The Gates of Paradise Read Free Page B

be with anyone else.”
    This was true.
    Nevertheless when she was alone, she often wished that there was someone to share her interests – most of all someone to ride with her when Papa was unable to do so.
    Now as the ship was moving out into the open sea she was thinking just how superb it would be if her father could be with her.
    He would tell her, as he always did, stories that other people did not know about the countries they were passing, especially those bordering the Mediterranean.
    There was so much more she wanted to know about Africa and especially Greece.
    Her Papa had been entranced when he was a young man by the wonder and beauty of Ancient Greece and she had learnt the language from him.
    One day she would like to go with someone she loved to Delphi and its shimmering cliffs and visit the Greek Islands, especially Delos where Apollo was born.
    â€œEvery girl,” her Papa had said once, “would like the man she marries to look like Apollo.  But I have found that handsome men do not always make good husbands.”
    â€œWhy not, Papa?” she asked quizzically.
    â€œBecause they are more concerned with their own looks than those of their wives.  And if there is to be one beautiful person in the family, it should be the woman.”
    â€œWhy, Papa?” Narina persisted, surprised at his words.
    â€œIf you have a husband who is too handsome, you will be fighting very hard to protect and keep him, instead of him fighting to protect you from being swept away!”
    It was just the sort of joke Papa would make and Narina laughed.
    But she learnt, as she watched her contemporaries that there was some truth in his words and she had told herself there was no need to pray for Apollo as her husband, but a man who would adore her and fight off any who tried to take her from him.
    At the moment, however, there had been no one for whom she had felt the least affection.
    Anyway it was not affection she wanted, but love – the overwhelming love so beautifully described in books she had read and it was, she was quite certain, what women all over the world were always seeking.
    â€˜Perhaps some are just unlucky,’ she mused.
    However, it was very seldom that she worried about acquiring admirers.
    There would be no one on the Battleship, she felt, who would pay her any compliments.
    But to her surprise she was mistaken.
    As she expected, the Baroness retired to her cabin and was not seen again on the voyage and the Baron, when they were alone, plied her with compliments!
    He looked at her with his aging eyes in a way that made her feel somewhat embarrassed.
    If it had not been from a man of his age, she might have felt shy, instead of which she found herself sparring with the Baron in words, being in a way somewhat rude to him.  She knew that she should respect him as her elder, but equally she was aware that he must have been a roué in his youth.
    It seemed that it was impossible for him to be alone with a pretty woman and not flirt with her.
    As the Battleship steamed down the Mediterranean and into the Aegean Sea, she found the Baron’s incessant compliments increasingly boring.
    And she was aware that when she was near him, his hands would automatically come out to try and touch her.
    It became quite a game for her to avoid him, but it was a bit difficult in the rather cramped circumstances of the Battleship.
    They sat opposite each other at meals, but while he could not touch her with his hands, his eyes were always on her face and the compliments would come blithely from his tongue in a number of different languages.
    Narina especially enjoyed practising the language of Alexanderburg, which she found was an easily picked up dialect of German, in order to answer the Baron back.
    Occasionally she would defeat him by a riposte that made them both laugh.
    â€œIf I was a bit younger,” the Baron said in his rather thick voice, “I would hold you tightly in my arms