Vows of Revenge

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

K ASSIA POSITIONED THE tip of her trowel over the protruding shard. She had to work carefully. And work she must. Without work she could not exist. Without work she would be a ghost. Without work she would be defenceless. Work could fill her days, her mind, her thoughts.

But it could not fill her nights.

That was the time she dreaded—feared. Nights brought thoughts, and thoughts brought memories, and memories brought dreams.

And dreams brought nightmares...

Her brow furrowed now, as she teased the earth from the shard. This was the last day of the dig and she wanted to get this shard out—and those that went with it. She was the last person in the trench, for the site was being shut down for overwintering. All the finds were packed away, all the notes and catalogues boxed up to be taken back to the museum. Her winter would be filled with completing the work done so far—typing up the paperwork, getting restoration work underway in the lab, choosing what should go on display, what should be sent to other museums, what archived.

Winter would keep her busy. And that was essential.

How long ago summer was. It was late autumn now, and the weather was breaking. Rain squalls were not uncommon, and a chill wind was sweeping down off the steppes. Time to hunker down...stay warm and dry.

Memory pierced... She and Damos, lolling by the roaring fire in the castle in the Highlands, rain spattering on the leaded windows, and she and he playing chess. Her mouth twisted and she dug the tip of her trowel in with more ferocity than she should. Damos had run circles around her playing chess. Just as he’d run circles around her in all the time he’d spent with her. Right from the very start.

She lifted her head. This trench, deserted but for herself, was an extension of where she’d been working all those months ago—the first time she had ever set eyes on Damos Kallinikos.

She felt her vision smear and dropped her head again. Her hand gripped the trowel so tightly her earth-stained hands went white. Dimly, she heard voices nearby, but her vision was still smeared.

Then someone tapped her hesitantly on the shoulder. She started, looking up. It was Dr Michaelis. But it was not only him she saw. It was the man behind him.

Damos.

Was he insane? The words were inside Damos’s head, but it was as if he could hear them audibly. Insane to come here? Hadn’t Spain taught him his lesson?

She wants nothing to do with me—nothing.

Yet he was here, all the same. Two months on. Months that had been like nothing he had ever endured in his life. Months that had made those brief weeks in the summer seem like a distant, impossible dream—a dream to torment him and torture him. For it was lost to him for ever.

As Kassia was lost to him.

Pain buckled through him at the knowledge of what he had done.

Everything she told me I had.

As he stood there now, looking down at Kassia hunkered in the trench, a terrible sense of déjà vu came over him. It was as if time were collapsing and he was seeing her as he had seen her for the very first time.

He felt a vice around his chest, tightening pitilessly.

But he deserved no pity...

Deserved only the pain that was now his constant companion.

Dr Michaelis was addressing her, and Damos could hear the awkwardness in his voice. He felt bad for him, but his need was too great. Too desperate.

‘Ah, Kassia... Kyrios Kallinikos has...has asked the favour of a word with you.’

Kassia’s expression did not change. Nor did she look at Damos. She got to her feet. She said nothing—only stepped out of the trench.

‘Good, good...’ said Dr Michaelis, sounding flustered. He hurried away.

Kassia’s eyes went to Damos. There was something wrong with them, he could see. They looked... smeared .

She still didn’t speak—just stood there. Memory poured through him. He could swear she was wearing the same earth-coloured baggy cotton trousers, the same mustard-coloured tee—though this time she wore a tan gilet over it against the chillier weather. Her hair was screwed up in a careless knot on her head, and she wore not a scrap of make-up—unless he counted the flecks of dirt on her cheeks.

The memory struck at him of how she’d walked back to the yacht at the marina in Spain, her shoulders hunched, head down. All the confidence that she’d glowed with once he’d got her to realise just how beautiful she was had gone. As if it had never been...

She was still not speaking, only looking at him with those smeared, blank eyes.

He made himself speak. Say what he had come here to say.

‘I... I have something that I would like to tell you. That I... I would like you to know.’

His voice was hesitant—but how should it not be? Twice already she had not let him speak—in Athens and in Spain.

‘I... I wanted you to know that I have been funding the museum. Your father...’ his voice was strained ‘...withdrew his support after—’

He broke off, then made himself continue.

‘I did not want the museum to suffer, so I stepped in. It was...something I could do. But I don’t...don’t say this in any expectation that you might...might think less ill of me—’

He broke off again. Those blank, smeared eyes conveyed nothing. Nor did she say anything.

He went on with what he had come here to say.

‘My acquisition of Cosmo Palandrou’s company has gone through—I used a proxy, whom I funded, who then sold it on to me. It had been badly mismanaged, and industrial disputes were endemic. Since my acquisition I have created an employee share scheme which allocates half the company to all the employees, at no cost to themselves. Profits will be shared fifty-fifty, and my share will be reinvested for the company’s expansion. I,’ he added, ‘will not be benefitting financially.’

He stopped. What he had to say next was hardest of all. But he must say it. Even though Kassia still had not moved, her blank smeared gaze was still on him.

‘I have done this because you told me in Spain that I had used you to make money for myself.’

His face contorted suddenly. Something broke inside him.

‘Oh, God, Kassia, if only I could undo what I did to you! I regret it so, so much! But I can’t undo it. All I can do is live with the consequences. Live with what I have lost.’

His voice dropped. There was a stone in his throat, making it impossible to breathe. To speak. But he must speak. Must say the most agonising words in the world.

‘You,’ he said. ‘I have lost you.’

He turned to go. She was still motionless, still unspeaking, not reacting. There was no point in him staying here. No point at all...

But as he started to turn away he saw something happen to her face. Rivulets of tears were running down it...

The tears were spilling. She could not stop them. No power on earth could stop them.

‘Kassia—’

Her name was on his lips. And then his arms were around her.

She should pull away—push him away, drive him away, force him away. For he was the man who had lied to her from the very first moment she had ever seen him, standing right here. Standing here, planning to lie to her, to make use of her, to make her the gullible, stupid fool her father had called her in his rage.

She should push him from her—but she did not. Could not.

His arms were holding her, cradling her. She heard his voice.

‘Don’t cry. Don’t weep. I beg you! I can’t bear that you should weep. I can’t bear that I did to you what I did! It’s an agony to me.’

She was clinging to him—but why she was, she didn’t know. How could she? How could she cling like this to a man who had used her as he had? Lied to her as he had?

‘You lied to me Damos! You lied and you lied and you lied! Everything was a lie—all a lie! Every day we had together. Every hour. Every night in your arms.’ Her voice choked, sobs racking her. ‘It was all a lie !’

She felt his arms stiffen. Then they fell away, dropping to his sides. He let her go and looked away, out over the deserted trenches to the olive trees beyond. Then his eyes came back to hers. Held them fast.

‘It started as a lie,’ he said.

He paused, and the silence between them stretched like a chasm. Then he spoke again, his eyes still holding hers fast.

‘But it became the truth,’ he said.

He heard the words he had said. The words that were the most important words in the world.

‘It became the truth,’ he said again.

His eyes searched her face. He could read nothing there. Nothing to help him. But he did not deserve help.

After all that had been a lie between them she deserved the truth. The truth about the truth.

‘The truth is brutal. Everything you threw at me in Spain—that I engineered meeting you, feigning an interest in sponsoring the dig, and invited you on board my yacht on that pretext...that I found out you were attending a conference in Oxford, so I turned up there myself, letting you think it was just by chance. I kept our acquaintance going, knowing exactly where I wanted it to lead. Knowing exactly why I was doing it. But then...then it changed.’

He knew his face was stark.

‘It changed, Kassia. I realised I was enjoying your company...that I wanted more of it. That I wanted Kassia— you . Not Kassia Andrakis, who was going to be the means by which I would outmanoeuvre your father, but you. Just you. For who you were yourself. I wanted you—I wanted to spend time with you—I wanted to be with you. And above all...’ his voice changed now, and there was a husk in it that he could not hide ‘...I wanted you in my arms.’

He shut his eyes for a moment. Then flared them open.

‘Oh, God, Kassia, how much I wanted that! And I wanted you to want it too! And the more I found out about you—how you lacked any confidence in your own beauty, which you could not see—the more I wanted to reveal it to you. And I did—I did just that! And when...when we came together that night, I knew I had found someone.’ His voice dropped, ‘Someone I did not want to lose.’

He drew a breath. Words were still coming—the truth was still coming.

‘Our time in the Highlands was the most precious time in my life. I felt a happiness I had never known before, being with you. We were good together—so very, very good. And I knew it was the same for you. I knew then that I did not want to be without you. I wanted our time together to go on, back here in Greece, just as I told you. But then—’

He broke off. Shut his eyes again for a moment, unable to bear seeing her looking at him. But he must bear it—must bear what he now had to say.

‘I had to deal with what I had set up when I first came here. The plan to...to use you for my own ends. If...if there had been more time I’d have wanted us simply to be seen in Athens as a couple. The news would soon have reached Cosmo and your father. But there wasn’t time for that. So I... I decided I just wanted it over and done with—the whole damn thing. I wanted to force the issue...have Cosmo and your father presented with us together and that would end it. I just didn’t realise...’

He stopped again.

‘It horrified me,’ he said at last. ‘Appalled me. What your father said to you.’ His voice dropped. ‘And it appalled me that I had exposed you to it—to that vile diatribe from your father...saying such things to you.’

He swallowed. There was a razor in his throat, but he swallowed anyway. He had no choice but to do so. He was telling her the truth about the truth.

‘But I exposed myself as well. Exposed myself to your father’s accusation of me. That I had used you.’ He stopped again, then went on, making himself speak. His voice was low and drawn. ‘I hadn’t wanted you ever to know...to know that I had come here deliberately, wanting to use you. Oh, I’d told myself at the start, when I dreamt up the idea, that it would do you no harm, my taking an interest in you. That if you did not want to get involved with me then that would be that. And if you did, you would likely enjoy your time with me because—well, why not? I even told myself that since you couldn’t possibly want Cosmo Palandrou foisted on you—what woman would?—you might appreciate the impact of our affair yourself. I told myself all that...’

He took another breath, ragged and razored.

‘But when I realised that I wanted you for yourself, not for any other reason...then I didn’t know what to do. I felt an impulse to come clean—to tell you why I had originally sought you out. But then I hesitated. It was too risky. It was safer not to tell you. I thought you need never know, because by then it did not matter. I wanted you for yourself, for real, and what we had together was so very precious to me, becoming more precious still with every day that passed. So why tell you anything about my original intentions?’

He stopped, his eyes veiled.

‘But there was another reason I did not want to tell you—a reason I did not want to face. But in Spain you made me face it.’

He looked away, out over the serried trenches to the olive trees beyond. When his eyes came back to her they were bleak.

‘In Spain, you told me I was exactly like your father—using other people for my own ends, as I had used you. And it shamed me—I deserved it to shame me.’

His eyes were bleaker still. Bleak as a polar waste where no warmth could ever come. His voice was just as bleak.

‘But I am paying the price now, Kassia. Believe me, if you believe nothing else, I am paying the price. It’s a price I deserve to pay for what I did. And it is a price I would not wish on anyone. I have lost you, and I cannot bear it. Except I know I must.’

I must bear this unbearable loss because I made it happen myself. And nothing can undo it—nothing.

Emotion speared him, right in his guts, twisting viciously. He had to bear that too...

He turned away. There was no point being here any longer. He had to go and live without her, all his days.

A hand touched his arm. Kassia’s hand. And then there was Kassia’s voice, speaking low and faint.

‘Don’t go,’ she said. Her voice was almost inaudible. ‘Don’t go,’ she said again. ‘Don’t leave me.’

His face stilled. His breath stilled. The world stilled.

He looked round at her. She wasn’t looking at him. Her head was bowed, shoulders hunched.

‘Don’t leave me,’ she said again. A husk...a whisper. ‘I can’t bear for you to leave me. I don’t want to lose you. I lost you before, and I can’t bear to lose you again. Not now...’

He heard her words but he did not believe them—dared not believe them. Dared not. And yet...

Slowly, he turned. The touch of her hand on his sleeve was so faint it was scarcely there at all. But he felt it tremble, as if it might fall from him at any moment.

She lifted her head now. What was in her eyes, he did not know. And yet he must speak. His heart seemed to be filling his chest.

‘Don’t say that,’ he breathed, ‘if you do not mean it.’

She shook her head. Slowly. As if she were moving it against the weight of the world. Against the weight of what he had done to her.

A rasp sounded in his throat, torn from his stricken lungs.

There was urgency in his words. ‘Kassia, if you will have me after all I’ve done to you, what I would give all the world to undo, I would beg your forgiveness—but how can you forgive me?’

She lifted her other hand, and with a touch that was as light as the hand on his sleeve she brushed his cheek.

‘But I do,’ she whispered.

Her eyes were lifted to his, and he saw they were no longer smeared, but lit with a silver light.

‘Kassia, dear God... Kassia! ’

That emotion was sweeping up in him, powerful and strange and unknown—the emotion that had swept over him the night he had made Kassia his own. But now he knew what it was. Knew that the spear which had been thrust so deep inside him, twisting viciously as he’d faced walking away from her for ever, was suddenly gone.

With a jerking movement he folded his hand over hers on his sleeve. Pressed it down. Never to let it go. Never...

Then he slipped his fingers under hers. Lifted them. Lifted them to his mouth. Kissed them.

In homage and in plea—and in love.

Because that was what he knew was filling him—that was what had caused that unbearable sense of loss when she had fled from him that hideous night. That had been the desperation driving him to find her, to make his confession to her, to do whatever he could to make amends. To show her that what had started as a lie had become the truth...to beg her to believe him.

‘I am yours,’ he said, and his voice was low, filled with all he felt, all he had come to feel, would always feel. ‘I am yours for however long you might want me. Yours for an hour, or a day, or a single night—or for a lifetime.’

She reached up a hand, enfolded his as it enfolded hers. She was looking at him now, and her eyes were filling again with tears. But her tears were diamonds...

‘Or for eternity?’ she said, and reached his lips with hers.

Was this love? Was this love pouring through her like a tide? Washing away all that had tarnished and poisoned and destroyed? Was it love she had tried to silence, to kill, after she’d realised what he’d done to her?

Oh, but it must be love! For what else could lift her like this? What else could turn agony and anguish into such joy? Such joy as streamed through her?

He was sweeping her to him, crushing her to him, saying her name, kissing her hair, her cheek, her mouth.

‘I don’t deserve you—I don’t deserve a single hair on your head. I don’t deserve a single moment with you! Oh, God, Kassia, if only I could undo—’

She pulled away—but only to place a finger across his mouth, to silence him.

‘No more,’ she whispered. ‘It’s gone...it’s over—we will never let it come between us again. Simply to know how much you regret it means all the world to me. It...it heals us, Damos. Heals all the harm that was done.’

She kissed him again, to seal that healing. And then, as she drew back, she spoke again. There was something new in her voice now. A rueful note.

‘And you know...maybe we should be grateful for your coming here for the reason you did. Because if you hadn’t...would we ever have met? And if we had—in Athens, say—you would have had some gorgeous, glamorous female with you and you would not have looked twice at me.’

She was given no chance to say more. Words fell from him, urgent and vehement.

‘Kassia, if you spend the rest of your life looking exactly as you do now, without a scrap of make-up and in clothes that should be buried deeper than those broken pots you keep digging up, I will love you and adore you and desire you all the rest of my days!’

He seized her hands, his eyes pouring into hers, and what she saw in them made her faint with love.

‘It’s you whom I love! And when I say I will always, always want you to look as stunning as I know you can, it is for you —not me!’

His mouth lowered to hers, and in the touch of his lips was all that she could ever desire. For a long time they kissed, and as at last they drew apart she saw he was gazing down at her, love light in his eyes...love light that was like a warming flame inside her, one that would warm her all her days, and all her nights, for ever and for good.

Her heart was singing. It would sing for ever now.

Damos’s arms came around her and he held her close, against his heart, where now she would always be. Her arms wrapped him just as close, and closer still. Heart against heart—for all eternity indeed. And so much longer.