couture suit. Her hair was pulled back off her face into a tight chignon—no sign of the soft waves that had once played around her shoulders.
Her face was white. Stark. Still marked by tears shed at the graveside.
Memory flashed into his head of how she’d stood trembling beside the bonnet of his car as she broke down into incoherent sobs when he yelled at her for her stupidity in walking right in front of his car. How appalled he’d been at her reaction...how he’d wanted to stop those tears.
The blade twisted in him...
‘What are you doing here?’
Her question was terse, tight-lipped, and she did not advance into the room, only closed the double doors behind her. There was something different about her voice, and it took Anatole a moment to realise that it was not just her blank, hostile tone, but her accent. Her voice was as crisp, as crystalline, as if she had been born to all this.
Her appearance echoed that impression. The severity of the suit, her hairstyle, and the poise with which she held herself, all contributed.
‘My uncle is dead. Why else do you think I’m here?’ His voice was as terse as hers. It was necessary to be so—it was vital.
Something seemed to pass across her eyes. ‘Do you want to see his will? Is that it?’
There was defiance in her voice now—he could hear it.
A cynical cast lit his dark eyes. ‘What for? He’ll have left you everything, after all.’ He paused—a deadly pause. ‘Isn’t that why you married him?’
It was a rhetorical question, one he already knew the answer to.
She whitened, but did not flinch. ‘He left some specific items for you. I’m going to have them couriered to you as soon as I’ve been granted probate.’
She paused, he could see it, as if gathering strength. Then she spoke again, her chin lifting, defiance in her voice—in her very stance.
‘Anatole, why have you come here? What for? I’m sorry if you wanted the funeral to be in Athens. Vasilis specifically did not want that. He wanted to be buried here. He was friends with the vicar—they shared a common love of Aeschylus. The vicar read Greats at Oxford, and he and Vasilis would cap quotations with each other. They liked Pindar too—’
She broke off. Was she mad, rabbiting on about Ancient Greek playwrights and poets? What did Anatole care?
He was looking at her strangely, as if what she had said surprised him. She wasn’t sure why. Surely he would not be surprised to find that his erudite uncle had enjoyed discussing classical Greek literature with a fellow scholar, even one so far away from Greece?
‘The vicar is quite a Philhellene...’ she said, her voice trailing off.
She took another breath. Got back to the subject in hand. Tension was hauling at her muscles, as if wires were suspending her.
‘Please don’t think of...of... I don’t know...disinterring his coffin to take it back to Greece. He would not wish for that.’
Anatole gave a quick shake of his head, as if the thought had not occurred to him as he’d stood there, watching the farce playing out in the churchyard—Tia grieving beside the grave of the man she’d inveigled into committing the most outrageous act of folly—marrying her, a woman thirty years his junior.
‘So what are you doing here?’
Her question came again, and he brought his mind back to it. What was he doing here? To put it into words was impossible. It had been an instinct—overpowering—an automatic decision not even consciously made. To... To what?
‘I’m here to pay my respects,’ he heard his own voice answer.
He saw her expression change, as if he’d just said something quite unbelievable.
‘Well, not to me!’ There was derision in her voice—but it was not targeted at him, he realised. He frowned, focussing on her face.
He felt his muscles clench. Thee mou, how beautiful she was! The natural loveliness that had so enchanted him, captivated him, that had inspired him so impulsively to take her into his life, had matured into true beauty. Beauty that had a haunting quality. A sorrow—
Does she feel sorrow at my uncle’s death? Can she really feel that?
No, surely there could be only relief that she was now free of a man thirty years her senior—free to enjoy all the money he had left her. Yet again that spike drove into him. He hated what she had become. What he himself had made her.
‘Anatole, I know perfectly well what you think of me, so don’t prate hypocrisies to me! Tell me why you’re here.’ And now he saw her shoulders stiffen, her chin rise defiantly. ‘If it’s merely to heap abuse on my head for having dared to do what I did, then I will simply send you packing. I’m not answerable to you and nor—’ the tenor of her voice changed now, and there was a viciousness in it that was like the edge of a blade ‘—are you answerable to me, either. As you have already had occasion to point out!’
She took another sharp intake of breath.
‘Our lives are separate—you made sure of that. And I... I accepted it. You gave me no choice. I had no claim on you—and you most certainly have no claim on me now, nor any say in my decisions. Or those your uncle made either. He married me of his own free will—and if you don’t like that...well, get over it!’
If she’d sprouted snakes for hair, like Medusa, Anatole could not have been more shocked by her. Was this the Tia he remembered? This aggressive harpy? Lashing out at him, her eyes hard and angry?
Tia saw the shock in his face and could have laughed savagely—but laughing was far beyond her on this most gruelling of days. She could feel her heart-rate going insane and knew that she was in shock, as well as still feeling the emotional battering of losing Vasilis—however long it had been expected—and burying him that very day.
To have in front of her now the one man in the entire world she had dreaded seeing again was unbearable. It was unbearable to look at the man who had once been so dear to her.
She lifted a hand, as if to ward him off. ‘Anatole, I don’t know why you’ve come here, and I don’t care—we’ve nothing left to say to each other. Nothing!’ She shut her eyes, then opened them again with a heavy breath. ‘I’m sure you grieve for your uncle... I know you were fond of him and he of you. He did not seek this breach with you—’
She felt her throat closing again and could not continue. Wanted him only to go.
‘What will you do with this place?’
Anatole’s voice cut across her aching thoughts.
‘I suppose you’ll sell up and take yourself off to revel in your ill-gotten inheritance?’
She swallowed. How could it hurt that Anatole spoke to her in such a way? She knew what he thought of her marriage to Vasilis.
‘I’ve no intention of selling up,’ she replied coldly, taking protection behind her tone. ‘This is my home, with many good memories.’
Something
