Tomb of Zeus

Chapter One Herakleion, Crete. March 1928 Miss Talbot! Wait!" Laetitia Talbot staggered on. She didn't glance back to discover who was calling her name. An abrupt turn of the head would have aggravated the seasickness that racked her; would have made her lose her balance on the slippery deckmight even have provoked a further stomach-wrenching attack of the unproductive retching that had tormented her for a good six hours. There filtered, through her discomfort, the puzzling thought that she knew no one on the ferry. The only man on the boat who was aware of her existence was the Greek captain and he was unlikely to be chasing after a passenger, fully occupied as he was at the controls in this unexpected squall. She corrected herself: mad March gale. She corrected herself again: fully blown Greek storm, stirred up personally by Poseidon with his disgusting seaweed-dripping trident. So who would be calling out her name with such confidence? Perhaps she'd failed to notice an acquaintance in her circuits of the deck? She winced at the thought of holding up her end of the conversation that might ensue if she turned around: ". . . Three summers ago . . . at Binkie's coming-out do . . . surely you remember? You've been in Athens? But why? What on earth can you have been doing there, Letty?" "Laetitia Talbot?" The English voice came again. Less peremptory. More uncertain. But closer. Letty sighed and stood still, grasping the metal strut of a lifeboat housing and waited for her pursuer to draw level. A moment later a hand grasped her firmly by her free arm and tucked it under his own. This would have been an unforgivably intimate gesture under normal circumstances, and Letty would have shrugged it off with a sharp comment, but normality, she'd discovered, was suspended on ferryboats. She found she was glad of the unexpected support, and the touch of the rough Scottish tweed jacket was reassuring. The stranger held out the book she'd carried up on deck with her that morning in a futile attempt at distraction from the horrors of the sea-crossing to Crete. "You dropped this in a puddle," he said, eyes narrowed against the wind, white teeth gleaming in a friendly grin. Good lord! The man appeared to be relishing the storm. His wet hair was plastered to his skull and seawater dripped from his nose, chin, and eyebrows, but no adverse weather conditions, Letty decided, could detract from the nobility of this young man's jutting features. She focused woozily on her battered copy of Persuasion. "I do apologise," she managed to reply politely through gritted teeth, "but I don't believe I know you?" "You're quite right. We've never met," he admitted cheerfully. "Then how . . . ?" "I opened your book and read the name on the front page. Sounless you've stolen this, you are the Laetitia Talbot who received it as a prize in the . . . what did it say? . . ." He flicked the volume open and read in a magisterial tone: "Good Conduct AwardMost Improved Pupil, at the Cambridge Academy for Girls in 1919. 'Improved,' eh? One is bound to speculate as to the less-than-perfect state of affairs that preceded the improvement. So, Miss Talbot, you must forgive me for sayingI feel I know who you are!" He pressed on before she could protest: "A Sprightly Girl but a Romantic who has matured sufficiently to become an ardent reader of the divine Jane's ripest workI'm judging by the general dog-eared condition of the book. A volume now rendered quite unreadable by Cretan seawater. I'm hoping you'll reject it with a gesture and say I may keep it. I've never actually read Persuasion, and I hear such good things . . ." Amused by the teasing formality and enchanted by the striking good lCleverly, Barbara is the author of 'Tomb of Zeus ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780385339902 and ISBN 0385339909.