Dragon's Lair (10 page)

there was something in Rhiannon's attitude which stung, and she

reacted impulsively to it. 'Three-quarters of an hour, you said? I'll

be ready. I'm afraid I have nothing to change into, though.'

'You look fine as you are.' Huw's grin was both delighted and

triumphant. He walked towards the back door, then turned. 'Sorry

about your headache, Rhi. Hope it's better soon. See you presently,

Davina.' And he was gone.

There was a short tense silence, then Rhiannon, her flush

heightened and her eyes blazing ominously, flung herself into the

scullery, banging the door behind her.

Davina was conscious of a feeling of compunction. It was wrong of

her to become involved in whatever the situation was between

Rhiannon and Huw, and the only excuse she could offer was that

Rhiannon had asked for it. The fact that she was wearing an

attractive dress indicated that she had had every intention of going

out with Huw that evening. Davina could only surmise that her

reluctance had been totally assumed in order to demonstrate to

herself that Rhiannon had a power over men that she could exert

when she wished, only it was a demonstration that had gone

disastrously awry. Huw Morgan, she thought with a faint grin, was

by no means a conventional young man, and if Rhiannon were

seriously interested in him, she would have to change her tactics.

All the same, she regretted her own involvement, and wished she

had stuck to her guns and insisted on an early night. If she had had

the wit to leave Huw and Rhiannon alone together, they would

probably have resolved their differences quite amicably, she

thought unhappily.

She hesitated for a moment, then got up and walked across to the

scullery door. She could hear the clatter of pots and pans but no

sound of voices. She knocked lightly and pushed the door open.

Rhiannon was alone in the room at the sink, a tea-towel swathed

round her waist. She looked round, pushing a strand of hair back

from her face, and her expression became set and sullen when she

saw Davina.

'I've got an idea,' Davina tried a tentative smile as she came into the

room. 'I'll vanish up to my room out of the way, and when Huw

comes back you can be waiting for him. You really want to go out

tonight, don't you—and Huw only asked me for devilment, you

know ...'

'You don't have to tell me anything about Huw Morgan. I've known

him longer than five minutes,' Rhiannon snapped. 'And you can stop

playing the Lady Bountiful. I don't need the crumbs from your table.

You go out with Huw tonight and welcome!' She grabbed at a piece

of steel wool and attacked a pan with it almost savagely.

Davina lifted her shoulders in a brief, helpless shrug and turned

away. She had attempted a friendly overture and it had failed.

After the warmth of the day, there was a satisfying coolness in the

evening breeze from the mountain and Davina closed the window in

her room before rummaging in her case for the black crocheted

shawl she had brought with her as a wrap. She put it round her

shoulders and went downstairs. There was a babble of voices and

laughter from behind the closed sitting room door, and she sent a

rather wistful glance in that direction as she walked towards the

front door. As she reached it, Mrs Parry emerged from the dining

room with a tray of glasses. She looked mildly surprised to see

Davina obviously on her way out.

'Going for a walk?' she enquired. 'It's getting a bit chilly. Would you

like to borrow a coat?' ,

'No, thanks.' Davina felt more uncomfortable than ever. 'As a matter

of fact, I'm going to a disco—with Huw Morgan. Rhiannon—didn't

feel like going, so he asked me instead.'

'And you're going.' Mrs Parry's eyebrows rose on her forehead.

'Well—yes,' Davina said defensively. 'There's no harm in it. Huw

seems a pleasant boy ...'

'Boy, is it?' Mrs Parry gave a distinct sniff. 'And how old are you, I

wonder. Twenty—twenty-one? Huw's older than you by at least

two years. I'm surprised he should ask you —a stranger, and a

married woman. I don't know what his Mam would say. And what

will Gethyn think?'

'I thing you're making a mountain out of a molehill.' Davina lifted

her chin a little. 'Huw isn't the slightest bit interested in me. He's

only doing this to teach Rhiannon a lesson because she was playing

him up.'

Mrs Parry shrugged. 'Then I'll say no more,' she said rather coldly.

'But I'm disappointed in you, Davina. This sort of behaviour may be

all right in big cities, but it doesn't go down well in a place like this.

Married women go out with their husbands here, or they stay at

home.'

'I see.' Davina was stung to anger. 'Well, if I'd followed that rule for

the past two years then I'd have been a recluse by now.'

'Well, the choice was yours,' Mrs Parry returned doggedly. 'It's a

woman's place to follow her husband. Let him go off on his own

and you're asking for trouble.'

'You're assuming I was even offered a choice. It's obviously never

occurred to you that Gethyn might have wanted to be on his own,'

Davina said recklessly.

'When he could have had a lovely thing like you beside him?' Mrs

Parry said almost derisively. 'We've bred a lot of men in our family,

but no monks. I don't know what went wrong between the pair of

you, and I don't want to know, but I'll tell you this—going out with

another man, even if it is platonic, isn't going to help. All it's likely

to get you is a good hiding from Gethyn.'

She turned and walked to the kitchen. Davina opened the front door

and walked out into the garden, glad of the breeze to cool her

cheeks and her temper.

It was all very well for Gethyn's aunt to talk like that, she thought,

seething. It was easy when you only saw everything in black and

white, and it was only natural that she should take Gethyn's part.

But then Mrs Parry had never woken up one morning to find herself

alone with just three laconic words 'See you, Gethyn' scrawled on a

piece of paper on the living room table. Nor had she lain in hospital,

desolate and in pain after losing her baby, whispering over and over

the name of a man who did not come and who did not even send

her so much as a message or a kind word. But then what else could

she expect? There had been few kind words between Gethyn and

herself. Just a few fraught weeks together in the flat, sharing meals

and avoiding each other's glances, building up to an almost

unbearable tension as the days passed. She had been merely the

housekeeper, she thought bitterly, except that no housekeeper ever

went to the lengths she had gone to avoid even the slightest

physical contact between them. Gethyn had treated her with a kind

of aloof civility, but there were times when she was only too aware

of his brooding gaze following her as she moved around the

flat—times when she knew with a kind of desperation that this

inhuman situation could not go on for much longer.

And the really shaming thing was she was not at all sure what her

reaction would be when the inevitable happened and Gethyn

decided to reassert his rights as her husband. She had no doubt that

he would do so eventually no matter what he might have said. For

one thing, on a sheerly practical level, he could not be sleeping

properly on that cramped sofa. She had considered on a number of

occasions offering to exchange places with him, but she had kept

silent, fearful of what such a conversation might lead to.

Because no matter how much she might insist to herself that their

wedding night had been a degradation, that he had used her quite

cynically for his own pleasure, all the time lurking at the back of her

mind was the memory of what he had made her feel, however

fleetingly. That was what she could not forgive, neither him nor

herself. For a few brief moments, he had been the lover whose

lightest touch could send the fires of rapture singing through her

veins and she had been poised desperately on the edge of utter

self-betrayal. She shivered when she remembered what it had cost

her to lie unmoving and unmoved in his arms, unresponsive and

rejecting until he had left her.

But then she had had fear and anger to bolster her up, to lend iron

to her determination not to yield to him. Now, she knew that

however bitterly she might regret her hasty marriage and its strange,

hostile aftermath, she was no longer indifferent to Gethyn

physically. It was humiliating to realise that a comparative stranger

could have such an influence on her most intimate emotions, yet it

was a fact that she faced each night as she lay alone in the darkness

watching with heavily thudding heart the thin thread of light under

the living room door that signalled that Gethyn was still wakeful.

What she would do when that door finally opened, she did not care

to contemplate. There were times when she dreamed restlessly that

time had rolled back a little and they were once more in the days

before their marriage, when she had clung to him, breathless from

his kisses, frankly expressing her longing by the sweet pressure of

her body against his for the closest union of all. Then she would

wake to find that her arms were empty, and there would be the feel

of tears on her face.

With each day that passed, the trip to America grew closer. Gethyn

said little about it, except to mention briefly the clothes he intended

to take with him and brusquely request that she would have them

ready for him. He was working very day, and she guessed it was

another novel, although she did not dare ask. She had learned

quickly that while she could tidy anything else in the flat, his work

table was sacrosanct and must not be touched. So she washed and

ironed and folded garments away in tissue in the big lightweight

suitcases and tried not to think how strange it would be when she

was quite alone in the flat, day and night. Whatever happened, she

decided grimly, she would stick it out. She would not go slinking

home to her mother with her tail between her legs. She had paid a

few visits to the mews house since her wedding and Vanessa

Greer's glance had been searching.

Davina thought ruefully that Gethyn had accused her of being an

actress in their relationship. Well, where her mother was concerned,

she had put her acting ability to good use. She was sure Mrs Greer

had no conception that her daughter's marriage was anything less

than blissful, and she forced herself to endure her increasingly acid

remarks with smiling ease. But Davina was thankful that her mother

never suggested visiting them at the flat. Vanessa Greer had an

uncanny knack for detecting atmospheres and diagnosing their

cause. Coupled with that was her dislike for Gethyn which she had

never troubled to dissemble. Among their earliest encounters had

been a dinner party which Mrs Greer had arranged with the fixed

intention, Davina knew, of making Gethyn feel uncouth and out of

place. But she hadn't realised until the evening had already begun

just what her mother had in mind and when understanding dawned,

she sat frozen with misery in her seat, waiting for the inevitable

explosion. But it had never come. Gethyn had realised before she

had that Mrs Greer's highly polished dining table was a

well-concealed chopping block and had smilingly declined to lay

his head on it. Instead he had set out to charm her guests while

leaving his hostess in no doubt that her motives were fully

understood. Mrs Greer had concealed her chagrin well, but her

feelings for Gethyn had become even more implacably hostile. For

ever after she had referred to him to her friends in her daughter's

presence as 'the Dragon Man' or 'Davina's Celtic barbarian',

accompanying the hurtful phrases with a little silvery laugh which

should have robbed them of offence but of course didn't...

If she as much as guessed at the real situation between Davina and

her husband, then the floodgates of all her bitterness and resentment

would be opened anew, and Davina had felt wearily that she could

not face that. After all, it had been her mother's insinuations which