Dragons Lair

‘It’s a lovely old house,’ Mrs Parry agreed. She walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. ‘Nice view, too. It’s clear today, so you can actually see the Dragon.’

‘What did you say?’ Davina stared at her.

Mrs Parry smiled. ‘Moel y Ddraig—that’s what it means. The bare hilltop of the dragon, and there he is, the old thing.’ She pointed upwards and Davina, intrigued, came to her side.

It was quite true. The enormous crag which jutted out above the house could, with very little imagination, have been a petrified dragon. It was all there—the great thrusting head with its menacing horns, and the long clawed foot raised threateningly just beneath it. And if you half-closed your eyes, the great shadowy bulk of the hill seemed to become huge spreading wings …

Davina wrenched herself back to reality with a jerk. She smiled. ‘I hope he’s a friendly dragon, otherwise he’d be rather too close for comfort!’

Mrs Parry’s eyes twinkled suddenly. ‘Well, he’s never done me any harm. Now I am going to make some tea.’ She paused. ‘Would you like to have yours up here, perhaps?’

Davina guessed that Rhiannon would probably be coming in to have tea and that this was a tactful intimation of the fact, and she agreed. The prospect of seeing Gethyn again had made her more keyed up than she had realised, and now she felt almost weak from anti-climax. She needed to relax and unwind for a while, and it would be far preferable to do so up here, out of Rhiannon’s hostile sight.

Mrs Parry hesitated at the door. ‘I’m sorry Rhiannon’s behaving like this,’ she said frankly. ‘But she is very fond of Gethyn—always has been. But she’ll come round, I daresay. Maybe this is the best thing that could have happened.’ And on that, she vanished.

Davina sat down in the easy chair and looked out on to the apple trees, their leaves moving gently in the slight breeze. She still could hardly believe that she was actually at Plas Gwyn. She leaned her head back on the cushions and closed her eyes, absorbing the sounds and silences of her new surroundings. She could hear the distant sound of the river, and superimposed upon it, closer at hand, the bleating of sheep and the sharp bark of a dog. Somewhere a horse whinnied with a restless stamp of hooves, and below her she could hear the homely clatter of cups and the rising whistle of a kettle.

Presently, when she had had her tea, she would walk up to the car and fetch her case. It contained her night things and a change of underwear, but little more, and she wondered rather restlessly what she would do if Gethyn’s absence was a prolonged one. She sighed. That he would be away from home when she arrived was the last thing she had bargained for. It was almost as if he had guessed her intention and timed his absence accordingly, but that was nonsense, of course. He could have had no idea she was on her way.

The bedroom door banged open and Rhiannon made her appearance, carrying, somewhat surprisingly, a tray of tea. Her eyes lowered sullenly, and her lips set, she marched across the room and deposited the tray on the table at Davina’s elbow.

Davina decided to try another friendly overture. ‘What a charming room this is,’ she commented. ‘I hope I’m not putting anyone out by being here.’

Rhiannon shrugged. ‘Only Gethyn, and he’s not here at the moment, it hardly matters, does it? Who knows? When he comes back, he may be putting you out.’

The bedroom door slammed on her departure and Davina sat bolt upright on her chair, her attention utterly arrested by what the other girl had said. Then she jumped to her feet and went over almost feverishly to the dressing chest, tugging open a drawer at random. Her worst fears were confirmed. A pile of shirts, neatly folded and unarguably masculine, was revealed. The contents of the other drawers only served to hammer the lesson home. This was Gethyn’s room.

A bright spot of humiliated colour burned in her cheeks. What could Mrs Parry have been thinking of? She must know what the situation was between Gethyn and herself—might even be aware that a divorce was projected, so how could she have put her in this room?

Davina swallowed and closed the drawers, backing away from them. Then she caught at herself. She was being utterly ridiculous. She would have to spend one night in this room—two at the most depending on when Gethyn returned, and then she would be gone. It would probably be never necessary for him to know that she had slept in his room—in his bed. And she was being foolish to ascribe any ulterior motive to Mrs Parry. Gethyn’s aunt had obviously been disconcerted by her arrival and had probably reacted without thinking. Besides, if there was no other room available, what choice did she have? It was either this, or some makeshift on a floor somewhere—possibly Rhiannon’s room, and Davina shuddered at the prospect. She was being hysterical, she thought. She should be thankful for small mercies. At least she had a roof over her head for the night.

But she still walked over to the bed and pulled back the counterpane. She relaxed perceptibly. The bed linen was crisp and fresh, clearly newly-changed. She knew, with an odd twist at the pit of her stomach, that it would have disturbed her to have to sleep in the same sheets as Gethyn had used, and she told herself defensively this was because he was now a stranger to her.

But she knew, if she was honest, that that was not her real motive, and she turned away sharply, forcing herself to go back to the chair and sit down and pour herself a cup of tea. It wasn’t her favourite drink, but she supposed wryly it might help to steady her jumping nerves.

Her pulses seemed to be behaving most oddly altogether, and she made herself sit quietly, trying to regain her control of herself. Anyone would think, she told herself, that the door was suddenly going to swing open and Gethyn was going to be standing there—as he had been that night more than two years before.

Davina put up her hands to her face as if she was trying to blot out the images that presented themselves relentlessly to her teeming mind. But it was no use. She was incapable of stemming the flood of memory that rushed to engulf her.

The bed in the honeymoon suite had been a very different affair—a wide, low divan with fluffy lace-trimmed pillows and a magnificent gold satin bedspread. She had sat at the dressing table in the white chiffon of her wedding nightgown, brushing her hair with long nervous strokes. She could see the bed behind her in the mirror, and she was assailed by a terrible feeling of inadequacy.

The dinner in the hotel restaurant had been a disaster. Gethyn had retired behind a mask of cool courtesy, and it was impossible for her to reach him, to try and explain the fears and apprehensions which were overwhelming her. In the end, resentment had begun to burn in her, and she had become equally silent. She shouldn’t have to explain; he ought to know how she was feeling. But sympathy and understanding seemed to be the least of his emotions. When they left the restaurant, he told her abruptly he was going to the bar for a drink, and wished her goodnight.

She came up to the suite alone, and looked round her desolately. It was all such a farce. The flowers were already beginning to wilt in the central heating, and the champagne remained unopened. She found some magazines on a table and sitting down on one of the sofas began to leaf through them, but the words and pictures danced meaninglessly in front of her eyes, and at last she threw them down with an exclamation of disgust. She glanced at her watch and saw that Gethyn had been gone for over an hour. Her temper rose. Well, he would not come back and find her sitting here meekly waiting for him!

She banged into the bedroom and closed the door. If it had had a key or a bolt, she would have used them. She undressed and showered in the luxuriously appointed bathroom, then put on her nightgown and the negligée which matched it and went slowly back in the bedroom.

She was feeling totally unnerved by the apparent volte-face her emotions had suffered, and all because of a few bitter words from her mother. Was it—could it be because deep in her heart she knew those words were true and that she had married a stranger? She shivered and laid down her hairbrush. Was it better, as her mother had always claimed, for love to develop slowly from friendship and trust and respect over a long period, or could it burst on the senses in a few short weeks with all the violence of an electric storm? Did Gethyn love her? He had never said so —that was when she realised it for the first time. She knew he wanted her, and had hugged to herself her secret joy in her own sexual power over him. But love was a different matter and one she had tended to take for granted. He wanted her, therefore he loved her, and it had taken her all this time, to their wedding night in fact, to realise that the two things did not necessarily bear any relation. This was what frightened her—this lack of spoken commitment which should have come, she thought, much, much earlier than the brief vows they had repeated that day. Sheer physical desire alone was too transient a thing on which to build a relationship which had to last for life.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked in the mirror at the blurred image of a girl, her body barely veiled by the misting of chiffon, traditionally prepared for a night of passion, and terrified. She tried to recapture the memory of Gethyn’s mouth on hers, to remember the swift, vibrant reponse he had been able to engender from the day they had met, but there was nothing but chill inside her.

And at that moment she heard the outer door of the suite slam. For a second she sat tensely, her slim body poised as if for flight, only there was nowhere to fly to. But her door remained closed, and after a while she relaxed perceptibly. Gethyn, it seemed, had gone to the other room, as he had indicated before dinner.

She slipped out of her negligée and laid it across the dressing stool, then got into the big bed. She felt lost in the wide expanse of sweet-smelling linen, and she wished fretfully that she had some sleeping tablets so that she could blot out this whole disastrous night. Perhaps everything would seem different in the morning.

She reached for the button of the bedside lamp, but as she did so, a slight sound came to her ears, and she looked up to see the bedroom door opening. Gethyn sauntered into the room, and pushed the door shut behind him. His dark hair was damp and dishevelled from the shower, and he was wearing a towelling bathrobe, and Davina knew with a sudden tightening of her stomach muscles that he wore nothing else. He strolled across the room to the side of the bed where she was lying and stood looking down at her mockingly. When he spoke, she could smell the whisky on his breath.

‘Good evening, lovely. And how are we enjoying our solitary honeymoon so far?’

She bent her head so that a swathe of dark auburn hair hung across her cheek like a curtain. ‘Gethyn, please,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I—I’m very tired.’

‘Tired, is it?’ The note of exaggerated concern in his voice was almost more than she could bear. ‘But I thought a headache was always the classic excuse—or does that come later in marriage? You’ll have to instruct me—I’m new to these feminine foibles.’

She looked up at him in swift resentment. ‘You mean I’m the first woman to refuse the great Gethyn Lloyd?’ she could not resist the biting words.

‘No, I don’t,’ he said softly. ‘Because you haven’t refused me yet, and you’d better not.’

A searing quiver of alarm ran along her senses, and this time she made no attempt to answer him.

His voice went on. ‘For the past few weeks, you’ve been promising me all the delights of Paradise. But at the same time it was made clear that you being an innocent virgin, and Mummy’s daughter to boot, it would be at a price. Well, today I paid that price, and now you’re going to keep your side of the bargain.’

‘Gethyn—no!’ She spoke then, her voice husky with suppressed tears. ‘It—it wasn’t like that, believe me.’

‘Then what was it like?’ he said gently. He took off the bathrobe and tossed it aside. ‘You have a golden opportunity, lovely, to convince me, right now.’

She was cold and trembling as he took her in his arms. As his mouth sought hers, she turned her head away, and her body flinched as his hands began their long, slow exploration. After a time, he lifted himself on to one elbow and stared down at her averted face.

‘Was it all an act, then?’ he asked, his voice harsh. ‘All that passion and promise? My God, you really had me fooled. Well, you’re cast in a new and demanding role now, Davina, and I’m sorry if you don’t know your lines.’

He took her with an insolent expertise, just short of brutality. When it was over, she lay very still, the first scalding tears squeezing from under her closed lids and trickling slowly down her face. She knew he had left the bed, and when eventually she opened her eyes, he was standing watching her, tying the belt of his bathrobe, his face sombre.

‘Goodnight, Davina.’ His voice was cool and cynical. ‘Thank you for the loan of your body. If at any time in the future you’re curious to know how it really should be between a man and a woman, you have only to let me know.’

‘I hate you!’ she whispered with passionate intensity. It might have been a trick of the lamplight, but she thought for a moment she saw him flinch. But when he spoke, the mockery was still in his voice.

‘Do you, cariad? Then that makes two of us, because I also hate myself.’

He turned and left her.

She fell into a restless uneasy sleep just before dawn. When she awoke, it was to the rattle of a breakfast trolley being wheeled into the sitting room outside. She sat up, pushing her hair back, and dragging the covers across her body as a quiet knock fell on the bedroom door. But no one made any attempt to enter, and after a moment or two she got out of bed. Her discarded nightgown lay on the floor beside the bed where Gethyn had tossed it and she kicked it out of her way with loathing. She slipped a black silk kaftan heavily embroidered with butterflies over her head, and tugged a brush through the tangle of her hair. She looked heavy-eyed, but no more so than other bride waking up after her wedding night, she decided with a wry twist of her lips.

For a moment she stood, nerving herself, then she opened the door and marched out into the sitting room with a defiant tilt to her chin. But the gesture was wasted, because the room was empty. And the breakfast in its silver chafing dishes was quite clearly for one …

She poured herself a cup of coffee, glancing in bewilderment towards the closed door on the other side of the suite. Presumably Gethyn was still asleep, in which case, who had ordered this breakfast? Cooked food was beyond her, but she took one of the warm rolls and spread it with butter. When she had drunk her coffee, she got up restlessly and wandered across to Gethyn’s door. She stood for a moment with her head bent listening for some sound of movement, but there was none, and after a brief hesitation she twisted the knob and pushed the door open. The room beyond was also deserted, the sheets and blankets stripped back, and the wardrobe door standing open, as if the occupant had made a hurried departure.

Davina’s hand stole to her mouth as the implications of this burst over her. He had gone. But where? She had never felt so humiliated. Even the degradation she had suffered at his hands the night before seemed to pale into insignificance beside this. She sank down on to the softness of the carpet and stared almost unbelievingly about her. Nothing could have underlined more bitterly the terms of their relationship, she thought, swallowing. He had married her for purely sensual reasons, and when she had proved a disappointment, he had decided to cut his losses.

Slow anger began to burn deep inside her. And what was she supposed to do? Go meekly back to her mother’s house and admit that Vanessa Greer had been right, and that it had all been a terrible mistake? She would see him in hell first!