house idyll in an English village.’
‘I shall endeavour to do so.’ Christine did not bother to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Why should she? Anatole was making assumptions about her...as he had done before.
A stab went through her, painful and hurtful, but she ignored it.
Again something flashed in his eyes. ‘You’re a young woman still, Tia—and now that you have all my uncle’s wealth to flaunt you can take your pick of men.’ His voice twisted. ‘And this time around they won’t need to be thirty years older than you. You can choose someone young and handsome, even if they’re penniless!’
His tone grew harsher still.
‘I’d prefer it if you took yourself off to some flash resort where you can party all night and keep your married name out of the tabloid rags!’
Christine felt her expression harden. Was there any limit to how he was going to insult her? ‘I’m in mourning, Anatole. I’m not likely to go off and party with hand-picked gigolos.’
She took another heaving breath, turning around to open the double doors.
‘Please leave now, Anatole. We’ve nothing to say to each other. Nothing.’
Pointedly, she waited for him to walk into the wide, parquet-floored hall. There was no sign of Mrs Hughes, and Christine was glad. How much the housekeeper—or anyone else—knew about the Kyrgiakis clan, she didn’t know and didn’t want to think about. Providing everything was kept civil on the surface, that was all that mattered.
Anatole was simply her late husband’s nephew, calling to pay his respects on his uncle’s death. No reason for Mrs Hughes to think anything else.
With his long stride Anatole walked past her, and Christine caught the faint scent of his aftershave. Familiar—so very familiar.
Memory rushed through her and she felt her body sway with emotion. For a second it was so overwhelmingly powerful she wanted to catch his hand, throw herself into his arms, and sob. To feel his arms go about her, feel him hold her, cradle her, feel his strong chest support her, feel his closeness, his protection. Sob out her grief for his uncle—her grief for so much more.
But Anatole was gone from her. Separated from her as by a thousand miles, by ten thousand. Separated from her by what she had done—what he had thought she had done. There was nothing left to bring them together again—not now. Not ever.
This is the last time I shall set eyes on him. It has to be—because I could not bear to see him again.
There was a tearing pain inside her as these words framed in her head—a pain for all that had been, that had not been, that could never be...
He didn’t look at her as he strode past her, as he headed for the large front door. His face was set, closed. She had seen it like that before, that last terrible day in Athens, and she had never wanted to see him look like that again. Like stone, crushing her pathetic hopes.
A silent cry came from her heart.
And then, from the top of the staircase that swept up from the back of the wide hallway to the upper storey of the house, came another cry. Audible this time.
‘Mumma!’
* * *
Anatole froze. Not believing what he had heard. Froze with his hand on the handle of the door that would take him from the house, his heart infused with blackness.
Slowly he turned. Saw, as if in slow motion, a middle-aged woman in a nanny’s uniform descending the stairs, holding by the hand a young child to stop him rushing down too fast. Saw them reach the foot of the staircase and the tiny figure tear across the hall to Tia. Saw her scoop him up, hug him, and set him down again gently.
‘Hello, munchkin. Have you been good for Nanny?’
Tia’s voice was warm, affectionate, and something about it caused a sliver of pain in Anatole’s breast, penetrating his frozen shock.
‘Yes!’ the little boy cried. ‘We’ve done painting. Come and see.’
‘I will, darling, in a little while,’ he heard her answer, with that same softness in her voice—a softness he remembered from long, long ago, that sent another sliver of pain through him.
The child’s eyes went past her, becoming aware of someone standing by the front door.
‘Hello,’ he said in his piping voice.
His bright gaze looked right at Anatole. Clearly interested. Waiting for a response.
But Anatole could make none. Could only go on standing there, frozen, as knowledge forced itself into his head like a power hose being turned on.
Theos—she has a son.
He dragged his eyes from the child—the sable-haired, dark-eyed child—to the woman who was the boy’s mother. Shock was in his eyes still. Shock, and more than shock. An emotion that seemed to well up out of a place so deep within him he did not know it was there. He could give it no name.
‘I didn’t know—’ His voice broke off.
Did her hand tighten on the child’s? He could see her face take on an expression of reserve, completely at odds with the warmth of a moment again when she’d been hugging her child.
‘Why should you?’ she returned coolly. Her chin lifted slightly. ‘This is Nicky.’ Her eyes dropped to her son. ‘Nicky, this is your—’
She stopped. For a second it seemed to Anatole that a kind of paralysis had come over her face.
It was he who filled the gap. Working out just what his relationship was to the little boy. ‘Your cousin,’ he said.
Nicky cast him an even more interested look. ‘Have you come to play with me?’ he asked.
Immediately both his nanny and his mother intervened.
‘Now, Nicky, not everyone who comes here comes to play with you,’ his nanny said, her reproof very mild and given as if it were a routine reminder.
‘Munchkin, no—your...your cousin is here because of poor Pappou—’
The moment she spoke Christine wished desperately that she hadn’t. But she was in no state to think straight. It was taking every ounce of what little remaining strength she had just to remain where she was, to cope with this nightmare scenario playing out, helpless to stop it. Helpless to do anything but hang on in there until finally—dear God, finally—the front door closed behind Anatole and she could collapse.
‘Pappou?’
The single word from Anatole was like a bullet. A bullet right through her. She stared, aghast at what she’d said.
Grandfather.
She could only stare blindly at Anatole. She had to explain, to make sense of what she’d said—what she’d called Vasilis.
But she was spared the ordeal. At her words Nicky’s little
