The Tower of the Winds, Page 3

  'Yes, of course she was your sister,' he agreed. 'It is fitting that you should mourn for her. But mourn for the girl that she was, not the woman she had become, for she was someone you did not know—'

  'Of course I knew my own sister!' Charity exclaimed.

  He smiled slightly. 'How many years were there between you? Ten?'

  'Eight,' she admitted. 'But Hope is only one year younger than Faith, and she knew her too!'

  Loukos bit back whatever it was he had been about to say. 'Shall we go?' he said instead.

  Charity hesitated. ''I think I'd rather go back to my room. 'I m-may start to cry again, and I don't want to embarrass you.'

  He didn't look as though he would be easily embarrassed, but what man could possibly want to escort her throbbing face anywhere? She stepped further back into the shadows and attempted a small, shy smile.

  'No,' he said positively. 'You are not going to cry any more. There will be no time for that! We shall be very gay and think only of the future.' A smile crept into his eyes. 'This may be the last holiday you will have by yourself before you marry, have you thought of that? I shall do my

  best to show you all that you are going to miss!'

  Charity cast him a startled look. 'Oh, but—' she began.

  'How long did you plan to stay in Athens?' he asked her.

  'I don't know. Over Christmas at least. But I don't know that 'I shall stay - now.'

  Loukos placed her wrap around her shoulders and led her out from the hothouse atmosphere of the hotel into the cool night. 'Why don't you ask your young man to come out here to you for Christmas?'

  Colin? Out here? She was shaken by the very idea. It would be fun to have someone with whom to see the sights, but she felt that it would also involve a commitment to him that she was far from ready to make quite yet.

  ''I don't know,' she said.

  He put her in the car, his brilliant eyes meeting hers. 'Because you're not sure? Or because you still think that you may be taking Alexandres home with you?' he challenged her.

  Her eyes dropped to the dashboard. 'I don't think that's any business of yours!' she claimed.

  'But I mean to know! You are not having Alexandros, Miss Archer. You will be far happier when you have faced up to that.'

  'Then I'll ask Colin if he'd like to come to Athens. Only the fare isn't cheap and - and I don't know how he's placed just at the moment.' She thought herself that she might well have been thinking of Colin's pocket when she had hesitated, but Loukos Papandreous was not deceived.

  ''I shall be interested to see this young man of yours,' he said. 'I will invite you both to my house some time over the holiday. It will be good for him as he knows that your father is dead and that you have no brother.'

  Charity was robbed of speech for a long moment. Could he really be intending to vet her boy-friend? And if so, why? She was nothing to him, and she had been making all her

  own decisions for more years than she liked to count.

  'Don't you ever mind your own business?' she asked.

  But Loukos only laughed. 'Is he so impossible?' he countered.

  'Of course not!' she denied with some heat. 'Then why should you object?'

  She strove to find the words to tell him, words that he could not possibly misunderstand, that she ran her own life and would not thank him to tell her what to do whatever his intentions.

  'I've known Colin for years!' was what she actually said. ''I know him as well as I know anyone!'

  'Of course. But, Kyria Charity, you are a woman and cannot possibly see him in quite the same way as a man will. You must allow me to do this for you. We are connected by your sister's marriage to my brother, so it is perfectly proper for me to ensure that this Colin will be a suitable husband for you. You must tell me all about him while we eat.'

  Charity had no intention of doing anything of the sort. She flounced round in her seat and studied the Christmas lights that decorated the streets of Athens. It was a curious thing about Athens, she thought, that it seemed to be in the wrong place. It had a look of a modern German city, without any of the Greek grace that pictures of the Parthenon and other Greek ruins had led her to expect. It was a bourgeois city, full of blocks of apartments and small family shops. Department stores, such as she was used to in London, seemed to be non-existent.

  'It doesn't look Greek,' she said, forgetting her anger with her companion.

  'Perhaps because it was laid out by Bavarian architects,' he answered. 'Our first king in modern times was a Bavarian prince, King Otto. His queen laid out the gardens by the old royal palace. You must visit them. They are very beautiful.'

  'Am 'I to be allowed out with Colin by myself?' she asked, her voice dripping sarcasm. ''I can hardly believe it!' 'It will depend—' 'On what?' she flashed back.

  He cast her one of his brilliant looks. 'On what this Colin is like, for one thing. And on what you are like, for another.'

  He touched her hand in a brief moment of contact. 'Faith should have insisted that you came to Greece as soon as your father died. It was not right to leave you alone, with no one to protect you. 'I cannot approve! Where have you been living?'

  Charity bit her lip. 'In my father's house,' she told him. 'Which is now yours?'

  'Well, no, not exactly. It belongs to all three of us.'

  'Then you will not be living there when you marry?'

  He was way ahead of her. She frowned thoughtfully in the darkness. ''I haven't thought about it. 'I hope not! It's a large, depressing place, with huge, very dark rooms downstairs and a vast number of freezing bedrooms upstairs.'

  'But this Colin would like to live there?'

  Charity was annoyed by Loukos' persistence. What did it matter where Colin wanted to live? ''I shouldn't think so,' she muttered.

  He parked the car neatly in the square by the Tower of the Winds and came round to her side of the car, opening the door for her. As she stepped out, he put his hand beneath her chin and tipped up her face to meet the light from the lamp above them.

  'No more tears,' he said very gently. 'No more sadness, for this evening at least. Is it a pact?'

  She smiled weakly. 'No more tears,' she agreed. 'I have wept for these things once already.'

  'So?' he teased her. 'You are a scholar also that you can quote from our Greek plays? Can you also name the author?'

  That was a much harder task. ''I think it may be Euripides,' she said, stepping away from him, because she was more conscious than she liked of his firm touch under her chin.

  His brilliant look rested lightly on her face. 'Did you learn our plays at school?'

  'No. I'm ashamed to say that I've read hardly any of them. That was a flash in the pan. It came into my mind and out it came!'

  'Ah!' he laughed. 'It was your red hair speaking! I like it better when you forget to consider every word that you say.'

  He might, but she preferred a decent reserve when she was speaking to one who was still a stranger to her. He began to walk down one of the narrow streets of the Plaka, now alive with bouzouki music and laughter. His breadth of shoulder and his air of certainty were very tempting to her. How nice it would have been if she could have relied on him, but she couldn't. She hadn't yet determined whether he was friend or foe, but she suspected that, as far as Faith was concerned, he was the latter, and that made him her enemy too.

  'Kyrie,it's kind of you to concern yourself with my affairs, but I've looked after myself for a long time now. I prefer it that way—'

  He turned his head, dismissing her careful speech with a contemptuous gesture. 'No woman can prefer it that way!'

  'But I do!'

  He shrugged. 'It is of no moment.' He held out his hand to her. 'Come, Charity, you must be hungry and we have many things to discuss before we go to Arachova and Delphi in the morning.'

  She hurried after him. 'Oh? What?' she asked him.

  'To begin with I still wish to read your sister's letter. You have it with you?'

  She nod
ded. 'Loukos, what are you going to do with little Alexander? I think I have a right to know that at least before 'I go back to England.'

  For once he avoided her gaze and she knew that the question was unwelcome to him. 'When the decision has been made you will certainly be told,' he answered stiffly. 'I will not forget that you are the boy's aunt and will wish to see him from time to time, but it is I who will decide his future.'

  'Won't you even discuss it?' she begged.

  'I see no reason to do so. If this Colin is the man you say he is, he may be useful when we come to a decision. That is why I wish him to come here.'

  'But it has nothing to do with Colin!' she protested. 'And it has a great deal to do with me!'

  He came to a standstill, frowning fiercely at her. ''I thought you were thinking of marrying this man?'

  'What if I am?'

  Loukos spread his hands in a comprehensive gesture. 'When he is your husband, he will naturally take command of your affairs, and so it is better that he should play his part from the beginning.'

  'But you don't understand!'

  He silenced her with a movement of his hand. 'Ftani pya!That will do! A pretty woman should have better things to do than to quarrel over things she should not be worried about. And you are a very pretty woman!'

  She was startled into silence. She was, of course, extremely angry that he should patronize her, and dismiss her opinions for no other reason than that she was a woman, but she couldn't help a sneaking excitement that he should think her pretty. Very pretty,he had said, and if he thought so now when her eyes were all bloated from the tears she had shed, he must really think that she was a little good-looking.

  She followed him into the taverna,blinking at the lights,

  noise, and zest for living that filled the crowded tables all about her. A waiter came forward with a smile and showed them to a table, his words of greeting completely drowned in the fever of activity with which the dancers threw themselves into the dance of the moment. Loukos smilingly accepted a menu and gave a rapid order before handing the card back to the waiter. Charity, resigned to not being consulted, looked about her with interest, catching the eye of the young boy who ran from table to table, bringing their orders for wine and ouzo from somewhere down the street. He kissed his hand to her and she averted her eyes as if she had been stung. Good heavens, she thought, he couldn't have been a day older than twelve!

  Loukos gave her a look of amusement which embarrassed her still further. 'What did I tell you? He, too, thinks you are pretty!'

  'He ought to be at school!' she choked.

  He laughed out loud. 'A Greek will tell a woman that she pleases him when he is still in the cradle!'

  'Really?' she said softly. 'And what about her? She must be very confused to find herself suddenly desirable, if her opinion is ignored as if she were a fool at all other times!'

  Loukos grinned. 'There is a difference, but it is not for me to point it out to you. Nor do I consider you a fool, Charity Archer, but I will allow that you are confused! Too much has happened to you today. You will feel better when you have had a good night's sleep, and not nearly so tetchy.'

  'Tetchy?'she repeated, wondering where he had learned such a word. 'Let me tell you, I've been a model of sweet reason! Whereas you—! You're impossible! I don't believe even the Greeks—'

  His eyes were brighter than ever. 'Yes, Miss Archer?'

  'Oh, you don't listen to anything I say!' she objected.

  'It is hard to concentrate on your words when the look in your eyes is saying something much more interesting! Naturally it will occur to any Greek how pleasant it would be to

  make love to you, but for the moment you are safe with me, and not because you have been crying, but because you are alone and have no means to protect yourself. Does that satisfy you?'

  She stared at him, wide-eyed. 'Am I supposed to be complimented?'

  He shrugged, amused. 'As you like,' he drawled.

  Well, really!But it was she who looked away first, feeling suddenly breathless and very, very conscious of the appreciation in his dark eyes. She found herself wondering what it would be like to feel his mouth on hers, to touch the smooth brown of his skin, even to feel his arms about her. It was a very disturbing thought, and one she had never caught herself thinking before. Indeed, she was more than a little shocked that such improper notions about any man should have crept up on her and taken her by storm, for now it was in her mind she couldn't get it out again, and she was almost sure that he knew it.

  'You - you wanted to see my sister's letter,' she reminded him hastily, determined to change the conversation. She searched in her bag and drew out the letter, pushing it across the table to make sure that there was no chance of their fingers touching. 'You can see how frightened she was. Andthat she wanted me to have Alexander!'

  He read the letter without looking at her, a slight frown between his eyes. 'Very dramatic!' he commented. 'Is this the only letter you've had from her, or did she leave one for you at your hotel?'

  She was surprised at the question. 'But it says I was to meet her at the Tower of the Winds. She was going to tell me everything then, so why should she write to me again? Besides, she didn't like writing letters.'

  He handed her back the letter. 'She must have had great confidence in you,' he remarked. 'There is no address for you to write back to.'

  'But I had her address— I mean, I had an Athens address

  that I always wrote to. I didn't know she was living somewhere else.'

  'In Arachova? I wonder why she didn't tell you. They had sold their apartment in Athens nearly a year ago. It was fortunate that your letter was delivered to me and that I opened it. I had already been through all my brother's papers and I recognized your writing on the envelope—'

  'But I never wrote to Nikos!'

  The twinkle of amusement came back into his eyes. 'Your sister shared his desk,' he told her. 'All your letters were there, interspersed with bills and other letters to do with Nikos' work.'

  'Oh,' said Charity. 'I hadn't thought that he might read them!'

  'Why not? He wasFaith's husband.'

  'I suppose you've read them too!' she went on crossly. 'Well, it wasn't my fault that they didn't say much. Faith never told me what she was doing, so they were bound to be a bit one-sided.'

  'Will you believe me that I didn't mean to read them at first? I wanted your address to let you know about your sister, but you write well and I found I wanted to know more about you.'

  Charity sighed and then she smiled. 'As long as you realize you had no right to read them!'

  'Only the last one,' he consented. 'It would not have done to have left you waiting at the Tower of the Winds for ever. There is no need to wonder what you said in those other letters, they spoke only of your father's illness, and of the house where you lived. Did you have no fun, Charity, in all those years?'

  'Of course I did!' she protested. 'My father was very ill right at the end, but before that—' She broke off, seeing the taut look on his face. 'What's the matter?' she asked him.

  He dismissed her enquiry with a twisted smile. ''I was thinking, that's all. It seems to me you were very young to