Sarah giggled. ‘Can’t you just?’
‘Alex, I am not going to stay...I promise you. I won’t even be staying to dinner. I’m flying straight back home again as soon as I leave. But really, Alex,’ Vivien lamented, leading them into the château, ‘it’s all your own fault. That ghastly hole and corner wedding you subjected this darling girl to today! No friends, no family, no reception...not even a honeymoon—shabby. I could have done it in style. I do want you to know that I pleaded with him, Sarah. Even with only three weeks to play with, I could have made it the wedding of the year.’
A line of staff was assembled in the vast entrance hall. ‘I know, positively medieval, isn’t it?’ Vivien whispered sympathetically, reading Sarah’s dismay.
Alex performed the introductions, but all formality was swiftly banished by Vivien, who also concluded the interlude by linking her arm with Sarah’s, saying, ‘Now I expect you’d like to freshen up,’ and carrying Sarah with determination towards the grand stone staircase.
‘Bit of an atmosphere between you two, isn’t there?’ Vivien commented with a sigh. ‘I adore Alex but it does take two to tango, doesn’t it? And it happens even in the best of families. And who could call such a gorgeous baby an accident? Frankly, I’d call him a miracle...Alex saved at the eleventh hour from deep-freezing himself into eternity with that dreadful Elise—you do know about her, don’t you?’
‘A little.’
‘A little’s more than enough. She’s the most frightfully perfect woman. Speaks several languages, is an accomplished artist, owns one of the most famous vineyards in the Loire and can trace her family tree back for yonks and yonks. Incredibly beautiful too. But she’s very superior—treats me like the proverbial dumb blonde, which I’m not...and she would have undone all the hard work I put into unfreezing Alex. Elise doesn’t have any emotions. I think she had them vacuumed out in a special operation so that she could function more like a robot!’
‘But she must have been hurt...’
‘Not at all. She doesn’t love Alex any more than he loved her. They were going to get together some day and hatch a dynasty, probably in a test tube...I really couldn’t imagine her doing it the normal way. She might get her hair mussed. Thank God your birth control let you down!’ Vivien asserted. ‘You saved Alex from a fate worse than death!’
Vivien’s constant chatter allowed Sarah to picture exactly what the older woman had been told. Alex had admitted he was making a shotgun wedding, purely for the sake of legitimising his child, it seemed. At least there was no need to put up a front of being a joyous and adored bride.
Vivien pressed her into a huge and opulent bedroom, festooned with white flowers everywhere she looked. ‘Got it all ready for you behind his back,’ she confided.
Sarah focused on the colossal carved oak four-poster. It was also hung with masses of fresh flowers, resembling some fantastic scene from a film, she thought, on the edge of hysteria. She could barely breathe for the heaviness of the perfume in the air.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she mumbled as Vivien regarded her. ‘Stunning,’ she added weakly.
‘Alex said I wouldn’t like you. I was terrified,’ Vivien admitted. ‘I mean, someone worse than Elise after all the plotting and planning I’ve been doing to keep her at bay! And Alex acting like he had been trapped... It would take an Amazon to trap Alex!’
The Amazon moistened her dry lips. ‘It wasn’t a trap but I did employ pressure,’ Sarah heard herself saying, desperately wanting to be as honest as possible.
‘You had to do that?’ Vivien’s pretty, animated face looked astonished. ‘With Alex? The rat!’ she exclaimed. ‘I always thought Alex could be depended on one hundred per cent to do the decent thing—’
‘Oh,
he can be—’ Sarah backtracked hastily.
‘He has a very strong sense of honour and responsibility. Makes him a bit pious sometimes.’ Vivien pulled a face. ‘But he adores children.’
‘Yes.’
‘Got rather rigid ideas, though. I spoilt Damon—that’s Alex’s younger brother—dreadfully. He was such a charmer when he was a boy...not that I don’t still love him but he does worry me sometimes.’ Vivien leant back against the massive footboard of the bed, looking abstracted and troubled. ‘You know, you’ll laugh, but when I first heard there was a baby I actually thought Alex might be trying to cover for Damon.’
Sarah had frozen. ‘Oh?’ was all she was capable of saying.
‘And it would totally have broken Andy’s heart, and she had been looking a bit peaky and strained lately. Worships the ground Damon walks on—’
‘Andy?’
‘My daughter, Androula.’
‘Your daughter is married to Alex’s brother?’
‘I was a widow with a little girl when I met Alex’s father,’ Vivien explained, with a far-away look in her eyes. ‘My first husband was also Greek. I worked in Nikos’s office. I couldn’t take dictation for tacks but he was always asking for me! Not that he had honourable intentions, let me tell you. Nikos had me earmarked as his next pillow-friend—’
‘His what?’ Still reeling from the shock that Damon’s wife was this woman’s daughter, doubly a part of the Terzakis family because she must have grown up with both brothers as a stepsister, Sarah was none the less fascinated by Vivien’s story.
‘A little Greek euphemism for mistress.’ Vivien wrinkled her nose. ‘I said no and no and no again for an entire year and always kept a desk between us. At the end of it he was on his knees begging me to marry him but hating me too, if you know what I mean. So we married and it took me another two years to get rid of what you might call the baggage from his previous life-style—’
‘Baggage?’