The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife (13 page)

Lizzie loved her nephews. She had been present at their birth, anxious for her young sister, and grieving for the fact that Ruby was having to go through her pain without their parents and without the man who had fathered her children. But when the twins had
been born and she had held them all the sad aspects of their birth had been forgotten in the rush of love and joy she had felt.

They had reached the villa now, and even though she had seen it before, and knew what to expect, Lizzie was still filled with admiration and awe as she gazed at its perfect proportions, outlined against the bright blue sky.

The warm cream colour of the villa toned perfectly with the aged darker colour of the marble columns supporting the front portico and with the soft grey-white of the shutters at the windows. The gravel on which the car was resting exactly matched the colour of the marble columns, and the green of the lawns highlighted the darker green of the Cyprus trees lining the straight driveway. The whole scene in front of them was one of visual harmony.

There was no other car parked outside—which Lizzie presumed meant that the man Ilios had come here to see had not as yet arrived.

‘We’re earlier than I expected, so I’ll show you the inside before Andreas arrives,’ Ilios announced as he opened the car door for Lizzie and waited for her to get out.

They walked to the entrance side by side. Side by side but feet apart, Lizzie thought sadly as she waited for Ilios to unlock the magnificent double doors.

Above them, where in Italy there would have been the family arms and motto, was an image of a small sailing ship.

‘Alexandros Manos earned his fortune as a maritime trader,’ Ilios informed her, following her gaze. ‘It was his fleet that paid for this land and for the villa.’

Ilios had opened the door, and was stepping back so that Lizzie could precede him inside the villa.

The first thing she noticed was the smell of fresh paint,
unmistakable and instantly recognizable. Her educated nose told her that the smell came from a traditional lime-based paint rather than a modern one.

With the shutters closed the interior was in darkness—until Ilios switched on the lights, causing Lizzie to gasp in astonished delight as she spun round, studying the frescoes that ran the whole way round the double-height central room.

She had seen frescoes before, of course, many of them. But none quite like these.

‘Are they scenes from the
Odyssey
?’ she asked Ilios uncertainly after she had studied them.

‘Yes,’ Ilios confirmed. ‘Only Odysseus bears a striking resemblance to Alexandros Manos. To have oneself depicted as the hero of the
Odyssey
was, of course, a conceit not uncommon at the time. I’ve had the frescoes repainted because of the damage they’ve suffered over the centuries. Luckily we had some sketches of the original scenes to work with. The work still isn’t finished yet,’ Ilios added, indicating the final panel of the fresco, where a woman was bending over a loom, unpicking a thread, with the outline of a large dog at her feet.

The fresco was badly damaged, with paint peeling from it and marks across it that looked as though someone had scored the panel angrily with something sharp. Even so it was still possible to see what the panel was meant to represent.

‘Penelope? The faithful wife?’ Lizzie guessed, remembering the legend of how Odysseus’s wife Penelope had held off the suitors who wanted to marry her and take possession of Odysseus’s kingdom by saying she would only accept one of them when she had finished her tapestry, and then unpicking it every night in secret so that it would
never be finished, so sure had she been that her husband would eventually return.

Ilios’s terse, ‘Yes’, told Lizzie that he didn’t want to discuss the subject of the panel, so she turned instead to follow him into one of the smaller rooms.

Here scaffolding showed where craftsmen were obviously working to repair the ornate plasterwork ceiling, which Lizzie could see held a central fresco of a family group.

‘I had to go to Florence to find the craftspeople to do this work,’ Ilios told Lizzie.

‘It’s a highly skilled job,’ Lizzie agreed.

Two hours later Ilios had given her a full tour of the house. The man he was supposed to be meeting had telephoned to say that he would have to cancel and make another appointment. He was unavoidably delayed because his wife had gone into premature labour.

‘I hope she and the baby will be all right,’ had been Lizzie’s immediate and instinctive comment as they’d walked down the return staircase.

The villa would be stunningly beautiful when the restoration work had been completed—a true work of art, in fact. But Lizzie simply could not visualise it as a home.

‘It won’t be easy, bringing up your sons here,’ she felt bound to say.

‘I don’t plan to live here,’ Ilios told her.

Lizzie looked uncertainly at him. ‘But I thought—that is, you said that the house had to stay within the family.’

‘It does, and it will. But not as a family home. I’ve got other plans for it. There’s a shortage of opportunities for young apprentices to learn the skills that go into maintaining a house like this. I found that out for myself. So I’ve decided that Villa Manos will become a place where those
who want to master those skills can come to learn them. Instead of turning the villa into a dead museum, I plan to turn it into a living workshop—where courses are run for master craftsmen, taught by those who have already mastered those trades themselves.’

‘What a wonderful idea.’ Lizzie didn’t make any attempt to conceal her approval.

‘I shall build a house for myself on the other side of the promontory.’

‘Where the apartments were?’

‘Yes. There will also be an accommodation block, and schoolrooms and proper workshops for the students. They will be situated in the wooded area between the villa and the other side of the promontory—’ He broke off as Lizzie’s mobile suddenly started to bleep.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, scrambling in her bag for it so that she could silence it. Her face suddenly broke into a smile as she looked at the image which had flashed up on her screen.

‘It’s the twins—my nephews,’ she told Ilios. ‘My sister sent me a photograph of them earlier, in their new school uniforms, and now she’s sent me another picture of them.’ Lizzie held up the phone so that he could see.

Ilios glanced dismissively at the screen, and then found that he couldn’t look away. The young woman in the photograph, kneeling down and clasping a uniform-clad boy in each arm, had that same look of love and happiness on her face as Lizzie herself wore when she was talking about her family. There was no doubting the closeness her family shared, and no doubting Lizzie’s love for her sisters and these two small dark-haired boys. Fatherless they might be, but they were laughing into the camera, confident in the love that surrounded them. Neither was there any doubt
about Lizzie’s determination to protect her family and provide for them. If Lizzie herself were to have a child then she would love it with the same absolute loyalty and devotion he could see on her face now. A child…his child…Absorbed in the enormity of what he was thinking, Ilios didn’t notice Lizzie move towards him until he felt her hand on his arm as she told him, ‘It’s thanks to you that they were able to have those uniforms.’

Thanks to him? Ilios tensed against what was happening to him—against the savage dagger-thrusts of pain that tore into him with Lizzie’s words. Because they reminded him of the truth. The only reason she was here with him was because he had blackmailed her into marrying him.

He shrugged off Lizzie’s hand on his arm, stepping back from her as he told her, ‘There are some interesting features in the garden. I’ll show you.’

Feeling rebuffed, Lizzie switched off her mobile and returned it to her handbag. Ilios obviously wanted to make it plain that their relationship was strictly business. He didn’t want to be forced to look at photographs of her family.

‘How long do you think it will be before your cousin accepts that he doesn’t have any grounds to try and overset your grandfather’s will?’ she asked Ilios as they headed for the garden at the rear of the villa.

Here, beyond a wide flagged terrace, steps led down to what must once have been intricately formal beds of clipped box, surrounding a pool with a fountain. But Lizzie wasn’t really concentrating on her surroundings. Instead she was hoping desperately for a miracle—for that miracle to be Ilios telling her that he had changed his mind about ending their marriage because he wanted them to be together for ever.

He shrugged dismissively. ‘You are, of course, impatient to return to your family?’

‘I do miss them,’ Lizzie agreed, her heart sinking. That wasn’t the response she had hoped for at all. It was true that she did miss her family, but she was also finding it increasingly difficult to behave as though nothing had happened between her and Ilios. Take now, for instance. When they had come out of the house she had almost put her arm through Ilios’s, just as if they were actually a genuine couple. Of course it was because she craved the intimacy of physical closeness with him, just as any woman in love would.

‘Regrettably, my lawyers feel that we should remain married for the time being, as a divorce so soon after our wedding would look suspicious. However, you can rest assured that I am every bit as eager to bring our marriage to an end as you,’ Ilios announced coldly, his response driven by pride and the need to defend himself from the alien emotions that were threatening him.

The cold words struck into her heart like ice picks. But it was her own fault if she had been hurt, Lizzie told herself resolutely.

‘This is what I wanted to show you,’ Ilios told her nearly half an hour later, when they had walked through the extensive gardens to the villa and emerged at the side of a pretty man-made lake. He gestured towards a grotto dotted with statuary and ornamented with a small fresh water spring.

‘What is it?’ Lizzie asked him.

‘It’s a nymphaeum,’ Ilios explained. ‘An artificially created grotto for which the statuary has been specifically designed. Villa Barbaro has one—some of its statuary executed by Marcantonio Barbaro, supposedly. It’s
a conceit, really. A way for the villa-owner to show off either his own talent as a sculptor or that of an artist to whom he was a patron. The lake here needs dredging, and the small temple on the island renovating.’

‘The whole place is stunning,’ Lizzie told him truthfully. ‘I can understand why your ancestor wanted it kept in the family. I do think, though, that your plan to turn it into a living workshop is a wonderful idea—and so very generous. A wonderful gift to future generations, enabling such special skills to be carried on.’

‘I’m not motivated by generosity. I’ve been held up on too many contracts by the lack of skilled artisans—that’s why I’m doing it.’ Ilios’s voice was clipped, as though her praise had annoyed him.

Because he didn’t want it? Just as he didn’t want her? She mustn’t dwell on what she could not have, but instead hold in her heart what they had briefly shared, Lizzie told herself. She mustn’t let that joy be overshadowed or diminished.

Nor must she allow the fact that Ilios did not return her feelings to prevent her from behaving as she would have done had she not loved him.

‘I’ve really enjoyed today. Thank you for bringing me and showing me the villa,’ she told him, with that in mind, as they headed back to the car for the return journey to Thessaloniki.

He had enjoyed it too, Ilios acknowledged. When he had not been battling with the emotions his conflicting feelings towards her aroused.

On the way back to Thessaloniki they stopped at the same tavern where they had had lunch. The small village overlooked the sea, and the front of the tavern was protected enough from the breeze for it to be warm enough to sit outside.

They’d eaten plump juicy black olives and delicious grilled kebabs, and were just finishing their coffee when it happened. A dull noise like thunder, and the movement of the ground beneath their feet.

The trestle table shifted, spilling Lizzie’s coffee, and then Ilios got up, coming towards her and taking hold of her, pushing her down to the ground, covering her with his own body as he warned her, ‘It’s an earthquake.’

‘An earthquake?’ she echoed.

‘This area’s notorious for them. It will be all right—just keep still.’

She had no other option other than to keep still with Ilios’s body a protective weight over hers, pinning her to the ground. His hand was cupping the back of her head protectively, pushing her face into his shoulder, allowing her to breathe in the now familiar scent of him. Lizzie just hoped he would assume that the heavy sledgehammer thuds of her heartbeat were caused by her shock and fear of the earthquake rather than by the proximity of their bodies. How fate must be enjoying its joke at her expense, knowing that when she had longed to be held in Ilios’s arms these were not the circumstances in which she had envisaged it happening. To be held by him in an embrace outwardly that of the most intimate and tender of lovers which in reality was nothing more than a means of safety felt painfully ironic, even if his prompt actions were for her own benefit.

‘What’s that?’ she asked anxiously above the growing noise she could hear.

‘Just a few stones and boulders dislodged by the quake rolling down the hillside.’

Lizzie gasped as the earth moved again, in a shudder she could feel right through her body, causing Ilios to
tighten his hold on her. Had he loved her, this moment would have been filled with the most intense emotion—and surely would ultimately have resulted in them celebrating their survival and their love for one another in the most intimate way possible once they had had the privacy to do so. Sex was, after all, the only human activity that combined life, birth and even a small taste of death in that moment when it felt as though one flew free into infinity.

Ilios. Why had she had to fall in love with him? Why couldn’t she have simply wanted him on a physical level and nothing more? Because she was a woman, and the female sex, no matter how much it might wish for things to be different, was genetically geared to making an emotional commitment?