by Penny Jordan
‘A sea nymph’, was how Leon had once described her, with skin as translucent as the most perfect pearl and hair the colour of moonwashed sand, and she, like the gullible fool that she was, had been taken in by his meaningless flattery, never dreaming that it was all merely a façade to blind her to the truth—a truth so ugly that even now she could not bear to face up to it. Not even her parents knew the real reason she had left Leon. No one did. It was a bitter secret which would remain locked away in her heart until the day she died.
As she followed the waiter back to the hotel she tried to push aside her preoccupation with the past and concentrate instead on the situation she now found herself in. The manager greeted her with a smile which did much to banish the worst of her fears, and once again she was ushered into the luxurious office and invited to sit down.
‘By the greatest of good fortune one of our most influential directors was at the Athens office when I telephoned there this morning,’ he told Chloe. ‘I explained to him the unfortunate circumstances you find yourself in and he has promised to do all he can to put matters right.’
Smiling gratefully, Chloe stood up. She could only hope that the manager’s faith in his superior was not ill founded.
‘For now you must just enjoy your holiday. As soon as I have more news you will be informed of it,’ the manager told her with another smile.
Which was comforting, but in actual fact told her very little, Chloe reflected a little later alone in her room. Her hotel expenses had been paid before she left England, fortunately, and Thos was not large enough to merit the need for large amounts of ‘spending money’. Still, it was an uncomfortable feeling to be alone in a foreign country with nothing more than ten pounds in small change.
She was a little late going down for dinner and found that most of the tables in the elegant dining room were already occupied. A smiling waiter found her a chair at a table with a pleasant middle-aged couple from Surrey who were spending their second holiday on Thos. Neither of them seemed to find anything unusual in the fact that Chloe was apparently alone.
‘Thos isn’t large enough to warrant the hiring of a car,’ Richard Evans told Chloe over coffee, ‘and like most of these small islands it isn’t really geared for them—thank goodness. I sometimes envy these Greek millionaires who buy themselves one of these tiny islands. There’s something about owning one’s own island that’s very dear to the heart of most men—especially Britons. It comes from being an island race, I suppose.’
Chloe agreed with him. She could still remember her own girlhood envy of Enid Blyton’s tomboy heroine with her own small island domain.
One reminiscence led to another, and when the manager suddenly appeared at her elbow Chloe was astonished to realise how quickly the evening had flown. She had been enjoying herself so much that she had actually almost forgotten about her stolen passport and travellers’ cheques.
‘Have you any news for me?’ she asked the manager, hoping against hope that Derek had come to his senses and perhaps left her passport at the airport.
‘You are to go to Athens,’ he told her in reply. ‘Everything is arranged. A helicopter is here to take you, and when you get there you will be met….’
‘Athens?’ Chloe began to protest, remembering the lengthy sea journey from the port of Piraeus to Thos. ‘But….’
‘It is necessary, kyria,’ the manager assured her quickly. ‘The loss of a passport is not to be treated lightly. There are documents to be completed, officials to see….’
He was quite right, Chloe accepted resignedly, and her passport was not simply lost, but stolen. She gnawed at her lip, trying to estimate how long she would be in Athens and what she would need to take with her. Surely one change of clothes would be sufficient?
‘You will spend the night at our sister hotel in Athens,’ she was told, ‘and then in the morning you will be taken to see the officials who deal with such matters.’
They were going to a lot of trouble on her behalf, Chloe thought, starting to thank him for his assistance. It was nothing, she was told with a beaming smile. If she would just pack whatever she needed for the brief stay in Athens, he would escort her to where the helicopter waited.
Chloe had never travelled in such a machine before, and said as much when, fifteen minutes later, she and the manager were walking across the tarmac-enclosed space at the rear of the hotel which she had not realised existed until this moment.
It was an enjoyable method of travelling, she was assured, especially when time was short. ‘The consortium which owns this hotel also owns others, and its executives frequently use company helicopters to travel from hotel to hotel.’
It would certainly save her a good deal of time, Chloe reflected. If she was lucky she could be back on Thos within twenty-four hours with all the tangles of her missing passport satisfactorily sorted out. While she was in Athens it might not be a bad idea to visit the British Embassy there, she decided, just to inform them of the position, although she would have to be careful what she said. She was furious with Derek, but she had no desire to brand him as a criminal.
The pilot of the helicopter gave her a cursory glance as she climbed into the machine. The noise of the rotating blades prevented conversation even if Chloe had wanted to talk, and within seconds they were airborne, rising above the hotel and out across the small bay where fishing boats were preparing to put out to sea, the lights from their mastheads reflected in the water like so many drowned stars.
Chloe had no clear idea of how long it would take to get to Athens. She knew they were passing over other islands by the glitter of lights far below them, but she could see nothing on the horizon remotely resembling the mainland of Greece itself.
When the helicopter suddenly started to lose height she was taken off guard, looking instinctively downward expecting to see the lights of Athens International Airport, but instead all she could see was one single solitary searchlight casting a blinding glare up into the purple-black night sky.
This was not Athens, she thought seconds later as the helicopter bumped down to earth. It couldn’t possibly be. She glanced instinctively at the pilot, but he was already opening his door, turning away from her and into the darkness. A soft breeze blew in through the half open door, carrying with it the faint scent of thyme. In the distance Chloe could hear male voices speaking in Greek. Panic filled her and she pushed open her door, stepping blindly out into the darkness, and would have stumbled if a calloused male hand had not not grasped her arm.
‘The kyria will come this way.’
The voice was curt but not unkind. Chloe opened her mouth to question where she was, and then closed it as she was propelled inexorably along a narrow path which seemed to lead upwards from the small plateau where the pilot had put the helicopter down. There was a moment when Chloe was able to pull back and turn round, but the powerful rotor blades of the machine were already turning faster and faster as the pilot prepared for take-off.
‘Just what’s going on?’ she demanded huskily, trying not to let her fear show in her voice, but the man who was holding her arm made no response, merely reinforcing his grip and urging her more determinedly along the narrow path.
It ended abruptly on a patio illuminated by the lights blazing from the expanse of plate glass windows overlooking the gardens and the swimming pool beyond it. Despite the vivid illumination the house seemed deserted, and fear trickled down Chloe’s spine like drops of iced water. Not normally given to febrile imaginings, all at once she felt her normal good sense deserting her completely, leaving her prey to clamouring fear.
‘Where am I? Why have you brought me here?’ she demanded through lips almost too stiff to frame the words.
The house facing her was plainly not that of a poor man—long and low, what she could see of it, and the patio and the enormous swimming pool running alongside it spoke of luxury and wealth.
Someone moved against the brilliant backdrop of the illuminated rooms beyond the patio, a man’s s
hadow, tall, broad-shouldered, moving with a menacing stealth gradually obliterated the light as he descended the small flight of steps set into the patio and walked towards them.
Chloe knew that her captor had relaxed his hold of her arm, but she couldn’t have moved even if she had wanted to. The light from the house which masked the features of the man walking away from it revealed her own in stark detail, fear and dread written clearly in her eyes as he answered her questions in the cool drawl she remembered from what seemed like a lifetime ago when, unbelievably, merely to hear this man speak had sent her dizzy with nervous excitement.
‘You’re on Eos,’ she was told calmly. ‘Island of the Dawn. As to why—I think you know the answer to that, Chloe.’
He must have made some gesture she had missed, because her gaoler melted away, leaving them alone at the edge of the patio. As always Leon had made sure he had the advantage, Chloe thought bitterly, and not merely in bringing her here like this. Even the way he stood, with his back to the light, several inches above her, when he was already fully six inches taller than she, spoke of his determination to overwhelm her. But she was not the silly, gullible young fool who had married him any more. She was a woman, aware of so much that had been hidden from her then. She moved slightly so that Leon also was forced to move, the light from the house falling sharply on features which had not changed, but merely set harder as though hewn from a marble impervious to the elements. He had always been good-looking, but now, without the blinds of innocence which had hidden so much from her, Chloe saw the aggressive sexuality of his features; the bone structure which was entirely male; the high, taut cheekbones and the sensually curved mouth. He was wearing his hair longer than she remembered, and her fingers clenched involuntarily against the memory of its thick silky texture beneath her fingers. Only his eyelashes betrayed a hint of vulnerability—deceptively, as Chloe knew to her cost—for they were long and dark, almost theatrically so against the silvery grey eyes that were an inheritance from a distant ancestress—an Englishwoman said to have travelled to Greece seeking Lord Byron, but who instead had found Leon’s ancestor and remained to bear his children.
‘I know the answer?’ Chloe’s delicate eyebrows arched. She was drawing heavily on the experience she had gained since she left Leon; the ability to mask her true feelings which she now always wore like an invisible protective layer of clothing. She had no idea what Leon wanted, but there was simply no way she was going to let him see how his unexpected appearance had unnerved her. Nothing he could say or do could possibly affect her now, she reminded herself. The love she had once felt for him had been a girl’s adolescent crush on a handsome, sexually experienced male, that was all. The man she had thought him to be; the man she had loved had never actually existed. Her lips twisted a little as she remembered how he had broken down all her barriers, turned her from a shy gauche child into a passionate woman, drawing from her a response she had never dreamed herself capable of giving. But it had all been a chimera, a selfishly and cold-bloodedly planned deception.
‘You want a divorce?’ She heard herself ask the question as calmly as though they were discussing nothing more important than the weather. She made herself pivot carelessly on one heel as though about to walk off in the opposite direction. ‘My dear Leon, you can have one, and there was no need for this ridiculous charade.’
‘I agree.’ The soft voice had grown unexpectedly harsh, the faintly menacing quality of his body causing anxious tremors to flutter upwards along Chloe’s tense nerves.
‘But then I haven’t gone to all this trouble because I want a divorce, Chloe.’
She moistened her lips, suddenly desperately afraid. Up until now events had possessed a vaguely dreamlike quality which had prevented her from fully experiencing the panic which was now sweeping through her, telling her that she must put as great a distance between this man and herself as she possibly could, but like Pandora she felt herself unable to stop herself from framing the question she knew Leon was silently willing her to ask.
‘Then what do you want?’
‘I want you, Chloe.’ He said it so softly, she thought she must have misunderstood, but there was no misunderstanding his next words. ‘I want you, because you are my wife. No Greek allows his wife’s desertion of him to go unpunished, and your greatest punishment, I think, will be to be forced to return to the role you abandoned so precipitately—and publicly.’
Chloe blenched, turning desperately aside, but it was too late. Fingers like steel trapped her wrist, hauling her up against a chest which she could now see was rising and falling with the force of the rage pent up inside it.
‘You little bitch, you really know where to hit where it hurts, don’t you? But you’re going to pay, Chloe. You should have remembered when you left me that I’m Greek, and Greeks never forget an insult—or forgive it.’
‘I won’t come back to you,’ Chloe managed to get out. ‘I won’t!’
Leon’s dark features seemed to swim above her in a dark mist, his lips contorted into a savagely bitter facsimile of a smile.
‘Oh yes, you will,’ he told her menacingly. ‘And not only that, you’ll give me a son to replace the one you destroyed.’
From a great distance Chloe heard a high-pitched, terrified protest as a great chasm of blackness opened up and engulfed her, and she fell down and down as though she were falling into the deepest pits of Hell itself.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MADAME is tired and must be left to sleep.’
It was several seconds before Chloe could place the faintly accented voice. At first she thought she was in Paris—Paris, where she had lived as a young girl and grown used to hearing her native tongue spoken with a faint French inflection, but then the hazy clouds of sleep parted and she remembered exactly where she was and why.
She sat bolt upright in a double bed which, huge though it was, made scarcely any impression at all in a room so large that it could easily have accommodated her tiny London flat twice over.
It was decorated in softest greens and silver. Mermaid colours. She blenched as she realised where she had remembered those words from. It had been on her honeymoon: Leon had used them to describe a gown he had bought her in St Tropez. Leon. She closed her eyes, willing herself to stay calm, and when she opened them again a small plump woman was hovering anxiously at the side of the bed.
‘The master said to let the kyria sleep. Gina,’ she scolded the small girl standing behind her, holding a breakfast tray, ‘you have disturbed Madame with all your noise!’
The girl looked ready to burst into tears, and Chloe shook her head, forcing a smile.
‘No… no, it’s quite all right. Just leave the tray.’
The events of the previous evening were beginning to flood back, and she shuddered as she remembered the look on Leon’s face as he told her that he meant to be revenged on her for publicly shaming him by leaving him, and not just that. She was glad that there was no one in the room to witness the way her hand trembled as she recalled the ferocity in Leon’s voice when he told her that she would bear him a son—to replace the life she had destroyed, he had said. She pushed her tray aside, swinging her legs out of bed, stumbling across to the large curtained window. The life she had destroyed. Hysteria bubbled up inside her. Did he still think he could deceive her? And why the change of heart?
‘Chloe?’
She whirled round, gasping with shock. She hadn’t heard him enter her room. She would have given anything not to have to face him like this, disadvantaged by the flimsy nightdress she was wearing and the evidence of her fear written plainly in her eyes. He, in direct contrast, was wearing an immaculate business suit, his dark hair damp as though he had recently stepped out of the shower. A shuddering sensation of weakness swamped over her, her body traitorously reminding her of other occasions—occasions when she had shared his shower with him, taking sensual pleasure in the act. Panic flared suddenly and she turned round, her eyes darkening to misty purple as she plead
ed with him.
‘Let me go, Leon. You can’t keep me here indefinitely—it isn’t possible. Why are you doing this? I can’t see any purpose in it.’
‘Can’t you? Then you must be incredibly thick-skulled. I thought I made my meaning more than plain last night.’ He followed the flickering glance of her eyes to the large bed, and laughed mirthlessly. ‘Last night was simply a respite. And besides, when I take you in my arms I want you to be very sure of what’s happening to you, Chloe. You won’t be allowed to escape me by fainting like some Victorian heroine.’
‘You mean you expect me… you….’ Suddenly she couldn’t speak for the huge lump in her throat. Oh, she knew that last night Leon had told her exactly why he had brought her to this island—an island which apparently was only inhabited by himself and his staff—but somehow she had never expected him to go through with it.
‘You can’t do this!’ she protested wildly when he continued to look at her. ‘You simply can’t do it. It’s against the law.’
‘For a man to take possession of his wife?’ he asked with deceptive suaveness. ‘Not against Greek law, Chloe. In fact, many of my countrymen would think I have been decidedly forbearing. You run off and leave me; humiliate me in front of all my friends, encourage them to question how I can maintain control of a huge business empire if I cannot control one small woman, and then you tell me what I can and can’t do? On Eos my word is law, Chloe, and by going to Thos you played straight into my hands. I had been wondering how to coax you back to Greece for some time—that you should choose to do so of your own free will was an unexpected bonus.’
A dreadful suspicion was beginning to take root in Chloe’s mind. She stared across the room.
‘You mean you….’
