Dark Avenger

  Dark Avenger

  Anne Hampson

  In the ancient Greek legend, Hades, lord of the underworld, had carried off the beautiful Persephone to live in his dark kingdom for four months of every year.

  And now Julie Veltrovers found herself a present-day Persephone, meeting a fate that had been awaiting her for ten years -- ever since Doneus Lucien had been wronged by Julie's family and had vowed that one day, when Julie was old enough, he would bear her off to Greece as his wife, to live there for seven months of the year. That day had come, and rather than ruin her family's happiness, Julie was forced to submit to his plans.

  But she had never foreseen that she would fall in love with this strange husband of hers -- a man that had only used her as an instrument of revenge . . .

  DID YOU PURCHASE THIS BOOK WITHOUT A COVER?

  If you did, you should be aware it is stolen property as it was reported 'unsold and destroyed' by a retailer. Neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this book.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired Out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This edition published under arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises BV MILLS & BOON and the Rose Device are trademarks used under license and registered in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States Patent & Trademark Office and in other countries.

  Published by Mills & Boon Ply.

  Limited 3 Gibbes Street, Chatswood,

  NSW 2067 Australia

  © Anne Hampson 1972

  ISBN 0-263-71380-6

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Paperbacks, South Australia

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE garden party was held in the castle grounds by the Honourable Mrs. Leighton-Forbes, and from the fashionable gathering could be heard all sorts of society gossip including the latest scandal regarding Sir Geoffrey and his latest affair, and the forthcoming wedding of Alastair Veltrovers and the Honourable Lavinia Jarrow. Many were the nods and smiles bestowed on the beautiful Julie Veltrovers, cousin to Alastair and ward of his uncle. With cold dignity she acknowledged this semi-adulation, unbending only when Lavinia approached with Cheryl, one of Julie's numerous friends, to drag her, rather unwillingly, towards the gipsy's tent. Every year Mrs. Leighton-Forbes held her garden party, and on each occasion a gipsy fortune-teller provided part of the entertainment. The three girls tossed a coin and Cheryl won.

  "She's not very good," she frowned on emerging from the tent five minutes later. "She didn't tell me anything much at all - just that I'd shortly be taking a journey, and all the usual things these gipsies talk about. I don't know where she comes from, but her English is awful."

  "Awful?" repeated Lavinia uncomprehendingly.

  "Very broken."

  Julie's impressive grey eyes were raised. Above the tent was the small poster with the invitation, "Step inside and have your future predicted."

  "Shall I go in next?" Lavinia was eager and impatient, and a soft smile came to Julie's lips. She nodded and Lavinia added, her eyes glowing, "I'll be thrilled if she tells me about Alastair! "

  "How deeply in love that child is!" Finely-modulated tones and a faint shake of Julie's honey-gold head. "I wonder if my cousin fully realizes how easily he could hurt Lavinia?"

  Cheryl shrugged but made no comment and they chatted about other things until Lavinia rejoined them, her face revealing all her disappointment.

  "Nothing!" she informed them disgustedly. "I think she's a complete fraud!"

  Julie's eyes flickered again to the notice above the tent. "In that case I'll not waste my money," she decided, and made to walk away.

  "Oh, go in," pleaded Lavinia impulsively, her young face flushed and happy. "It's all in fun. Besides, she might tell you

  something interesting."

  "Hardly likely when she hasn't told either of you anything,"

  returned Julie in a dry tone.

  "Be a sport - it's for charity," urged Cheryl, grinning. "I always go in to these tents; they're spooky and - well, it's exciting."

  Laughing, Julie parted the curtains and stepped into the dimly-lighted tent. Black eyes in their sunken sockets became alert, the directness of their gaze all-examining. A slight frown creased Julie's brow. The woman had all the appearance of a gipsy, and yet....

  "Please be seated." After perusing something on her knee the woman looked up, searching Julie's face again. For some reason quite beyond her comprehension Julie had the impression that it was a photograph the woman had examined, but it was hidden by the table where stood the dark crystal, on which the woman's attention was presently directed. She wore several thin gold bracelets and three rings. Julie's attention was caught by one in particular and her frown deepened. It was a seal ring - bearing the head of Zeus. Could the woman be Greek? Julie felt sure she was.

  "You're almost nineteen." The woman gazed into the crystal which Julie knew for sure she could not read. "Nineteen and expecting to make a most advantageous union." The words were articulated with great difficulty, but Julie did manage to make them out. The woman moved her knee and Julie caught sight of a magazine.

  Country Gazette! So it was a photograph the woman had looked at. Fascinated, Julie stared at the edge of the magazine, unable to see the date and yet knowing it was issued three months previously. In that particular copy there had not only been the announcement of Alastair's engagement but also a photograph of Julie, on horseback, being presented with a silver cup at the county gymkhana.

  This photograph was particularly good, the cameraman not only having caught all the delicate details of Julie's face, but the strong character lines too. And the combination had resulted in what the cameraman himself had described as one of his greatest triumphs. It was the sort of arresting picture one looked at over and over again, drawn, as if to a magnet.

  "I am not engaged." Julie's voice was calm and cool despite her puzzlement. As yet the woman had told her nothing. Julie looked her age - no older, no younger - and it was obvious that any young girl attending such a party as this was expecting to make an advantageous marriage.

  "Not engaged, but - attached, shall we say? - to a young man who will eventually inherit one of the largest estates in the country."

  Julie remained silent, recalling the addition to the caption under the photograph. "... watching Julie receive her prize is Mr. Edward Holmes-Furbishley. There have been recent rumours of a forthcoming engagement between them...."

  "But, my dear," the woman was saying in the best way she could, "this man is not for you, not him nor any man here." The black eyes looked up from their perfunctory perusal of the crystal ball and settled on Julie's face. "Your destiny was mapped out ten years ago - and you must follow it, follow it ... or else...."

  Ten minutes later Julie left the tent. The sunlight and blue sky, the clear fresh air! She made for her friends without one backward glance, her face so pale that it was inevitable both girls should inquire at once if she were feeling
ill. Julie shook her head. A tightness blocked her throat, but she managed an airy laugh.

  "She isn't much good; you're right, Cheryl." They all walked on and once again Julie was coolly acknowledging the nods and smiles of her friends and acquaintances, but what she had heard in the "gipsy's" tent was a tight coil of misery encircling her heart.

  "I thought she would have told me about Alastair." Lavinia turned to her future cousin-in-law and then raised her eyes as Julie shook her head in a sort of compassionate gesture.

  "It isn't safe to be so in love," she warned. "You can be too easily hurt."

  "Not with Alastair," came the emphatic pronouncement.

  Lavinia's eyes shone with confidence, and involuntarily Julie turned her head to glance at the dark tent from which she had so recently emerged. "Alastair's wonderful - wonderful! He'd never hurt me, never! "

  Julie closed her eyes and for one fleeting moment it seemed her innate dignity would desert her. But no. Her head inclined gracefully as Lady Swinton-Cromley sailed by, smiling at her in passing.

  "What did she tell you?" inquired Cheryl curiously, her eyes still examining her friend's pale face. "Did she mention Edward?"

  "She made a slight reference to him, yes." A quick shrug and then, before either of the others could speak, "It was all very trifling. As I said, she isn't much good."

  Lavinia was engaged in happy contemplation of the future, but Cheryl looked very much as if she would persist in her questioning and Julie said with a hint of finality, "It's always rubbish these people tell you - but as Lavinia remarked, it's fun."

  Her uncle Edwin was in his study when Julie arrived home just before tea time. Knocking, she entered without waiting to be given permission and her uncle looked up, faintly surprised.

  She remained in the doorway, a slim and lovely girl of average height. From a long line of aristocratic ancestors she had inherited classical features of unusual beauty and a reserve which gave the mistaken impression of an inner coldness and lack of feeling.

  Her skin, delicately touched with colour, possessed a clarity amounting almost to transparency and through the veins at her temples ran the blue blood of her noble forebears.

  Her uncle waited for her to speak. His love for her was disproportionately deep - but then, unknown either to his son or to Julie, Edwin Veltrovers, though already married, had secretly loved the woman who became his brother's wife.

  Julie remained silent and he frowned a little, wondering at her strange expression.

  "Do you want something, dear?"

  Slowly Julie walked into the room and stood by his desk, staring down at her uncle as if he were a stranger and not the man who had nurtured her and lavished on her all the love of a father.

  At sixty Edwin Veltrovers carried his age extraordinarily well, having retained his thick brown hair and his upright figure. One immaculately kept hand lay on the desk, idly holding a pen; the other rested on the arm of his chair.

  "Who," said Julie at last in a frozen voice, "is Aidoneus Lucian?"

  Her uncle started and his throat moved spasmodically. A grey tinge emphasized the age lines at the sides of his mouth.

  "Aidoneus - er - what? Am I supposed to know him?" Her lovely eyes glinted.

  "You should know him, seeing that, ten years ago, you gave me to him." An electric silence followed and then Julie added, softly but with almost harsh deliberation, "For seven months of the year, Uncle Edwin."

  The greyness round Edwin's mouth spread up to his cheeks.

  Clearly he had received a severe shock.

  "Aidoneus. . . ." Julie looked into his eyes. "The name we normally use is Hades, but the early Greek name was Aidoneus - and it was as Aldoneus that he carried off Demeter's daughter to the underworld ... where he demanded that she remain with him during the darkest months of the year - four in that case, not seven."

  Edwin passed a tongue over his parched lips, but presently he shrugged and his face cleared of all but a frown.

  "This melodrama? I don't understand you, Julie."

  She swept him a contemptuous glance.

  "Isn't it rather late for prevarication, Uncle? You've given yourself away. In my case, I believe what I've been told."

  "Who has talked?" he inquired after a small hesitation. "Only two other people know about that business -"

  "Two other people?"

  "Other than this Doneus, as he called himself for short. They are Alastair and Mrs. Fellows."

  "The housekeeper? She knew you'd given me away?" His face twisted with impatience.

  "What strange expressions you do use, child. Who has been talking to you?" he asked again.

  Julie swallowed the hardness in her throat. She dearly loved her uncle, but she now knew the greatest contempt for him, partly because he was not displaying the contrition she expected.

  "It doesn't matter who told me the story; it's sufficient that I know it - all of it. Ten years ago you promised you'd send me to this Doneus, on my nineteenth birthday, and I was to be married to him. I was to stay with him for seven months of the year - from September to March." She paused and frowned.

  "Why was that?" she wanted to know. The "gipsy" woman had omitted to explain this point.

  "He's a sponge-diver, and they go out to the coast of Africa for five months of the year."

  "I see. So he agreed to my coming home for those five months?"

  Edwin brought down a hand sharply on to the table. Having recovered from the shock he was now prepared to be angry with his niece.

  "Come to the point, Julie. Who told you all this and what are you trying to convey to me?"

  She was silent for a space, for it was seldom indeed that Edwin spoke a sharp word to her.

  "You promised me to this Greek in exchange for his silence over the death of the girl killed by Alastair -"

  "Killed? You shall not say that, Julie! My son's no murderer! "

  "The more subtle word for it is manslaughter." Julie's face was white and her stomach seemed to be dragged dawn with a leaden weight. "You had no intention of keeping that promise."

  "Naturally I'd no intention of keeping it. You don't give people away. In any case, how could I make you go off to this rocky Greek island and marry a stranger? You'd have absolutely refused. Certainly I'd no intention of keeping the promise. The roan was satisfied that I would, of course, because in his country they do give their daughters and wards away - when a man offers, that is." He paused a moment; Julie waited, her eyes contemptuous again, and her mind in. turmoil. "The man was mad and I had to make the promise in order to pacify him, and so that he would go peaceably from my door."

  "He wasn't mad, Uncle. He was out of his mind with grief."

  "It was most unfortunate, I agree," he conceded, but with an impatient shrug nevertheless. "They were a couple of Greek peasants, the girl having been living with the man before Alastair - before he -" Edwin tailed off and Julie finished softly, "Ruined her. And not satisfied with that he ran her down with his horse and killed her." The couple had not been living together - not according to the "gipsy", and Julie did not doubt her word.

  "She flung herself under it -"

  "That's not what I was told. But if she did it was because she was ruined! A Greek woman is ruined, utterly, when anything like that happens to her! " Julie's face was tinged with colour now and her small fists were clenched tightly against her sides.

  "Where did you get the story? I insist on knowing." The old man's attitude of a moment ago had melted; he was haggard now and his voice a shade unsteady. "You've just come from the garden party, but no one there could have related this ancient story to you."

  "As a matter of fact I did hear it at the castle. The fortune-teller had been sent especially to see me and to convey the message."

  "Sent to see you? - all the way from Greece? Nonsense! The man couldn't afford to send a message by cable, let alone send a woman over with it."

  "I happen to know that he did send this woman especially to see me. She was
told by Doneus to make contact in any way she thought fit, and as she heard about the garden party, and knew all the aristocracy from round-about would be there, she managed to get herself taken on as the fortune-teller. Had she not found me there it was her intention to adopt some other method."

  "How the devil has he the money to send a woman here?"

  "He might have saved for months, or even years - I don't know what these spongedivers get." She paused and then significantly, "Let's hope he proves to be poor enough to be grateful for a bribe."

  "A bribe? What are you talking about? We don't have to bribe the wretched man! I've never heard of such nonsense in all my life! I've a good mind to send for the police."

  She looked at him, her mouth tight.

  "I wouldn't advise it," she murmured, and again her uncle gave a start.

  "You'd better tell me the rest," he invited shortly, and Julie related all that had occurred, and ended by saying that Doneus Lucian had informed her, through the woman, that unless she, Julie, went over to Greece to marry him he would come to England himself and appear in church.

  "He intends exposing Alastair - before the ceremony begins,"

  Julie ended significantly.

  "At the - He'll go to the cathedral and make trouble?"

  "That's the message which has been conveyed to me."

  A deep and profound silence settled on the elegant oak-panelled room. And after a while Edwin rose and paced about, opening and closing his fists as if endeavouring to release some tight spring that refused to unwind. He was badly shaken, as it was imperative that his son make this advantageous marriage, for the Veltrovers' finances were in a pretty bad way.

  "They were just a couple of peasants," he said again, his voice no more than a whisper. "Uneducated and clad in the poorest of clothes. I never saw the girl," he added, "but Alastair told me she was shabbily dressed. They came over to see the girl's grandmother, who was English. She was dying and wished to see her granddaughter. The girl's fiancé brought her and Alastair met her - don't ask me how, but he did. She was pretty, so Alastair said, and he - well, he -he-"