Sara Craven - Dragons Lair

She had tried quite vainly to explain this to her mother. Mrs Greer had been stunned into silence when Davina had awkwardly broken the news of her proposed trip and its dual purpose. Then, and more disturbingly, she had burst into tears.

‘You’re going back to him,’ she had repeated over and over again. ‘In spite of everything that’s happened, you’re going back to him.’

‘No.’ Davina had attempted to reason with her. ‘I’m going solely to find out, if I can, why he has ignored Mr Bristow’s letters. And I have some papers from Uncle Philip to deliver as well.’

‘Oh, yes, Philip!’ Her mother had rounded on her, her eyes flashing. ‘Naturally, he’s involved. He’d be glad to see you reconciled to that—creature, if only to spite me. He’s never liked me.’

Davina felt suddenly very weary. ‘If Uncle Philip really felt like that, I doubt whether he’d go to these lengths to show it,’ she said. ‘This tour that’s being laid on is quite genuine.’

Mrs Greer produced a lace-trimmed handkerchief and sat twisting it in her hands. Her eyes when she looked at Davina were brooding and full of resentment.

‘I still see no need for you to go,’ she said. ‘If it’s all that important, Philip could go himself—or send someone else.’

‘He is sending someone else,’ Davina insisted gently. ‘He’s sending me. I do work for Hanson Greer, you know. Please try to understand, Mother. The easiest way for me to get a divorce is to persuade Gethyn to agree to it. If he won’t answer letters then it will have to be in person. I just want us to end our marriage in a civilised manner …’

‘Civilised!’ her mother cut in, with a bitter laugh. ‘With that barbarian? He has no decent feelings—leaving you ill and alone while he gallivanted across the United States.’

‘I wasn’t ill when he went,’ Davina pointed out. ‘In fact it was you. You had that bad dose of ‘flu, and I stayed to look after you.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Her mother’s lips were trembling again. ‘So it’s all my fault. But for my inconvenient virus, you’d have gone trailing after him like some pet dog.’

Davina bit her lip. ‘I don’t know what I would have done,’ she said. ‘And there’s little point in discussing it now. I—didn’t go.’

Looking back, she realised it was not merely the nursing of her mother, who had been a fractious patient, that had made her so tired, but the early pregnancy she had only dimly begun to suspect. Mrs Greer had refused to have a private nurse, and had insisted on Davina doing everything for her during her illness and convalescence, and it had been while Davina was helping her mother downstairs one day that she herself had slipped and fallen and precipitated the loss of her baby.

Afterwards she had wondered sometimes if she had confided her suspicion that she might be pregnant to Gethyn whether it would have made any difference, but on the whole she doubted it. Gethyn had already chosen his own path, and his hasty marriage had only been a temporary aberration from this. His solitary departure for the States had been an acknowledgment of their mistake, and a repudiation of his part in it.

Perhaps, Davina thought painfully, it was just as well he had not responded to her urgent call for him when she was in hospital. They might have been together even now, tied only by her dependence and his pity. It was a speculation that she found frankly unbearable.

Ahead of her, down the hill, a thread of smoke was rising from a clump of trees. Houses, she thought with a quick thump of the heart. People. And among them would be Gethyn. So far she had refused to contemplate what she would say to him when they were actually face to face. The situation was a potential minefield, and she would have to rely on her instincts to guide her, although they had not proved to be very reliable in the past.

She drove slowly, telling herself it was because the road sloped steeply with sharp bends, refusing to acknowledge the emotional reluctance that kept her foot on the brake. But it was not such a terrifying prospect that faced her after all as she turned into the narrow village street. A handful of slate-roofed cottages facing each other. A post office, combined with general store. A petrol filling station and an inn. No estranged husband stood forbiddingly in the middle of the highway ordering her away. In spite of herself, her lips twisted wryly at the prospect. And the only dragon was a painted one—black with a fiery red eye—on the inn sign.

Davina drove carefully down the street. Some of the cottages had names, others numbers, but not one of them was called Plas Gwyn. And they didn’t seem right either, with their lace-curtained windows and neatly kept front gardens bright with summer flowers. What part had Gethyn with all this quiet domesticity?

She licked her dry lips. Her obvious course was to enquire at the post office, but it seemed to be closed for lunch. That left the inn, which was a much more inviting proposition. She had been driving for a long time with no refreshment except a cup of coffee purchased in Shrewsbury. And a board outside the inn had mentioned bar snacks. There was a tiny gravelled car park at the side, and she drove in there. She leaned round to the back seat to recover her handbag, and took a deep steadying breath as she got out of the car. She pushed open the front door and found herself in a small lobby, with dark wooden doors opening on each side of her. On the right she could hear the soft drift of voices, predominantly male, with an occasional burst of laughter, and guessed this was the public bar. She opened the left-hand door and found herself in a small room, comfortably furnished with oak tables and high-backed settles. An old-fashioned wood fire had been laid in the grate but not lit. An elderly-looking golden labrador had been lying on the rug in front of the hearth, and as Davina came slowly into the room he got up ponderously and ambled across to put a damp but welcoming nose into her hand. Then he put his head back and gave a deep-throated bark.

‘Quiet, you old fool,’ a woman’s voice called from the regions behind the bar. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

The curtain that hid the doorway through to the other bar was pushed aside and she came in, small and dark with glasses pushed up on her forehead. She put her hand to her mouth in mock dismay when she caught sight of Davina.

‘There now,’ she said. ‘Me calling him names, and he was only trying to tell me you were here. What can I get you?’

‘I’d like a lager.’ Davina hoisted herself gracefully on to one of the tall padded stools along the bar counter and returned the woman’s smile. ‘And a sandwich, if that’s possible.’

‘More than possible,’ the woman said briskly. ‘There’s ham, cheese or turkey. Or I’ve a menu somewhere …’ She began to fill a glass with lager, peering round for the menu card as she did so.

‘Turkey would be fine,’ Davina assured her.

‘Come far, have you?’ The woman set the glass down on a mat and pushed it towards Davina. Her twinkling eyes frankly assessed the classic lines of the cool shirtwaister dress, and the cost of the gold chain Davina wore round her throat.

‘Quite a way,’ Davina agreed noncommittally. The lager was ice-cold, frosting the outside of the glass, and she sipped it gratefully.

‘It’s chilly in here.’ The landlady hunched her shoulders in a slight shiver. ‘Shall I put a match to the old fire for you?’

‘Oh, no, please.’ Davina put out a detaining hand. ‘It’s a gorgeous day. Perhaps I could take a chair outside.’

‘No need for that. There’s a patch of grass at the back and a few tables. You can sit and look at the river and I’ll bring your sandwiches out to you.’