Dragon's Lair (24 page)

'Well, it isn't the Morgans' farm.' He sent her a satirical glance over

his shoulder. 'I presume that's where you thought you were bound.'

'Yes,' she admitted. There was little point in trying to deny it.

Gethyn seemed to have been one step ahead of her all the time.

'How—how did you know I was in the back?'

'Intuition,' he said mockingly. 'It seemed the logical step for you to

take, especially after Huw had told me about your fruitless appeal

to his chivalry earlier on.' He smiled. 'We simply agreed to swap

vehicles for the evening, that's all. Although I did check you were

actually in the back before I drove off. Your fetching shape was

quite unmistakable even underneath a tarpaulin. Besides, a corner

of your handbag was poking out.'

'If I'd known -' she said unsteadily.

'Oh, you don't have to describe what your reaction would have

been.' He raised a laconic hand. 'You've already made that more

than clear. But I'm simply doing you a favour, if you did but know

it. You did say that you weren't prepared to spend another night at

Plas Gwyn. Now, you don't have to.'

He poured the coffee into two battered tin mugs and carried them

across the room, offering her one which she accepted with a

perfunctory murmur of thanks. Her brain Seemed to be going round

in endless circles. She couldn't really believe what was happening

to her. She presumed that her present surroundings were part of the

old mill that Gethyn was renovating. Judging by the rudimentary

furnishings, he also camped there periodically. A shiver ran through

her, and she inched her chair fractionally nearer to the blazing logs,

although she was perfectly aware that it had not been a purely

physical reaction. In fact, it was very warm in the small room, and

the fire had obviously been started some hours before. Everything

in readiness, she thought, clasping her hands round the warmth of

the mug, and herself walking blithely into the trap of her own

devising.

Suddenly events seemed to be taking on a previously unguessed-at

pattern, as if the bait had been laid months before when Gethyn had

refused to answer Mr Bristow's letters, knowing, perhaps, that she

would come to find out his reasons for herself. And she, all too

predictably, had done precisely that.

But, if her reasoning was correct, why had he done all this? It was

all very well for him to claim that she was still his wife and

arrogantly demand the resumption of their marital relationship, but

he had been the one who had walked out. For two years—nothing.

Not a word, not a sign, yet now this. As if she was some plaything

to be picked up and discarded at will!

That was what hurt, of course. That and the realisation of how

much she had given away in her blind, seeking response to his

lovemaking only hours before. What, after all, did he care about her

mind and her heart, as long as her body wanted him?

It was almost a shock to raise her eyes and find that he was looking

at her, and that there was something in his regard which told her

plainly he had been watching her for quite a while and had probably

had little difficulty in reading the various emotions which had

occupied her mobile face. It was quite bad enough to know that

presently he would no doubt insist on stripping her physically

naked. It was too much to know that he was attempting much the

same thing to her mental processes.

'What are you trying to prove?' She made her voice as even as

possible.

'A good question.' His voice was mocking. 'But surely there should

be no question of proof between husband and wife.

Shouldn't—most things be taken on trust?'

'I think it's a little late for that, don't you?' She took a sip at the hot

coffee. It seemed to put heart into her.

'If I thought that,
cariad,
then we should not be here. And you

question far too much, as well. That was what was wrong from the

beginning. You suddenly started to ask yourself just what you were

doing getting into bed with this wild Welsh savage. After all, you

didn't even know if I was housetrained. I'm not objecting to the

questions in themselves, you understand. You're as entitled to have

last-minute doubts as the next one. It was just the timing of them

that I found unfortunate.'

His tone was light, and she tried to reply in the same spirit.

'I suppose the start of the honeymoon is a little late to ask

questions—but it needn't have made a great deal of difference—if

I'd got the answers I wanted. As it was ...' She tried a casual shrug.

'As it was,' he said without emotion, 'it never occurred to you, my

sweet egotist, that I might have had some doubts myself as to what

I was taking on, and that the answers I came up with were equally

unsatisfactory. I wondered, you see, if the realisation that you'd

actually married a man and not merely a success might be too bitter

a pill for you to swallow. And how right I turned out to be. But

Mummy had brainwashed you well, hadn't she, lovely? You could

only think of yourself in terms of being an asset. It never occurred

to you that you could be a liability.'

The tin mug and the remains of the coffee crashed unheeded to the

floor as Davina leapt out of her chair.

'You bastard!' Her voice shook uncontrollably. 'You dare to

reproach me—you dare ...'

'I dare a great deal, Davina, as you will shortly find out.' He kicked

away the upturned packing case he had been lounging on before her

outburst, and took one long stride towards her.

'No!' She tried to back away, but the rocking chair was in the way,

catching the back of her legs making her stumble. 'No—you ran out

on me.'

He laughed unpleasantly. 'That's rich, coming from you, Davina.

You've been running all your life.' His voice roughened, took on a

note that chilled her. 'Why, you even ran away from motherhood.

Or were you hoping I might have conveniently overlooked that

most salient point? You owe me that child, Davina. And if by some

good fortune you should conceive tonight, then I'll keep you

chained to my wrist for the next nine months. You won't cheat me

again.'

She cried out at that, her hands pressed tremblingly to her stricken

face. Tears were scalding at the back of her eyes and hurting her

throat.

'You—you can't say that,' she choked. 'You don't know —you can't

imagine what I went through ...'

'I have a pretty fair idea.' His face in the firelight looked diabolic. 'I

think it was only the knowledge that you'd suffered that stopped me

from coming back to Britain and half-killing you.'

'Oh, God,' she was crying openly now, the tears spilling endlessly

down her white cheeks. 'How can you be so cruel?'

'Cruelty, is it?' His voice was harshly mocking. He seemed totally

impervious to her distress. 'Perhaps you imagine you have a

monopoly?' His hand gripped her shoulder, bruising the flesh. 'And

what about you,
cariad?
A wife who waits until her husband is a

thousand miles away across the Atlantic before she slips into a

West End nursing home to have his baby scraped out of her. I'd say

that was pretty cruel—wouldn't you? Or was I simply never

intended to know?'

She could hear the words, but they made no sense. Gethyn's dark

face, poised above her to swoop and plunder, was suddenly a blur.

The firelit walls were closing in, the ceiling descending and the

floor, in some crazy way, tilting up as if to receive her limp body,

as she slipped sideways to the ground at his feet and lay still.

It was the sound that was familiar in some strange way, she found

herself thinking. That steady rather metallic tapping —if only she

could remember what it was. Her eyes opened slowly and

unwillingly.

She didn't remember the ceiling. That was quite certain. She'd never

seen those heavy beams and steeply sloping roof anywhere before.

And it was a strange bed that she was lying on—an old-fashioned

wooden bedstead, and a mattress that was hard without being

uncomfortable. Strange bedclothes too. A sleeping bag, and a single

sleeping bag at that.

But at least she knew what the sound was now. After all, she had

lain in bed many times listening to it. It was the sound of Gethyn

typing. Only he wasn't in the next room. If she turned her head very

slightly, she could see him, sitting with his back to her only a few

feet away at a small table.

She gave her head a bewildered little shake. Where was she, and

why was she there? And what was Gethyn doing, working at his

typewriter while she lay here in this sleeping bag, swaddled like a

baby? ... A baby.

Memory came flooding back to lash at her, to awaken her to full

and agonised consciousness. Gethyn hated her because he believed

she had deliberately got rid of the baby—their baby. He had

brought her there to punish her, and soon he would get up from the

table and come across to this bed and take her with that same

hatred in his heart. And if he succeeded in his avowed aim and

made her pregnant, she would always have that hatred to remember

—while she was carrying the child and after it was born. And what

hope was there for any of them?

Moving with utmost stealth, she managed to lower the zip on the

sleeping bag a little way. At least she was still fully dressed. There

was no way in which she could have managed to put her clothes on

noiselessly and get down the stairs in the corner without him

hearing her. Whereas now she did have a chance—a remote

one—of making a dash for it while he was so absorbed in his work.

Slowly, by inches, she managed to extricate herself from the

sleeping bag, her eyes fixed on his back. The tiny sound she did

make would surely be drowned by the noise of the typewriter keys.

In spite of herself, she could not help wondering what he was

writing. It must be very important to him if he could lose himself in

it to the exclusion of everything else. Whatever it was, if she

managed to get away from the mill, she would owe it a debt of

gratitude.

A questing foot discovered her shoes, but she made no attempt to

put them on. She picked them up and tucked them under her arm.

Stockinged feet would be best to carry her the few feet to the head

of the wooden staircase.

She crept across the room, wincing slightly at the roughness of the

boards under her feet, and keeping a wary eye on Gethyn. But her

luck seemed to be in. He did not falter in his task, or make any

attempt to turn and look at the bed. Nor did he seem to hear across

the room the thunderous beating of her heart.

She could still feel the dampness of tears on her face and taste their

salt on her lips. And there was no one to dry them but herself. After

the things he had said to her—the accusation he had made—she had

nothing to hope for from Gethyn. He was ready to believe that she

had deliberately destroyed their child, and yet he was the one who

had talked about trust. But at least it explained the silence of the

past two years.

She was about halfway down when the stair under her foot gave a

resounding creak. Above her head, she heard Gethyn swear, and the

sound of his chair scraping across the floor, and panicked, trying to

rush the last few stairs, desperately trying to gain the ground floor

and the friendly darkness only a few yards away.

She felt her foot slide on the wooden surface and herself plunge

forward, catching unavailingly at the rickety handrail. Her shoes

went flying out of her hand as she hit the ground, falling not

heavily, but awkwardly, her arm trapped underneath her.

'God in heaven!' Gethyn came racing down the stairs and knelt

beside her. 'What are you trying to do, you crazy little fool—break

your neck? Here, let me help you. Have you hurt yourself?'

'I'm quite all right,' she snapped. She was scared and winded, but

that was all, surely? She got up gingerly on to her knees, then

pushed herself up on to her feet. Gethyn rose too and looked at her

with narrowed eyes.

'Let me see your arm.'

'I've told you—I'm perfectly all right,' she insisted almost wildly.

She couldn't let him touch her after what had just passed between

them. That would be past all bearing.

'Move your fingers,' he ordered shortly.