Bridal Bargains

Elena led the way up and across the polished floor to a door directly opposite the stairs. She threw it open then stood back to allow Mia to move past her.

Her feet were suddenly sinking into a deep-piled oatmeal carpet, and her eyes drifted around soft lemon walls and white woodwork. Oatmeal curtains were caught back from the windows with thick lemon ropes.

‘Your bathroom is to your right,’ Elena informed her coolly. ‘The master’s bedroom is through the door to your left.’

Separate bedrooms, then, Mia was relieved to note. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, and forced herself to step further into the room.

Elena did not join her, instead remaining in the open doorway. ‘My daughter, Sofia, will come and unpack for you. If you need anything tell her and she will tell me.’

In other words, don’t speak to me yourself unless it is absolutely necessary, Mia ruefully assumed from that cold tone.

‘Guido, my husband, will bring your luggage shortly,’ the housekeeper continued. ‘Dinner here is served at nine. Will you require some refreshment before then?’

And doesn’t it just stick in your throat to offer it? Mia thought with a sudden blinding white smile that made the other woman’s face drop at the sheer unexpectedness of it.

‘Yes,’ she said lightly. ‘I require a large pot of coffee, milk—not cream—to go with it and a plate of sandwiches—salad, I think. Thank you, Elena. Now you may go.’

The woman’s face turned beetroot red as she stepped back over the threshold, then pulled the door shut with a barely controlled click. Almost immediately Mia wilted, the stress of maintaining this level of indifference towards everyone taking the strength out of her legs so that she almost sank shakily into the nearest chair.

Right in the very midst of that telling little weakness she sucked in a deep breath, straightening her shoulders and grimly defying it. She had many long months of this to put up with, and if she started turning into a quivering wreck at each new obstacle she wouldn’t stay the course.

With that now aching chin held high again, she turned to view the room in general. It was large and light and airy, with two full-length windows standing open to a light breeze beyond. Appropriate furniture stood around the room—a couple of oatmeal upholstered bedside chairs and a small matching sofa scattered with pale lemon cushions. A large dark wood wardrobe stood against the wall opposite the windows, a dressing-table against another, and a tall chest of drawers. Her eyes kept moving, picking out occasional tables and table lamps sitting on lace doilies to protect the polished wood—all very old-fashioned and reminiscent of a different era when tender loving care was poured into furniture like this in the form of beeswax, which she could smell in the air.

And then, of course, there was the bed.

Gritting her teeth, Mia made herself turn and face her major fear. The bed was huge, standing in pride of place between the two open windows, its heavily carved head-and footboards suggesting that the bed was antique. The sheets were white and folded back neatly over a pale lemon bedspread, the headboard piled with snowy white pillows.

Her heart stopped beating, her stomach muscles contracting with dread as she stood there staring at it. She made herself imprint the image of two heads on those snowy white pillows—one dark and contemptuous but grimly determined, the other red-gold and frightened but resolutely defiant.

She shuddered suddenly, realising that contempt and defiance were not going to make good bed partners. Contempt and mute submission would be a far less volatile mixture, she told herself in an attempt at wry mockery.

It didn’t work. In fact, there wasn’t even the merest hint of the usual mockery that she relied on so much to keep her going.

Oh, hell, she thought heavily, and moved around the bed to go and went to open one of the windows, her lungs pulling in short tugs of clean fresh air in an effort to dispel the ever-present sense of dread—a dread that was drawing nearer with every passing hour.

There was a pretty view outside, she noted in a deliberate snub to those other grim thoughts. Carefully attended gardens rolled down towards a shallow rock face, but she couldn’t see a beach or any obvious way down the cliff to the sea below.

But there was a glass-walled swimming pool glinting off to the left of her, which cheered her up a bit because at least the temperature was mild enough to allow her to take her usual exercise while she was stuck here. Further out, she could see the misted bulk of several other islands not very far away. It made her wish she’d had the foresight to ask where he was bringing her so she could have bought herself a map and acquainted herself with what she was seeing out there.

Then another thought hit her, making a connection that she should have made ages ago. For this was Skiathos, and Skiathos belonged to the Sporades group of islands. The island her father owned was also in the Sporades group. She could actually be looking at her new husband’s dream, without actually knowing it.

Suddenly she felt surrounded by reminders of what she was here for. The island. The bed. The isolation in which she was supposed to fulfil her part of the bargain.

Her blood ran cold and she shivered, any pleasure she had experienced because of the beauty of her new surroundings spoiled for ever. She turned away from the window, from the islands, from the bed, and walked straight into the bathroom.

She needed a shower, she decided grimly—needed to soak the tension out of her body with warmth. She had to keep herself together because this was the beginning, not the end, of it.

Guido had arrived with her luggage while she was still in the bathroom and Sofia was there when Mia eventually came back to the bedroom, wrapped in a white terry bathrobe she had found hanging on the bathroom door and with her hair hidden beneath a turban-wrapped towel.

Sofia’s glance was very guarded. ‘I bring food,’ she said in badly broken English, ‘and have unpacked for you.’

‘Thank you.’ No smile was offered so none was returned.

The girl left and Mia moved over to the tray set on a low table beside the sofa. The coffee was too strong and the crusty bread sandwiching the salad too thickly cut for her to have any hope of swallowing it past that lump that was still constricting her throat. Luckily, someone had had the foresight to place a pitcher of iced water on the tray with the coffee so she contented her thirst with that and picked the salad off the bread.

By the time she had finished she felt suddenly and utterly bone-weary. Despite her long shower, the strain of it all was still dragging at her muscles and she could now feel the dull throb of a tension headache coming on.

With a heavy sigh, she at last did what her brain and her body had been pleading with her to do since she’d arrived here. She got up and walked over to that dreaded bed, threw herself face downwards across it and simply switched off.