A Fatal Waltz

Chapter 29

The weather on Santorini was far from perfect. The sky and the ocean were gray, and rain whipped the white walls and blue shutters of my villa. Colin and I had arrived separately, planning this as a clandestine sort of meeting. We might be engaged, but we could not travel without a chaperone unless we wanted to court gossip, and certainly it could not be known that we were staying together, unsupervised and unmarried. He had come to the island five days before me, but when I reached the house, I could not find him. My cook, Mrs. Katevatis, pointed me outside, saying that, untroubled by the weather, he’d gone for a walk.

I took the umbrella she offered, but it was barely useful. The wind tugged at it, bending its ribs, and the rain, coming at me horizontally, soaked my coat as I walked along the path that skirted the edge of the island’s cliffs. It was here that twice Colin had stood before me and proposed, here that I now found him, his back to me as he stared out over the caldera. I turned him around and saw his dark eyes, red-rimmed, devoid of warmth, full of sadness. He fell into my arms and cried.

More than a quarter of an hour passed before he raised his head. “I don’t have to explain this to you, do I?”

“Not at all.” I knew his pain too well. It was the same I’d felt when at last I’d mourned my husband, two years after his death.

“It doesn’t have to do with you—you must understand that. What we have, Emily, it’s everything. I did love her, years ago, but that was different. It wasn’t…she didn’t…”

“She loved you,” I said. “She told me. She only refused you because she thought having a wife would distract you and put you in danger.”

“She told you this?”

“Yes.”

“I—”

I put my hand up to his lips. “Colin, it’s all right. She loved you. You have to know that.”

“I always believed her when she said it was just play,” he said. “I never thought she loved anyone.”

“She was good at being covert.”

“Too good.”

The smell of the wet earth rose all around us. A smell I usually welcomed, something that reminded me of childhood days playing on my father’s estate. But today it caught heavy in my throat as I breathed. I could feel a trembling start in my core, and I could not stop it.

“I don’t want to disappoint you.” I hated the words the moment they escaped my lips.

“Disappoint me?”

I dropped my head against his chest, embarrassed. “I’m afraid I may suffer in comparison to your past.”

“You have a past too, my dear, one that’s not always been easy for me to accept.”

“My past? My past hardly even existed.”

“I knew you as someone else’s wife. My best friend’s wife.”

“Yes, but—”

“But you loved him. Eventually you loved him. And he adored you from the beginning. You were his.”

“Colin, I—”

“You’re not a girl who’s out for her first Season, and I’m not just down from Cambridge. We come to each other with fully lived lives, Emily.” The rain was falling harder, and we were both drenched. “We must accept that. I don’t think there’s anything more to be said.”

My eyes filled with tears. He pulled me close to him.

“You’re shaking,” he said. “It’s cold. We ought to go inside.”

Part of me wanted to stop him, wanted to insist that we talk about this more. But the rest accepted—begrudgingly, perhaps, but accepted nonetheless—that there was no need to speak further on the subject. Our pasts had brought us to where we were now, and without them, we might never have come together. He took my hand and slipped it, along with his, into his jacket pocket.

“I love you,” I said, looking up at him.

He smiled. “Such simple words, yet they sing.”

“How soon can we be married?” I asked, a smile creeping onto my face.

“I’m free this afternoon if you don’t have other plans.”

“If only,” I said.

“You wouldn’t dare refuse me. Not now.”

“What would the queen say?”

“I’ve no interest in anyone’s opinion but yours,” he said, and I knew at once how serious he was. There was no hint of flirtatious teasing in his voice.

“Does Mrs. Katevatis know?” I asked.

“She’s making spanakopita and kreatopitakia even as we speak.”

“Then I don’t see how I could say no,” I said. He brushed a wet curl away from my eyes and took my face in his hands, kissing me gently. I felt every barrier to happiness dissolving inside me.

“Shall we go straight to the chapel?” he asked.

“We’d need a license.”

“I’ve already arranged for that.”

“We’re soaked,” I said.

“I don’t mind being soaked. Do you?”

“No.” I looked at him, memorizing his face so that I’d always be able to recall this moment in perfect detail. “Strangely, I don’t.”

How could I mind? We’d already waited long enough.