Kate Hewitt - Greek Affairs - To Take A Bride

‘Say that again,’ she shook out.

‘I followed you to England but you refused to see me.’ He gave a flick of a long-fingered hand. ‘I was not going to bring this up but you did, so we might as well deal with it. It was a difficult period for both of us five years ago and I knew you needed time to come to terms with … what happened, but how much time, Louisa?’ A sigh wrenched from him. ‘You were grieving, I understood that. I behaved badly after the funeral. I knew I deserved everything that you dished out. But to refuse to see or even speak to me? To keep me hanging around in England like a dog to be whipped and even after weeks of it to still send me packing as if our years together meant nothing to you at all?'

Lost in confusion, Louisa gave a shake of her head. ‘But I didn’t refuse to see you.'

‘I phoned, I wrote; you refused to answer my calls or my letters.'

‘No,’ she denied, not wanting to believe this.

The flat line of his mouth offered up a derisive twist. ‘Lie to yourself if you feel you must do, but I know it happened, agape mou, and there is only so much banging of my head against the brick wall of your unforgiving nature I could take before I finally let it sink in that it really was over for us.'

The growing horror that he could be telling her the truth here really shook her. ‘I never knew you had come to England,’ she whispered.

Grim scepticism spun him away again. A different kind of churning took charge of her stomach as she walked towards him. ‘Andreas,’ she said. ‘I truly did not know! You came—to England? No one told me. Who did you speak to? Why didn’t they tell you where I …?'

Enlightenment suddenly began to dawn, dragging her feet to a shuddering halt a couple of steps from his hard, lean, unrelenting stance.

‘My parents,’ she breathed unsteadily.

Her parents had been so eager to get her away from this island, always resentful of the Markonos wealth and power and the way they believed Andreas had used her that summer. When Andreas had walked away after the funeral he had confirmed every bad thought they’d ever had about him.

And his family had not tried to hide their relief when she had eventually agreed to go back to England. For the best, everyone had said. You both need time to recover from your loss. So she’d given in to pressure and left the island, wanting, needing to get away from everything, not least from what she’d read as his desertion of her when she’d needed him the most.

Suddenly the strength drained from her legs and she pulled out one of the chairs then sank down onto it. By then Andreas had turned again and was studying her face with a hard, cold, unforgiving glitter while she sat there numbly recalling all the heartache and pain she had carried away with her along with the heavy drag of her numbing grief.

‘After arriving in England I became … very upset,’ she improvised because the truth was so impossible to admit. ‘H-hysterical,’ only just touched the edge of it. ‘The doctor decided it was best that I went away to—to convalesce.'

‘You were in hospital.?’ The stunned catch in his voice made her flinch.

‘More like a private retreat,’ she said, unable to look at him because even after five years she still found it difficult to accept how quickly she’d sunk into that dark place inside herself. ‘If— when you came for me my parents were supposed to tell you where I’d gone! They promised me, they promised …’

Then they’d lied and lied and lied in their determination to keep them apart. All those long, bleak, empty days and weeks when she’d waited for him to come and get her. All those ‘No, he hasn’t made contact’ replies when she’d asked the question—asked and asked! And she’d been so gently let down, so lovingly pitied.

‘You are telling me that your parents lied to me?’ Andreas said harshly. ‘Why the hell would they want to do that?'

Louisa felt her spine quiver as she drew in a breath. To her the why was obvious. ‘They didn’t like you.'

‘We were married!’ he raked back. ‘Whether they liked me or not should not have come into it! We were man and wife and we had just lost our son! We needed each other! It takes more than dislike to want to keep us apart like that!'

‘It w-wasn’t just them.’ Louisa put her hands up to her face and rubbed at it as if trying to rub away the pain of what she was going to say next. Then she dropped her hands and looked up at him standing there like a rumbling dark mountain threatening to erupt. ‘I wrote to you too,’ she told him thickly. ‘I phoned you here at the family villa and at your office in Athens, only to be told you were out of the country … Did your parents or your brother or your secretary pass on any of my messages to you?'

He did not need to answer because she knew that they hadn’t. Now she knew it but not back then when everyone had been so nice and gentle and careful with her.

Conspiracies. She shivered. Their marriage had been cunningly manipulated by two families who’d conspired to make it come to an end. Even her visits back to this island had been carefully coordinated to ensure that she and Andreas did not meet.

‘What you said about my brother.’ Andreas prompted darkly.

‘I used to tell you about Alex bating me and you used to just brush it off as sibling jealousy. And you know what?’ she said starkly. ‘I think you were right. At least Alex was open about what he thought about me, while.’ while the rest of them smiled nicely as they stabbed us in the back. ‘I knew you blamed me f-for what happened to Nikos—'

‘Will you stop staying that?’ Andreas sighed. ‘I did not blame you!'

‘Why not, when I blamed myself?’ she choked out. ‘And it was my own guilt that they worked on, wasn’t it? They used it to let me go on believing that you …'

She couldn’t say any more because the tears really were threatening now.

‘I have to go and deal with this.’ The way he suddenly burst out of his stillness left Louisa blinking as he strode through the archway like a man about to—

Leaping up from her chair, she ran after him. ‘Andreas—!'

He was halfway up the steps that led to the lobby when she called him. He stopped but he didn’t turn, the full length of his frame stiff with anger.

‘Please,’ she begged him. ‘Don’t go off angry like you used to do when you didn’t like something!’ ‘You’re upset.’

‘Of course I’m upset. So are you! But think about it,’ she pleaded. ‘Charging off to slay them all isn’t going to change anything now!'

‘They stole five years from us,’ he roughed out hoarsely.

‘Yes.’ Her voice quivered. But it wasn’t only them who’d done that. She was thinking about the woman she’d seen him with—the one part of their conversation earlier he had oh, so carefully edited out!

His wide shoulders flexed inside the blue shirting. ‘They reduced us both to complete failures as a husband or wife in our own eyes …'

Louisa had to cover her unsteady mouth.

‘And to sitting alone at our son’s graveside when we should have been sitting there together …'

Oh, it was all so unforgivably cruel when put like that. ‘I suppose they believed it was the best thing for both of us at the time or—'

‘You believe that?’ He swung round to blister a burning look at her.

‘Yes—no!’ She gave a helpless shake of her head. ‘I don’t know what to think—I’m still reeling too much from the shock to think!'

‘Well, I am not reeling, so you can leave me to deal with it.’ He turned away again.

‘By climbing onto your jet plane and flying to England so you can have my parents lined up and shot?’ she cried out. ‘Well, don’t go fighting my battles for me, Andreas. I don’t need you to do anything for me any more!'