‘The mistress he did have. He just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t have us both.’ Vivien fixed bright blue eyes ruefully on Sarah. ‘I presume you are aware that Alex keeps his left luggage in Athens and Paris?’
‘Er...yes.’
‘Greek men have double standards,’ Vivien muttered with rich sympathy. ‘Want to know how I kicked out the baggage?’
‘Love to,’ Sarah said truthfully.
‘I made him jealous. A dangerous game, that, but for me, it worked. All of a sudden he realised how I felt and he never strayed again, he was so busy watching my every move. I loved him to death but boy, did I keep him on his toes. What are your plans?’
‘Plans?’
‘You need a strategy if you want to decimate the opposition. Remember, I’m always at the end of the phone and I come to Paris all the time. I’ll be here in a fortnight again to see my grandson properly.’ Vivien was already drifting to the door. She turned back for a second and smiled. ‘Alex has a conscience...play on it...and of course that.’ She indicated the bed meaningfully beneath Sarah’s embarrassed gaze. ‘I’m sure you’re already quite aware that what happens in here is more important than anything else right now. Don’t let the sun go down on a row...’
Sarah nodded dumbly in receipt of her instructions.
‘See you next week.’ The door shut on Vivien.
Sarah collapsed down on a chair, feeling as though she had tangled with a whirlwind. She was beginning to understand why Alex had looked momentarily helpless. Vivien was a miniature dynamo. And the poor woman was actually rooting for this crazy marriage to work because evidently Sarah was viewed as a lesser evil than Elise!
But Vivien was the mother of Damon’s wife. That opened up whole new areas of conjecture. Talk about keeping it in the family! Slowly Sarah shook her buzzing head. The extent of her own ignorance was colossal and frustrating. She knew nothing about the Terzakis family that Callie had not chosen to tell her and she had not seen Alex once in the three weeks which had come between his agreement to marry her and the actual ceremony today. No wonder Alex had been shaken by the sight of his stepmother’s descent! Naturally he did not trust Sarah, who had been so vitriolic with him, to keep her mouth shut with Vivien.
Androula...’looking a bit peaky and strained,’ according to her mother. Sarah broke out in a cold sweat of discomfiture. Dear God, she had been so wilfully blind in refusing to see the view from the other side of the fence! Sarah had been outraged when she’d realised that Damon had gaily married another woman while Callie was carrying his child—it had been the final insult in Sarah’s book! She had regarded Androula as her sister’s triumphant rival.
But how triumphant could a newish bride be, faced with the knowledge that another woman was having her husband’s child and then ultimately being presented with the demand that she take on that same child and bring it up as her own? Sarah wasn’t a bit surprised that Vivien’s daughter was looking strained. After all, at what point had Androula learnt of Callie’s condition? Before or after the wedding?
Sarah groaned out loud. Suddenly she was being forced to face yet again that there was another side to the coin of her own bitterness. Clearly Androula was suffering too and she was an entirely innocent party. Damon, she reflected grimly, spread misery wherever he went, it seemed.
Her luggage was brought up by a manservant and then a maid arrived to tell her that dinner would be served in an hour. The maid stayed to unpack. Sarah hovered, uneasy at being waited on for the very first time in her life, and in the end took refuge in the en-suite bathroom to freshen up and change for dinner. That achieved, she employed her schoolgirl French to the task of asking directions to the nursery.
Nanny had put up the barricades all right. Nicky was tucked into a great brass cot, fed, changed and put down for the night. ‘He’s settled...finally,’ the older woman stressed before Sarah could cross the threshold of the room.
‘Great...’
‘It wouldn’t be a good idea to disturb him.’
Gritting her teeth, Sarah withdrew again. If she disturbed her nephew and he started to cry, she would be leaving Nanny to cope while she went down to dinner.
‘And I’ll be retiring now, Mrs Terzakis. I’m very tired.’
‘I’ll see to his night feeds,’ Sarah said cheerfully.
Nanny looked at her in amazement. ‘Not at all, madam. There is no necessity for that. I’ll manage tonight and tomorrow, I believe, some help will be arriving—a young girl to step in for the late feeds and cover for my time off.’
Glory be. Nicky was going to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance! Sarah went downstairs at speed, her wide green eyes furious. Nicky was being taken over by staff hired by Alex. Sarah was being replaced and made superfluous.
A hovering manservant, evidently awaiting her arrival in the hall, flung wide the door of the dining-room.
‘I hate unpunctuality.’
Alex was standing by a massive fireplace, cradling a drink in one brown hand. As she took in his immaculate appearance in a tailored dinner-jacket, Sarah tensed, acknowledging her first social error. She should have put on the single evening gown she had purchased. Did he dress up every night to dine?
She took her seat at one end of the long, polished table, lit by an ornate set of silver candelabra, and ran an uncertain hand through her tumbling hair, intimidated, though the sensation ran strongly against her natural spirit.
‘Your stepmother’s very nice,’ she murmured. ‘Astonishingly nice actually. She made me feel very welcome.’
Alex’s expressive mouth twisted sardonically. He signalled the manservant. A minute later all the candles on the table had been doused and the great chandelier above had been illuminated to shed blinding light on the vast contours of a room which had been romantically shrunken into intimacy by the candles.
‘The staff may believe we have something to celebrate; I do not.’