Deceit Of A Pagan

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT!’ Templar stared at him in horror. ‘You can’t possibly be serious?’

Arrogant eyebrows rose over heavy-lidded eyes, the firmness of his mouth showing his displeasure. ‘But I am, perfectly serious. The final decision does of course lie with you. You can either give up your daughter or marry me.’

Templar placed Keri back in her cot, moving like an automaton. She wrung her hands together, her eyes dwelling thoughtfully on the copper curls just visible from the bedroom. She looked again at the dark forbidding face of the man who had the power to wreck her whole life, and saw no softening there, he obviously meant what he said.

His thick dark hair was brushed casually back from his high forehead, his nostrils flaring arrogantly as she continued to look at him. How could she let her little Keri live with this hard, embittered man, with no one to give her a mother’s love? Or would he get someone else to provide that? He was a very determined man and a little thing like her unhappiness wouldn’t matter to him as long as he got what he wanted. And there could be no doubt that he wanted Keri. If she told him now that Keri wasn’t her child he would take her away from her anyway; much better to keep that knowledge to herself. As long as this man attained control of his niece what possible difference could it make that Templar wasn’t her mother? As far as she could see it would only be Keri and herself who suffered by his gaining such information.

‘Why—’ her lips felt stiff and she found it difficult to articulate. ‘Why should you want to do a thing like that?’ she asked nervously, licking her lips.

His expression didn’t alter as he flicked a speck off the tailored jacket of his light grey suit. ‘Why should I not?’ he returned coolly. ‘And do not obtain the mistaken idea that I am considering this course of action for any other reason than Keri’s future. You, as a person, do not interest me in the slightest. Secondhand goods are not my line.’

‘And just what is your line, Mr Marcose?’ she asked, ignoring his insults as she felt sure he wanted to annoy her, and she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.

‘Surely Alex told you?’

He sounded slightly mocking and Templar flushed uncomfortably. ‘No,’ she answered lightly. ‘I don’t believe your occupation ever entered into our conversation, in fact, I don’t think we ever discussed you at all.’ Which happened to be true. How could she have discussed anything with a man she had never met?

His eyes darkened to a metallic grey. ‘Alex seems to have been remiss concerning several of his relationships. I had never heard of you either. Just what was your line-before you had Keri?’

Templar bridled angrily at his condescending tone. ‘My line, as you put it, happened to be modelling.’

‘Really? Alex seems to have found girls in that profession particularly attractive for some reason.’ His eyes studied her intently. ‘Ah, yes, I remember now. When I first saw you I thought you appeared familiar. You are the girl in the make-up advertisement, are you not?’

Her nose wrinkled slightly at his obvious distaste. ‘That was one of my last assignments,’ she remembered wistfully.

‘You would like to return to your profession?’

Templar shook her head. ‘Not now. It’s too late. I have Keri and she’s my whole life.’

Her visitor looked bored. ‘You do not have to continually try to convince me of your devotion to the child. I have given you the options, you have only to make your choice.’

She paced restlessly about the room. ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she insisted.

‘I see. You have a—boy-friend?’

Momentarily Templar thought of Ken and then dismissed him. He could hardly be cast in the light Leondro Marcose was trying to put him in. ‘No, I have no boy-friend.’

‘You surprise me,’ he said dryly.

‘I have a male friend, but that’s all he is,’ she said firmly. ‘Anyway, that isn’t the reason for my hesitation. You can’t honestly expect me to seriously consider marriage to a man I’ve known barely an hour, a man that I know nothing about. You claim to be Keri’s uncle, but I only have your word for that.’

‘Do not be hysterical!’ he snapped. ‘If it is information about myself that you want then I will gladly tell you a few facts about myself. My name you already know. I am thirty-six years of age, and unmarried. I have worldwide business interests, mainly hotels and property. I am Greek, but I live mainly in my apartment in London. Of course, if you decide to marry me, I will move you into my house in the country. I shall be taking Keri there anyway, whatever you decide to do. A nanny will be obtained for her.’

‘It most certainly will not!’ Templar said adamantly. ‘If, and I emphasise the if, I allow you to force me into this senseless marriage, I will continue to care for Keri myself. Goodness, I could have arranged for a nanny for her myself and carried on working to pay for her. But I don’t think that’s the way to bring up a child. It would be heartless to do that to her now, she has come to rely on me completely.’

He gave a slight inclination of his head. ‘That is, of course, unfortunate. It seems you have little choice in the matter, then.’ He stood up.

She stayed his departure, her face desperate. ‘Please! Look, couldn’t you just care for Keri and myself? We could—well, we could still come and live with you. But surely we don’t have to marry?’

‘The idea appeals to me no more than it does you. But Keri’s likeness to Alex is too noticeable for her to be other than his child—or my own. And in this case I would prefer that she was thought to be mine. Alex may have had a fleeting relationship with you, but in Greece he has a fiancée who could be hurt by your mere existence. In your country it may be accepted that women have children outside of marriage, but such a thing would not be allowed to happen in my country.’

‘Must I remind you that it was your brother who was responsible for Keri’s birth? The woman is not solely to blame for the situation she finds herself in.’

His mouth set in firm lines. ‘I realise this. That is why it is only right that I should care for you and your child. It is unfortunate that this has occurred at all, but now that it has, and Alex is no longer alive to face up to his responsibilities, I will have to do so for him.’

‘And you think love didn’t enter into it?’

His eyes flickered over her contemptuously. ‘You are surely not trying to tell me that you loved my brother?’

Templar flinched from the derision in his voice. Whatever he thought, Tiffany had loved his brother, and there was no denying this fact. ‘Surely the fact that Keri was born at all is proof enough. No single woman would bring a child into the world if she didn’t love its father—or at least, she doesn’t have to. It isn’t necessary nowadays.’

‘Maybe not in your estimation, but in mine every child conceived with love or without it should be given the chance of life. So what you are saying is that if you hadn’t loved Alex, Keri would not have been born? And yet a few moments ago you said you were not even sure Alex was her father. Have you been in love with all the men who have shared your bed?’ he scorned.

‘Mr Marcose,’ she began tightly, ‘if you have such a bad opinion of me, aren’t you taking rather a risk by marrying me? After all, I might be a very disruptive influence in your life.’

‘You will not be allowed to be,’ he said arrogantly. ‘You will lead a very quiet life at my country house.’

‘Oh, yes? And just what will you be doing while I keep out of trouble in the country?’

‘Working. At my London apartment. I rarely visit the house you would be living in, and as soon as you move there I will endeavour to make my visits even more infrequent. I have no wish to behave as the doting husband too often.’

‘The—the what?’

He looked impatient. ‘We will have to show a certain amount of affection towards one another, no matter how much we hate it. It will be expected.’

Templar shook her head. ‘Not by me it won’t! I couldn’t possibly pretend to feel affection for someone I—–’ she broke off.

‘Hate?’ Leondro Marcose suggested. ‘You can be assured, Templar Newman, that the feeling is mutual. But I think my brother must have had some feelings of love for you. I do not know if he was aware of the type of person you actually are. Not even to know the father of your own child!’ his top lip curled back in a sneer. ‘I will leave you now. But arrangements will be made for our marriage of which you will be notified.’

‘Couldn’t I just have a little time to think it all over?’ begged Templar. ‘It’s all so—so sudden.’

‘Why sudden?’ he asked tartly. ‘You must have expected something of the sort when you wrote that letter.’

She shook her head numbly. ‘I didn’t. I just thought your brother—Alex,’ she amended quickly, ‘I thought he might be able to help me.’

‘And why is it that you suddenly need this help? Keri is ten months old, did you not consider asking for his assistance when she was born? Ah, but I forgot—you did not know Alex was her father. So why this sudden necessity for his aid?’

Templar thought of refusing to answer him, but knew he would only force it out of her. ‘I’ve been told I have to leave here at the end of the week, and I simply have nowhere else to go. No one wants to take in an unmarried mother, and I thought Alex might just be able to help for a couple of months until I had something sorted out.’

‘And now you find yourself placed in the position where you either marry someone you hate, or lose the one thing you love. It is a pity, of course, but then you were instrumental in forging your own destiny. You must have known you could never have married Alex.’

‘And why should I have known that?’

‘Because of his fiancée. A betrothal is almost as binding as a marriage in my country, and Alex was very much betrothed. He was killed only four weeks before the wedding was to have taken place. And do not think you were the first girl he had been involved with. There was another model just before his involvement with you.’

‘Then he couldn’t have been very much in love with his fiancée, to have behaved that way.’

‘Love!’ he scoffed. ‘What does love have to do with marriage? His betrothed was a quiet girl of a good family and breeding, and she would have brought a large dowry to her husband.’

‘Everything I’m not, apparently,’ said Templar dryly.

‘As you say,’ he agreed coldly. ‘But obviously your other attributes meant more to him at the time than anything Katina could give him.’ He glanced impatiently at his wrist watch. ‘I have an important appointment to go to now; you have until Friday to make up your mind. But be assured that whatever you decide to do for yourself, Keri will come to me. You are perfectly free to live your own life.’

‘Keri is my life,’ she repeated vehemently.

‘So you have said. I will call again on Friday.’

The room felt strangely empty once he had left, the smell of his cigar lingering in the air. Templar stared blankly at the closed door. Things had seemed desperate before, but they were even worse now. Leondro Marcose might be able to give Keri the sort of up-bringing Templar could only dream about for her, but it meant a lifelong marriage for Templar to a man she could only ever despise.

She stood at the side of Keri’s cot, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Oh, darling,’ she breathed softly, ‘what shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?’

Templar looked around the shabby room she had moved into the day before. When the kindly landlady had told her that she could have the room and that she would look after Keri while Templar worked she couldn’t believe her luck. She had told no one she was moving, except of course Mrs Marks. Not even Mary and Ken knew. She daren’t risk being traced by them. Men like Leondro Marcose could wield a lot of power, and it wouldn’t take him long to trace one very frightened girl and her baby.

And she was frightened, terrified in fact. She couldn’t possibly spend the rest of her life married to that cold arrogant man. He had the look of a springing leopard about to leap on its prey. And Templar felt as if she was that prey.

Keri seemed little bothered by her change of scene, not that it was all that different. All these rooms were the same, although this one was shabbier than most. But then the landlady was kind, and that made all the difference.

Of Ken she had seen little; he had finally washed his hands of her. In fact, like Leondro Marcose, Ken had given her an ultimatum: marry him and give up Keri or else their relationship ended. He seemed to think he had waited long enough for her, and the argument that had followed had not been pleasant. Templar had told him so many times that she would never give up Keri that she had thought he would actually have realised by now that she meant what she said. But he hadn’t, accusing her of playing at mother, and Keri’s contented gurgles of ‘Mama’ had only incensed him more. Finally he had stormed out of the room with a vow to waste no more time on her.

In a way his departure had been a relief. His complaints about Keri had become more pronounced of late and Templar often had to bite her tongue from preventing herself from saying something she would regret. Like most red-haired people, she had a hot temper, although she usually managed to control it. As a child she had often been punished for losing her temper with another child, or even more disastrous, with an adult.

At every movement or knock on the door Templar physically jumped, dreading opening the door in case it should be Leondro Marcose, although Keri didn’t seem affected by the air of electricity that surrounded her.

Templar took Keri downstairs and left her with Mrs Street. She had to leave earlier in the mornings now, the journey to work taking twice as long from here. Her employer, Howard Hathaway, ran a small insurance agency, and Templar, besides being his secretary, was his assistant, the tea-girl, general telephonist and also the cleaning lady. Not that she minded. A huge impersonal complex wasn’t her idea of enjoying work, although occasionally Howard became just a little too familiar. Templar never ceased to be amazed by this. Howard had a beautiful and loving wife and two young children, and yet still he had to try and prove his irresistible manhood—another reason for her disillusionment of men’s fidelity.

‘Good morning, Howard,’ she said breathlessly, placing her bag full of groceries in the corner of the room with her coat. ‘Sorry I’m late, but I just had to get some food in.’

‘That’s all right,’ accepted Howard, a man in his mid-thirties beginning to go slightly bald on top. ‘Although you look worn out before you even start. What have you been up to?’

‘Why, nothing,’ she blushed. ‘But Keri did have rather a wakeful night last night.’

‘Teething,’ sympathised Howard. Having had to put up with it twice himself he knew how wearing it could be.

Templar shook her head, beginning to sort through the letters on her desk. ‘No, it wasn’t teething. She decided that two o’clock this morning was the time to play,’ she grimaced. ‘You try telling a determined ten-month-old that you’re too tired to play! It doesn’t work.’

‘I know,’ he laughed. ‘Look, leave those for a minute and make us both a cup of coffee.’