The Tower of the Winds

by Elizabeth Hunter

  'Mr. Anderson is leaving today,' she said, a lilt to her voice. 'May 'I have his bill as soon as it is ready?' 'As you wish, kyria.'

  She thanked him and turned away to take the lift up to her room. Another hour, or maybe a little less, and she

  would be with Loukos!

  But, in the end, she never mentioned Colin to Loukos at all. The look in his eyes when he came to collect her made her very circumspect in her greeting and not even his obvious amusement would make her do otherwise than offer him her hand and keep her distance from him in the car.

  'Have you told your parents yet?' she asked him as they drove through the centre of Athens on their way to Kifisia.

  He smiled at her lazily. 'Nervous?'

  'Yes, 'I am, a little. 'I don't think they liked Faith—'

  'That was quite different!'

  'But it wasn't really. Faith was my sister and I'm very like her in lots of ways. I can't help thinking they'll be disappointed.'

  'You worry far too much,' he told her. 'Nikos was my brother, but our marriage will be quite different from theirs, 'I can assure you of that! My mother will welcome you as her daughter-in-law if she thinks you will make me happy. She isn't the ogre you imagine her to be. I think she is a little afraid of you too!'

  'Of me?' Charity wondered. 'Why should she be?'

  'She is afraid you'll challenge her whole way of life and that she won't be able to do anything about it. It wasn't easy for her when all the women began to talk about Faith's independent ways—'

  'But Faith would never have caused a real scandal!'

  'Not in England perhaps. In Athens, she caused a great deal of talk, first of all by refusing to give up the flat and go with Nikos to Delphi and, later on, by the way she complained about their way of life in Arachova. My mother's friends were all horrified and made all sorts of suggestions as to what Nikos should do to bring her to heel—'

  'How horrible!'

  He reached out for her hand, threading his fingers through hers. Charity felt her nerves tingling at his touch and had to force herself not to return the pressure of his

  fingers on hers.

  'It wasn't very nice for my mother,' he said dryly.

  'It doesn't sound as though it could have been very nice for Faith!' Charity maintained stoutly. 'I'm not surprised she didn't want to live in Arachova!'

  His brilliant eyes challenged her. 'If I said we were to live there, would you pack up and follow me there?' he asked.

  She was silent, distressed by the question. She would want to follow him anywhere, even to that poverty-stricken house in Arachova. Indeed, she thought it might be preferable to live with him in such a place because there was no room there to be other than companionable. There she would have had to share his bed and his board and she would have madehim love her! But to say so smacked horribly of disloyalty to Faith, whose circumstances had been different, for she had been sure of Nikos' love and had been pregnant at the time.

  'Would you have run away from me?' Loukos insisted, carefully draining all emotion out of his voice. 'No,' she said.

  His lips twitched. 'I thought not!' 'How could you know?' she demanded. He laughed. ''I know a great deal about you, yinekaof mine!'

  'You couldn't know that,' she said, blushing. 'I don't even really know myself! I may thinkso, but the reality might be quite different!' She bit her lip, aware of his open amusement. Then the title he had given her suddenly struck her, interfering with her breathing in the most uncomfortable way. Hiswoman! How she wished she was!

  Loukos slipped the car smoothly into the right stream of traffic and rounded the corner into Kifisia.

  'The reality is going to be better than you think!' he assured her. 'Which brings me to our wedding, Charity. This half-way house is difficult for both of us, especially for you. Is there any reason why we should delay the ceremony, or

  are you prepared to marry me as soon as I can arrange the day?'

  She thought about it for a moment. It would certainly be easier to meet Loukos' friends in Athens as his wife rather than as Faith's sister, though she would have died rather than admit it to anyone but herself.

  'I want to tell Hope,' she said in a smothered voice. 'It would be silly for her to come all the way from America, but I wouldn't like to get married without her knowing.'

  'Ah yes, Hope is your other sister. I'll put through a call to her if you give me her number and you can speak to her for as long as you like. Okay?'

  'It'll be frightfully expensive!' she pointed out.

  He drew up outside his parents' house and switched off the engine. He was smiling when he turned to her. 'I think you deserve that much,' he said, and kissed her on the cheek. 'You don't ask for much for yourself, do you? You were well named Charity - though I can't say the same for that sister of yours!'

  'We all hate it!' Charity admitted. 'It's been the bane of our lives! But the others hated it more than I did because they were older. They only had to say their names to be asked, Where's Charity? That was bad enough, but it was even worse when all they could say was that I was at home and wait for them all to laugh at them, as they always did!'

  He touched her cheek again with his lips, sliding over her soft skin to her mouth. It began as a casual caress, but her own need for him flared and she forgot everything else except the aching response that rose within her in answer to the deepening demand of his kiss. She was shaken and tearful when he put her away from him. How was she going to survive a platonic marriage when she felt like this about him? What was she to do? He must know the effect he had on her, for he was far more experienced in dealing with her sex than she was with his, and she couldn't help wondering

  what he thought of her for making it so easy for him to kiss her. The only answer she could dredge up did nothing for her self-respect, and she pulled herself away from him and began to smooth down her hair, not daring to meet his eyes in case what she read there humiliated her still further.

  'The quicker I marry you the better!' he said in a funny, tight voice.

  She nodded, still not looking at him. 'Electra will be glad. She was telling me—' She broke off, quite unable to continue.

  'Oh, Charity!'

  'D-don't!' she begged. 'You know we're only getting married because of Alexander!' She wrenched open the door and ran up the garden path to the door, not caring whether he was following her or not, until she felt his hand fall heavily on her shoulder.

  'Will you still be telling me that afterwe're married?' he demanded, his anger blazing in his eyes.

  She forced herself to be still. 'Of course,' she said. 'It's the truth—' Her voice died away into a painful silence. It was partly true!She took a shuddering breath, on the point of going on, to tell him what? But the door opened in front of her and Loukos' father, smiling genially, took her by the hand and led her into the'house.

  Both Spiro and Xenia were very kind to her that afternoon. In their very limited English they welcomed her to their family and then turned with relief to Greek to discuss the wedding plans with their son. At intervals Xenia would include her with a little nod and a satisfied smile, and then another babble of Greek would break out with all the sound and fury of a full-scale family quarrel. That it was nothing of the sort only dawned on Charity slowly. It seemed that this was the Papandreous way of agreeing with each other and, as she sat silently listening to them, she felt a sudden desire to laugh. It was so very different from the family life she had known, especially after her sisters had gone, and a

  sad silence had descended between herself and her ailing father. Her eyes met Loukos' and she began to laugh in earnest, to her own consternation and the surprised gratification of everyone else who laughed happily with her, even though they had no idea what they were laughing about.

  Loukos put his arm about her and hugged her. 'Is getting married such a joke?' he asked her, his eyes amused.

  'Not really,' she admitted. 'It's the way you all shout at each other, and none of you listen to a word an
yone else is saying!'

  'Very true,' he agreed, 'but we get there in the end. We've even decided on the church for the wedding!'

  'Oh,' she said blankly. 'And when?'

  'But of course when! Three days from now. My mother insists that you wear her wedding dress, which can be altered to fit you, and my father will stand for you at the altar.' He turned back to his parents with another spate of Greek and she was left to digest this bit of information. It made it seem very close. She stole a shy look at Loukos from under her eyelashes and thought that he was still a stranger to her. What would it be like, living in his flat and seeing him every day? It was bound to be strange. And, no matter how hard she tried, she was bound to irritate him sometimes and she wasn't sure that she could bear his displeasure! Three days!It wasn't half long enough for her to get used to her new status in life.

  Somehow, the afternoon flew past and it seemed no time at all before she was standing on the doorstep again, embracing her future in-laws, and trying not to think of what lay in store for her. A strange ceremony, in a strange language, and then an even stranger marriage, and all because of Alexander!

  She was surprised when Xenia put her arms right round her and kissed her warmly on either cheek. 'I am very pleased,' the Greek woman whispered. 'Electra tells me

  many things and I am sure you will make Loukos a fine wife. You will make him very happy, yes?'

  'I'll try,' Charity heard herself promise.

  Xenia chuckled, her dumpy body heaving with laughter. 'Where there is love, trying is not very difficult!' she smiled.

  Charity could only stare at her, her eyes wide, but Xenia only laughed the more and patted her hand with her own dimpled one while she said something in Greek to Loukos, who looked at Charity with such intensity that she felt herself blush and looked down at her feet with a shyness she had not felt since she had been about six years old. But Loukos only smiled at her and held her loosely by the wrist all the way to the car.

  The next three days passed in a whirl. Xenia's wedding dress fitted her better than anyone could have suspected and needed remarkably little alteration. Charity could only think that Xenia's shape must have changed considerably since the days of her own wedding. It was a dress of ivory-coloured silk, cut on medieval lines, with a square neckline and huge sleeves that fell almost to her feet and which were just like wings when she held her arms aloft. Embroidered with seed pearls and with touches of silver at the neckline and hem, it must have cost a pretty penny when it was new. Xenia agonized over the tarnished silver, but Electra, ever the more practical sister, devised a way of cleaning it to the satisfaction of them both. Charity was too bemused by this time to care deeply about anything. She did what anyone told her to do, trailing in and out of hairdressers, dressmakers, jewellers, and the cake-shops that Xenia loved to visit more than anything else in the world. Of Colin she thought not at all, and of Loukos she tried not to, because even thinking about him set her heart pounding against her ribs and destroyed what little presence of mind she had left.

  The night before the wedding she went to stay with Loukos' parents. Loukos came to dinner, which surprised her, for she had thought he would be out celebrating his last night as a single man.

  'A stag party?' he had exclaimed, when she had put the idea to him. 'I do not find it very complimentary to the bride that one must go out and get drunk the night before one marries. It is a joke, no?'

  She had assured him that no one considered it a joke, but his air of disapproval had remained, to her secret delight, for she found it reassuring that he appeared to welcome marriage to her as something pleasant and didn't think it a prison he was entering for the rest of his life. But then no Greek man would think that, she told herself wryly. It was the wife who was the prisoner in this country, while the man remained free to live exactly as he had before. And here she was, hurrying into jail as fast as she could go, and she could hardly wait!There, that was the truth of the matter - she wanted to be Loukos' wife more than anything else in the world!

  Loukos had booked her call to Hope in the States. When it came through, he himself spoke to her sister for a long time before he called her to the phone. Charity took the receiver from him with a nervous smile. It had been silly to want to talk to Hope when she had nothing to say to her. She never had!

  'H-Hope?' she stammered.

  'Darling!' her sister's voice came back, warm, with American overtones, and quite unfamiliar to her. ''I gather you're making the most brilliant marriage of any of the Archers. Well done you!'

  Charity felt totally blank. 'Am - am I?'

  Hope sounded amused. 'I gather this is a love match too?'

  Charity looked about her to make sure that no one was listening. 'I'm in love with Loukos,' she admitted with a

  rush. 'I'm terribly in love with him!'

  'Then that's all right,' Hope said cheerfully. 'He sounds very nice. He says he'll bring you over to the States next time he comes and you can have a long visit with us—'

  'Oh!' Charity gasped. ''I shouldn't rely on it. I mean, it would be very expensive, wouldn't it? And then there is Alexander. I have to look after him!'

  'Bring him too,' Hope said, unmoved.

  'But that would cost even more!' Charity pointed out, much agitated.

  Hope laughed. 'My dear, haven't you any idea how much your husband is worth? He's the nearest thing to a millionaire I'll ever know!'

  Charity was astounded. 'You mean you've heard of him?' she asked.

  'I've travelled on his ships! Oh, Charity, if it isn't just like you not to know a thing like that! Didn't Faith ever tell you—' She caught herself up. 'No, 'I suppose she didn't, when I come to think of it, because you were so much younger. You know, love, I'm beginning to think Loukos is a lucky man! Does he know that you're not marrying him for his money?'

  ''I don't know,' Charity said. She turned the subject to Hope's children and then thankfully rang off, feeling more confused than ever. The Papandreous family might have been extremely rich at one time, but there was no sign of any great wealth now - certainly not in the house her sister had lived in in Arachova! Not that it mattered much to her either way. It was Loukos she was going to marry, not his fortune or lack of it.

  She thought she wouldn't sleep at all that night, but on the contrary, she fell into a deep slumber the instant her head touched the pillow. When she opened her eyes again, she could hear the muffled sounds of feverish activity going on all round her, and a minute later there was Electra's dour face peering round the door at her with a cross look at her

  watch and a warning that she would be late at the church unless she hurried herself.

  Charity didn't feel like herself at all. She wore her mother-in-law's dress and looked, even to her own eyes, so devastatingly beautiful that her heart missed a beat when she saw her own reflection in the glass. She hoped Loukos would think her beautiful too - more beautiful than Ariadne for instance, and a lot more loving.

  She went to the church on Spiro's arm, not knowing what to expect. She had never been in an Orthodox church before and the magnificence of its furnishings made her hesitate for an instant in the doorway. She had an impression of rich, oriental carpets that completely covered the floor, and gold and silver-covered ikons hanging from every available space on the walls, lit by a mass of candles. The priest was dressed from head to foot in cloth of gold, his long hair hanging about his shoulders beneath his golden headdress. She stood beside Loukos, who looked stern and withdrawn, and the butterflies in her own stomach died away and she gave all her attention to the gorgeous ceremony that made her his wife. For what seemed like hours, crowns were held over her and Loukos' head, and a ribbon was threaded about their hands. She had no idea what the blessings meant, but Loukos had arranged for her to repeat her vows in her own language and her voice was strong and clear as she made her promises directly to him.