'Very well, I will see you then. Good night, Charity.' The amusement in his voice became very marked. 'I am glad you are no longer unprotected, and there is nothing to stop me from stealing a kiss from you. Will you be glad too?'
Her outrage was clearly audible, but unfortunately not very deeply felt. Long after she had replaced the receiver, she felt a warm glow of excitement that he might make good his threat. It didn't mean anything! Everyone had moments when they would like to be kissed by someone they didn't care twopence about, just because they had a skin the colour of olive wood and eyes as bright as the sun. If Apollo called, who had ever resisted him?
Colin was yawning into his drink when she joined him in
the bar. 'This whisky cost me almost ten bob!' he complained. 'Well, have you fixed it up with this Greek fellow for us to see him?'
Charity nodded. She considered for a wild moment telling him that Loukos was planning to vet him as to his suitability as a husband for herself, but her courage failed her at the look on his face. Another man would have roared with laughter, as in other circumstances, she would have done herself. But then, she thought with a touch of despair, Colin never had had any sense of humour. And at that moment she disliked him very much indeed!
Loukos' apartment was in a stylish block on the Vasileos Konstantinou, not far from the Royal Palace. A litde way up the road was the American Embassy and the Hilton Hotel. In the opposite direction was the Athens Stadium, too small for modern events, but nevertheless the place where the first of the modern Olympic Games had been staged. The buildings were almost all made of the same Pentelic marble from which the Acropolis had been rebuilt twenty-four hundred years before. It was evidentiy a very fashionable part of Athens and, Charity suspected, an expensive one. She cast a sidelong glance at Colin as they entered the shadowed entrance and were whisked upwards in the silent lift.
'A man of substance,' Colin remarked with appreciation. 'His credit standing must be pretty good - 'I wouldn't mind living in a place like this!'
'Perhaps the company he works for owns it,' Charity suggested. ''I don't think the Papandreous family is particularly wealthy - not by Greek standards. The house in Arachova was barely furnished, so Nikos couldn't have had much apart from what he earned.'
Colin gave the carved ceiling on the landing a respectful look. Charity wished irritably that he would take that awed look off his face before Loukos saw him, but Colin seemed dwarfed by his surroundings and quite determined to
behave like a nervous schoolboy on an unexpected treat from school.
Loukos opened the door to them himself. 'Hullo, Charity. As you can hear, our nephew is screeching his own inimitable welcome!'
Charity laughed before she could prevent herself. The baby's cry was not really very loud, but then neither was he very old.
'This is Colin Anderson,' she said awkwardly. 'Colin, Loukos Papandreous.'
Colin lifted his hand in a vague signal of greeting, ignoring Loukos' outstretched hand. She saw Loukos lift an eyebrow. It couldn't have been worse, she thought. But she was wrong. In his hurry to get through the door, Colin pushed her to one side, his enthusiasm alight for a picture of the Houses of Parliament he had spied in the hall over Loukos' shoulder.
'The first civilized thing I've seen in Athens!' he said warmly. He turned his head, patently adding up the probable cost of the furniture. 'Very nice!' he approved. 'Funny thing, Charity gave me quite the wrong impression of you.'
Loukos's expression was inscrutable. 'Did she though? I am afraid she has had an unsettling few days since she came to Athens and is rather emotional just at the moment in her judgments.'
Charity interrupted indignantly, 'I didn't say anything about you at all! Except that you won't let me have Alexander-'
Loukos suddenly grinned, his eyes sweeping over her red hair. 'Did you tell Colin what I wanted to see him about?' he asked. He might as well have thrown cold water in her face. Her eyes widened guiltily.
'Oh, please don't!'
'But I shall!' He put his arm round her and hugged her to him. 'Electra is waiting for you in her own room at the end
of the corridor. You can rejoin us for coffee when we've had our chat. Okay?'
The touch of his hand on her back set her heart pounding. She would have argued with him further, anything to put off the humiliation of having him interview Colin like a Victorian father - when he wasn't her father, or anythingto her! - but her mouth was dry and her knees were trembling, and she couldn't bring herself to meet the brilliance of his eyes.
'Okay,' she said.
Colin was only too willing to be taken into the sitting-room. Charity was just able to catch a glimpse of his pale face glowing with pleasure as Loukos said something to him. But then Loukos firmly shut the door behind them, shutting her out of their masculine conference. She stood there for a long moment, sure that her whole future was about to crumble about her ears. She didn't trust Colin!The knowledge came like a thunderbolt, reverberating round her mind. Loukos would make mincemeat of him and she wouldn't be there to give him a push in the right direction, and Loukos had planned it that way. But why should he care whom she married? The answer was only too painfully clear. He didn't. He was merely exercising the traditional Greek care of the orphan and the unprotected female.
She stumbled along the corridor and knocked on Electra's door, hoping against hope that Electra spoke a few words of English. The Greek woman had Alexander on her knee and she eyed Charity suspiciously as she entered the room.
'Why do you come here? You want to take the baby away from me, is that it? But Loukos has promised that I shall look after him until he can make a proper home for him. That's all I ask, a few weeks with a baby to look after! Must you take that away from me?'
Charity was startled into compassion. ''I only want to see him,' she said. ''I won't take him away from you. You see, I love him too!'
Electra's straight back sagged with evident relief. 'He has so little love,' she said in muffled tones. 'A baby needs much love!' She rocked Alexander back and forth, beginning to smile. With her black hair falling out of the knot at the nape of her neck, and the deep lines cut into her face between her nose and mouth, she yet had a maternal look about her that had never been allowed to flower before. 'Who is that man who came with you?' she asked.
'Colin? He's a friend of mine. I - may marry him.'
'If Loukos approves?'
Charity frowned. 'It has nothing to do with Loukos! Only I haven't entirely made up my mind'
To her indignation, Electra laughed. She had the same full-blooded laugh as Loukos, enjoying her mirth with every bit of her, only in her case it was because jokes were too few and far between not to make the most of them. 'Of course it has to do with Loukos! Your father is dead, no? And you have no brothers to arrange the settlement with your intended. Loukos says you have as little as your sister before you, so he will not be marrying you for your money.'
Charity's cheeks burned. She sat down on the vacant chair beside Electra and put an absent hand out to the baby, who clasped her finger in one fat hand and gurgled back at her. 'Faith didn't do very well out of her marriage,' she observed.
Electra's black eyes snapped with some remembered emotion that Charity could only guess at. 'What did she expect? A runaway marriage is always difficult for the families to accept. How can they know anything about the bride? We accepted Nikos' word that the girl was chaste, but she herself would tell us nothing! Xenia despaired of ever making anything of her. It was uncertain even that she loved Nikos, but then it is difficult to tell with the English. Are you in love with this man of yours?'
'I think so,' Charity murmured.
Electra leaned forward, intent on what she was about to
say. 'Xenia is not an easy woman, even though she is my sister. 'I could understand why Faith did not confide in her.' Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. 'The baby disturbed her and Loukos had to bring us here to his own apartment. I didn't want to come at
first.'
'Why not?' Charity asked, annoyed to find herself whispering too.
'Ariadne! Loukos thinks I don't know about her, but me, I see more than he thinks! I know her family are hardly speaking to her - and how glad they were when Nikos took her out of Athens to be in his play at Delphi. And I know why! Did you know that she was promised to be married?' Electra nodded her head several times. 'Now he will have nothing to do with her, as one would expect! She is ruined! I was afraid that if I came here, she would be here too.'
'Here?'
'She is in love with Loukos. Why else did she allow him to do this terrible thing to her? Who will marry her now? She may have thought that Loukos would, but why should he marry her now? I thought the affair was still going on.' She lowered her eyelids virtuously. 'Ariadne's parents are personal friends of mine. I could not turn a blind eye to their daughter's bad behaviour, so I had rather not be here. But Loukos says she will not be coming here while the baby and I are here. It is better so.' She nodded again, her eyes on the baby's face, not expecting any answer from Charity.
How could she have missed it? Charity wondered. How could she not have seen it? And she shivered, quite suddenly ice-cold.
CHAPTER SIX
'Well, what did he say?'Charity had become increasingly cross as she and Colin had walked back to their hotel, and as Colin had maintained a smug silence over what had passed between the two men. 'He must have said something!'
'Yes, he did, but not about Alexander'
'About me?' Charity demanded, with a tightening about the lips. Less and less did she want Loukos to poke his nose into her affairs. He had Ariadne - surely she was enough for him! Wasn't it enough that he had ruined the Greek girl's life, without getting excited about Colin marrying a girl he knew nothing about, and who wouldn't thank him for his interest at the best of times?
'In a way,' Colin admitted. 'I don't know what you've been telling him about your life in England, Charity, but I don't think you should have made out that you were lonely exactly. After all, I was about, wasn't I?'
'Of course you were!' Charity agreed warmly.
'Well then, why make out you had to do everything on your own?'
'I don't think I did,' Charity answered. ''I wouldn't say such a thing even if it were true'
'I know you had a tough time with your father,' Colin went on, not listening to her at all. 'Still, you wouldn't have thanked me if I had made all the arrangements for you, would you? This Papandreous fellow seems to think that I should have taken on the whole lot, told you what to do and seen that you did it too! I tried to tell him that we weren't on those sort of terms at the time'
'We aren't now!' Charity interrupted.
'No,' Colin agreed.
'I'm not helpless!' Charity went on. 'Really - the Greeks
have the oddest ideas about women! But I'm nobody's - thing,to be bossed about merely to make some man feel good!'
'Quite right!' Colin approved. 'You're too practical yourself, much more practical than I am. That's why I'm asking you to play along with Loukos Papandreous. If you play your cards right, I think he may make some sort of marriage settlement on you. He seems to feel some kind of responsibility for you, because of Faith, I suppose. She married his brother, so he considers you family. It could be a good thing for you.'
'Nonsense!' Charity scoffed. 'Nikos was as poor as a church mouse!'
'But Loukos isn't!' Colin pointed out.
'No, but I wouldn't accept any of his beastly money even if he offered it to me. He may be thinking of settling something on Alexander, but that would be different. Wecouldn't use any of it!'
Colin looked thoughtful. 'He didn't say anything about Alexander. It was you we were talking about. He had the nerve to ask how much I'm earning!'
Charity coloured. She bit her lip, torn between embarrassment and an odd sense of gratitude to Loukos that he should go to so much trouble on her behalf. Lucky Ariadne!Even if he wasn't going to marry her! She gave a little gasp at her own thoughts and tried to meet Colin's look of astonishment.
'Are you laughing?It wasn't at all funny, let me tell you! He didn't think I was earning enough to keep myself going and that I had no business to be considering marriage at all!'
'Goodness!' said Charity.
'Of course I told him it was all your idea,' Colin said airily. I'd have preferred to wait a bit' 'And you told him that?'
He nodded. 'I told him that you wouldn't wait because of Alexander.'
'Oh, thank you very much! It doesn't sound as though you want to marry me at all! You don't have to, Colin. I can manage very nicely without you'
'Not if you want Alexander!'
She blinked. 'Yes,' she admitted, 'I do want Alexander. But having him wouldn't be enough for you, would it?'
'He won't come empty-handed,' Colin said dryly.
Charity looked at him, seeking some sign of the love she thought he had for her. 'Do you - do you mean me?' she asked him.
He grinned. ''I suppose I do,' he agreed.
It wasn't very loverlike, she thought. She would have liked it better if he had swept her up into his arms and kissed her until she forgot all about Alexander, all about everythingin the joy of being loved by him. But that wasn't Colin's way. She had to remember that he had his own way of doing things, and that he would never kiss her like that. It had its advantages, of course, and she would do better to dwell on them. He would never, for example, use his superior strength to win an argument with her. He would expect her to argue the toss on its merits; And he would apply the same standard to her. He would despise her if she used her sex to cajole him into agreeing with her - if he knew that that was what she was doing. She knew already she could flatter him in a way that Loukos would have seen at once, and would have laughed straight out of court. But she refused to think about Loukos - she would not!
'Colin, you did tell him that our marriage has nothing to do with him, didn't you?'
He looked startled at the urgency in her voice. 'But I keep telling you, Charity, that he's determined to make himself in some way responsible for you. If he likes to make some cash settlement on you when we get married, why should we refuse him? Money never does any harm!'
''I won't discuss it!' Charity retorted. 'He's nothing to me, even if his brother did marry my sister! Any money we
need, we can make ourselves by our own efforts. I can work too, Colin. I won't be a drag on you!'
''I know, darling. But you'll never earn more than a pittance at best. Loukos was talking about real money.'
'I won't accept a penny from him!'
Colin laughed. ''I haven't your scruples. I'll accept every penny I can get. I made it pretty clear that I don't expect to lose by having Alexander either. He was pretty close about how we'd stand as far as the baby is concerned, though. I asked if Nikos had left anything for the education of his son, but he just looked at me in that way he has, as though he can look right into one's mind and doesn't much care for what he sees. Jolly uncomfortable sensation, I can tell you! I thought if I kept quiet for long enough he'd be bound to say something, but he didn't. Just let the silence drag on until I said a great deal more than I meant to. I even told him that I'd had to borrow the cash to fly out to Athens for Christmas!'
Charity knew now that she had never known anything about humiliation until that moment. She had thought she did. But that was before Loukos had come into her life, turned her emodons and her most dearly held theories upside down merely by looking at her out of those dark, brilliant eyes of his, and now he had brought her to this nadir of mortification by exposing Colin's tepid feelings for her, not only to his remorseless gaze, but also to her own.
The Tower of the Winds Page 9
