Moon of Aphrodite
Sara Craven

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

ENDPAGE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

‘I’M not going and that’s final,’ Helen said.

Hugo Brandon gave a worried sigh and pushed a hand through his thick thatch of greying hair. The letter lay between them on the breakfast table, flimsy, foreign-looking, the handwriting spiky and black, managing to convey an impression of autocracy.

He said, ‘Don’t be too hasty, darling.’

‘Too hasty?’ Helen’s eyes flashed fire. ‘Dad, you can’t be serious! After the way he treated you and Mother—cutting her off completely like that. Refusing all communication, even when she was so ill and begged him to write and say she was forgiven?’

Her father was silent, staring down at the tablecloth, his fingers drawing a restless pattern on it.

She said, ‘Or that’s what you’ve always told me, Dad, dozens of times. Are you going to say now that it wasn’t true?’

‘Oh, it was true. And more.’ Hugo’s voice was heavy. ‘But he’s an old man, Helen, a sick old man. You’re his only grandchild, and he wants to see you. It isn’t that extraordinary.’

‘My God!’ Helen said explosively, and there was a tense silence.

The letter from Grandfather Korialis had come like a bolt from the blue. Helen had read it twice and she still could hardly believe the contents. For nearly nineteen years, her Greek grandfather had chosen to forget her existence. He had not even acknowledged the news of her birth. And now this demand for her presence at his villa on the island of Phoros, just off the Greek mainland. Surely he couldn’t really believe that after all this time, all this bitterness, she would simply present herself to order.

But perhaps he did. Perhaps when you owned a chain of hotels like Michael Korialis, when you said ‘Jump’, everyone jumped.

Well, she, Helen, was neither his employee nor beholden to him in any way. On the contrary, she thought broodingly, she would be the exception to the Korialis rule. She would not jump.

Hugo said gently, ‘Has it occurred to you to think what your mother would have wanted you to do?’

Helen had a brief unhappy image of her mother not long before her death six years previously, the sweet high cheekbones, which Helen had inherited, thrown into prominence by the haggard thinness of her face.

She knew what Maria Brandon would have wanted—had wanted all her married life, happy though it had been. She had wanted to be reconciled with the stern man in Greece who had cast her off from him completely when she had defied him and the marriage he had arranged for her, to elope with the tall English artist who had been staying in a nearby village.

She knew that if it had been to her mother that this unexpected olive branch had been extended, then she would have accepted it without a second thought, and joyfully too.

But I’m not capable of that kind of generosity, Helen told herself flatly. After years of slights and neglect, I can’t just perform an about-face and pretend that it all never happened. All this time, he’s ignored the fact that I’m alive, yet now he wants to see me. It makes no sense.

But at the same time, having read her grandfather’s letter, she was uneasily aware that it made all the sense in the world. The letter had not been long, but it had been very much to the point.

He had suffered a severe heart attack, he wrote, and wished before he died to see his only grandchild. An air ticket to Athens would be provided, transport to the island arranged, and all her expenses met. He would expect her to stay at his villa for a minimum of one month.

The tone of the letter had been so much like a business contract that she had almost looked for the inevitable dotted line on which to sign.

She glanced up and saw her father watching her, his face grave and a little compassionate, as if he sensed her inner struggle.

She said reproachfully, ‘You’re not being fair. But it makes no difference. Even if I wanted to go—and I don’t—it wouldn’t be possible. We’re coming up to the height of the tourist season, and you know how busy the gallery becomes.’

Hugo nodded. ‘I know, but I’d be prepared to release you, and find another assistant, if you were willing to go to Phoros.’

‘I don’t understand you.’ She spread her hands helplessly.

‘I’m not sure I understand myself,’ he admitted. ‘I only know that I’m tired of the bitterness and enmity, and that this seems a good way to end them once and for all. But if you really feel that you can’t do it, then I won’t press you. The ultimate decision must be yours.’

‘If he’d invited you as well …’ she began, but he cut across her with a wry smile.

‘Now that really would be impossible for all sorts of reasons. It’s you he wants to see—Maria’s daughter.’

‘I feel I’m being blackmailed,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Not very subtle pressure is being applied and I don’t like it.’ Her voice deepened passionately. ‘After all, he didn’t respond when Mother was so ill.’

‘Your mother underplayed the seriousness of the situation, perhaps deliberately, I don’t know. She always made excuses for him and his actions all her life. Perhaps she was letting him down lightly for the last time.’

Helen said, ‘Yes,’ almost absently. Her hand reached for the letter, screwing it into a ball. Her eyes met her father’s in defiance and appeal. ‘I may look like her, Dad, but I haven’t her forgiving nature. He may be a wealthy and powerful man, but he can’t come and go in our lives, just as he pleases.’

‘Are you prepared to tell him so?’ Hugo’s voice was gentle and without censure.

‘I don’t intend to reply at all.’ She tossed the ball of paper into the waste bin. ‘Problem disposed of. Now let’s change to a happier topic. Did you get the message from Paul that I left for you last night?’

‘Yes.’ Her father smiled. ‘And I’ve telephoned him. He’s been working really hard, and the exhibition won’t have to be postponed after all.’

‘It never does have to be postponed,’ Helen smiled in response. ‘It’s just eleventh-hour panic on his part. God knows why. Or you do, perhaps?’

‘I have an idea,’ said Hugo. ‘Though I must admit no one ever clamoured to put on an exhibition of my work.’

Helen gave him an affectionate smile before rising to busy herself clearing the breakfast things from the table. Her father’s work, as far as she could judge, had been competent but not outstanding, but he possessed the eye of a judge, a connoisseur where other people’s painting was concerned. He was also a realistic man, and had recognised quite early in his career that he would probably never earn enough from painting alone to support himself, plus a wife and child. A legacy from an uncle had enabled him to buy a share in a gallery near the West End. The gallery wasn’t doing too well, but Hugo Brandon had changed all that, and within five years he had been able to buy his partner out and replace the gallery’s rather pretentious name with the single word ‘Brandon’. He made a name for himself on both sides of the Atlantic and in Europe as a man who could spot a real talent in the making. And Helen had never asked anything better than to join him in his work.

But sometimes she wondered if he ever regretted that it was not his own signature that his customers sought on their canvases. Was he happy, she thought, was he fulfilled, or had he settled for second best? She hoped not, but doubted whether she would ever know the truth.

One thing she had never doubted was his love for her, and for his late wife. But again she wondered if he would have worked quite so hard to make the gallery a success financially as well as artistically if he had not married a rich man’s daughter. Perhaps he had been determined that Maria would never count the cost of all she had given up in order to become his wife.

God, she thought ruefully, as she stacked dishes in the drying rack, everything’s so complicated. Except for my life, she amended hastily.

Helen had enjoyed the year since she had left school. She liked the fact that their flat was sited immediately over the gallery, as well as the work she did there. She was beginning to be a good saleswoman, and learning about art as well, which pleased her. And without being conceited, she was aware that her own attractions—a slim body with rounded breasts and hips, an oval face with high cheekbones, and clear hazel eyes fringed by lashes shades darker than her honey-blonde hair—contributed to her success.

Her mother had been blonde too, but her eyes had been brown like pansies, and full of laughter.

Helen’s eyes darkened too, when she was angry, which was really the only form of passion she had ever encountered. She had never lacked for men to take her out, but her romances so far had been very tentative affairs with little commitment on either side.

Her thoughts for a moment went to Christopher who was taking her out that very evening. She liked him, she enjoyed his kisses even, but something warned her that that was all the involvement she wanted, although she was aware his own desire was for a much closer relationship.

Perhaps in time, she thought, almost absently, then caught at herself. What was she thinking of? Her mother had preached few moral lessons at her, perhaps because she guessed the morality her daughter would be subjected to would be a very different thing from her own sheltered girlhood in Greece, yet one thing she had stressed. Without love, there could not, should not be any giving. And Helen had to admit she could not imagine love blossoming from anything as lukewarm as her present feelings for Christopher. Like most of the other young men who had passed briefly through her life, he was a pleasant companion, but little more.

She sighed faintly. Perhaps this was why their passage was so fleeting. Maybe they turned to other girls for the warmth, the passion she denied them.

But it might also be that she had never yet met anyone who ‘turned her on’, she reminded herself. Perhaps one day she would meet a man, and know that he was the one for her just as her mother had done.

‘I loved him from the first moment that I saw him,’ Maria had told her once, her mouth curving in tender reminiscence. ‘He was sitting on the hillside above the village, painting the view, in the heat of the day without even a hat to protect him from the fierceness of the sun, and I said to him, “Why do you not sit in the shade? The sun will make you ill.” And he turned and smiled at me.’

The young artist had taken her advice, she went on, and from then on she had gone each afternoon to watch the progress of the painting.

‘One day I was late, so late, because Thia Irini had made me help with some sewing. When I got to the place, he was not painting at all, and when he saw me, he jumped up and said, “I was so afraid you weren’t coming and that I wouldn’t see you again.” And then I knew that he loved me also. But I had known first,’ Maria concluded with a look of smiling satisfaction.

How nice to have such certainty, Helen thought, particularly in view of what was to come later.

The news that Maria was to become betrothed to the son of a business acquaintance, a young man only a few years older than her seventeen-year-old self, had burst on the lovers like a bombshell.

Maria had protested to her father that she had never met the young man, but his attitude was inflexible. There would be plenty of opportunities for them to meet, he said. Of course, if they disliked each other, the marriage would not take place. But Maria knew there would be few grounds for dislike. Her father’s choice would not have fallen on someone unsuitable, and she knew that unless she acted fast, the most subtle but inexorable pressure would be exerted and she would find herself a married woman. She knew too that it would be pointless to plead that she had already fallen in love with Hugo Brandon. Her father would dismiss her plea as a young girl’s fancy, or more probably, become very angry.

To his credit, Hugo had not wanted a hole-and-corner affair; he had been quite prepared to face Michael Korialis and endure his wrath. But Maria knew her father, and how vengeful he could be, and she persuaded Hugo that the risk would be too great. Time, too, was growing short. A big party was being planned to celebrate her betrothal, and the hour was approaching when Maria would have to meet her intended husband for the first time.

‘I cannot see him. I cannot face him,’ she had sobbed to Hugo. ‘How can I greet another man, let him touch me, when it is you that I love?’

Two nights later she had left her father’s house for ever, leaving a note imploring his forgiveness. She had never heard another word from him as long as she lived.

Helen tried to imagine herself abandoning Hugo without a backward glance for Christopher, or any of the men who had occupied her attention, however briefly. It was a ridiculous thought, she decided scornfully.

And she was enjoying life. She liked her work, and there was very little to disturb her—with the exception of her grandfather’s letter, which had been disposed of, she thought with satisfaction.

A little of his own medicine, she told herself as she dried her hands, and hung up the tea towel before going down to the gallery to start her day’s work. And that’s the end of it.

Nor was there any premonition—any pricking of her thumbs—to warn her that it was only the beginning.

The gallery had the tired, slightly rumpled look it always had after the opening of an exhibition, especially a successful one as that day’s had been, Helen thought.

She moved about, a slim figure in her cream dress, straightening chairs, picking up the occasional cigarette end which had escaped an overflowing ashtray, and returning glasses to the trays which the catering firm would collect presently.

It had been a good day, she thought, staring round at the numerous red ‘sold’ stickers on the paintings, and pieces of sculpture on display. Paul Everard, who had stayed away from the gallery for his usual pre-exhibition nervous breakdown, would undergo an instant revival when he saw them, she told herself smilingly. He might even be persuaded to start painting again, if anyone could only convince him there was a permanent and enthusiastic demand for his work—which there was. She sighed a little. So many of the successful artists they handled seemed to suffer from these doubts—the failures, who came to Hugo demanding that their work be given notices, status, respect, seemed to have no such misgivings. And that, she supposed, was life.

She gave a final glance round as she prepared to depart, and frowned. One of the paintings was hanging a little askew, and that was a thing she could not endure. She went over and stood on tiptoe, trying to straighten it, but only succeeded in making matters worse. There was a small pair of steps in the office, but fetching them seemed too much trouble after a long and tiring day. Besides, Hugo was in the office, working on the accounts, and she did not want to disturb him.

She dragged forward one of the small velvet-covered chairs which were dotted about the gallery. It was fragile, but it should support her weight for the moment or two that was all she would need.

She adjusted the picture to her satisfaction, and leaned back a little to make sure it was exactly level again. The shift of her weight caused the chair to rock on its narrow legs, and she knew with a sudden shock that it was going to fall over, and that she would fall with it.

She gave a little breathless cry, and in the same moment felt a pair of strong arms go round her and lift her clear. She was briefly aware of the scent of some expensive cologne, and the faint aroma of cigars before she was set safely down, and turned to thank her unexpected rescuer.

Very unexpected, she thought at once, her brows lifting unconsciously as she registered him fully. Tall, but not overpoweringly so, with broad shoulders and a muscular chest, tapering down to lean hips and long legs, with a rugged strength about him that no amount of expensive tailoring could conceal. His suit was silky, lightweight and foreign-looking, but then he was clearly not English himself. He was too dark, and his skin was too swarthy for that. Not a conventionally handsome face, either, but one that with its strongly marked features and dark, heavy-lidded eyes would not be easily forgotten. A faint smile played about the man’s firm lips as he watched her—watching him, she realised with sudden dismay, and felt herself blush.

She said hurriedly, ‘I have to thank you, monsieur. You saved me from a nasty accident.’

‘The pleasure was mine, believe me, Miss Brandon.’ There was a faint trace of an accent in the deep voice, but it certainly wasn’t French. In fact, she didn’t know what it was.

She was moved by a sudden inexplicable uneasiness. She hadn’t seen him in the gallery before; in fact she would have sworn he hadn’t been at the exhibition at all. He was not the kind of man to be overlooked, even in a crowd. And he knew her name.

She said rather primly, ‘I’m afraid the gallery is closed for the day. Didn’t they tell you so downstairs?’

‘I didn’t come to look at pictures, Miss Brandon, good as many of these are. I came to look at you.’

A strange stillness seemed to encompass her.

She said carefully, suddenly thankful that Hugo with within earshot, ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. Do you—know me? I don’t think we’ve met before?’

‘Never—until this moment,’ he said. ‘But I have seen pictures of your mother when she was a girl and you are very like her.’

Her voice sharpened. ‘What do you want? What are you doing here? Who are you?’

‘Such a lot of questions!’ There was faint mockery in his voice. ‘I’ll start with the last. My name is Damon Leandros, and I am here, quite simply, to persuade you to return to Greece with me to visit your grandfather.’

‘He sent you?’ She was rigid with disbelief, then she managed a short laugh. ‘And what role do you fulfil in his exclusive little set-up—one of the heavy mob?’

The words uttered, she wondered almost hysterically what Hugo would have said if he could have heard her being so abysmally rude to a stranger. It was out of character to say the least, and her only excuse could be this sudden, inexplicable nervousness the presence of this man was engendering in her. But why should I be nervous? she demanded inwardly. He can hardly kidnap me bodily.

His eyes narrowed slightly, indicating that her words had got to him, but his tone was light as he said, ‘As I told you, my role is that of persuader. If I was what you imagine, I would threaten—perhaps even use force, but that’s not my way.’

‘I suppose I must be thankful for small mercies.’ Helen resisted an impulse to step away from him. ‘But you’re wasting your time, Mr Leandros.’

‘You read your grandfather’s letter?’

‘Of course.’

‘Yet you did not reply to it.’

‘As you seem to be aware of most of the family secrets—no, I didn’t. Mr Korialis should recognise the technique. He employed it often enough with my mother’s letters to him.’

He sighed faintly. ‘He was afraid that would be the reason for this silence. Would it make any difference to you to know that he regrets his treatment of your mother?’

‘None at all,’ she said tightly. ‘Now, we really are waiting to close for the day, so I’d be glad if you would leave.’

‘I’ll leave when you do,’ he said quite equably. He hitched forward one of the velvet-covered chairs and sat down.

‘I can have you thrown out, you know,’ she said, faltering a little at the thought of Arthur, their faithful doorman, well past his prime, being called on to deal with this muscular Greek who looked at the peak of his virility.

He tutted, his faint smile widening. ‘Using your heavy mob, Miss Brandon? But why, when I’ve said I intend no strong-arm tactics against you?’

She shrugged, feeling rather foolish, as she guessed he intended. ‘Because I’ve no intention of waiting here all night while you exercise your powers of persuasion, Mr Leandros.’

‘Nor do I intend to spend the night here. I’d hoped you might have dinner with me.’

‘I’m having dinner with my father,’ she said. ‘We’re very close. You might tell your—client that.’

‘My—client also had a daughter to whom he believed he was very close,’ Damon Leandros said calmly. ‘Circumstances can change.’

‘And yet he let her die without a word from him,’ she said bitterly.

‘He didn’t know she was dying, and when he received the news of her death, he mourned her every day that followed in his heart.’

‘He could have writen to my father—made some move.’

‘You don’t understand about pride? Strange,’ he looked at her reflectively, ‘I would have said you had a strong streak of it yourself.’

‘Let’s not get into personalities, Mr Leandros. I’m sorry if I’ve been rude, but really your coming here has been a complete and utter waste of time, both yours and mine.’ Helen hesitated. ‘You can give Mr Korialis my best wishes, if you want.’

‘Give them to him yourself.’

‘No!’ Her exasperation rose. ‘No, it’s quite impossible. Now will you please go?’

‘Helen!’ In her agitation, she hadn’t heard the office door open and Hugo approach. Now he was standing beside them, a worried frown creasing his brow. ‘May I ask what’s going on?’

‘I’m sure Mr Leandros will be delighted to explain his errand in person,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve heard enough. I’m going up to the flat.’

She turned and walked away, followed by Damon Leandros’ soft chuckle. She flushed, and her nails dug into the palms of her hands. He didn’t seem to be taking his task very seriously—either that or he wasn’t taking her seriously. Perhaps he thought her reluctance was pretence. Well, he would learn his mistake.

Safely in the flat, she stood for a moment making herself calm down before she continued the preparations for the evening meal which Mrs Gibson, who acted as a non-resident housekeeper for them, had begun. The casserole of chicken and mushrooms was simmering gently in the bottom of the oven, and a lemon meringue pie, one of her father’s favourites, was standing crisp and golden brown on the work surface. Helen began measuring rice into a saucepan, exclaiming in dismay when she realised she had used too much.

‘Concentrate,’ she adjured herself fiercely. She wondered what her father was doing. Surely it couldn’t be taking him all this time to get rid of their unwanted visitor? She breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the flat door open at last, and her father call, ‘Helen?’

‘I’m in the kitchen.’ She returned. She added water to the pan of rice. ‘Has he gone at last? He seemed very determined.’

‘Oh, he is.’

The sardonic voice behind her made her whirl round, the colour draining from her face as she registered Damon Leandros leaning negligently in the kitchen doorway watching her.

‘How did you get in here?’ she demanded in swift alarm. ‘My father …’

‘Dead, and his body buried under the thirteenth stair,’ he said in studiedly sepulchral tones, then burst out laughing. ‘You are wasted working in an art gallery, Miss Brandon. Such an imagination could be put to good use writing thrillers. Your father is pouring me a drink, and I have been sent to enquire if you would like one also. Is everything clear to you now?’

‘Like hell it is!’ she snapped furiously. She banged down the saucepan and marched to the door. She expected him to move to one side to give her passage, but he remained exactly where he was and she was forced to brush past him, a fleeting contact, but one that she would have given much to avoid.

Hugo, who was busying himself with bottles and glasses, gave her a slightly apologetic look. ‘Dinner will stretch to three, won’t it, darling?’ he asked.

‘It could probably feed four or five,’ she said in a stifled voice. ‘Aren’t there any other strangers we could pick off the streets?’

‘Helen!’ There was a real sharpness in her father’s voice. He said, ‘I must apologise, Mr Leandros, for my daughter’s bad behaviour. I can assure you that she isn’t usually like this.’

‘The situation isn’t very usual, either,’ Helen burst out. She was trembling violently and very close to tears.

‘Perhaps it would be better if I went,’ Damon Leandros suggested. ‘We can always defer this discussion to a more suitable occasion.’

‘It won’t make the slightest difference …’

‘Helen!’ her father interposed again. ‘You could at least listen to what Mr Leandros has to say. I thought perhaps in a relaxed atmosphere, over a meal in your own home, you might be more willing to listen to reason.’

Helen drew a shaky breath. ‘You—really think I ought to do as my grandfather wants and go to Greece, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Hugo Brandon said baldly. ‘I see no point in continuing a hostility which has done nothing but harm in the past. You have his blood in your veins, my dear, whether you want to admit it or not. I suspect you also have a certain amount of curiosity about this unknown part of your family.’

Desolation struck at her as she stood there between the two of them. That was something she could not deny, but she could have sworn that it was her secret and always had been. Of course she’d been curious. She could remember all the stories her mother had told her when she was quite tiny of life on Phoros, and in the big villa that Michael Korialis owned on the outskirts of Athens. She wouldn’t have been human, she thought, if in spite of everything she had not sometimes wondered—speculated about all the things her mother had told her. But she had never said a word or given a hint of this to her father because she was afraid that he might be hurt, or worse, think perhaps she was hankering after the material comforts that life in a Greek millionaire’s household could provide her with.

She said wearily, ‘I’ll go and see to the dinner. I—I can’t think straight.’

It wasn’t the most successful meal of all time. Helen could only pick at her own food, and Hugo did little better, his eyes fixed anxiously on her bent head. Only Damon Leandros seemed to have any appetite, and the ability to keep a normal conversation going, choosing safely impersonal topics.

She supposed the real discussion would take place over the coffee. She’d been aware all through dinner that Damon Leandros had been watching her, not with the concerned protectiveness of her father, but rather, she thought, as a cat might watch a mouse. She could feel resentment building up in her at his scrutiny, but she controlled it. Perhaps he was also curious about his employer’s long-lost granddaughter, she thought.

One thing was certain: Michael Korialis must rely on him highly to entrust him with such an errand. She found herself wondering exactly in what capacity he worked for her grandfather, how old he was, even if he was married, then checked herself hurriedly. This kind of speculation was totally valueless.

Hugo and Damon Leandros were sitting talking while the stereo unit in the corner murmured Brahms in the background when she returned with the coffee. She set down the tray on the table, wondering if anyone would believe her if she pleaded a headache and went to her room. Then Damon Leandros bent forward to pick up his cup, and she caught the derisive smile twisting his lips as he looked at her, and she knew that he was just waiting for her to make some such excuse, and angry colour rose in her cheeks. She took her own cup and retired with it stonily to the far corner of the room, on the pretext that she wished to listen more closely to the music. But her seclusion was shortlived.

It was Hugo who rose with the excuse. He had run out of the small cigars he smoked, and would have to go to the nearby off-licence to buy some more, he explained. He wouldn’t be long, he added, with a deprecatory look at his daughter.

When the door had closed behind him, she sat rigidly in her chair, staring unseeingly ahead of her, feeling the tension build up in the room. There was not a word or a movement from her companion, yet she was convinced her father had simply invented the tale of needing more cigars in order to leave them alone together.

At last she stole a glance at him under her lashes, and was disconcerted to see that he was leaning back in his chair, watching her, very much at his ease.

‘Relax, Miss Brandon,’ he said drily. ‘You look as if you would splinter into a thousand pieces at the slightest touch.’ He saw her swallow and smiled rather grimly. ‘Don’t be alarmed, I do not propose to test the truth of my observations.’

‘I should hope not.’ Helen found her voice. ‘I wouldn’t think Mr Korialis would be too pleased to know that one of his henchmen had been—mauling a member of his family.’

His face was sardonic. ‘But as you do not propose to accompany me to Greece, there would be little chance of your grandfather ever finding out. Perhaps I should make love to you, if it means you will contact him, even if it is only to protest at my behaviour.’

He got up from the chesterfield and walked towards her. Helen felt herself shrinking back against the cushions.

She said huskily, ‘Don’t you dare to touch me. Don’t you come near me!’

He halted about a foot from her chair. Staring up at him dazedly, she thought that he seemed to tower over her.

He said softly, ‘You’re a stubborn little fool, Eleni. What am I asking for, after all? A few weeks of your life, no more. A few weeks to give some happiness to a sick old man, holding on to his life in the hope of seeing you.’

‘A sick autocrat,’ she said bitterly, ‘who has never had his slightest wish disregarded before. That was clear from the tone of his letter.’

‘If it were so,’ he said, ‘then you would never have been born. As for the letter, it is true that Michaelis finds it difficult to ask. Is there no pity for him—no warmth under that English ice?’

‘You have absolutely no right to talk to me like that.’ She wished desperately that he would move away. ‘And my name is Helen, not Eleni.’

‘To your grandfather, you have always been Eleni,’ he said quite gently, and to her horror she felt sudden tears pricking at the back of her eyelids.

‘Damn you!’ she whispered, then his dark face blurred, and she buried her face in her hands. When she had regained sufficient control over herself to become aware of her surroundings again, she found that he had moved away to the fireplace and was standing with one arm resting on the mantelshelf, staring down at the floor. An immaculate linen handkerchief was lying on the arm of her chair, and after a brief hesitation she used it with a muffled word of thanks.

He said, ‘I won’t wait for your father’s return.’ He reached into an inside pocket and produced a small leather-covered notebook and a gold pencil and wrote something, before tearing off the page and putting it on the mantelpiece. ‘My hotel and room number, Eleni,’ he said. ‘I shall be returning to Greece at the end of the week. If you wish to come with me, you have only to contact me.’ He paused. ‘Or leave a message, if you would prefer.’

‘I would prefer,’ she said tightly. ‘Very much I’d prefer it.’

He gave her an unsmiling look. ‘I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.’

‘I’m sorry we had to meet at all,’ she said wearily. ‘But I suppose my grandfather will be grateful to you. How will you describe your victory to him, I wonder? As a knock-out in the first round? Perhaps he’ll give you a bonus.’

He looked faintly amused. ‘I would hardly describe this as a victory, more in the nature of a preliminary skirmish,’ he said coolly. ‘As for my bonus—–’ he smiled—‘I think I’ll collect that now.’

Two long strides brought him back to her, his hand reaching down to close like a vice on her wrist, jerking her upwards. Taken off her guard, she found herself on her feet somehow, overbalancing against him, and for the second time she experienced the strength of his arms as they held her, drawing her closer still.

She protested on a little gasp, ‘No!’ and then his mouth closed on hers with merciless thoroughness.

When it was over, she stood staring at him, her eyes enormous in her tear-stained face, one hand pressed convulsively against the bruised softness of her lips, too shocked to utter a word of protest.

Damon Leandros gave her a last cool look and turned to go, and as he reached the door, Helen found her voice at last.

‘You swine!’ She was trembling violently. ‘I’ll make you sorry you did that!’

He turned and looked back at her. ‘You are too late, Eleni. I am already sorry,’ he said, and went out.

CHAPTER TWO

HELEN unfastened the shutters of her hotel room and stepped out on to the balcony, in the full force of the Athenian sun. The muted roar of the city came up from the square below as she stared around her in fascination. She had been told to rest for a few hours to prepare for the continuation of the journey to Phoros, but she could not simply lie down on her bed and forget that all Athens was spread out at her feet.

Besides, she wasn’t in the least tired. It had probably been the least troublesome journey she had ever undertaken, she thought. She had expected to travel on the normal scheduled flight, so the private jet had been a shock, but a pleasant one.

‘This surely doesn’t belong to my grandfather?’ she had asked Damon Leandros, having to forgo her fierce private intention to speak only when spoken to by him, and then only in monosyllables.

‘No. It belongs to a friend of his,’ he said laconically, but he didn’t volunteer any further information on the subject, and she was determined not to ask.

The formalities at the airport were soon concluded, and a chauffeur-driven car was waiting to take them into the city. Helen had assumed she would be staying at her grandfather’s villa, the one her mother had described, and she was a little surprised to be taken straight to a hotel instead, albeit a luxury one. But it soon became clear that this was one of the hotels owned by her grandfather, a fact emphasised by the flattering welcome afforded her by the smiling manager, and the flowers and fruit which awaited her in her suite. A discreet fuss was being made, and Helen would not have been human if she had not enjoyed it.

It made up, she told herself, for having to spend the journey in Damon Leandros’ company. She had not seen him from the evening he had dined at the flat until the time the car had come to collect her to take her to the airport.

Even when she had finally nerved herself to phone his hotel and announce that she was prepared to return to Greece with him after all, he had not been there, and she had had to leave a message with some unknown female with a husky seductive voice. Typical, Helen had thought scornfully, as she replaced her receiver. The degrading way in which he had treated her had shown that Damon Leandros was the sort of man who would constantly need to be proving his virility by having some unfortunate woman in tow. She had nothing but contempt for him. It had annoyed her too to see the amount of deference with which he had been treated at the airport in Athens and back in England, while the hotel manager’s greeting when they arrived had been almost servile. He was not just an ordinary employee, she decided, he must be quite big in her grandfather’s organisation. Well, the bigger they were, the harder they fell, she thought with satisfaction, and she could not believe that Michael Korialis would be too pleased to learn that even a trusted employee had been pawing his granddaughter.

Even though the last thing she wanted to do was spend any more time with him, nevertheless it had annoyed her when he had casually remarked that she would need a rest before the resumption of their journey, and that her lunch would be brought up to her suite.

On their way to the lifts, she had passed the open doors of the dining room where a mouthwatering cold buffet was being set out, and she would have much preferred to have come down to the dining room and chosen a meal for herself with the rest of the guests.

Not that anyone could have complained about the selection which had been brought to her, she admitted. There had been a variety of delicious salads, cold meats, stuffed tomatoes and peppers, and a half bottle of white wine, just dry enough to suit her palate.

She had sampled everything eagerly, but if she was honest, she was too excited and too nervous to eat, and sitting on her own in a hotel room, however luxurious, was not improving the condition. She needed something to take her mind off the journey ahead of her, and the stern old man waiting for her at the end of it.

She still did not really understand why she was here. She hadn’t wanted to come, and now she was here she was beginning to realise just how alien her new environment was. People said that these days foreign capitals were growing so much alike that anyone dropped into one blindfold would be hard put to it to decide where he was. They would never be able to say that with Athens, she thought. Even on the journey in from the airport, she had realised it had an atmosphere all of its own, and the glimpse she had caught of the mighty Acropolis had been breathtaking.

She glanced at her watch, which she had remembered to alter to local time. She had several hours to kick her heels in before they set off again. Surely she had time to do a little sightseeing.

She slipped on a pair of low-heeled sandals and reached for her bag. She had brought some travellers’ cheques in London and changed a few pounds into drachmas. It wasn’t a great deal, but it would be enough to pay her bus fare up to the Acropolis, and maybe buy her a coffee and a pastry at one of the pavement cafes she had noticed on her way to the hotel.

She slipped on a pair of sunglasses as she went down in the lift. Not that she really believed that anyone would try to stop her if they saw her leaving, she told herself, but Damon Leandros had been very positive about her resting in the heat of the day, and perhaps the hotel staff might feel that his orders should be reinforced.

The foyer was full of people as she stepped out of the lift and she walked past the reception area without being observed by anyone, and through the enormous swing doors into the sunlight.

After the air-conditioning of the hotel, the heat outside struck her like a blow. She stopped at one of the news-stands and bought a guide book in English, and walked along slowly reading it. She didn’t feel conspicuous in the slightest. Every second person she saw seemed to be a tourist, and no one seemed to be in a hurry. Using the map in her book, she managed to find her way to Omonia Square, and there she hesitated, finally plucking up courage to ask a passer-by where she could catch a bus for the Acropolis. He gave her a wide smile, then launched into a flood of Greek, interspersed with a few words of very broken English, before seizing her guide book from her hand and writing down the numbers of several buses across the top of the page. She was about to thank him and turn away when another man standing nearby decided to take a hand. Waving a peremptory finger, he seized the stub of pencil the other had been using and began to write a list of alternative numbers, beaming at Helen occasionally while his conversation with the first man became more and more heated.

Helen, aware of the curious glances of some of the passers-by, was becoming embarrassed by the raised voices and violent gestures. She tried to interrupt, but the two Greeks were by now far more interested in their argument than anything else, and after standing there rather helplessly for a moment, she decided to try and find the way to the nearest bus stand by herself.

Next time she wanted to know anything, she vowed silently, she would ask a policeman!

The heat was becoming oppressive now, and she was beginning to wish she had taken Damon Leandros’ advice and stayed in her suite with the shutters closed. Perhaps if it had been offered as advice, and less as an order, she might have felt more inclined to accept it, she told herself in self-justification. It was galling to be issued with instructions as if she was a child who could not be trusted to think for herself.

There seemed to be a great many buses about, but none of them seemed to bear any of the numbers she had been given, she realised ruefully as she stared around her. Nor were there any policemen in the vicinity.

At last, in desperation, she entered the nearest shop, a chemist’s, and this time she was luckier. The chemist, a dark young man with a beard, spoke almost perfect English, but he looked at her dubiously when she explained where she wished to go.

‘In the heat of the day, thespinis? Is it wise?’

‘I only have a few hours in Athens,’ she explained.

He shrugged, looking at her slender arms revealed by the sleeveless navy dress she was wearing. ‘You have a very fair skin. It needs protection in our sun.’ He reached to one of the shelves behind him and produced a tube of sun cream. ‘This will help a little, but you must take care or you will burn, and that is not pleasant.’

She thanked him rather doubtfully. After all, she had only come in to find out where the bus stop was, not to spend any of her small hoard of drachmas on expensive sun cream, but when she produced her money, he waved it away.

‘I do not wish payment, thespinis. It is my pleasure to do this for you.’ He smiled into her eyes with a frank sensual appreciation that sent the colour racing into her face. ‘Perhaps one day you will come back to Athens.’

He escorted her to the pavement, and pointed out to her exactly where she could catch her bus. It occurred to Helen as she moved away that with very little encouragement he would probably have come with her. And she recalled too that Greek women were supposed to lead quite sheltered lives until their marriage. Judging by the way the men behaved on the slightest acquaintance, they had good reason to be sheltered! she thought with faint amusement.

There were already several people waiting at the stop when she arrived, and she hoped that was a good sign and that the bus would be along very shortly. Time was passing more rapidly than she could have believed possible, and she had no idea how long the journey to the Acropolis would take.

But twenty minutes later they were still waiting, and Helen was ready to scream with frustration. Most of the other would-be passengers had moved back from the bus stand to find themselves patches of shade, but Helen remained at the edge of the pavement, straining her eyes as she peered down the hill at the oncoming traffic.

She noticed the car at once, because of its opulence and sleek lines. And then she saw who was driving it, and a little gasp escaped her. It was Damon Leandros, and he was not alone. There was a girl with him, dark and in her way as opulently beautiful as the car. She was smiling and talking to him animatedly, and at any moment the car would be past and gone, then Damon Leandros turned slightly to flick his cigarette out of the window, and his eyes met Helen’s across two lanes of traffic. She was thankful those two lanes existed, because as well as recognition and disbelief, she had seen the beginnings of anger in his face.

She glanced down the hill again, biting her lip anxiously. He was caught in the traffic, and couldn’t stop, and anyway this was a one-way street, yet something told her that he would be back.

A battered grey taxi swerved into the side of the road to discharge its passenger, and Helen leapt for the opening door, almost knocking over the indignant Athenian who emerged in her haste.

The driver was very dark and unshaven, and looked like a member of the Greek Mafia, but he seemed to understand that she wanted to be driven to the Acropolis, even if he displayed no real inclination to take her there. He put the car into gear with a gut-wrenching screech and hurled it into the stream of traffic, muttering all the time under his breath as he did so.

Helen, being bounced around in the back seat from one side of the car to the other, was almost numb with rage. Quite a few of the taxis she had noticed in the streets had had the same battered look, with bumps and dents, and sometimes even their headlights taped up, and if this was a sample of the way they were usually driven, she could quite understand why. She wished very much that she spoke Greek, because she doubted very much whether the conventional phrase books on sale would provide a translation for ‘Please stop driving like a maniac!’

Her only consolation was that when Damon Leandros returned to look for her, and she had not the slightest doubt that he would, she would have vanished, she hoped without trace.

The taxi stopped at last with a jerk which almost hurled her on to the floor, and she stared doubtfully at the mass of figures on the meter, wondering which one depicted the fare. The driver didn’t seem prepared to help. As she hesitated, he directed a sullen stare at her, and eventually she produced her purse, peeled off a number of notes and handed them to him. Judging by the slightly contemptuous smile he gave her as he pocketed them, she had given him far too much, she thought angrily as she got out of the car.

It was hotter than ever as she walked up the hill which led to the entrance, but near the car park was a large stall selling cold drinks and other refreshments. There were people everywhere, sitting under the shade of the trees as they ate and drank, most of them tourists, a lot of them students, propping themselves up on their bulging rucksacks. There were all sorts of accents, and Helen found she was eagerly listening for an English voice, as she made her way up the slope to the summit. She would have her cold drink later, she thought, because something told her that if she ever settled under the trees, her sightseeing would be over for the day.

The stone slabs she was walking up were warm through the thin soles of her sandals, and above her the rock towered away, crowned by a cluster of buildings. She stood there for a moment, staring up, conscious of an isolation that went deeper than mere physical loneliness, overcome by the thought of time, and the generations of feet which had trodden this way before hers—tyrants, philosophers, soldiers, slaves and conquerors—suddenly aware as she had never been of her mother’s Greek blood in her veins, and of a faint stirring deep inside her which went further than the ordinary excitement of the holidaymaker.

Following the small knots of people ahead of her, she made her way without haste through the Propylaea and out on to the vast expanse of bleached white rock which had served the city of Athens as a fortress and a religious sanctuary. The Parthenon dominated, as she supposed it had always been intended it should. Its great honey-coloured mass seemed to rear into the flawless blue of the sky, like some proud ancient lion scenting the air, Helen thought, and smiled at her own fancy.

She became aware that a group of people behind her were patiently waiting to take a photograph and stepped out of the way with a murmured word of apology. She knew that because of the wear and tear of the centuries, and more recently air pollution from the great city which circled the foot of the Acropolis, the most she could do was look and admire from a distance. Some of the buildings, she noticed, glancing round her, were already supported by scaffolding. It was a shame, but at least the authorities were doing their best to preserve them for further generations of feet to tread up the long winding route from the foot of the rock.

She sat down on a piece of fallen masonry, and filled her mind with images to carry away with her, because she doubted whether she would ever come back. She had agreed to undertake this journey of reconciliation because her grandfather was elderly and ill. It seemed quite likely that he was at death’s door, she thought sombrely, and once he was dead there would be no reason for her to return to Greece ever again. That feeling of fellowship with the past, of homecoming even that she had experienced earlier, had disturbed her. She didn’t understand herself. She had always regarded herself as English through and through, and wholly her father’s daughter. She had never ever looked Greek, she thought in perplexity.

After a while, she rose and walked to the edge, threading her way between the chattering groups with their clicking cameras. The view was stupendous. She thought she could even catch a glimpse of the sea in the distance.

She turned away at last, feeling a little giddy. The sun reflecting off the white rock she stood on was almost overwhelming, like some exotic moonscape. It would surely be cooler, more bearable indoors. She went down a brief flight of steps, past a large stone owl and into the museum. She found an unoccupied bench and sank down on to it, pressing her fingers against her forehead with a little sigh.

When the hand descended on her shoulder, she looked up with a start, thinking it was one of the attendants. Instead she found herself looking into the coldly furious face of Damon Leandros.

‘Oh.’ She stared up at him, her brows drawing together. ‘It’s you. How did you find me?’

‘It did not require a great deal of thought to deduce where you were going,’ he said icily. ‘I saw you enter the museum and followed. What is the matter? Are you ill?’

‘A slight headache, that’s all,’ she returned stiffly, and heard his exasperated sigh.

‘I asked you to rest for precisely this reason,’ he said after a pause. ‘I do not wish to present you to your grandfather suffering from heatstroke or exhaustion.’

‘Of course not, although I needn’t ask whether that’s prompted by concern for me or concern for your job.’ She pushed her hair back from her face with defiant fingers. ‘I suppose my grandfather might not be too pleased that you’d left me to my own devices.’

He gave her a long, hard look. ‘Your grandfather was perfectly well aware that I had business to attend to this afternoon, and that our departure for Phoros would be delayed for a few hours.’

‘Really?’ Helen smiled in spite of her pounding head. ‘I saw your—business beside you in the car. Nice work if you can get it,’ she added with deliberately airy vulgarity.

But the expected explosion did not transpire. When he did speak his voice was softer than ever.

‘Miss Brandon, did your father never beat you when you were a child?’

‘Of course not.’ Helen dismissed from her mind the memory of numerous childish chastisements. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Idle curiosity. There could, of course, be no other reason.’ His tone was silky. ‘Are you prepared to return to the hotel with me now, and rest?’

Helen lifted her chin. ‘But I haven’t had a chance to look round the museum yet,’ she objected.

‘Then by all means let us do so.’ She didn’t like the smile he gave her as he lifted her to her feet.

Half an hour later, she was wishing with all her heart that she had meekly acceded to his original suggestion of returning to the hotel. Her head was pounding almost intolerably, and she felt desperately thirsty and slightly queasy at the same time. At any other time—and of course if he had been anyone else—she would have been fascinated by what he was telling her about the transition from the Archaic to the Classical style in sculpture, but his words seemed to buzz meaninglessly in her ears. And the curving smiles on the Korai, the maidens carved out of stone as offerings to the virgin goddess of the city, Athena, seemed to mock her everywhere she looked.

She swallowed, staring down at the floor, refusing to admit defeat. She was being a fool, she knew. After all, Damon Leandros had been detailed by her grandfather to look after her, and she was sure she only had to give a hint and she would be out of this increasingly stuffy atmosphere, and back in that comfortable hotel room, with the shutters closed. But if she asked him to take her back, he would have won in some obscure way and that she could not allow. She gave a little stifled sigh and forced herself to concentrate on the head of a boy, known as the ‘blond youth’, Damon told her, because there were still traces of yellow tint found on it when it was discovered.

‘We have always admired fair hair, you see.’ Her companion’s voice sounded amused. ‘On Phoros near your grandfather’s villa there is a ruined temple that archaeologists say was dedicated to Aphrodite. She is usually pictured as having blonde hair too.’

Helen said faintly, ‘She could be bald as a coot for me. I—I really must get out of here. I can’t breathe.’

The events of the next hour or so were mercifully blurred. Later she would remember details, like the strength of his arm round her, and the way the cushions of that sleek car of his seemed to support her like a cloud. As they drove back to the hotel, she found herself wondering, as she tried to control the waves of threatened nausea, what he had done with the dark beauty she had seen him with, but enquiring was altogether too much trouble. Besides, she tried to tell herself, what did it matter how many women he had?

And she could remember vomiting tiredly until her throat and her stomach ached, and the tiled bathroom swung in a dizzying arc around her, and the refreshing sensation of a towel dipped in cold water wiping her face, and being placed across her forehead as at last—at long last—she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again it was early evening, judging by the length of the shadows across the floor. She sat up gingerly. Her head still ached, but she no longer felt that terrible, debilitating nausea. In fact, she was almost hungry. She pushed back the single sheet which was the only covering provided on the bed, and started to get out, catching as she did so an astonished glimpse of herself in the long mirror opposite. She looked a mess, she thought candidly. Her eyes looked twice their normal size, and her hair hung on her shoulders in a tangle, but that was incidental. All she was wearing were her underclothes, a dark blue lace bra and matching brief panties. Her navy dress was hanging over the back of a chair with her sandals placed neatly beside it, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember removing any of them.

She got up and went over to the dressing table, reaching for her hairbrush which had been among the small amount of hand luggage she had unpacked, and starting to smooth her hair into its usual face-curving style. She looked wan, she thought critically, but cosmetics would soon improve that. She wandered into the bathroom and had a long leisurely wash, spraying herself liberally with L’Air du Temps when she had finished.

She would phone down for some soup, she thought, and also enquire if there were any messages for her. It was already well past the time that Damon Leandros had proposed they should set off for Phoros, and she supposed he would be waiting somewhere. Grudgingly, she had to admit that he had been kind enough during the dash back to the hotel, and that he had at least left her alone to recover from her sickness.

She sauntered back into the bedroom, and stopped dead, her eyes widening in disbelief. Damon Leandros was there, lounging nonchalantly against the long row of fitted wardrobes which filled one wall. For a moment their gazes locked, and then his eyebrows rose mockingly and she remembered too late that she was half naked.

She looked round wildly for her dress, but he was between her and the chair on which it lay. As if he guessed what was going through her mind, he turned and reached for it, tossing it to her. She snatched at it thankfully, and dragged it over her head, her hands fumbling as she sought to reach and close the long back zip.

He watched her efforts for a moment or two, a derisive smile curling his lips, then he moved towards her and she took an instinctive step backwards.

‘Relax,’ he advised curtly. ‘I have no intention of raping you, but you seem to need help.’

‘I don’t need anything from you,’ Helen choked, still struggling ineffectually with that damned zip.

‘You didn’t say that a few hours ago while I was holding your head in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘Besides, I may have damaged the zip when I removed the dress. I was in a hurry and they are fragile things.’

Helen pressed her hands against burning cheeks. ‘You—it was you? Oh, how could you? How dared you?’

‘There was no question of daring,’ he said coolly. ‘I thought English girls gloried in their liberation from outdated conventions. Besides, you were and are perfectly adequately clothed. I daresay you will wear far less when you go swimming on Phoros.’

‘Well, at least you won’t be there to see,’ Helen flashed. ‘I doubt whether Mr Korialis will regard your activities in quite the same liberated way.’

‘So you intend to make use of your Greek parentage when it suits you. I find that interesting.’ He walked over to her before she could retreat again and spun her round, his hands on her shoulders. Helen felt the recalcitrant zip move upwards, and for one infinitely disturbing minute the brush of his fingers strangely cool on the heated skin of her spine. She tensed involuntarily at his touch, and heard him laugh softly.

‘I’m glad I amuse you,’ she said tersely, as she pulled away from him. ‘I think you’ll laugh on the other side of your face when you find yourself out of a job.’

‘You intend that your grandfather should dismiss me?’ he enquired lazily.

‘How right you are!’ She faced him defiantly, her chin up, eyes sparkling.

He shrugged. ‘You can always try, Eleni.’

‘And please don’t call me that. It—it’s familiar.’

‘Which is of course unthinkable,’ he said solemnly. But he was amused, and she knew he was, and it infuriated her.

‘How the hell did you get into my room anyway? Surely the staff wouldn’t have allowed …’

‘Oh, I can be very persuasive when I want. But in this case I didn’t have to be. When I left after attending to your—needs, I simply took your key with me.’ He touched his jacket pocket. ‘I have it here.’

She held out her hand. ‘Give it to me, please.’

‘Why? You won’t need it again. We are leaving soon. As it is, I have had to telephone your grandfather and tell him we have been delayed.’ He paused. ‘He wasn’t pleased, and it is bad for him to suffer any agitation.’

‘And I suppose you made haste to tell him it was all my fault,’ she said with heavy irony.

‘I told him merely that you have been tired by your journey from England, and that the heat had affected you. I did not tell him you had been mad enough to try and explore the Acropolis in the full blaze of noon without allowing yourself to become in any way acclimatised. Michael Korialis is not one of those who—to use your English phrase—suffer fools gladly, and I didn’t wish you to make a bad impression immediately.’

She gave him an outraged look. ‘The implication being that I’ll make one eventually.’

‘I think it is inevitable. You are wilful, disobedient, and have a sharp tongue, and none of these are attributes to appeal to a man who adheres to the old ways like your grandfather. You have a lot to learn about Greece and its men, Eleni.’

‘I’d prefer to have no more lessons from you,’ she said baldly.

He smiled. ‘As you plan to have me dismissed as soon as we get to Phoros, there will be little opportunity for such lessons,’ he said smoothly, but his dark eyes held an odd glint, and Helen bit her lip in sudden uncertainty. Perhaps she shouldn’t have clashed with him quite so openly. Her grandfather had obviously given him a great deal of power, and it had gone to his head. But it might have been better to have waited to declare her enmity until they were safely on Phoros. But she’d not been able to help herself. The thought of him looking at her, touching her when she was sick and helpless made her feel ill all over again.

She should have retaliated after he had kissed her in London, she thought vengefully, as she repacked her small case. She should have hit him or laid his face open with her nails, then he would not have dared take these kind of liberties. And she ignored the small warning voice which suggested that a man like Damon Leandros took what he chose, as he wished, and without counting the cost.

As she worked, she was aware of him watching her, his dark face enigmatic as she thrust her toilet bag on top of her night things, and threw her hairbrush in after them.

As she clicked the locks shut, she ignored his outstretched hand.

‘Perhaps you would bring the others.’ She nodded towards her other cases, standing under the window.

‘I’ll have them brought down, certainly,’ he said evenly, after a pause, and she-suppressed a grin. Beneath his dignity, obviously, to walk behind her carrying two large cases, she thought. Perhaps she had discovered his vulnerable point. He didn’t like to look ridiculous. And that, she thought, with the vaguest germ of an idea forming in her head, could be just too bad for Mr Macho Leandros!

As she walked along the corridor towards the lift, Helen became aware of two excitedly giggling chambermaids observing her from a linen room. She glanced questioningly at Damon, who smiled faintly.

‘They are pleased to see you,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather is a much loved man.’

She felt as if he was waiting for some special response from her, but she could give none. The prospect of meeting her grandfather was becoming more and more formidable.

She entered the lift in silence and stood waiting while her companion pressed the ‘down’ button.

‘How do we get to Phoros?’ she asked at last, more to break the silence than from any desire for information.

‘There is a car waiting to take us to Piraeus. From there we make a journey by sea,’ he said laconically.

‘Oh.’ Helen digested this. ‘I suppose there’s a regular ferry service, even though it’s only a small island?’

‘It runs three times a day.’

The faint wish to make him look ridiculous which had been buzzing in her mind now began to take shape.

It would give her great satisfaction, she thought, to arrive on Phoros alone, having left Damon Leandros ignominiously behind in Athens. She wished she had thought of it earlier while she was still in her room. Perhaps she could have lured him into the bathroom and locked him in somehow, although she had a feeling the only bolt had been on the inside of the door. Well, she would just have to think of something else.

As they emerged from the lift Helen saw her remaining luggage being carried out to the car ahead of them. If this was a sample of the service provided by all her grandfather’s hotels, then it could hardly be faulted, she thought wryly.

‘Don’t we have to—check out or something?’ she asked a little desperately as they moved past the reception desk.

‘That’s all been taken care of.’

‘But my key,’ she persisted. ‘You’ve still got my key.’

‘I left it in the door of your room.’

Oh, blast! Helen thought savagely. If she could have delayed him at reception even for a moment or two she might have been able to get out to the car and persuade the driver to leave without him.

She could hardly believe her own fortune when she heard one of the receptionists call after him, and saw him hesitate with obvious impatience before he turned back towards the desk.

‘You go ahead,’ he directed briefly. ‘I hope only to be a few minutes.’

‘Take as long as you like.’ Helen sent him a dazzling smile. Her heart beating rapidly, she walked towards the door. The car, an opulent vehicle of a make which she didn’t immediately recognise, was drawn up at the kerb, and a man in a chauffeur’s uniform was standing beside it. When he saw Helen coming towards him he threw open the rear passenger door with some ceremony.

She got in, trying to appear calm and in control of the situation.

‘Do you speak English?’ she asked.

‘Only a little, thespinis.’

‘That’s fine.’ She made herself speak slowly and deliberately so that he would understand. ‘I want to leave at once. We must go quickly to catch the ferry.’

The man’s face was a picture of astonishment. He started to say something about Kyrios Leandros, but Helen swiftly interrupted.

‘Kyrios Leandros cannot come with us. He has been delayed.’ She mimed a telephone call. ‘He is too busy. He will come later.’

The driver gave her a long doubtful look, then stared at the hotel entrance as if willing Kyrios Leandros to appear like the Demon King and put an end to his uncertainty. But no one emerged.

‘Please hurry!’ Helen applied a little more pressure. ‘If I miss the ferry, my grandfather Michael Korialis will be angry.’

It was clear the Korialis name had pull with the driver, because with a fatalistic shrug he got into the driving seat and started the car. Helen sat back in her seat, allowing a little relieved sigh to escape her lips. She wished she could be around when Damon Leandros finished taking his phone call, or whatever he was doing, and came out of the hotel to find the car gone and her with it, but you couldn’t have everything in this life, and she was more than content to be speeding towards Piraeus and the Phoros ferry without him.

And let him explain that away to my grandfather along with everything else, she thought.

The drive to Piraeus was a little disappointing, as the road lay through rather dusty suburbs and industrial estates, and the scenery was flat and uninspiring. Helen found it difficult to relax. She felt exhilarated, and a little nervous at the same time, and could not resist taking brief looks back over her shoulder, as if she half expected to see Damon Leandros following them.

But that was impossible, she told herself confidently. He’d have to find another car, and that would take time. She glanced at her watch, wondering what time the Phoros ferry left. The traffic was heavy, and the car was constantly being forced to slow almost to a crawling pace if not stop altogether. But recalling her experience of waiting for the bus, Helen decided that timetables were obviously not as strictly adhered to in Greece as in the rest of creation. Certainly the driver did not seem at all agitated by the frequent delays, and the easiest thing to do was to follow his example.

She sighed in relief as the harbour came in sight, and sat forward, waiting for the car to stop. But it did not stop. The driver steadily threaded his way through the other vehicles both moving and stationary which packed the narrow streets, narrowly avoiding laughing, chattering groups of people who roamed across the crowded highways as if it was just another extension of the narrow footpath.

There seemed to be streamers everywhere, Helen thought dazedly as she stared out of the window, and hundreds of people boarding and disembarking. She only hoped the driver knew what he was doing, and that her escapade would not end in her sailing off into the wide blue yonder on the wrong ship.

She tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Which is the ferry?’ she asked.

But his only response was an owlish look and a faint shrug of the shoulders as if her meaning escaped him.

‘Boat—Phoros,’ she tried again, and this time to her relief he nodded, smiling broadly.

‘Soon, soon, thespinis.’

And with that she had to be content. The car moved on, away from the harbour, and the scent of exhaust fumes mingling with the more pervasive odours of charcoal grills and olive oil, and out on to a winding road. Helen twisted round, staring at the clustering vessels they were leaving behind. She could only hope the driver knew what he was doing as they left the vast sprawl of the waterfront behind them. The road they were on seemed to have been carved out of the vast cliffs themselves, and some of the views were spectacular, she had to admit. She was intrigued too by the numerous little shrines and grottoes which were dotted along the wayside. Thank-offerings, she supposed, but to which gods—the ancient or the modern? Perhaps in a country like Greece the old pagan undercurrents still ran strong.

The road turned downhill, and she saw another smaller harbour beneath them, where sleek motor launches and small yachts lay at anchor. It looked the last place in the world where a public ferry for a small place like Phoros would leave from, and she leaned forward frowning a little.

The driver looked back at her, as if aware of her uncertainty, and pointed downwards, saying something in his own tongue which clearly intended to be reassuring. She made herself smile back, but her tension showed in her smile. She was at the end of one journey, perhaps, but at the beginning of another. And at the end of it was a man who, although unseen, had seemed to dominate her childhood and adolescence, on whose character, whose pride, arrogance and lack of compassion she had speculated so often and to so little avail. Yet soon they would meet, and her stomach churned involuntarily at the thought. If her grandfather could be judged by the calibre of the men he chose to employ, she thought, then resolutely switched her mind to other less disturbing ideas. He had sent for her, he wanted to see her, so surely that indicated a softening of his earlier implacable attitude. Or at least she had to hope so, or the few weeks she was committed to spending in Greece could well be unendurable.

She wished she had never allowed herself to be persuaded to come to Greece, if persuasion was the word. Emotional blackmail might be more appropriate, she thought bitterly, remembering how Damon Leandros had deliberately played on her heightened sensibilities. He was to blame. He was to blame for everything.

The car drove slowly along the waterfront, past open-air cafes whose gay awnings fluttered in the slight evening breeze. There were people everywhere, tourists tentatively sipping their first tastes of ouzo and retsina, and the usual anonymous groups of men talking, the bright strings or worry beads in their hands moving incessantly as they gestured to lend emphasis to their remarks. The main waterfront at Piraeus had almost been too crowded to assimilate, but here Helen had time to look around her and take in some of the atmosphere.

It was soon obvious that the driver was no stranger here, and this in itself was a reassurance to her. The car was recognised and voices called and hands lifted in greeting, to which he responded. He drove slowly along the curve of the quayside almost to the far end before stopping. Then he turned to Helen.

‘Boat here, thespinis,’ he announced.

There certainly was a boat, but not the small, rather scruffy steamer she had ruefully envisaged as the most likely craft to be plying between Piraeus and an unimportant island. It was a large, impressive cruiser with cabin accommodation, and what appeared to be a sun deck with an awning. And was that a radio mast? she wondered in bewilderment.

The driver had opened her door by this time and was standing patiently waiting for her to alight.

Helen gestured weakly at the cruiser. ‘This?’ she asked with a shake of her head.

He nodded vigorously. ‘Phoros boat, thespinis. You hurry. They wait for you.’

How very obliging of them, Helen thought, sudden amusement rising within her. Her suspicions about the timetable were apparently totally justified, and she would bet the other passengers were blessing her by now.

A flight of steps led down from the harbour wall, and at the bottom a man in a white uniform was waiting to help her on board. Helen waited while her luggage was speedily transferred to the cruiser, and smiled as the driver returned up the steps.

‘Efharisto,’ she said shyly, trying out one of the few Greek words she knew.

‘Parakalo.’ He removed his cap. ‘Go with God, thespinis.’

The cruiser had indeed been waiting for her, Helen decided, because as soon as her feet touched the deck it seemed to become a hive of discreet activity, and she could feel the throb of powerful engines springing into life. Her cases had vanished, she noticed, and she stood feeling rather solitary, and a little lost.

A man wearing jeans, and a pale blue vest which showed off a powerful torso and arms, went past her, and Helen detained him with a quick ‘Oh, please!’ He paused, looking at her enquiringly.

She shrugged rather helplessly. ‘Where are the passengers?’ she asked. ‘How long does it take to get to Phoros?’

He spread his hands out in front of him. ‘Then sas katavaleno, thespinis.’

‘You don’t speak English,’ Helen said resignedly, and turned away, to find the man in the white uniform beside her.

‘Welcome to the Phaedra, Miss Brandon,’ he said with a heavy accent. ‘It is pleasant on deck, ne? But there are refreshments below, if you prefer.’

Some coffee, Helen thought longingly. The scents and flavours emanating from the tavernas they had passed on the way here had served to remind her just how hungry she was, and how Damon Leandros had rushed her off from the hotel without allowing her to order the soup she had craved.

‘I’d like to go below,’ she said rather shyly. She looked round the deck. ‘Is—are the other passengers there too?’

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