The Greek's Marriage Bargain ✔️ (Completed)

Six

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"So, Natalia. My son tells me you are something of a silversmith these days."

    Natalia put her wine down and produced another friendly smile, even though her face was beginning to ache. She felt like someone who had undergone a police interrogation, since Dimitris mother had been firing questions at her for most of the overlong meal. And her arrogant son hadn't done a thing to help her out.

    Dressed impeccably in navy, with pearls gleaming at her throat, Martha Valerianos was an elegant woman whose once-beautiful face bore a vaguely startled look, as if life had disappointed her. Natalia knew she'd been made a widow when Dimitris was barely eighteen and not for the first time she wondered why the bilingual socialite had never considered marrying again. Unless she was one of those women who loved only one man...

    This line of thought was a little too uncomfortable to pursue. Instead Natalia concentrated on watching the candlelight flickering over the heavy crystal and silver, telling herself that the meal would soon be over and then she would be able to make her escape. She had tried to answer her mother-in-law's queries as cheerfully as possible -- even though she had been chewed up with nerves when she'd first sat down.

    Yet she couldn't deny that tonight Martha had seemed almost kind and much less terrifying than before. Maybe that was because these days she felt more mature and much less intimidated. And, of course, less worried that she was going to make some terrible social gaffe and make Dimitris ashamed of her. She no longer had anything to lose, did she?

    So she turned to Martha Valerianos and smiled.
    "Silversmith" sounds a bit grand for what I do," she said.

    "But you are making jewellery?"

    Natalia nodded, her fingertips brushing against the two elongated silver triangles dangling from her ears as if she were showcasing her handiwork. "Yes, I am."

    "And you enjoy it?" asked Martha.

    "I love it," Natalia answered. "I've got my own little workshop in ths village and I enjoy being my own boss. It gives me the kind of freedom I've never had before."

    "I can imagine," Martha Valerianos sipped from her glass of water. "I never worked, of course. Not before my marriage nor after it. It was not considered appropriate for a woman to work, particularly if she was a Valerianos woman, with all the responsibilities which went with that role."

    Natalia looked into Dimitris piercing green eyes. Help me out here, she beseeched him silently and to her astonishment she saw an answering glint of comprehension.

    "Modern women like to work, Mitera," he said, with the tone of somebody who had made the recent discovery that the world was round. "Some obviously need to work for economic reasons -- but others do it because it gives them a purpose in life. It fulfuls them in a way that nothing else can -- something which men have known for centuries. And who are we to knock that?"

    Natalia wondered if her own expression reflected the dazed bemusement of her mother-in-law's. She looked across the table at her husband in disbelief. Dimitris coming out with an opinion about women which didn't sound as if it had been formed two centuries ago? This was from the man who had been adamant that she should be a stay-at-home kinda wife?

    At the time, he had explained that they had far too much money for his conscience to allow her to work. Which in theory Natalia had tried to understand. She had told herself that she had married a Greek and that she had to accept there would be cultural differences.
    But what did a woman do all day when she wasn't working and there were servants to run her life for her? Especially if she was a woman who didn't like to 'do' lunch, or spend hours shopping?