Moon Of Aphrodite. Sara Craven
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.’