will be as handsome as even Mama could wish for,' he murmured when he gave her freedom to draw breath for a moment, 'eh, my lark?'

  Corinne looked up at him with starry eyes, and she could have sworn that the child stirred within her. 'You know?'

  'Am I wrong?' Gregori challenged, and she did not stop to think about Doctor Merron's official confirmation, for even he had admitted to trusting a woman's intuition.

  'I'm almost sure,' she told him, and Gregori drew her once more into the fiercely possessive circle of his arms, then bent and slid an arm under her legs, lifting her off her feet and cradling her against his chest.

  I have furnished the bedroom,' he told her with a gleam in his dark eyes that sent tiny thrills along her spine. 'A bridal suite, my love, for this is where our marriage really begins! The rest of the house will be furnished in time, but this was the most important; and just in case you should ever doubt my love for you again—'

  `I never shall,' Corinne promised, and clung to him tightly as he carried her up the wide, steep staircase of their new home. `But please convince me.'