Sara Craven - Pagan Adversary

‘Whose side are you on?’ Harriet joked weakly.

‘Nicky’s.’ Manda gave her a gentle smile. ‘Take him home if you want, but do some good, hard thinking once you get there. If you don’t you could end by losing out completely, and that would be a bad thing for you both.’

Harriet’s thoughts were sober as she walked along, pushing the baby buggy. Nicky was fast asleep, his dark lashes making half-moons on his pink cheeks. She looked down at him with tenderness. The thought of losing him was frankly intolerable, but Manda’s words had hit home.

At first, as she turned into her road, she was barely aware of the car, and when she did notice it, it was with a kind of detached curiosity. There were plenty of cars in the road, especially at weekends, all the popular models and mostly with elderly registrations, but this was very different.

A Rolls-Royce, she thought incredulously, and her steps began to slow instinctively, her white-knuckled hands gripping the handle of the buggy.

There was a uniformed driver in the front seat, and his passenger was already getting out, tossing his half-smoked cigar into the gutter as he waited for her.

Alex Marcos said with a glittering smile, ‘Welcome home, Miss Masters. So this is Nicos. Thank you for bringing him to me.’

HARRIET stood staring at him. Her lips moved almost helplessly, ‘But—I didn’t….’

‘Oh, I am quite sure you did not,’ he said sardonically. ‘Nevertheless, the boy is here, and I am here, which is what I wanted.’

Harriet looked down at the sleeping Nicky, and knew that Alex Marcos’ gaze had followed her own.

‘He is very much a Marcos,’ he said after a pause, his voice expressionless.

‘He has my sister’s eyes.’ Harriet’s grip tightened almost defeatedly on the handle of the pushchair. She swallowed. ‘Will you be taking him now—or do I have time to pack his things?’

‘You speak as if I planned to kidnap the child.’ He did not bother to disguise the note of irritation in his voice. ‘I do not, I promise you. However, this is hardly the place to discuss the matter. Shall we go indoors before we begin to attract unwelcome attention?’

Harriet hesitated, but really she had very little choice, she thought angrily as she began to manoeuvre the pushchair up the rather overgrown path to the front door.

In the hall, she bent to release Nicky. Alex Marcos was at her side.

‘Give him to me.’ His voice was authoritative, and he took Nicky from her, not waiting for any sign of assent on her part, leaving her to fold the buggy and lead the way up the stairs.

As she unlocked her own door, she was thankful that the room was tidy and clean. She hated coming home at the end of a long day to any kind of mess, and she was glad now that she had made the usual effort to clear up before leaving that morning. She was thankful too that the small clothes-horse only held a selection of Nicky’s garments, and none of her own.

‘He has not woken,’ Alex Marcos said from behind her. ‘What shall I do with him?’

Harriet indicated the cot in the corner, shielded from the rest of the room by a small screen which she had recovered herself in a collage of bright pictures cut from magazines.

‘He’ll sleep for a while,’ she said with something of an effort. ‘Until he realises it’s teatime.’

She watched him put Nicky down in the cot, his movements deft and gentle. Unusually so, she thought, because he could not be a man who was used to children.

He straightened, and turned unsmilingly, the brilliant dark gaze going over the room in candid assessment. Harriet felt an absurd desire to apologise for it. The square of carpet had come from a saleroom, as had much of the furniture. The rest had been picked up from junk shops and lovingly repaired where necessary, and polished, but few of the pieces were beautiful, and none of them were valuable. And besides, there was something in Alex Marcos’ sheer physical presence, she realised crossly, that made the surroundings seem far more cramped and shabby than they actually were.

No, she was damned if she would apologise that it was only a room and not a flat, or justify herself in any way. This was her home, and he could make whatever judgments he liked. At the same time, she was his hostess, however reluctant.

She said slowly, ‘Can I offer you some refreshment?’—some imp of perversity making her continue, ‘I’ve some sherry left over from Christmas, some instant coffee, or tea-bags.’

He inclined his head mockingly. ‘You are most gracious. Perhaps—the coffee.’

She had hoped he would stay where he was, but he followed her along the passage to the first-floor communal kitchen. She could just imagine what he thought of that too, from the elderly gas cooker to the enormous peeling fridge. She opened the cupboard where she kept her provisions and crockery and extracted the coffee and a couple of pottery mugs, while the kettle was boiling.

Alex Marcos was lounging in the doorway, very much at his ease, but not missing a thing, Harriet thought.

She said, ‘There’s no point in waiting here. The kettle takes rather a long time.’

‘I imagine that it might,’ he said, smiling faintly.

‘It must all be very different from what you’re used to,’ she said stiffly. ‘You should have stayed in the West End, where you belong.’

His brows lifted. ‘You have never visited Greece, it is clear, Miss Masters, or you would know that for many of our people such a kitchen would be the height of luxury.’

‘But you’re not among them.’

‘That is true. But my own good fortune does not lead me to feel contempt for the way others lead their lives.’

That wasn’t the picture Kostas had painted, Harriet thought, as they went back to the flat. He had spoken with feeling of unyielding pride and arrogance, of a total inability to make allowances for the weakness or feelings of others, or to forgive—and with good reason, considering the way he had been treated by his family. Not his marriage, not Nicky’s birth, had done anything to heal whatever breach was between them. Harriet was aware that the Marcos family had been notified when Kostas was killed, but she had frankly never expected to hear from them again. Certainly there had been no flowers, no message of condolence at the funeral. For months there had been silence—and then the bombshell about Nicky had exploded.

Nicky still hadn’t stirred when they got back, and Harriet moved round quietly taking his aired clothes from the clothes-horse and folding them, before putting them away in the small chest of drawers. She opened the window a little too, letting some of the later afternoon sunlight into the room, along with the distant noise of traffic, and the overhead throb of a passing jet.

This was the time of day she usually looked forward to—tea with Nicky, then playtime before she got him ready for his bath and bed. But for how many more times? she wondered desolately.

As she turned away from the window, she found Alex Marcos was watching her, and there must have been something about the droop of her shoulders which had betrayed her, because his voice had softened a little as he said, ‘You cannot pretend that you wish to spend the rest of your life in this way—looking after someone else’s child. You are young. You should be planning a life of your own—children of your own.’