Vows of Revenge

Epilogue

KASSIA COULDN ’ T STOP LAUGHING . Both she and Damos were making endless mistakes, but no one minded. All the other dancers were helpfully calling out to them which way they should be turning, whose hands they should be taking now. One thing was for sure, though, reeling was an energetic business. The foot-tapping music was driving them on, with fiddles, pipes, drums and accordions, and it was just impossible not to dance. They’d already Stripped the Willow, Dashed the White Sergeant, been to Mairi’s Wedding, and were now completely confused in an eightsome reel.

When it ended she was more than ready to collapse down on one of the chairs around the edge of the village hall where the ceilidh was being held.

‘Not bad, lassie...not bad at all.’

Duncan MacFadyen, looking not out of breath in the slightest, came up to her. He looked resplendent in his filibeg short kilt, simply worn with a white shirt and tie. His nephew was the piper in the band, and Mrs MacFadyen was presiding over the groaning supper table.

Damos came up too. He also looked not out of breath in the slightest.

Duncan clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll make a Scotsman out of you yet, laddie,’ he said approvingly.

Damos laughed. ‘Kassia and I will practise in Greece in time for our visit in the summer,’ he promised.

He’d procured a glass of beer for himself and Duncan, and presented Kassia with a glass of cider—which she knocked back thirstily.

‘We’ll be a respectable married couple by then, Duncan,’ she said.

‘So we’re making the most of our last illicit romantic getaway here,’ Damos said, with a glint in his eye.

‘Och, well, winter’s as good a time as any for keeping warm together,’ Duncan chuckled with cheerful wickedness.

Kassia smiled, thinking of how very, very warm Damos kept her in the velvet-hung four-poster in the castle bedroom. She and Damos, after a Christmas spent with Kassia’s mother and stepfather, hadn’t been able to resist taking a Hogmanay break back here.

In the castle where we fell in love.

And where they’d be spending their honeymoon, too, next summer.

It was a long time to wait—but Kassia could not deprive her mother of the pleasure of organising a huge, full-works traditional wedding for them, with a reception at her stepfather’s country house in the Cotswolds. There would be a marquee on the lawn, a lavish wedding breakfast, and dancing under the stars in the evening.

Her mother was in her element, and Kassia was giving her her head, knowing how much her social butterfly mother was enjoying it. As for herself—she’d have been just as happy taking her vows simply by hand-fasting, in the centuries-old Scottish union of those who loved each other, holding Damos’s hand, quietly and on their own.

Perhaps that was what they would do. Walk down to the edge of the loch while they were here—warmly wrapped against the Scottish winter. Or perhaps at the summit of the Munro that Damos was determined to bag before they flew home. He’d already made the outdoor wear shopkeeper in Inverlochry an even happier man by taking Kassia there and kitting them out with winter walking gear.

‘We’ll bag our second Munro now,’ he’d said. ‘A nice easy one for winter walking. And then try a tougher one in the summer. And we’ll keep going from there, doing another couple every annual visit, until we’ve bagged the lot!’

Kassia had laughed. ‘There are close on three hundred!’ she’d exclaimed.

Damos had dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘Well, maybe we’ll settle for half. And that...’ he’d taken her hand, his eyes warm upon her ‘...should see us into ripe old age. We might even still be tottering up them when we reach our centenaries!’

Kassia had squeezed his hand. That she and he should be granted so long a time together was all her heart’s desire. She’d felt her heart swell then, and it was doing so again now, as she gazed up at Damos as he downed his beer, so tall, so gorgeous, and so infinitely dear to her.

How much I love him—how very, very much.

After their rapturous reconciliation everything had been so simple. Dr Michaelis had given her extra leave on the spot, and she and Damos had flown back to Athens, wrapped in each other’s arms. They’d spent the weekend at his apartment in Piraeus, barely surfacing, and then he’d come with her to England. He had made his peace with her mother and shaken her stepfather’s hand.

There was only one hand he could not, would not shake. Nor would Kassia ever expect it of him. Or of herself. Her break with her father was absolute—it could not be otherwise. And though it cast a shadow over her it was one she would not let blight her. It would be her stepfather who would give her away at her wedding.

Till then, she and Damos were doing what he had suggested to her when they’d left the castle in the summer. She could not let Dr Michaelis down, so would continue at the museum until her wedding, contenting herself with weekends with Damos. Then, once married, she would seek a post in Athens.

But it might not last that long. Already Damos was hinting.

‘This apartment is all very well for the two of us, but it wouldn’t suit a family,’ he’d declared.

‘But let’s enjoy some time together first as a couple,’ Kassia had said. ‘Doing all the things you’ve promised me you’ll do.’

Damos was stepping back from many of his business concerns. He had sold his yacht charter company, and was divesting himself of some of his merchant marine interests. And he had decided, once Cosmo Palandrou’s freight and logistics business was in good order, to reduce his share even more.

‘I want to enjoy life,’ he’d said to Kassia. ‘Learn scuba diving...go sailing with you...travel more. Our time together has taught me that.’

‘I’m glad,’ she’d said. ‘You’ve worked so hard, Damos, to get where you are today—now relax, and enjoy the fruits of all your hard work. After all...’ she’d given him a wry, quizzical look ‘...one day we’ll be like all those souls who lived three thousand years ago in the Bronze Age, with the archaeologists of the future digging up the remnants of our lives, wondering what they were like. So...’ she’d kissed him on the cheek ‘...let’s make sure they are good lives.’

They were words that came to her again now, as the band struck up once more. Immediately her foot started tapping irresistibly.

Damos finished his beer and took her empty cider glass from her, placing both on the windowsill behind her chair.

‘Away with you both now,’ Duncan said jovially. ‘Back to the ceilidh .’

He packed them off back to the dance floor. And as she and Damos took their places memory struck her.

‘Do you realise,’ she said, ‘that this evening is the first time we’ve danced together since that night at the Viscari?’

She felt her heart swell again. The memory was sweet, so very sweet, and that night had started the affair that now would be their marriage, all their lives, for ever and beyond.

Her eyes went to Damos now, as they stood opposite each other, waiting their turn. He met her eyes full on, and in them was such a blaze of love that it made her reel.

And then the reeling was for real...

‘It’s you!’ the woman next to her said.

Kassia started forward, and Damos did too, seizing her hand. Hand in hand, their eyes still locked together, they went down the line, hand-fasted, heart-fasted, united in their love for each other, dancing into the future that was theirs and theirs alone.

And always would be.