The Goddess Of Love Read online

  As if she was afraid that the silence between them was more eloquent than words, Corena rose from the table.

  Instinctively she walked out on deck and Lord Warburton followed her.

  She went to the railing and now the last glimmer of the sun had vanished over the horizon.

  The stars were growing brighter every minute and being reflected in the smooth sea.

  There was a silence and then Corena looked up at the sky and said,

  “I can see – Orion and he is very – bright tonight – almost as if he is shining – especially for you!”

  Lord Warburton knew that she was talking so as to break the tension between them and he said very quietly,

  “It is for – you that he is – shining!”

  He thought, although he was not certain, that a little tremor ran through her before she asked,

  “You are – so strong – so clever – no one could really hurt you – could they?”

  He wondered at the question, but he replied,

  “Being hurt physically is one thing, but there are many far more subtle and cruel ways of being hurt.”

  He was thinking of the love that was burning in him because Corena was so near to him.

  He thought that perhaps he was a fool not to put his arms around her and tell her how much it would hurt him if she refused his love.

  He thought that she had not understood what he was trying to say and after a moment he went on,

  “I think, Corena, we have had an entirely unique experience in being together these past days. Will you miss me once you are with your father?”

  There was a little pause before Corena replied,

  “I shall miss our – conversations – I never knew that it was possible to talk to – any man as I have been able to – talk to you.”

  “Will you miss anything else?” he asked.

  He wanted her to say that she would miss him.

  Instead she answered,

  “Y-you have opened up new – horizons for my mind – and made me understand things I have – never been able to understand before – and whether I see Greece tomorrow or not – I know it will – always be in my heart.”

  She spoke in the same quiet almost inhuman tones that she used when she was speaking of the Oracle at Delphi.

  Once again Lord Warburton felt that she had slipped away from him and he could not hold her.

  “There is something I want to say to you, Corena – ” he replied.

  Before he could say anything more she interrupted him.

  “I must go – to bed,” she said. “There will be – many things to do – tomorrow and perhaps I will have to give – some of my – strength to my father.”

  He knew she was thinking that, like those who took part in the games, she needed the same vigour and strength to support her.

  She did not wait for Lord Warburton to agree or disagree that she should leave him.

  Instead she said very quietly,

  “Perhaps – tomorrow I shall be able to – thank you for all your – kindness to me – but tonight it is – impossible to find the words.”

  Her voice quivered and he had the feeling that she was very close to tears.

  But why? Why?

  Why was it not possible for her to tell him what was wrong, even at the very last minute, so that he might help her?

  He put out his hand as if to stop her from leaving, but it was too late.

  As if it was a dream in which she moved away from him before he could realise what was happening, she had managed to slip away.

  He was left alone with the sea and the sky and the despairing feeling that after tomorrow he might lose her forever.

  When finally he went to his own cabin, he tried to tell himself that his fears were unfounded and that he was being absurd.

  When he saw Sir Priam, and if it was necessary, took him in his yacht to Naples, from where he could travel by train back to England, he would tell him what he felt about Corena.

  Then, of course, all the difficulties that lay between them to which he could not put a name would vanish.

  He knew that one of the reasons why he had been so careful not to upset Corena by telling her of his love was that he felt honour-bound to respect her because she was travelling on his yacht without a chaperone.

  It was not of his contriving, he felt obligated towards anyone so young and, as he knew, pure and unsophisticated.

  Yet his whole body burned with his love and all the devils of hell tempted him before he went below.

  He had only to open the door of her cabin and perhaps if he told her when she was in bed she would understand.

  Then there would be the light he sometimes thought he saw in her eyes – the light of love.

  ‘She loves me, I know she loves me,’ he told himself, but he could not be sure.

  Once again despair swept over him and he found himself thinking of the words of Pindar,

  “And yet the hopes of man,

  Now ride on high, now are sunk low,

  Cleaving their way through seas of false illusion. ”

  Was the illusion false?

  The question seemed almost to be shouted at him.

  He knew the only person who could give the answer was Corena, who was in the next cabin to him.

  When Hewlett had left him being aware that his Master had no wish to talk, Lord Warburton opened the porthole in his cabin.

  He drew back the curtains and let the light of the moon, which was now high in the sky flood in.

  Inevitably it made him think of Corena and he felt as if she came towards him, as Aphrodite might have done, on a shaft of moonlight.

  Then, finding the beauty of the night, because it was hers, was almost unbearable, he forced himself to climb into bed.

  He thought it unlikely that he would be able to sleep.

  The Sea Serpent was already at anchor and there was only a very faint lap of the waves against her sides and the silence of the night seemed to speak to him of his love.

  “Oh, God, how can I win her?” he asked.

  He knew, as the words burst from his lips, that Charles would laugh and say that this was what he had always wanted him to feel.

  *

  In her own cabin Corena was tossing from side to side in her bed.

  She knew that she had so nearly betrayed herself to Lord Warburton when he stood beside her on deck under the stars.

  She had to fight against an almost uncontrollable impulse to tell him how frightened she was of what was awaiting him at Crisa.

  She mistrusted Mr. Thespidos’s promises and he hovered over her like some great vulture from which there was no escape.

  ‘I – have to save Papa – I have to!’ she said over and over again to herself as if to reassure her that she was doing the right thing.

  Then, as the night seemed to deepen around her and everything was very quiet, she knew that to sacrifice Lord Warburton to Mr. Thespidos was a crime against everything she believed in.

  Everything that had been beautiful and holy to her ever since she had been a child.

  It was not as Orion that she was thinking of him but as Apollo.

  The God who was part of Greece itself, who had swum ashore at Crisa where they would be tomorrow morning.

  He had brought light to the whole world.

  The Greeks had worshipped him and, she thought, she could understand how Apollo must have looked to them – very much like the magnificence of Lord Warburton.

  She had never in her life enjoyed anything so much as being with him, talking to him and listening to what he had to tell her.

  At first it had been like being with her father.

  Then she knew that it was different, not only because Lord Warburton was the most handsome man she had ever seen but also because he was young.

  Although she tried to deny it, there was a vibration between them that was not explainable in words, but as if they spoke to each other in the language of the Gods.

  H
e was so strong, so fine and at the same time so perceptive and understanding that she knew that it would be hard to leave him.

  Then suddenly, and she had not thought of this before, she realised that when she did so he would loathe and despise her for handing him over as a hostage to Mr. Thespidos.

  It had not occurred to her before that he would despise her and would never wish to set eyes on her again because she had betrayed him.

  ‘He will understand – of course he will understand that I had to – save Papa,’ she told herself.

  Then she went on,

  ‘Mr. Thespidos will ask an enormous ransom from him and when he has paid it – he will go free.’

  It was then she remembered the evil expression on Mr. Thespidos’s face.

  Almost as if somebody was telling her so, she was aware that he would not be content just with money.

  He would want to humiliate Lord Warburton, perhaps by taking from him not only his money but his treasures, everything Greek that he had collected over the years.

  She wanted to cry out at the idea of it and then, even more frightening, that even that would not be enough.

  Mr. Thespidos might want to torture him, just for the amusement of it, just to prove that Lord Warburton could suffer as any man would when he was helpless.

  ‘I-I cannot – bear it!’ Corena cried to herself.

  Almost as if she was being talked to by voices that filled the cabin, she put her hands over her ears and hid her face in the pillow.

  “I have – to save Papa – I must – save Papa!”

  She was speaking the words aloud even though they were stifled.

  She could hear Mr. Thespidos say that if she betrayed him, if Lord Warburton was aware of what she was doing, her father would die and not pleasantly.

  She felt she could hear him screaming in agony and wanted to scream too, but her voice died in her throat.

  If it was not her father who screamed, it would be Lord Warburton!

  It was then as she thought of him suffering she knew, as she had known for days, that she loved him more than anything else on earth.

  She loved his clear-cut features, the height and breadth of his forehead and the squareness of his chin.

  She loved the sensitiveness of his hands, the breadth of his shoulders and the athletic movement of his body.

  She loved the deepness in his voice when he spoke to her and the way certain things he said made her quiver inside almost as if they lit a flame.

  “I love him!” she said aloud despairingly.

  Not really realising what she was doing, she climbed out of bed to go to the porthole.

  It was open to let in the cool night air.

  As she pulled back the curtains, she could see the constellation of Orion shining above her.

  Orion – Apollo, whichever he was, he was a God and she dared not destroy him.

  “No shelter has Apollo, nor sacred laurel leaves,

  The fountains now are silent, the voice is stilled.”

  The words seemed to he whispered in the lap of the sea.

  She knew that, if Lord Warburton died at the hands of Mr. Thespidos, it would be she who had really killed him.

  He was the God of Light whom the whole world, whether they knew it or not, worshipped.

  She closed her eyes.

  Then looking up at the stars she thought that they were telling her what she must do and she dared not disobey them.

  Without thinking, driven by a feeling of urgency, of terror and at the same time of love, she opened her cabin door.

  Everything was quiet and dark as she turned the handle of Lord Warburton’s door and went inside.

  He was awake, thinking of Corena and his love, and suddenly he was aware that she was standing only a few feet from him.

  The moonlight illuminated her hair as it flowed over her shoulders onto the diaphanous nightgown she wore.

  It flashed through his mind that he was seeing a vision of Aphrodite herself and she had come to him.

  Then with a little cry Corena ran towards the bed and dropped down on her knees.

  “I have – to tell – you!” she said in a quick, breathless, terrified little voice. “You – are in – danger! Tomorrow a man will be – waiting for you – but I cannot do it! I know – now that I cannot do it – !”

  Her voice broke and the tears seemed to choke her.

  “What are you saying to me, Corena?” Lord Warburton asked. “What are you telling me?”

  “H-he said – if I did not – come with you to Crisa – he would kill Papa – and I know that he has already – tortured him!”

  She fought for breath as she added,

  “Now – he will – do it to you!”

  It was impossible to say anything more as the tears came and she put her face down on the bed and sobbed bitterly.

  The sound breaking the silence and seeming to become part of the moonlight.

  She cried despairingly, all the pent-up horror of the last weeks seeping through her so that she could no longer think.

  She could only feel that she was already a murderess, killing both her father and Lord Warburton whom she loved.

  She did not realise that he had slipped out of bed on the other side, put on a dark robe that Hewlett had left on a chair and come round to where she was kneeling.

  He bent down and very gently picked her up in his arms.

  She was still crying helplessly and uncontrollably.

  As he sat down on the bed and cradled her against him, she went on weeping against his shoulder.

  He held her very close and, although she was not aware of it, his lips were on the softness of her hair.

  Then he said,

  “Stop crying, my darling, and tell me what all this is about.”

  Because his voice was so quiet and yet so firm, it percolated through her misery.

  While the tears still flowed, they were not so tempestuous.

  She could feel the strength of his arms and was conscious that she was close to him and that for the moment she felt safe and protected and the terror of Mr. Thespidos had receded a little.

  Gently, so very gently that she could hardly realise it was happening, Lord Warburton put his fingers under her chin and turned her face up to his.

  In the moonlight he could see her very clearly.

  The tears were running down her cheeks, her lips were trembling and her wet eyelashes were dark as she closed her eyes because she dared not look at him.

  For one moment he gazed at her and then his lips were on hers.

  As she felt them, it was not even a shock to Corena.

  It was as if everything that was happening was inevitable and had been decreed since the beginning of time.

  At first his kiss was gentle and very tender, because he comforted her.

  Then, as if the softness and innocence of her lips made him surer of himself, the pressure increased.

  He kissed her demandingly and possessively as if he made her his.

  It was then that Corena knew that this was what she had been longing for, although she had not been aware of it.

  She felt her whole being move towards him and become a part of him.

  She thought wildly that it was something she should not do, but she gave him her heart, her soul and herself.

  Now she was no longer alone and frightened but his.

  He kissed her and at last her tears abated.

  Then, as she opened her eyes, the stars shone above his head and he was no longer human but Orion and they were both part of the sky and one with the Gods.

  “I love you!” Corena whispered and it did not seem wrong to say it.

  Love pulsated through her so that she could no longer think clearly but only feel.

  “As I love you!” Lord Warburton said. “My darling, how could you have tortured me by making me feel I might lose you?”

  He did not wait for an answer, but was kissing her again; kissing her fiercely, demandingly, as if he defie
d the whole world to take her from him.

  It was so perfect and so wonderful that Corena could only be aware that the stars were not only around them but within her and shining within her breast.

  Then with a little cry of horror she came back to reality.

  “Y-you – don’t understand?” she stammered. “You – must listen to – me!”

  “My precious, my darling, my wonderful little Aphrodite,” Lord Warburton said, “nothing matters except that you love me, as I love you.”

  He would have kissed her again, but with an effort she turned her face aside.

  “I have to tell you,” she said, “then – perhaps you will – no longer – love me.”

  Lord Warburton smiled at the absurdity of such an idea and then he said,

  “I am listening, my lovely one. At the same time I find it impossible not to kiss you when for these last days you have driven me nearly mad! I have never, and this is true, felt so frustrated in my whole life!”

  “I thought – I could do what was – wrong and – wicked,” Corena said, “but now I know that it is – impossible – but how can I allow them to – kill Papa?”

  Now the agony was back in her voice and Lord Warburton heard it.

  He drew her a little closer to him before he said,

  “Tell me about it, my precious, and don’t be afraid.”

  “B-but I – am afraid!”

  There was a little pause.

  Then she said in a voice that he could hardly hear,

  “When you – know what I have done – you will stop – loving me.”

  “That is impossible! We have loved each other since the beginning of time,” Lord Warburton said, “and nothing you can do or say now could prevent me from worshipping you for the rest of Eternity!”

  Corena gave a little sob and turned her face against his shoulder.

  “Tell me,” he said. “I know you have been hiding some momentous secret that you would not share with me.”

  Hesitating, stumbling over her words, and with the tears once again running down her cheeks, Corena told him how Mr. Thespidos had come to the house.

  How he told her that there was only one way she could save her father.

  She hesitated for a long time before she said,