The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife(26)

‘No, my value to him lay in my genes, that is all,' was Ilios's harsh response.

Lizzie ached with sadness for him. Was his own childhood the cause of   Ilios's determination not to marry and not to allow any woman to   knowingly have his children? Had having to be so self-reliant, unable to   trust the one adult he should have been able to turn to, left him so   badly scarred that he was unable to trust other human beings himself? It   would have taken great emotional strength and endurance and great   maturity to have survived the childhood Ilios had had and emerge   unscathed from it, far more than any young child could have been   expected to have.

Lizzie felt desperately sorry for the little boy Ilios must have been-so   sorry, in fact, that she wanted to gather that child up in her arms  and  hold him safe, give him the same loving childhood she herself had   known. But of course that child no longer existed, and the man he had   become would scorn her emotions as mere sentiment, she suspected.                       
       
           



       

‘The past is over. Looking back toward it serves no purpose,' Ilios told her curtly. ‘We live in the present, after all.'

‘That's true, but sometimes we need to look back to what we were to understand what we are now.'

‘That is self-indulgence and it also serves no purpose,' Ilios insisted   grimly, looking at his watch and adding, ‘If you are ready to leave … ?'

Lizzie nodded her head. The subject of his childhood and the effect it   must have had on him was obviously closed, and she suspected it would   remain that way.


It would soon be spring, and the temperature was beginning to rise a   little. Wild flowers bloomed by the roadside, the way they had their   faces turned up to the sun making Lizzie smile as Ilios drove them   towards the east and the peninsula where Villas Manos stood.

Since Ilios was a good driver there was no logical reason for her to   feel on edge. No logical reason, perhaps, but since when have the   emotions of a woman in love been logical? Lizzie asked herself wryly.

They passed the turn-off for Halkidiki and the famous Mount Athos   peninsula, with its monasteries and its rule that no female was allowed   to set foot there, including female animals, and then had stopped   briefly at a small tavern for a simple lunch of Greek salad and fruit.   It was eaten mainly in the same silence which had pervaded since they   had set out.

If Ilios was regretting inviting her to join him, then she was certainly   regretting accepting his invitation. She felt rejected and unwanted,   deliberately distanced from Ilios by his silence-a silence that her own   pride would not allow her to break.

Ilios drove straight to the villa on the western side of the promontory,   ignoring the fork in the road to the east where the apartment block  had  been.

It seemed a lifetime since she had first met Ilios there. Then she had   been a single woman, her only concern for her financial situation and   the future of her family. Her own emotions as a woman simply had not   come into the equation. Now she was married and a wife-at least in the   eyes of the world. Her family were financially secure, and her anxiety   was all for her own emotions.

Ruby had sent her a photograph of the twins via her mobile, so that   Lizzie could see the new school uniforms she had bought for them at   Lizzie's insistence that she must do so and that they could afford it. A   tender, amused smile curled Lizzie's mouth. The two five-year-olds had   looked so proud in their grey flannel trousers and maroon blazers,  their  dark hair cut short and brushed neatly.

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.