A Most Unconventional Courtship

‘I’m not married to Fred Court, Lord love you!’ The redhead snorted with amusement, caught the sharp edge of Alessa’s meaningful stare and glanced at the children, then added, ‘Not that we’ll not be getting round to it, some day.’

There didn’t seem to be much to be added to that, so Chance turned to the old woman who was steadily demolishing bread and cheese despite an apparently total lack of teeth. ‘Do you speak English, ma’am?’A blank stare. He did not feel up to making stumbling conversation in Greek, but surely she would have acquired some Italian from the long-time rulers of the island. ‘Parliamo inglese, signora? Italiano?’ The stare this time was positively frosty. He was beginning to see where Alessa might have acquired her more forbidding expressions.

‘Kyria Agatha speaks only Greek,’ Alessa explained. ‘Would you like some more wine?’

When they finished the meal she pressed Chance back into his seat again and cleared the table with the help of Kate and the children. They vanished inside, leaving him alone with Agatha. Chance ventured a smile, forcibly reminded of the dowager Lady Lakenheath at her most formidable. He had a sudden weird vision of both old ladies at Almack’s and kept a straight face with an effort.

The old woman adjusted her head scarf with a flick of one hand, straightened up and regarded him with intelligent, inimical, black eyes. ‘If you hurt my child, I will make you sorry you ever came to Kérkyra, lord.’

For a moment Chance thought she had spoken in Greek and that by some miracle he had translated it instantly, then he realised that she had addressed him in perfect, if heavily accented, English.

‘I would not dream of it,’ he retorted, shaken out of his poise by her attack.

‘Pah. You think you love her? It is easy for men to love, to forget and to love again. You are all the same. For women, not so easy. So I warn you, English lord, so you know I watch you.’

‘I do not love her,’ Chance denied, wondering even as he said it if it was a lie. ‘And I will not hurt her. I just want to help her find her own people again. And I thought you did not understand English.’

The only answer he got was a cackle and one wrinkled eyelid dropping in a wink. When Alessa reappeared Agatha was sitting back in her chair, eyes closed, apparently asleep, and Chance was flicking olive pits at the chickens, who chased them hopefully.

Alessa leaned against the olive tree and watched. The tall man in the sailor’s clothes leaning back at his ease on the bench next to the sleeping old woman—they made an incongruous pair. However he was dressed, however tousled and salt-sticky his hair, Chance looked like the English gentleman he was. Agatha looked as though she had grown out of the rocky soil.

She was in love with him, there was no denying it, however hard she tried. She had struggled with her feelings, even as she worked with the children and Kate to clear up the meal, telling her friend about some little item of local gossip, daring her with her eyes to say anything about Chance in front of the children.

At first her startled mind told her this certainty was simply a physical reaction, and the extraordinary way she felt was only her response to her first real sexual experience. But as the minutes passed she knew it was not just that. There was excitement, a strange quivering ache deep inside her, a frightening awareness of her whole body. But there was also a feeling of tenderness and yearning that made her want to go and touch him, hold him, feel his breath against her skin, feel his heart against hers, and never, ever, let him go.

Alessa folded her hands tightly together and walked up to the table. Chance tipped back his head and smiled lazily up at her and all her doubts vanished. She could have stood there all day, locked in that warm brown gaze. The breeze caught the branches of the olive tree, flicking the leaves and scattering bright sunlight across Chance’s face. He squinted his eyes against it and the trance was broken.

Time to face reality. ‘Chance—will you tell me about this lady? About my aunt?’ How strange that sounded. Aunt.

‘Yes, of course.’ He sat up straight and moved along the bench to make room for her.

‘No, not here. In the olive grove, where we will not be disturbed.’ It was too soon to let other people know about this, and certainly too soon for the children. Later would be time enough, if Chance proved to be right and this unknown relative acknowledged her.

Alessa took his hand without thinking and led him away, round the side of the cottage and up the hillside until they were in the strange greenish-brown shade of the olives. ‘Here.’ It was a favourite spot, a mossy bank that must, in ancient times, have formed a boundary between different owners’ plots of olives. They sat and she wriggled back against a gnarled trunk. ‘You can see the sea—look.’

She raised her hand to point and realised it was clasped with Chance’s. Both sets of fingers were brown with sun and wind, but hers looked tiny against his. Chance let his hand rise with her gesture, then, instead of opening his fingers, he raised her hand to his lips and let them touch the back of it.

‘No.’ Alessa jerked her hand away. It was like the strange pricking sensation you got when you rubbed silk against glass. Papa had used to do that to make paper dolls dance for her and she used to giggle and shriek if her fingers touched the magic tingle. Now, she had no inclination to do either. ‘No,’ she repeated, this time more moderately, disentangling herself. ‘We have been imprudent enough for one day.’

‘Is that a promise for another day?’ he asked softly.

She shot him a reproving look, but he was leaning back against the tree, not looking at her any more.

‘These olives are odd; different from the ones I have seen in Italy and France. Bigger, and the trunks look as though they are made out of ropes and net, all tangled together.’

‘I know.’ Alessa snatched at the neutral topic gratefully. ‘It is Venetian, I believe: nowhere else are there olives pruned like these.’

Chance was silent for a moment, twirling a twig between his fingers. ‘We did not come here to flirt, nor to discuss olives. I wish I had handled this better, made sure of my facts before I told you anything.’

‘Tell me what you believe.’

‘Your eyes and eyebrows are very distinctive; I would guess from what I know now that you inherited them from your father.’

Alessa nodded. ‘Papa had always referred to them as the Meredith witch-eyes. Legend has it that one of our ancestors seduced a witch and then left her. She deposited her son on his doorstep nine months later. Personally I think any self-respecting witch would have left a curse, not a baby.’

‘Perhaps she loved him,’ Chance speculated, suddenly turning his head and fixing her with a direct look. ‘It does happen.

‘Anyway, I was in the courtyard at the Residency. You had just run away and left me, and Lady Trevick arrived home with her new houseguests: Lady Blackstone and her daughter Frances. For a moment, when I saw the daughter, I thought she was you—you could be sisters. There is no mistaking the resemblance, nor yours to Lady Blackstone.