Dragon's Lair (8 page)

that Vanessa Greer had been right, and that it had all been a terrible

mistake? She would see him in hell first!

Within an hour she had bathed, dressed and packed and was in a

taxi on the way to Gethyn's flat. It had already occurred to her that

he might not be there, but the landlord lived on the premises and

would have a pass-key.

But there was no need for this. As she approached the flat door, she

could hear the sound of Gethyn's typewriter. She banged her case

down and beat a tattoo on the door. After the briefest of pauses, the

door opened, and Gethyn stood looking down on her. He did not

offer any kind of greeting or explanation, but his brows lifted

almost cynically at the sight of her.

'Come in,' he said at last. 'There's some coffee if you want some.'

Davina gasped as she dumped her case down on the sofa. 'Is that all

you have to say?'

He shrugged, his thin dark face inscrutable. 'What do you expect

me to say?' he countered.

She held on to her temper with difficulty. 'Well, some kind of

apology might do to start with. Didn't it occur to you as you walked

out this morning that I would be worried sick?'

'Frankly, no, it didn't. How very wifely of you,' he said smoothly,

and she could have struck him. 'But it can't have been too traumatic

for you as you knew exactly where to come to find me.'

'That's hardly the point.' Her voice rose almost to a shout. 'You

walked out on me!'

'You didn't really expect me to hang around that gold-plated film set

playing the doting groom to your adoring bride for the benefit of a

pack of hotel staff—or did you?' He gave her a long hard look. 'I

gave in to you yesterday only because it seemed to be what you

wanted. Now I'm no longer sure what it is you do want. Except that

it isn't me,' he added almost as a casual afterthought.

Their glances locked, but it was Davina who looked away first. She

moistened her lips. 'So what happens next?' She tried to imitate his

own casualness, but could not disguise' completely the tremor in her

voice.

He shrugged again. 'Life goes on.' He made a slight gesture towards

the typewriter and the litter of paper that surrounded it. 'I've started

work, so if you do decide to stick around, I'd appreciate it if you

could keep quiet. We're low on food, so you could stock up on that

if you felt like it.'

'You're incredible,' she said shakily. 'You don't really care, do you,

whether I go or stay?'

'Oh, you'll stay,' he said. 'Until a more acceptable solution turns up.

Where else can you go without making yourself a laughing stock?

And it won't be for long, anyway. I leave for America in five weeks.

I assume that you—won't be accompanying me after all.'

'You assume correctly,' she said between her teeth.

He nodded. 'Well, now that we've got that sorted out, make yourself

at home. I'm sorry conditions are so cramped, although under

ordinary circumstances that probably wouldn't have mattered too

much. You can have the bedroom. I've cleared a space for your

things.' He saw a flicker of uncertainty cross her face and his tone

roughened. 'Oh, you don't have to worry. I meant what I said last

night. Any future move will have to come from you.'

She picked her case up and walked through to the bedroom,

slamming the door behind her with unnecessary force. There was a

short silence, and then from the room behind her, she heard the

sound of Gethyn's typewriter again, and she sank down on the edge

of the bed and, burying her face in her hands, began to cry very

quietly.

Davina put up her hands to her face and found that her cheeks were

wet. 'Fool!' she castigated herself sharply, reaching for a

handkerchief and scrubbing at her eyes.

It was madness, all this raking up of the past. What had happened

between Gethyn and herself was past, done and quite irrevocable.

She knew that. Why else was she here? By letting memory have its

way with her, she was simply re-opening old wounds which she had

wrongly presumed were healed. It was disquieting to discover how

vulnerable she still was. The past two years of solitariness had

simply spread a thin veneer of acceptance over raw and tangled

emotions.

She got up restlessly and thrust open the window, staring up at the

looming bulk of the mountain. Every scrap of reason she possessed

was warning her to get away from this place—that now was not the

time for her confrontation with Gethyn. She could leave the papers

that Uncle Philip had sent and depart first thing in the morning, she

told herself. She would abandon the idea of any kind of personal

appeal to Gethyn, and leave all future negotiations in the hands of

her solicitor. That was the most sensible course to follow and it

always had been.

She went along to the chilly old-fashioned bathroom with its black

and white checked lino and washed the signs of tension and distress

from her face before venturing downstairs. There was an

increasingly savoury smell coming from the back of the house, and

she traced it down a flagged passage to a tall white door at the end.

She tapped on the door rather hesitantly and peeped round it, to

find that her instinct had been quite correct and that she was in the

kitchen.

It was a large comfortable room, dominated by the big scrubbed

wooden table in the centre, and the Aga range which filled an entire

wall. Beyond the kitchen was a small scullery, and from this an

open door led to the sunlit yard. As Davina looked around her, Mrs

Parry came bustling in from the yard carrying a flat wicker basket

of vegetables.

Her smile when she saw Davina was welcoming, but a little

surprised too.

'So you're down. Supper won't be ready for an hour or so yet, I'm

afraid.'

Davina shook her head. 'I wasn't looking for a meal,' she answered.

She pointed to the basket of vegetables. 'Can I help with those?'

Mrs Parry looked doubtful. 'Well, it hardly seems right. Wouldn't

you rather go in the sitting room? There's a wireless in there, and a

few books, though we haven't a television. The reception isn't good

enough and ...'

'Oh, please,' Davina broke in impulsively. 'You'll make me feel I'm

being banished and'—she attempted a smile— 'you did say I was

part of the family. Do let me help.'

'Well,' Mrs Parry capitulated, 'as long as you let me give you an

apron to cover your dress. You could slice these beans for me.

Rhiannon usually does them, but she's gone up to the farm to fetch

me some eggs.'

'I see.' Davina was conscious of a feeling of relief as she sat down

at the kitchen table and reached for the colander and the knife. She

sniffed appreciatively. 'Something smells good.'

Mrs Parry smiled. 'Roast Iamb,' she said. 'We don't go in for fancy

dishes—just good plain food. That's what people want when they've

been out in the air all day, and we've got quite a houseful at the

moment.'

'Are they all trekking at the moment?' Davina asked, but her hostess

shook her head.

'It's a rest day for the horses,' she explained. 'I think one family

were going to Dolgellau for the day, and the others have gone up

the mountain to the waterfall for a picnic. It's a good place in

weather like this. There's a pool where you can bathe, and even a

little beach. You'll have to ask Gethyn to take you there when he

comes back.'

The knife slipped and Davina came perilously near to adding a slice

of her finger to the colander of beans. Now was the time to tell Mrs

Parry that she was not going to wait for Gethyn's return after all.

There was no need for any detailed explanation, yet somehow she

could not find the words, and Mrs Parry was chatting cheerfully on

about local beauty spots, and the moment had gone. When the

beans were done, there was a mound of young carrots to scrape and

chop, and when these had been dealt with, she relaxed at the table

and watched Mrs Parry pipe whorls of whipped cream around the

edges of several enormous fruit flans.

As she worked, Mrs Parry talked. Davina guessed after a while that

the soft flow of words had been prompted at the start by a feeling of

awkwardness in the presence of this stranger niece by marriage,

and that Mrs Parry was basically a shy woman, so she set herself to

respond and draw her out, and soon they were laughing and

chatting together with the comfort of old acquaintances.

Davina also found she was learning a good deal of what had

happened over the past two years. Mrs Parry's late husband had

been a farmer until the economic difficulties which had affected so

many small farms had forced him to sell up. A week after the sale

he had collapsed with a heart attack and died within a few hours.

That, she discovered, was when Gethyn had returned to Wales. In a

matter of weeks Plas Gwyn and the land that belonged to it had

been negotiated for and purchased and Mrs Parry and Rhiannon

were installed. Rhiannon had been an expert rider since childhood,

and the idea of capitalising on this expertise to encourage tourists to

Plas Gwyn had followed almost inevitably.

Gethyn had returned to the States, but about a year later he had

turned up on the doorstep unannounced to take his place as the

master of the house and local landowner.

'I thought he'd soon get bored, after all that travelling around,' Mrs

Parry confided. 'But it seems not. And now he's got the old mill to

interest him. It was almost derelict, but there was a
lot of
the

original machinery still in it, and he had experts down to advise him

on what would be needed to get it in working order again. He's

done a lot of the actual work himself, helped by local labour.'

Davina's eyes were fixed on her wonderingly. 'He actually means

the mill to produce cloth?'

'Oh, yes. It's been done before at other old mills. It won't be a

large-scale thing, of course, but it's always an attraction for tourists

and the looms can make rugs and tapestries for them to buy at the

little shop they've built on the side. The old crafts are coming back

into their own these days. Mrs Davies in the village had a handloom

and she's going to give demonstrations on it-when the mill is

working again.'

'I see.' Davina was silent for a moment. She found the whole

concept of Gethyn immersing himself in rural crafts a difficult one

to grasp. He was a writer and had his own art to think about. Surely

after the success he'd had, he couldn't have abandoned his writing

career altogether, yet that was what seemed to have happened. In

all Mrs Parry had said, writing had never been mentioned once, and

Davina knew herself that people in the village seemed unaware that

they had a celebrity in their midst.

This was not the Gethyn she remembered, she thought

bewilderedly. He had had a ruthless streak of ambition which had

caused him to pursue fame and money quite unequivocally. He

enjoyed the status that being a best-selling author had brought him.

So what was he doing here in this backwater involved in a venture

which would probably end up making him a considerable loss?

She realised Mrs Parry was watching her curiously and flushed a

little. She could well imagine the kind of speculation that must be

passing through the older woman's mind. Apart from anything else,

Mrs Parry must be wondering if her days as mistress of Plas Gwyn

were numbered, now that Gethyn's wife had arrived unexpectedly

on the scene. Davina would have liked to have given her some kind

of reassurance, but it was impossible without discussing her real

motive for coming to Wales, and that she felt she could not do.

So she changed the subject and began to ask about the

pony-trekking—the number of horses kept for the purpose, and the

problems of organising such a venture.

She learned that not all the horses stabled at Plas Gwyn belonged to

it, but were the property of the Morgan family who farmed nearby.

'Rhiannon had her own horses, of course, but they were sold when

everything else was,' Mrs Parry said with a sigh. 'It was a great

grief to her, and Gethyn knew that, so he went all over Wales

tracing them after the sale and buying them back for her. They were

all in the paddock at the back of the house waiting for her when she

got here. I'll never forget her face and nor will Gethyn, I daresay.