His Forbidden Bride (26 page)

'I think it's al changed a lot since she was there—and Aunt Megan.' She

paused. 'Have you seen her lately?'

'No, but they're all grumbling about her at the Garden Club. They say she

was impossible at the last meeting— fal ing out with everyone.'

On the way home Zoe cal ed at her aunt's house. She rang the bel , and

knocked, but there was no reply, although she was convinced there was

someone at home.

She must have known I'd come looking for her, and taken evasive action,

Zoe thought as she turned away.

When she reached home she wrote a cheque for her share of the ticket her

aunt had bought, and put it in an envelope with a brief note of thanks.

Two days later it was posted back, torn to pieces.

Steve wrote to say that he was missing her, and that there had been some

rain. He telephoned, too, and she thought he sounded sad. She wondered if

the date for Andreas' wedding had been fixed, but he did not mention it, and

she could not bear to ask.

His lawyers in Athens sent documentation confirming that the Vil a Danaë

now belonged to her, and she wrote back, asking them to place it on the

market, and detailing what they should do with the money it fetched.

She bought educational journals, and studied the employment columns. She

applied for several jobs in various parts of the country, and was interviewed

for two of them. She was offered the second, a post in a city school with a

headmaster who was battling successful y to move out of the doldrums, and

up the league tables, and accepted it.

She found a renovated terrace house a few streets away from the school,

and applied for a mortgage.

Everything was going according to plan—except that it al seemed to be

happening at some great distance. Someone who looked like her, and

spoke like her, was performing all these actions, but she herself was

standing on the sidelines, observing and uninvolved.

The autumn term started, and she began to work out her notice. She and

George ate their sandwiches together, and once a week went out for a drink

after work.

'Mother doesn't seem to see so much of your aunt Megan these days,' he

told her on one of these occasions. 'Not since she made that scene over you

being in Thania.'

Zoe shrugged. 'I don't see her either. I've been to the house twice, but if

she's there she won't answer the door. And Adele says she's resigned from

nearly al the groups she belonged to. It's as if she's turning into a recluse.'

'I know the feeling,' he said glumly. 'I saw in the paper they're starting

line-dancing classes. Do you think I should join?'

She grinned at him affectionately. 'Go for it, George,' she told him. 'What

have you got to lose?'

By the end of September, the weather was colder, with high winds and

heavy rain.

'Lousy forecast for the weekend,' the bus driver remarked as he pulled up at

her stop on Friday afternoon.

Lousy weekend anyway, thought Zoe, her arms aching under the weight of

the briefcase full of marking that she was carrying. She couldn't run because

of it, and she was drenched and cross by the time she reached the flat.

She peeled off her wet mackintosh, and lit the gas fire before sitting down to

look at the small pile of envelopes waiting for her. There was one with a

Greek stamp, and she opened that first. It was from Steve's lawyers, stating

there had been an offer of the ful asking price for the Vil a Danaë, and that,

if it was acceptable to her, they would prepare the paperwork.

So, that was the end of that, she thought, and sat for a long time, staring at

the steady blue flame of the fire, and hoping it had been bought by someone

who would live in it and love it.

She was just about to start on preparations for her evening meal when the

telephone rang.

'Miss Lambert?' It was not a voice she recognised. 'I'm sorry to bother you,

but I'm a bit concerned about your aunt, Mrs Arnold, and I didn't know who

else to speak to.'

'I don't understand,' Zoe said. 'Who are you?'

'My name's Ferris, and I clean for her. She always pays me on Fridays, only

she was out this morning, and when I went back just now she didn't answer

the door. And I know she's there because the drawing-room light's on, and

the curtains aren't drawn—and, Miss Lambert, she's sitting there rocking

herself back and forwards, and she looks ghastly. The place is a mess, too.

There's things broken, and even a chair pushed over.

'It made me feel real y frightened. I thought of calling the police, and then I

remembered you, and I don't think she's got anyone else.'

'No,' Zoe said. 'I don't think she has.' She thought for a moment I'l get a

cab, and come straight away, but there's no guarantee she'l let me in either.

It may have to be the police.'

As soon as she got there she could see why plump, sensible Mrs Ferris had

been so alarmed. Aunt Megan looked like a crazy woman, her hair all over

the place, staring in front of her, her mouth open and moving as she rocked.

Everything seemed to be locked, but Zoe realised the key had been left on

the inside of the conservatory door.

Oh, God, she thought as she picked up a stone and smashed a pane. Aunt

Megan's pride and joy. She unlocked the door and went in, Mrs Ferris

fol owing uncertainly.

'Shall I come with you, miss?'

'No, I'l talk to her first. But if you could make some tea it would be good.'

She stopped at the drawing-room door, thinking that she would rather be

anywhere but there, then tapped lightly and went in.

Aunt Megan was still in the same chair, hugging herself, and keening in a

low voice.

Zoe went over to her, stepping over fragments of smashed porcelain and

torn paper, and knelt beside the chair, avoiding a crumpled newspaper, and

a big leather-covered book lying on the floor at Mrs Arnold's feet.

She said gently, 'Aunt Megan, it's Zoe. What's wrong? Has someone broken

in?'

Her aunt turned her head slowly, and looked at her. 'Broken,' she said

hoarsely. 'Yes—al broken, al those years ago. And never mended. And

now it's too late.'

'I don't understand,' Zoe told her. 'Please tel me what's troubling you. I'd like to help.'

'No one—no one can help me. Because they've al gone now. I

thought—one day—I would go back. I'd see him one last time. But the girl

went instead, and I knew she'd tel him that I lied to him. And then he

wouldn't want to see me.'

'And I couldn't have that, because I always thought I'd be able to tel

him—how I felt. Make him look at me as he used to look at her. And now it's

too late. Al too late.' She was crying, huge, slow tears that trickled down her

face and dripped into her lap.

Zoe swallowed. She felt as if she were tiptoeing through a minefield. But she

had to ask, just the same.

She said, 'Aunt Megan, do you mean Steve Dragos.'

'Stephanos!' The older woman glared at her, then subsided. 'Such a

beautiful name, and he was so handsome too—like a Greek god. I'd hurt my

ankle, you know, and he lifted me up, held me in his arms. I knew there and

then that I wanted him to go on touching me for the rest of my life, but he

never did so again.'

She looked down at Zoe. 'Because she came, and it was al different. He

was stil kind to me, but he only looked at her.

She shook her head. 'She left him, you know, because he was a married

man, and his wife wouldn't divorce him. I would never have left I would have

stayed with him always, if he'd asked me. I wouldn't have cared.'

She wrung her hands together. 'Why did he never ask? Why didn't he want

me instead of her?

'And then she told me that she was going back to him, because she was

having his child. And I thought of them together, making the baby, and I

couldn't bear it. So I laughed, and said, "Then that makes two of us." I told her that he'd been sleeping with me too all the time. That one woman would

never be enough for him.'

Zoe said, 'And she—believed you?'

'I was her sister. Her older sister who took care of her. And he was a rich

man, who was unfaithful to his wife. She knew there'd been others before

her. I think she was secretly afraid that he wouldn't be able to stop his

womanising, no matter how much he loved her.

'And I'd been il with a tummy bug. I let her think I was sick because I was

pregnant. Yes, she believed me, because I was confirming al her doubts, all

her worst fears about him.

'I remember she said, "I must think" and she went away from me out of the house, into the street, and a car knocked her down. She wasn't badly

hurt—just cuts and bruises— except for the baby, of course. Stephanos'

baby.'

Zoe was scarcely breathing. 'You mean my mother had a—miscarriage?'

'She was weak,' said Megan Arnold. 'She let his baby die. If she'd been

strong like me, a little accident like that would have made no difference. I

would have given him children. I didn't care that they would have been

bastards. But she cared. It was always the moral high ground with Gina. She

blamed herself for loving him. She expected to be punished for it.' She

smiled, suddenly, gloatingly. 'And I punished her.'

Zoe felt icy cold. Her teeth began to chatter. 'What did she say when she

realised you weren't having a baby.'

'I told her it had been a mistake, but that next time I'd make sure.' She

giggled almost girlishly. 'She believed that, too. Convinced herself that he

wanted me more than her.' She shook her head. 'It made her quite il . But

she stopped reading his letters, even though he wrote and wrote to her. Not

a word to me—just to her, although I pretended I got letters.'

'She moved right away—got a job, and met someone else. Oh, he wasn't

like Stephanos, but he loved her, and she knew she could trust him always,

so she settled for that. And then she had you. The perfect little family, and I

hated her for that.'

She sat upright. 'I went back to Thania. I saw Stephanos at his house. I told

him that I'd always loved him. That I'd be anything he wanted—do anything

that he wanted. I think I even went on my knees to him. But he took no

notice. I don't think he even realised what I was saying. He just wanted to

ask about—her. And about his baby.'

'At first, I was going to tel him about the miscarriage, because I wanted to

hurt him as he was hurting me. And then I realised that it would upset him

far more to think he had a child that he would never be allowed to see. So I

told him that Gina had a little girl, and she'd married someone else, so that

his child would have a name. And that she never wanted to see him again.'

'How could you?' Zoe said slowly. 'How could you do those things—tel

those lies—ruin two people's lives?'

'Because I saw him first,' said Megan Arnold. 'And he should have wanted

me, not her.' She began to cry again. 'Everyone always wanted her. Even

when I got married, my husband thought she was wonderful. And now he's

gone, and so has she.'

She looked down at the crumpled newspaper, and moaned softly. 'And so

has my Stephanos.'

Zoe's lips parted in a soundless gasp. 'What are you talking about?' she

demanded hoarsely.

'He's dead,' the older woman said tonelessly. 'Very suddenly. A heart attack.

I read it in the paper—in the business section. I was looking for the share

prices, and I saw it. I've lost him for ever.'

Zoe spread out the paper, smoothing the creases with shaking hands. She

found it almost at once. It was quite a long piece, beginning with his funeral,

which had taken place in Athens the previous day, barely forty-eight hours

after his death. It listed his commercial achievements, various philanthropic

efforts he'd been associated with, and stated that the running of the Dragos

companies would now be taken over by his only son, who had already taken

control. It added that a proposed merger with the Mandrassis shipping line

would soon be finalised.

As she shuffled the pages together she suddenly saw Andreas' face. It was

superimposed above an item in the gossip column, briefly profiling the new

head of the Dragos Corporation.

'Once a wel -known jet-setter, Andreas Dragos has moved away from his

playboy image over the past two years,' she read. 'His forthcoming marriage

will no doubt provide him with additional stability.'

The door opened, and Mrs Ferris came in with a tray. 'The kettle's gone

wrong. I had to boil a pan on the stove.' She gave Megan Arnold an anxious

look. 'Is she al right? What happened?'

Zoe looked at the motionless figure. She said gently, 'She's had a

bereavement.'

The doctor came, and then an ambulance, and Aunt Megan was taken off to

a private hospital.

Zoe paid Mrs Ferris, and cleared up the mess in the drawing room. Then

she sat down in another chair, and read both the newspaper pieces again.

I wish I could have been told, she thought sadly. I wish I hadn't had to hear

about it third hand like this—especial y like this.

Yet it al seemed to have been dealt with at phenomenal speed. He'd died,

and two days later he'd been buried. Even if she'd known about his death, it