A Shameful Consequence Read Online Free PDF Page A

clutched her figure ‘ … could be improved.’
    ‘Tell him he is never to speak to you that way and mean it,’ Nico said, but as he looked at her he changed his mind, for surely she should not stay. ‘Tell him that you won’t live like this.’
    ‘I cannot.’
    ‘You could get an annulment.’ She screwed her face up at the impossibility, just too embedded in the ways of the island to take such a step. It wasn’t his job to save her, it wasn’t his place to insist she be strong, for after all he would be gone from Xanos in the morning.
    ‘Then you do your best to survive your life.’ Nico gave a half-smile as he left her to it—it was not for him to persuade her otherwise. ‘Take your lover.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Take ten.’
    ‘I can’t …’ She closed her eyes in dread. ‘What if he were not discreet, what if people found out …?’
    ‘You care too much what others think.’
    And then she cried, different tears now, not angry, or bitter, but she cried for all that would be denied to her, for a loveless, sexless future and all the hope she had pinned on this night. Her grief so deep, her pain so real it could not help but move him. He went over to the chair and wrapped her in his arms. He thought he would comfort her; he was unsure of his motives, but the feel of arms around her, the scent of him close and all she had suffered tonight had her mouth move to his. He felt herclumsy, desperate kiss on his lips and closed his eyes, not in passion but restraint.
    He moved his mouth away, pulled his head back and heard her sob. He realised he had added to her humiliation as he did to her what Stavros must have done, so very many times.
    He looked down at her hands, which were shaking in her lap.
    ‘Where is your ring?’
    ‘I threw it at him,’ she said. ‘I’m never putting it back on.’ And then he saw a tear slide out of her eye at the hopelessness of it all, for tomorrow, he was quite sure, it would be on. She would do her duty, to everyone but herself.
    ‘I’ll go back.’ She went to stand but her legs woud not obey and for a moment she sat. ‘Thank you.’ She gave a very wan smile. ‘Thank you for talking to me, thank you for your kind words, and I apologise for suggesting you might gossip …’
    ‘I am discreet.’
    ‘Thank you.’ She took a deep breath, as one would when preparing to dive into cold water. ‘I’d better go back.’
    ‘I meant …’ He should just let her go, it was no business of his, but the thought of her going back to lie in a bed alone, of Constantine crying herself to sleep, of all her wants unfulfilled, moved Nico when usually sob stories did not. ‘You said you were worried a lover may not be …’
    Hope flared inside her and he must have seen it,because instantly he quashed it. ‘I will not be your long-time lover, I am no one’s escape …’ He saw her eyes shutter. ‘But I will be with you tonight.’
    ‘Just tonight?’ She wanted more than that: she wanted weekends in Athens and discreet meetings in hotels and phone calls and all the passion that had been denied. She wanted so much more than one night with him.
    ‘Only tonight.’ He looked at her, his eyes roamed the body he had been thinking about for hours now, the virgin bride, who would stay that way if not for him. ‘You come to my bed, I will show you what your husband denies you—all you miss out on if you choose to live this lie …’
    ‘I have no choice.’
    ‘Always we have choices,’ Nico said, and this was his—to choose not to examine his feelings tonight. His mind was black and here was light. The streets of Xanos had unsettled him, stirred emotions that he sorely wanted gone. He wanted diversion and here it had been delivered to him in the shape of a tear-streaked, beautiful virgin.
    He stood and she took his hand and did the same. She stared at the room and it was the wedding night of her dreams—just the wrong man. Then she looked again, because if she was completely