It was an oddly courteous gesture and one which warmed her even if it did nothing to ease the nervous tension from her stiffened limbs as she walked beside him.
The two doormen jerked to attention as they walked in, by the respectful looks on their faces, recognising Leon instantly. He ignored them with that arrogance which used to annoy her, but she was beginning to read it better now, and see it for the defence mechanism it was to him.
Leon was not at all comfortable being here in his father’s house. Not that it would show to anyone else, she noted as she kept pace with his smooth, easy stride with his arm comfortingly warm around her waist.
The entrance hall was big and luxurious, with a pure white marble floor and modern black furniture set against white walls. It led right through from the front to the back of the house, and by the emptiness of the rooms either side of them Jemma had to assume that the party was taking place elsewhere, which proved to be outside, as she realised when Leon led her down the marble hallway towards the growing hum of chatter coming from the garden beyond the open rear doors.
They were late. It took Jemma just ten seconds to realise it as they paused on the threshold to look out on the subtly lit garden where—at a quick and frightening guess—about one hundred people sat around the tables set upon a large paved area in front of a circular swimming-pool.
Not just late, but rudely late, she realised, when she noticed the coffee-cups and liqueur glasses on the table. And deliberately so if she was reading Leon accurately.
As if picking up on her thoughts, he murmured softly, ‘It looks as though we have timed it just right.’
But before she had time to ponder on this last cryptic remark someone noticed them, and the woman’s surprised gasp brought all heads turning in their direction.
It was amazing how total silence could deafen, Jemma thought as she felt her body go heavy with dread. She slipped her hand beneath Leon’s jacket and clutched at a fistful of his soft linen shirt.
‘Easy,’ he soothed her quietly. But Jemma could feel the tension in him. He was as uptight as she was.
‘So, you deign to arrive at last.’
Two things hit her at that moment: one, that the voice which spoke was harsh and angry, and the other that it spoke in English, which surprised her. The anger did not.
Leon’s father, it had to be, she assumed, because the man just rising to his feet was simply an older version of the man standing beside her. On his right sat the most exquisitely beautiful woman with the coldest pair of black eyes Jemma had ever seen, and on her right reclined a young man who could only be Leon’s half-brother because, again, he looked so incredibly like him—except for the thinness of his mouth. That had a slightly peevish look about it, and cold, like the woman he sat beside.
It was then she saw the two empty places on the other side of Leon’s father, and felt a wave of embarrassment wash over her. Those had to have been their places for dinner.
‘Father.’ Beside her, Leon acknowledged the other man with a smooth nod. ‘Many happy returns for your birthday.’
His father’s mouth tightened angrily. ‘Is that all you are going to say?’ he demanded.
‘No.’ Leon nudged Jemma into movement. She didn’t want to go, so he had to exert pressure to her shoulders to make her, and she found herself walking on shaking legs towards the clutch of tables. ‘I wish you many more of them,’ he added politely.
There was one small comfort, she noted tensely as she felt the prickling sting of one hundred pairs of eyes pierce her. No one had noticed her condition yet, simply because their eyes were locked on the awful necklace gleaming between the fringed folds of her otherwise concealing shawl.
A great diversion, she acknowledged half hysterically, her fingers taking an even tighter grip on that precious piece of shirt she was clinging to as a whisper of gasps and murmurs skittered around the garden. The woman seated beside Leon’s father was staring at Jemma’s throat in something close to horror, his half-brother stiffening in his seat. Yet no one spoke—no one seemed daring enough—as Leon guided them between their tables and chairs until he came to a stop beside his father, his arm resting across her trembling shoulders.
The older man had been staring at the necklace too, but now his glance flicked up to clash with his son’s. There was a question in his eyes—and a strange touch of excitement that Jemma did not understand. He seemed to swallow rather thickly. ‘Is this—?’
He was interrupted, not by Leon, but by the woman sitting to his father’s right. ‘We expected you at seven, Leon,’ she censured, coming stiffly to her feet. She was tall and incredibly slender—and with an aristocratic manner about her that put Jemma in awe. She flashed the necklace a hard look, but other than that honed her cold eyes exclusively on Leon. ‘It is now gone nine o’clock!’
There was another moment’s short, sharp silence while Leon continued to hold his father’s gaze, strange messages, Jemma sensed, flashing from one man to the other, then he flicked his eyes to the other woman. ‘Anthia,’ he acknowledged. ‘As beautiful as ever, I see.’
She did not take the remark as a compliment, her cold face stiffening. And it was only then, and at such close quarters to her, that Jemma realised that she had to be in her late fifties. It was just that she had cared for her body and face through the years, and it had paid off, because there was hardly an age-line on her.
‘Were you deliberately trying to ruin your father’s birthday?’ she demanded. ‘Does he not even get an apology from you for your rudeness?’
Leon leaned forward a little, the eye-to-eye contact between the two of them a formidable force in itself. ‘Does my companion get an apology for the way you are deliberately ignoring her?’ he threw back softly.
Jemma stiffened up like a board, even her chin going rigid on a complete overload of stress.
Again, the woman’s eyes flicked to the necklace, and something clo
se to panic spoiled their soulless expression before she was coolly back in control again. ‘Since it is you who are so rudely late,’ she drawled, ‘I therefore think your...companion will understand why your introductions will have to wait until after we have finished here.’ She made a gesture towards their listening audience with a long, languidly graceful white hand. ‘As you very well know,’ she went on tightly, ‘your father is about to make an important announcement, and we would appreciate it if you would at least show some manners, and let him get on with it.’
Another moment’s taut silence while Leon held the other woman’s angry gaze. Then, ‘But of course, Anthia, you are quite right,’ he conceded with a sudden back-down from the confrontation that everyone, even Jemma, had felt brewing. ‘Father must be allowed to continue—no matter what,’ he agreed. ‘But first I am afraid I really must show my poor manners yet again, and insist on making my own small announcement. Agape mou,’ he murmured, drawing Jemma closer to his side, ‘I would like you to meet my father, Dimitri Stephanades. Father,’ he continued softly, ‘my beautiful wife, Jemma.’
Stunned silence. It drummed in her ears. Dry-mouthed—terrified how she would be received—Jemma lifted her eyes to Dimitri Stephanades’s, the tension so fraught inside her that she could feel her blood-pressure rising perilously. Leon’s hand tightened on her shoulder as if to give her courage, and she swallowed nervously, her dry tongue sweeping around her parched lips as she forced a trembling hand upwards to offer it tentatively to the older version of Leon.