Dragon's Lair (30 page)

narrow building, the long windows revealing that it was built on

three storeys. Beside it a huge wheel turned slowly but powerfully

in the creaming water. It was very quiet apart from the sound of the

water and the cooing of pigeons somewhere nearby. Davina shaded

her eyes and stared up at the windows, but there was no sign of

movement. It seemed that the renovation work was not being

carried out today for some reason. The adjoining buildings,

including the cottage she had been brought to the previous night,

looked almost derelict in comparison, although it was clear that

remedial work was being carried out on them too. The one nearest

the mill, she guessed, was going to be the mill shop that Mrs Parry

had mentioned, and she wondered what plans Gethyn had for the

other— apart from using it as a makeshift love nest, she thought

with a wry smile.

She trod up to the cottage door and knocked tentatively, but there

was no reply or sound of movement within. After a while, she lifted

the latch and walked in. Everything was just as it had been left the

night before—the half-unpacked roll of bedding, coffee mugs

dumped on the table, and dead ashes in the hearth. Last night the

place had had a cosy, if rather seedy, charm. Today, it simply

looked neglected. Davina compressed her lips. If it had not been for

her arm, she thought wistfully ... Yet there were some minor

improvements she could make, notwithstanding.

She searched round until she found a small handbrush and an

ancient shovel and set herself to clear out the grate; dumping the

feathery wood ash into an old cardboard box. Then she rinsed the

coffee mugs under the single cold tap in the corner.

She wandered round the cottage, opening any windows that seemed

strong enough to withstand her handling. Then she carried the

bedding up the stairs, making several journeys. She would have

liked to have made up the bed, but decided it would probably be

beyond her. Besides, there was plenty of time for that.

She was just deciding that her efforts deserved a cup of coffee

when she spotted the table and the typewriter in the corner. She

stared at it for a moment, her instinctive curiosity battling with her

respect for Gethyn's privacy. But curiosity won. Why had he told

her he was doing no more writing, when it was patently untrue? she

wondered. Was it possible that the business proposition from Uncle

Philip had prompted him to start again? Somehow she did not think

so.

There were a number of sheets of paper littering the small table,

and a thick wad of manuscript inside a cardboard folder. Guiltily,

Davina opened the folder and peeped at the top sheet. She flushed

slightly. It wasn't a novel at all. It appeared to be some kind of

diary, and she had absolutely no right to be snooping there at all.

She was just about to close the folder when her own name seemed

to leap out at her from the closely typewritten page.

She bit her lip. It suddenly seemed totally imperative that she

should discover what Gethyn had written about her. With a sense of

shock, she realised that the papers in the folder were dated two

years previously—in the period just after their marriage and before

Gethyn had gone to the States. With a feeling of incredulity, she

realised that it must have been this diary, and not the novel she had

thought, that Gethyn had been engaged on night after night as she

had lain awake listening to the clatter of the typewriter.

She sat down on the chair and began to read at first in silence, but

then aloud as the sense and meaning of the words in front of her

began to come home to her. It was not merely a diary that Gethyn

had written during those long nights. It was more a love letter—a

long, articulate but passionate outpouring of a man's deepest

feelings. And it was also, she discovered as she read bewilderedly

on a portrait of herself.

Nothing was hidden. His longing for her and her love was revealed

over and over again in passages of lyrical tenderness. But his own

self-loathing and doubts were also frankly discussed—his hatred of

the travesty of passion he had forced on her on their wedding

night—his determination to wait for her to come to him in her own

time even if it took the rest of their lives. Every word she had

spoken to him during those weeks in the flat, every emotion

however fleeting she had expressed, each time she had smiled—

everything was there in those close-packed pages.

'My angel and my demon,' he had written at one point. 'Sometimes I

am tempted to risk everything by telling her how much I love her

and need her. Yet I know it would be cruel to burden her like that

when it is so plain she cannot return my feelings. I have to face the

fact that she may never do so, and why should I make her suffer

more than I have done already by allowing her to see my suffering?'

Oh, Gethyn, she thought, her throat aching with threatened tears. If

only you had obeyed that impulse and told me—how different

everything might have been. Yet at the same time she could

understand and honour the reasoning behind his self-imposed

restraint.

His stated intention—to lead her slowly and gently from the heady

delights of their courtship days to the deep relationship that

marriage would demand—had been defeated by her own sudden

intransigence.

She fumbled the sheets back into the folder, blinded by tears. All

those wasted hours, days, weeks when they could have been lovers

instead of strangers, forging a bond so strong that no malice

however calculated could have come between them. Whereas,

separated by circumstances, a prey to their own uncertainties, they

had proved easy victims.

Her hand reached out for the new sheets—the pages he had typed,

presumably since her reappearance in his life— then hesitated. She

was frightened. Supposing they did not contain the reassurance she

longed for?

She got up and went over to the bed and lay down, pulling the

sleeping bag over herself. She felt cold suddenly. No written words,

however evocative, could warm her now. She wanted the strength

and passion of Gethyn's arms around her, his lips setting fire on fire.

Or was it too late, after all?

She never knew when, worn out by crying and the emotional debate

she was waging with herself, she fell asleep, but when she woke

again she realised that several hours must have passed. The sun had

moved round and was now falling directly across the bed itself, and

she found her forehead was beaded with perspiration. She sat up,

pushing her damp hair back from her face, wondering what it was

that had woken her. Then she heard the sound of movement in the

room below and her heart began to thump slowly and agonisingly.

She slipped noiselessly off the bed and tiptoed to the head of the

stairs, peering down into the room below. All kinds of possibilities

were flashing through her mind—that it might not be Gethyn at all,

but one of the workmen concerned with the mill—or that Gethyn

might not have come alone.

But he was there and quite alone, sitting at the kitchen table, his

back turned towards the stairs. As she watched, he slowly lowered

his head on to his folded arms and became very still.

Davina came down the stairs very carefully, clutching at the rail

with her left hand.

'Gethyn,' she whispered.

His head came up immediately, and he swung round on the chair,

scraping its legs across the floor. He looked haggard and ill, and his

chin was dark with stubble. For a moment he stared at her as if he

did not believe his eyes, then, as if some internal shutter had been

operated, his face became cold and closed.

'Davina?' he said flatly. 'What the hell are you doing here? You

should be halfway to London by now.'

She shook her head. 'What made you think that?'

'You went with her,' he said tiredly. 'They told me so at the house.

What happened? Some last-minute change of heart? Or is Mummy

here too?'

She descended the remaining stairs and came towards him. 'She's

not here, Gethyn. She's on her way back to London. But I didn't go

with her.'

He shook his head, as if he was finding it hard to concentrate

suddenly.

'Well, you should have done,' he muttered. 'There's nothing here for

you.'

'You're here.'

'But not for very much longer.' His lip curled. 'Have you forgotten

I'm setting out on my travels again? I rang your uncle earlier and

told him the good news, and he seemed delighted. I shouldn't be

surprised if you get a bonus when you return to London. In addition

to the divorce, that is.'

'That isn't what I want.'

He shrugged cynically. 'Then that's your tough luck.'

'I do have alternative proposals.' She knelt beside his chair looking

up into his face. 'Don't you want to hear them?'

'No,' he said. 'And for God's sake get up. That floor must be filthy,

and the time when I would have rejoiced to see you grovelling at

my feet is long gone.'

She smiled. 'If I'd had the use of both hands, I'd have cleaned the

floor. I did do the dishes and the hearth.'

'So I noticed. I hope you don't expect me to be grateful. My

domestic arrangements here might not go down very well in

Knightsbridge, but they suit me very well and I can do without your

interference or anyone else's. Now why don't you push off back to

Plas Gwyn like a good girl, and phone your mother and resolve

whatever tiff you've had with her, and then leave. Perhaps then we'll

all be happy.'

'I can't phone my mother, Gethyn,' she said steadily. 'Perhaps one

day I shall be able to forgive her for what she tried to do to

us—what she did do. But not yet.'

'Now what are you saying?' His mouth twisted sceptically.

'I'm talking about the lies she told you when she telephoned you in

America. The reason I didn't follow you on the next plane that day

was because she was ill—some kind of virus. I nursed her through

it. She was convalescing when I had a fall—down the stairs at the

house.' She tried to smile. 'But I didn't get off so lightly that time. I'd

have welcomed two broken bones. Instead I started to lose our

baby. They took me into hospital and did everything they could, but

it was no use. I asked someone to contact you, to get you to come

home and be with me, but my mother— intervened. Someone—a

nurse—had told her that the clinical term for miscarriage was

"spontaneous abortion" and she deliberately used those words and

twisted them to make you think that I hadn't wanted the baby, that

I'd deliberately got rid of it. But it wasn't true, Gethyn. I wanted

your child then, just as I wanted you. Just as I want you now.'

'No.' He shook his head. 'You never really wanted me. Oh, you

came to me. You let me take you—make love to you. But

afterwards you cried, and I knew that you regretted what you had

done. That was why I left like I did. I couldn't bear to look into your

eyes and see you hating me. And when your mother phoned, I knew

I'd been right all along.'

'But you were wrong,' she said quietly. 'Just as you were wrong not

to tell me that you loved me from the first. Why didn't you?'

'You were so young, you frightened me sometimes. I was afraid you

weren't emotionally ready for the demands I might make of you,' he

answered, then paused, his eyes narrowing. He looked down into

her suddenly flushed face, then glanced towards the stairs and the

upper room. 'I see.'

He gave a mirthless laugh. 'Well, I wouldn't pay too much heed to

those maudlin ramblings,
cariad.
They don't stand the test of time.'

'I don't believe you,' she said. 'Oh, Gethyn, darling Gethyn, I just

don't believe you.'

He remained motionless for a moment, then with a stifled curse he

got up and went over to the window and stood staring out.

'Go back to London, Davina. That's where you belong, no matter

what your mother may have done.'

'I belong with you.' She went on kneeling where she was. 'I belong

to you. I've been deceiving myself for so long, telling myself I hated

you, that I never wanted to see you again. Yet as soon as I was

given the opportunity, I came to you. Oh, I may have told myself