The Realms of Gold

by Elizabeth Hunter

  REALMS OF GOLD

  Elizabeth Hunter

  Emily Thorne considered herself the steady, quiet one of her family; she carried on with her job, saved for the future, hardly gave a thought to love and marriage. But was it true, or was she simply unawakened? Perhaps her stormy relationship with the wealthy Demis Kaladonis would provide the answer.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Emily Thorne caught the train by the skin of her teeth. She threw her single suitcase and a number of well-filled plastic bags ahead of her and pulled herself rather breathlessly up into the crowded corridor just as the train began to pull away from the station. Bending to retrieve her possessions, she sighed, noticing that she had somehow managed to ladder her tights in the rush.

  ‘You should not be in such a hurry,’ a deep, masculine voice said somewhere above her head. There was a faintly foreign inflection to his speech which was attractive without being incomprehensible. She looked up quickly and was annoyed with herself for the momentary curiosity she felt about him. He seemed enormous, standing over her, his clothes immaculate and obviously expensive. She stood up, balancing her plastic bags on her fingers.

  ‘One always has more than one can carry at Christmas time,’ she said. ‘You know, goodies for the family—that sort of thing.’

  He took a selection of the bags from her and peered inside them. ‘Ah, it is food! It looks good.’

  ‘It is good.’

  His serious expression made her want to laugh. His skin, she noticed, had a golden look as if he spent most of his life in the sun, and his hair was black and curly. He had a strong, unsmiling face that held a ruthless look. On the whole she was glad that he was only a passing stranger.

  ‘You are confident of your abilities as a cook, but you are a poor traveller,’ he said firmly. ‘You had better sit on my seat and take these packages on your knee. They will soon be crushed out here in the corridor.’

  Of course he would have a seat! She followed him meekly to his chosen compartment and found it was a corner seat facing the engine on which he had placed his briefcase, apparently the only luggage he had with him.

  ‘But I can’t deprive you—’ she began in halfhearted protest.

  ‘Sit down,’ he commanded. ‘I shall go to the buffet and see if there is a bar where I can have a drink. Will you be all right here by yourself?’

  Emily nodded. All right? She was in clover, for she had expected to have to stand the whole way. She was, however, feeling a bit mean in allowing him to search the train for what, she was almost sure, would turn out to be a non-existent drink. She even made a move to stop him, but she was too late and he had already gone, forcing his passage through the crowded train with the ease of an experienced rugby player. He was not, she realised, so unusually tall as she had thought! but he would never be easily overlooked. She expelled her breath with a rush, still feeling the impact of his personality. How her sister would have loved playing heroine to his hero, she thought with amusement. Married or not, she dearly loved to make her mark with every attractive man she came across.

  Emily settled more comfortably in her seat and allowed herself to imagine the way her sister would have related the incident to her assembled family. Oh, she would have blown it up into an encounter of major proportions, with herself escaping being kidnapped by a hair’s breath, and they would all more or less believe her, for Margaret attracted romance as other, lesser beings dreamed their more ordinary dreams. Emily’s brother Patrick was not behind the door either when it came to attracting the opposite sex. It was only herself, the youngest of the trio, whose prosaic approach to life safeguarded her from falling from one exciting romantic adventure to another.

  So what was wrong with her? she wondered. Nothing, her common sense retorted. It was only that she liked to be comfortable and high romance was apt to outrage her sense of humour at all the wrong moments. Byronic young men, like the stranger on the train, had no taste for being laughed at, especially when they were intent on using some girl as the perfect foil for their own good looks. Emily, who had watched both her brother and sister choosing their friends among the opposite sex for that very reason since early adolescence, had been less than enthusiastic when her own turn had come to be courted and made much of for no better reason than that she was a Thorne and every bit as pretty as her more adventurous sister.

  Her sister had stayed at home until she had married: Emily had gone to London, determined to earn her own living. She had always been the outsider in her family, holding herself aloof from the passionate quarrels and reconciliations in which they all indulged, all that was except her father, with whom she had struck up a quiet, unexacting relationship early in life. Together they had watched the excesses of their loved ones, shrugging their shoulders at the latest display of fireworks from one or other of them with an amused tolerance that went unnoticed by the rest.

  ‘You shouldn’t laugh at your mother,’ her father had reproved her once when she had been about eight years old.

  ‘She doesn’t mind,’ Emily had answered. ‘She likes to have an audience when she gets excited. The others don’t listen to her. Do you?’ she had added curiously.

  ‘Always,’ he had affirmed. ‘I’m her most devoted audience.’ And they had laughed together, just as though Emily had been the parent and her mother the child.

  And Emily had gone on listening, marvelling at her brother’s and her sister’s capacity for falling in and out of love, and offering appreciative exclamations in all the right places whenever the story of the latest conquest was being recounted.

  ‘You should try falling in love yourself!’ Margaret had remonstrated with her when Emily had been struggling to get her elder sister into her wedding dress. ‘Let yourself go, Emily! You have the whole of London waiting for you, but you never seem to go anywhere interesting—or meet anyone nice!’

  ‘I manage,’ Emily had said with a smile.

  ‘But do you?’ her sister had insisted. ‘Why do we never hear about any of your young men? Aren’t you ever asked out at all?’

  ‘Fairly often,’ Emily had answered with wry humour. ‘I’m particularly in demand for parties, though I sometimes wonder if my canapés don’t add to my allure more than my fatal charm.’

  ‘I daresay,’ Margaret had agreed without hesitation. ‘You know, you’re every bit as good-looking as Patrick and I are, but there’s something lacking. I can’t imagine you having to fight off half a dozen goodnight kisses after a dance—’

  ‘Well, if I did, I wouldn’t tell you about it,’ Emily had cut her off, her grey-green eyes alight with laughter. ‘I’d be too busy nursing my bruises after knocking all their heads together!’

  ‘I suppose you have been kissed?’ Margaret had asked frankly.

  Emily had laughed out loud. ‘Once or twice. I am a Thorne, after all,’ she had answered, and had refused to take up Margaret’s open invitation to tell her all about it.

  ‘Well?’ her sister had demanded.

  Emily had opened her eyes wide. ‘Well what?’ she had returned.

  Emily leaned back and closed her eyes. It would all be the same this Christmas, she supposed. She wondered if her brother-in-law would be there. When last heard from, her sister had tearfully wept over the telephone that she never wanted to see him again. Emily had listened as always, but the ache in her shoulder-blades had transmitted itself to her voice when she had suggested that Margaret should try for once to see somebody else’s point of view. Margaret had been first hurt and then angry.

  ‘You’re jealous!’ she had declared. ‘You’ve always been jealous of me! Patrick has always said so, but I never believed him until now!’

  Emily pursed her lips together. She had never envied her sister’s greater charm
and she wouldn’t have said thank you for her spouse, whom at first meeting she had dismissed as petulant and at the second as far too weak to hold one of the volatile Thornes for long. She didn’t even like him very much—

  She opened her eyes and saw that the stranger was back, a can of beer in his hand. He had his back to her, standing before the window, his feet slightly apart to facilitate his balance, but she could see his profile every time he poured the liquid down his throat. His nose was too heavy for his face and the muscles of his jaw were too uncompromising for Emily to suppose that he would be an easy individual to deal with. She had had enough of strong-minded individualists in her own family, she decided. When it came to her turn to marry she would choose someone cuddly and kind and very, very undemanding!

  He turned his head and saw her looking at him. Far from smiling at her, his mouth tightened.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

  She was startled. ‘Of course. Don’t I look all right?’

  He shrugged, his eyes deliberately examining her hands. ‘You are unwed,’ he observed. The jolting of the train made him stand nearer to her than she liked and she carefully moved her knees well away from his leg that was nearest to her. ‘But perhaps you are promised?’ he added, his eyes straying over her with a languid, insolent interest.

  Emily’s eyes sparked dangerously. ‘Do I have to have some man to be all right?’

  His eyes met hers. ‘I think so,’ he said.

  ‘Then you can keep your thoughts to yourself!’ Emily retorted. ‘I’m much better off as I am, heart-whole and fancy free.’

  He raised his eyebrows with a small shake of the head. ‘Your protest is too pat for me to believe that it comes from the heart,’ he dismissed her angry comment. ‘It is good you are going home to your family. No doubt they will see you have suitable partners at the Christmas parties and you will find yourself married to one of them before you know it. It must be a worry to them when you are on your own in London—or do you live with some other relations there?’

  ‘No.’ Emily tore her eyes away from him. This was the most ridiculous conversation and she had every intention of bringing it to a swift close. ‘You’re not English, are you?’ she remarked sweetly. ‘In Britain women live their own lives nowadays. We prefer it that way.’

  ‘Some may, but in Britain too there are still some girls feminine enough to feel incomplete without a man to look after them. You are not the only one.’ That was a cue for laughter if there had ever been one, but Emily was too angry to be amused by his arrogance. ‘I’m well able to look after myself!’

  Slowly he shook his head at her again. ‘Would you say the same if you had missed the train? Or if I had not given you my seat to sit on? Is that why you became a good cook?’

  Emily struggled to her feet, her face furiously angry. ‘Have your seat!’ she almost shouted at him. ‘I can manage very well without it! And even better without your personal remarks!’ she added for good measure. ‘Go on, sit down in your precious seat and I hope you enjoy it!’ She gave him a push and became angrier still when she found that she couldn’t shift him. ‘I want to go outside, if you’ll move out of the way.’

  ‘Why are you so angry with me?’ he asked, as calm as she was vexed. ‘Do you always lose your temper so quickly and so thoroughly?’ For the first time his mouth relaxed into a faint smile. ‘Too quickly, koritsi. Sit down again and relax. I shall leave you in peace until we arrive at your station. You will need help getting out with all your packages, no?’

  She subsided back into the seat, wondering what could be wrong with her that she couldn’t dismiss his outrageous comments with the lightness they deserved. Why get all hot and bothered about nothing at all? she demanded of herself. A few personal remarks from a foreigner wouldn’t hurt her. She had read often enough that they dealt in them all the time, so he was probably being no more than polite in his own way.

  She forced a reluctant smile. ‘For the moment I forgot you are a foreigner,’ she told him by way of apology. ‘In England we usually talk about the weather to strangers, not how they manage or mismanage their lives.’

  ‘In Greece we are a little more direct,’ he acknowledged. ‘But you are right to be cautious, after all.’ He made an expressive movement with his hand. ‘You are afraid all these people will look the other way if I should act improperly towards you?’

  Put like that she was forced to acknowledge her fears to be ridiculous, but she couldn’t help thinking that if he wanted to he would find his way round any difficulty. Thank goodness he couldn’t really want to!

  It was a relief when he retreated into the corridor! and, after a few moments, disappeared down the train, probably in search of another beer. Ashamed that she should be such a coward, Emily rose quickly to her feet, gathered her possessions about her and began to push her way through the crowds in the opposite direction. If Patrick were to see her in the company of such a man there would be no end to the questions she would be asked over the holiday. They would go on and on at her, asking her all about him and when she was going to see him again, and she would be as vulnerable as she always was to their teasing, half wishing that she could take the wind out of their sails by announcing, ‘He’s Greek, and rich, and he won’t take no for an answer, so I’m marrying him next week!’

  A man fell against her in the corridor, ruining her brioche aux pecanes, and into the bargain she nearly dropped the bag that held the Christmas puddings.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ the man said, not caring at all.

  ‘I expect I’ll survive,’ she answered wearily.

  He gave her a doubtful grin. ‘You’re not angry, are you? No one has any right to be angry at Christmas time.’

  ‘I’m never angry!’ she retorted. He was the second person to accuse her of being bad-tempered and she couldn’t understand it. What had happened to her usual aloof placidity in the face of all disasters? Gone with the Greek stranger! Though why he should have had that effect on her she found it impossible to guess.

  The man’s grin grew more confident. ‘Getting out at the next station, are you? Want a hand with those things?’

  Emily thanked him gratefully, glad that she was nearly home. Only a few more minutes and then she would be driving away in Patrick’s comfortable car to the house where she had been born and brought up.

  Not many people got out at the next station. Emily thought she would have known if the Greek had been among their number, and she heaved a great sigh of relief that she had managed to free herself from his attentions. That there was also no sign of Patrick did not immediately occur to her. She exchanged a few words with the ticket collector, as she always did, and found a clear space in which to put down her packages and wait.

  It was not Patrick who came running up the slope to the station, however, but Margaret. Emily watched her sister’s eyes focus on her and the startled step backwards of surprise.

  ‘Was the train early?’ Margaret demanded.

  ‘Two minutes late,’ Emily returned.

  ‘Oh well, you didn’t mind, did you? I’m here now. It’s good to see you, old thing. The whole household is in chaos because they didn’t expect me on my own, but they did expect Patrick, and there were even rumours that you were bringing someone from London with you. What’s he like? I don’t mind telling you that Pat and I were beginning to worry about you. It’s not normal to be as reticent as you are about your affairs! Where is he, by the way?’

  ‘Where is who?’ Realising that Margaret was not going to help her with the plastic bags or her suitcase, Emily began stringing them on to her fingers, lifting them carefully so that no further harm could come to their contents.

  ‘Him! The man you’ve brought with you.’

  ‘Oh, him! I left him behind in London,’ Emily said airily. What man was she supposed to be bringing with her? ‘Did mother tell you about him?’

  ‘Of course she did. Father is as close as you are.’ Tears came flooding into Margaret’s eyes. ‘H
e’s not well. Oh, Emily, we had such a scene last night, too, when I told them, that I was leaving Peter. You know what Father is, marriage is for life and all that stuff. That’s why it’s so important you should take his mind off me by producing this man. How could you leave him in London?’

  ‘Well,’ Emily said, ‘as I don’t know who he is it never occurred to me to do anything but leave him there.’

  ‘Emily! Don’t be maddening! Mother must have got the idea from somewhere! And don’t you care that I’m leaving Peter?’

  ‘Of course. Tell me all about it,’ Emily invited, mentally making a note to expect Peter some time on Christmas Eve for the Grand Reconciliation that would inevitably take place.

  Margaret made the most of her story while Emily stowed her luggage away in the boot of the family car. ‘Nobody was glad to see me,’ she ended tragically. ‘Father said I should be making our own Christmas for Peter, not running around without him, and Mother only wanted to know where Patrick was and why he wasn’t coming home. Then she came up with this story about you and Father looked pleased! He said at least one of us was behaving in a responsible manner and that it was right and proper that you should bring him home to meet the family—which was a hit at me because I didn’t let anyone see Peter until I was absolutely sure of him. You know what Mother is with young men, and I wanted him looking at me and not at her.’

  ‘She should have told me,’ Emily said. ‘I expect I could have found somebody who would have been glad of a family Christmas.’

  ‘Could you have done?’ Margaret looked at her with narrowed eyes. ‘You do have boy-friends, then?’