B.ing

This was real and those romantic stories for which she did the art work were far behind in her London flat.  Up there on the deck of the caique stood a tall Greek bent on vengeance,  and down bere she huddled in his cloak like a trembling Victorian virgin.  Only she wasn't about to have the vapours,  and that devil wasn't going to have his way without one hell of a fight!  Alice dropped the cloak,  tossed back her hair and lifted her suitcases on to the divan.  If he thought he had run off with a siren,  then she was about to show him her real self,  in neat skirt and blouse,  spectacles and her hair in a bun.
      Alice had mounted to the deck very quietly and now she stood partly concealed by some ship's tackle watching Stefan Kassandros at the wheel of the craft,  its great sails belling out in the fresh wind off the sea.  He had removed his sheepskin coat and his wide shoulders strained the linen of a white shirt as he steered his piratical caique ards the island he had called Solitaria because it was far out in the Aegean and he could take a woman as he wished there and do with her
      All of it was incredible,  like some fantastic dream that held her spellbound.  She breathed the tang of the ocean and felt the sun against her skin,  and for the first time she saw Stefan Kassandros with clarity.
          At first after glancing through her belongings she bad Tamcked because she had been unable to find her indoor glasses,  then had realised that he hadn't bundled them in with her other things.  They had been left unnoticed on the bathroom shelf,  but fortunately she possessed a pair of sun-  glasses,  not too deeply tinted,  and these would have to suffice for everyday use.  She was wearing them right now,  along with a slim dark skirt and sedately collared blue blouse.  Her hair was neatly coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck and she wore not a trace of make-up.  Now she was Alice Sheldon again,  the prim-looking sister of the glamor-  ous Alberta,  whom men passed by without a second glance.
   He had waited a long time to score off Ionides Damaskinos Tana it was seeing her last night,  masquerading as Alberta rather than herself,  which had led to her being with him on this graceful craft,  which rode the swells with sails full-  stretched in the wind.  Never in her wildest dreams had Alice imagined something so improbable and improper happening to her,  and with some guilty,  deep-down part of herself she almost wanted him to go on believing that she was Alberta.  Even her popular sister had never been dated by a man who looked like Stefan Kassandros,  with a lithe strong grace to his body,  and a look of command in his face.  With eyes that vowed retribution for emotional suffering!
       She wanted to tell him to give it to the fishes,  but once again was betrayed by her own body.  Sbe was ravenous,  and the food on the tray had an aroma that was out of this world.  The boy Miki gave ber a smile,  as if it were quite the usual thing for him to assist in the abduction of an English maybe he had been led to believe that she was an eager passenger aboard the caique she wouldn't put anything past Stefan Kassandros! "Arrange that box so Miss Sheldon can sit and eat her breakfast,"  he said to Miki in English.  Miki is bi-lingual like quite a few young Greeks,"  he explained to Alice. "His father,  my cousin,  spent some years in America and brought home with him a Greek wife who had been born there.  A lot of my people go to the States for a while,  but they invariably return to Greece.  Few other countries have our history and timelessness,  and even your
   own country,  England,  is being spoiled by so-called progress.Don't you agree?'
   Alice lowered her gaze to her plate and realised howa physically aware of him she was oh lord,  was she so love-starved that she actually felt some kind of pleasure in this abduction?  This man was sailing away with her like some buccaneer,  and here she was eating his food and actu-  ally admiring his wide shoulders tapering to lean hips,  and his legs that were so long and thrusting in the sailcloth
     Why had Alberta pretended to be called Alice,  for that was obviously what she had done?  It could only be connected with something Alberta had said years ago,  when they were children and reading the Lewis Carroll books.  The pert and pretty Berta had turned to their father and said that she was the one who should have been called Alice because she fair hair and blue eyes and was the enquiring child of the family.  Their father had laughed and Alice remembered how he had looked at her,  with a kind of concerned tion,  as if he had known that Wonderland would never be easy for her to find.
   He lounged above her,  his eyes moving over her dis-  ordered hair and down to where his lips had disarrange her blouse so that it showed her white skin.  Very deliber-  ately he shook his head. "We are more than halfway to the island and I have no intention of turning back to Athens just because you had an attack of the vapours.  I shall just
  have to go a little more slowly with you,  Alice.  You come into a different category from those other liberated English-  women who come abroad,  titillated by romantic tales of ruthless Greek ship owners.  You intrigue me more than ever.'
        In her he intended to find release for all his pent-up hatred,  all his restraint since the girl called Timareta had died.  Alice knew that he cared nothing for her feelings he firmly believed that her hopes and dreams resided in a man he despised
   Alice clutched a cushion to her and felt terribly lost and insecure as the Phaedra carried her across the deep Aegean to the island of a man who had her completely in his clutches.
   ALICE stood taut by the rail as tbe caique was skilfully eased among the rocks that grew in dark clusters beyond the beach of Solitaria.  Dusk was falling and streaks of flame lay across the sky;  the wind blew her hair across her brow and her lips were more red than usual against the paleness of her face.  was encircled by those dark-  It seemed that the island mak-  tipped rocks deeply submerged in the blue Aegean,  ing of it a kind of stronghold that would appeal to the corsair in Stefan from sculptured cliffs made brazen by the sunset,  and even here she could see the house be called Fireglow,  rooted there on the hulking cliffs,  wild,  almost forbidding in its air loneliness,  dominating the sea from which it arose on bedrock deep ocean turbulence must have thrown up aeons ago.
   As she leaped ashore she glanced upwards and her eyes were filled with the incandescent,  flamy glow of Her spectacles were in the pocket of her jacket,  for waves had across the skiff and so bedewed the lenses t they had become more of a hindrance than a help.  Now as she looked around her everything had a kindly haze to it,  somehow lessening her initial sense of apprehension
    When they entered the elevator a light went on auto-  matically and the cage,  which was just about big enough for two people and some luggage,  climbed carefully up the shaft.  Had Alice been alone she would have felt nervous of the lift,  shrinking inwardly at the thought of it stalling in that long tunnel of rock.
  She stared at him,  realising that he had subtly altered the prison sound of her name,  as if now they were on his island call th was going to be moulded exactly to his requirements.