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began, then stopped.
    Anatole frowned. ‘You are his aunt—why should he not travel with you?’
    For a second—just a second—he saw in her eyes again that same emotion he had seen when he had challenged her as to whether she had adopted Georgy or not.
    ‘You said that the process of adoption is not yet finalised,’ he said. ‘Does that affect whether you can take him out of the country?’
    She swallowed. ‘Officially I am still only his foster carer,’ she replied. There was constraint in her voice, evasiveness in the way her gaze dropped from his. ‘I...I don’t know what the rules are about taking foster children abroad...’
    ‘Well, I shall have enquiries made,’ said Anatole. ‘These things can be sorted.’ He did not want her hiding behind official rules and regulations. He wanted her to consent to what he so urgently needed—to bringing Marcos’s son to Greece.
    But he would press her no longer. Not for now. Finally she was listening to him. He had put his request to her—now he would let her get used to the idea.
    He got to his feet, looking down at her. ‘It has been,’ he said, and his voice was not unsympathetic now, ‘a tumultous day for you—and for myself as well.’ His eyes went to the baby on her lap, who had twisted round to gaze at him. Once again Anatole felt his heart give a strange convulsion, felt the pulse of emotion go through him.
    There was so much of Marcos in the tiny infant!
    Almost automatically his eyes slipped to the face of the young woman holding his infant cousin. He could see the baby’s father in his little face, but what of the tragic mother who had lost her life in giving him life? His eyes searched the aunt’s features, looking for an echo of similarity. But in the clear grey eyes that were ringed with fatigue, in the cheekbones over which the skin was stretched so tightly, in the rigid contours of her jaw, there was no resemblance that he could see.
    As his gaze studied her he saw colour suffuse her cheeks and immediately dropped his gaze. He was making her self-conscious, and he did not want to add to her discomfort. Yet as he dropped his gaze he was aware of how the colour in her cheeks gave her a glow, making her less pallid—less plain. More appealing.
    She could be something...
    The idle thought flicked across his mind and he dismissed it. He was not here to assess whether the aunt of the baby he’d been so desperately seeking possessed those feminine attributes which drew his male eye.
    ‘Forgive me,’ he said, his voice contrite. ‘I can see my cousin so clearly in his son—I was looking to see what he has inherited from his mother’s side.’
    He had thought his words might reassure her that he had not been gazing at her with the intention of embarrassing her, but her reaction to his words seemed to have the opposite effect. He saw the colour drain from her face—saw, yet again, that emotion flash briefly in her eyes.
    Fear.
    He frowned. There was a reason for that reaction—but what was it? He set it aside. For now it was not important. What was important was that he took his leave of her with the lines of communication finally open between them, so that from now on they could discuss what must be discussed—how they were to proceed. How he was to achieve his goal without taking from her the baby nephew she clearly loved so devotedly.
    He wanted his last words to her now to be reassuring.
    ‘I will leave you for now,’ he said. ‘I will visit you again tomorrow—what time would be good for you?’
    She swallowed. She had to make some answer. ‘I have lectures in the morning, but that’s all,’ she said hesitantly.
    ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I will come here in the afternoon. We can talk more then. Make more plans.’ He paused, looking into her pinched face. ‘Plans that we will both agree to. Because I know now that you will not give up Georgy—you love him too much. And you must surely know that since he cannot be taken from