Chapter ThreeWhen luncheon was over, Nikōs turned to Thea,
“There are places in the wood that I would very much like to show you. Another day I will take you riding.”
Thea looked at him with wide eyes and he added,
“Both you and Mercury have gone far enough today. It would really be cruelty to take your plucky stallion any further.”
She opened her lips to say that she could not stay with him as he had suggested.
And then she asked herself ‘why not?’
She had to stay somewhere for the night and it suddenly struck her that if she was in a hotel she might well be frightened and intimidated.
She had not thought of this before, but, of course, there might be strange men.
Although Nikōs was what the English would undoubtedly call ‘a gentleman’, other men might be rough and threatening and
