Dragons Lair. Sara Craven

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      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.

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