The woman pressed her lips together thoughtfully. “You’re from Canada, are you?”
“That’s right.” Elain thought it better not to add the information that she lived in London. “You’ve got a very good ear for accents.”
“My nephew is in Canada. I visited him there last year. In Vancouver, he is, working in construction engineering.” Elain relaxed as they chatted, knowing she had all but won. “Well, I’ll just ask,” said the woman after a minute. She turned into her office and exchanged a few words with someone in a guttural but strangely musical language, one that seemed curiously familiar to Elain, as though she had heard it in a dream, or in another life. “He’s out at the moment,” said the woman, coming out again. “Really, I don’t know what—” She lifted her head as the door opened behind Elain. “There you are, Math. Here’s a young woman from Canada, an artist she is, who sent a cheque for a reservation and we never got it. She’s wanting to know if we can put her up.”
“Hello,” said a male voice, and Elain felt a prickle of superstitious dread between her shoulder blades, knowing the man heading towards her must be her prime suspect. “I’m Ma—” He paused as she turned, and for a moment out of time, they stared at each other. Then slowly, reluctantly almost, as though a smile was not his first response, Mathonwy Powys smiled at her. He reached for her hand, and just as reluctantly, she gave it. “I’m Math Powys.”
He was taller than she. Elain was used to looking directly into most men’s eyes, but she had to look up to meet his gaze, and although he was slimly built, he had broad shoulders and muscular arms and hands. He was dark, with very thick black hair falling over his forehead, and deep black eyes that seemed to see and take in everything. His nose was broad and thick, strong without being well-cut, his mouth wide and square, with full, generous lips. The kind of mouth that smiles easily at women. The kind of mouth that always made her nervous.
He was wearing the grey shirt and faded jeans she had seen earlier, but she didn’t need that clue to tell her this was the man on the horse. She would have recognized him even if he had changed; the sense of threat, of personal danger, was the same.
She wanted to run. Every instinct warned Elain not to ask to stay, but simply to turn to go at once, while she still could. Her heart was pounding in her throat as if it would choke her, and she could feel it even in her hand as he touched her, could feel her pulse where it pounded against his warm, strong palm.
She drew her hand back, and made up her mind. She could not, would not get friendly with this man. He was dangerous. She would tell Raymond to find someone else. She would get away from here.
Because Mathonwy Powys had done it. She was sure that this feeling of deep, dark mistrust was telling her that—that he was guilty, just as they suspected. And never until she looked into those all-seeing black eyes had she been so afraid of the consequences of getting friendly with someone only to betray him. He was ruthless, she knew that. Her heart was pounding as if she were meeting an old, deadly enemy, or...or... With him looking down at her she felt hunted, as though she had already betrayed him and he were after her.
No! she protested silently. It wasn’t fair that her luck should turn against her like this.
“I’m afraid we’ve had a fire,” he was saying. Thank God he was going to say no! It would be easy. She would just pick up her things and go. She would drive back to London—or at least out of Wales—before she slept tonight.
He was looking deep into her eyes, frowning slightly now, as if bemused by what he saw there. “But we can’t drive you out into the storm,” he said. That was a laugh, she thought, because whatever might be kicking up outside was nothing compared to what was building for her here, if she stayed. “If you’re willing to put up with a certain amount of inconvenience, I think we can find room for you.”
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t—” she began, but he reached out to take her wrist in his hand, and that shut her up as if he had clapped a hand over her mouth. He smiled, and she sensed a determination in him that sent hot and cold waves of irrational fear over her.
“I insist,” said Math Powys.
He knows, she thought in panicked dread. He knows why I’ve come. And he’s not going to let me get away.
Chapter 2
“I‘ll show her up to Llewelyn’s Room, Olwen,” he said, and bent to pick up her easel and two of her suitcases. “Send Jan along, would you?”
If she had had no luggage she might just have been able to get away. But she had been the author of her own undoing, she thought, as she helplessly watched him take the key and walk down the hallway. She had deliberately brought in all her luggage before ringing the bell at reception, in the kind of psychological manoeuvre Raymond had taught her: establish a beachhead. Now it was rebounding on her.
“But I...” she began, and then felt something she didn’t understand at all. An inner immobility assailed her, a frozen lethargy, as if she were somehow unwilling to rescue herself, as though some buried part of her were determined that she...what? Face the threat, the danger? But why? Why? she cried helplessly to that inner self. But there was no answer, only the seal on her lips, the weight on her limbs, that made resistance impossible.
“Llewelyn’s Room,” said Olwen approvingly. “That’s not Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, of course. He’s too far back. But that’s what the room’s always been called.”
Elain tore her gaze away from the retreating back of Math Powys. “Really?” she said, though she had heard nothing. “Could I use a phone?” She must talk to Raymond. If she explained to Raymond, he would tell her to come back.
“Right over there,” said Olwen. An old-fashioned black phone sat on a little table between two armchairs beside the door. Her heart sank. “I’ll have to dial the number for you in the office. It’s a very antiquated system we have here.” She smiled and sensed Elain’s hesitation. “But you’d better go off now with Math, and see your room. Dinner’s almost ready. I’ll tell Myfanwy about you.”
Elain picked up the small bag and her paintbox and followed Math Powys as if to her doom.
The lift looked like something out of a thirties English movie, and Elain couldn’t help being affected by its old-fashioned charm. She loved the movies of that period. Sally had a huge collection of films on video, and it was always the old black-and-whites that Elain watched. Math Powys set her bags down and held the gate open for her, and when she was inside with him and the gate was closed and it was too late to get out, she realized how small it was. It had been designed to fit into the stairwell, and it was about the size of two coffins.
“You’re an artist, are you?” He had the deep, mellifluous voice that is the hallmark of the Welsh, but without the strong, lilting accent.
Elain nodded, thanking her stars that that was the truth. He was a man, she felt, who would have seen through that kind of lie in about five minutes. He had pushed the button, but it seemed to be taking the lift a long time to respond. “That’s right,” she said awkwardly. Under the pressure of his nearness, the old, tongue-tied feeling of social ineptness came creeping over her.
With a reluctant clang, the lift began to rise.
“You’ll find plenty to paint around here. But you know that, or you wouldn’t be here. Have you stayed at the White Lady before?” He was just making conversation, and yet her heart was pounding in her ears. She felt sweat beading her brow and under her arms. She even felt dizzy. This was a ridiculous overreaction. What was wrong with her? Of course he didn’t know why she was here.
She licked her lips and her fingers combed the hair beside her left ear. “No,” she said.
He smiled and turned as the lift leaped a little, bounced down again, and stopped. “It’s usually better not to bother with the lift unless you have luggage,” he said drily. He opened the clanging gate and picked up her luggage again, then preceded her along a short wainscotted hall to a door at the end, and opened it.
She stepped into another century: grey, rough-hewn stone walls h
ung with a needlework tapestry; a dark-stained wooden floor with a couple of small carpets; an old portrait in oils of some seventeenth-century beauty; an antique chest of drawers; a free-standing full-length mirror on an oak pedestal and an unstained oak chest at the foot of the bed. The bed, against the one wall of ancient wood panelling, was covered by a green tapestry spread that matched heavy curtains at the windows. There were two arched, leaded casement windows cut into walls that were at least two feet thick, and a small stone fireplace that hadn’t changed in hundreds of years. Elain stopped dead, a few feet into the room, and gazed around her, mouth open.
“Oh, how beautiful!” she breathed, because she loved old things, and the room breathed a timeless peace that her soul had hungered for without knowing.
“Yes,” said Powys, nodding. “This room has been restored. Most of the others are still semi-modernized. I’ve been working on the restoration one room at a time.”
He set down her bags and crossed the room to the deeply recessed windows. They faced out over the valley, where rain-clouds now darkened the sky. Off to the right a swirl of greys and pinks behind the rain meant the sun was setting.
He opened one of the windows. The song of a single blackbird immediately came in on the wind and, too loud to be from the valley, the crying of sheep. He stood looking out over the valley for a moment, not heeding the raindrops that blew onto him. Then he turned. “Cadair Idris,” he said, and smiled an invitation to come and stand beside him.
It was beyond her to go and stand beside him in that intimate space. Elain pretended not to notice the invitation, crossed to the other window and opened it, gazing out at the scree-topped mountains that stood across the valley, barely visible in the mist. What parts were visible were coloured deep purple. “Where?” Elain asked, and then wished she hadn’t, for he came and stood beside her to point out over her shoulder.
“That long shape,” he said. “The peak is just covered.”
He was not touching her, though she felt as though he were. Her skin was crawling with awareness, with hostility. “It doesn’t look very high,” she said rudely. It was true. The Welsh mountains were not high, nothing like what would be called a mountain at home, she knew. But it was said they had a kind of perfect proportion that made any term other than “mountain” impossible.
He glanced down at her. “No,” he agreed. “You can climb it in a couple of hours. Do you like walking?”
“Not as much as the English do,” Elain said, her tone suggesting that that was a failing on the part of the English. She was sounding sullen and narrow-minded, a Canadian who couldn’t see virtue in anything that wasn’t just like home.
“The views from the top are spectacular. On a clear day,” he added with a grin.
“Oh, yes?” She hated this. Why didn’t he get away from her? She wanted to shove him away, but was afraid of touching him.
“But don’t stay with him all night.”
She glanced up at him. “What? With whom?”
“With the giant of the mountain, whose name is Idris. Cadair means ‘chair’ in Welsh. The mountain is the chair of Idris. He’s a friendly soul, but if you stay on the mountain overnight, tradition says, you come down in the morning either mad, or a poet.”
She felt an uncomfortable sense of being enchanted against her will. “Really? Have you done it? Stayed overnight on the mountain?”
He hesitated and then looked at her with a smile in his black eyes, inviting her to share the joke with him. “I have, as a wild young man.”
“Was it for a dare?”
He hesitated again. “Not quite.”
She couldn’t help asking, “And did you go mad?”
“I hope not.”
“Are you a poet, then?”
“Olwen says we have a new guest and sheets are wanting, Math. Is it in here you’re wanting them?”
Elain blinked and whirled as the voice intruded into...what? Had she so easily been hypnotized? She glanced up at him in dismay, but he had already turned away to the young woman who was standing in the doorway, sheets and towels over her arm. “Yes, that’s right. This is Jan,” he said to Elain. “She’ll generally see to your needs in the housekeeping department. Jan, this is...” He paused. “I’m afraid I neglected to get your name,” he said, as though his lapse surprised him.
“Elain,” said Elain to both of them. “Elain Owen.”
“Elain,” he repeated, making a move to take her hand but recovering easily when she avoided the touch. “Would you like to come downstairs for a drink before dinner while Jan makes your room ready?”
“If first I could...”
“Of course. Jan, perhaps you’ll show Elain where the bathroom is. I’ll see you down in the sitting room, then, when you’re ready, and you can meet the others.”
With a nod at them both he was gone, leaving a curious void behind, as though he had taken all the energy of the room with him.
“Owen,” said the girl, when she had set down the sheets on a chair and was leading the way out of the room. She emphasized both syllables, in a more musical pronunciation than Elain had ever heard before. “That’s a Welsh name. Are you Welsh, then?”
“My great-grandfather was born here.”
“And do you have people here?” She stopped and opened a door, but waited while Elain replied.
“I don’t know. I’d like to think so.”
“In this part of the country, would they be?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
“This is the bathroom,” said Jan, opening the door wider to expose a very handsome old bathroom with a Victorian-looking white tub and sink surrounded by dark mahogany wainscotting. It was another century altogether from the bedroom.
“Goodness,” said Elain, in mild astonishment. Above the sink hung a large, mahogany-framed antique mirror, giving a muted, kindly reflection. Her creamy skin and auburn hair seemed to have been brushed over with softly tinted shellac, so that she herself looked as though she belonged to that other world.
“The toilet is next door,” said Jan, setting down clean white towels. “I’ll leave you now, shall I?”
All this ancient splendour was getting to Elain. “Do people change for dinner?” she asked in dismay, glancing down at the jeans and wrinkled shirt she had been wearing since nine that morning.
“Vinnie always does, of course. The others do when they like, or not, as it suits them. Tonight you’d be better not to change, because with so few guests everyone eats at once, and Myfanwy—that’s the chef—will get upset if people are late. They’ll be sitting down in fifteen minutes.”
So much for her plans to squeeze in a quick bath to wash off the travel grime. “Right,” said Elain, closing the door as Jan left.
She washed her face and hands, and back in her room again, rummaged in her case, changed her shirt for a loose light cream cotton sweater that hung almost to her knees, kicked off her travel sneakers, slipped bare feet into her loafers, combed her hair and quickly renewed eyeliner and mascara. She was quick enough that Jan was still making up the bed as she left, quick enough to have all thoughts of the man downstairs driven from her mind until she was lightly tripping down the wide stone staircase that encircled the lift.
Then she caught her lip between her teeth, and her light steps slowed. It had happened before, this feeling of instant dislike for someone without there being any apparent objective reason for it.
Did the man downstairs remind her of Stephen? His eyes were a little like Stephen’s, perhaps...yes, maybe these two had some similarity, shared some common trait, that had nothing to do with looks or profession, if she could find it.
It was like a sixth sense trying to tell her something, when she just couldn’t hear clearly enough to get the message. What had—
“There you are,” said his voice, and she came to with a start to find herself standing a few steps up from the main floor, and a dark figure at the bottom, silhouetted against the light. “We’re just in h
ere.”
The hall was broad, though the dim light from the deep windows falling onto the centuries-old grey stone of the floor didn’t go very far. Above her the staircase stretched up three floors, dark and mysterious and full of the whispers of another age. Math Powys stood in front of her, and as she looked into his dark face, he, too, seemed to be a shadow from another age. I’ve known you before, Elain was thinking suddenly. We were enemies then, too. We’ve been enemies from the beginning.
* * *
There was a huge stone fireplace at one end of the large room, which looked as though it could roast a whole sheep, and probably had done in the past. It was primitive and roughly beautiful, its mantel an axe-hewn beam of stained oak, holding up a mountain of stone. On both sides there was dark, antique panelling. Owen Glendower, Prince of Wales, might have stood there with his warriors, in full armour, eating a hasty meal of meat and bread, and red wine in pewter tankards, as he rested briefly from his assaults on the English overlords....
A small group of people was sitting in the sofa cluster nearest the fireplace. They had all looked up at her entrance, and Powys led her towards them. The rest of the room, barring the leaded windows, was disappointing: the stone walls all plastered over, an interior wall covered with faded wallpaper, old-fashioned crystal chandeliers, everything done to diminish the power and strength of the original, to bring it down to size, to make it coyly comfortable. She was back in the thirties movie.
“This is Elain Owen,” Mathonwy Powys said. “She’s just arrived. Elain, meet Vinnie Daniels.” The oldest occupant of the room, a very slender white-haired woman in pearls, a silk blouse and a grey pencil-slim skirt, sat with her legs drawn elegantly sideways, the pose of a woman who has lived her life with beautiful legs. They still were, Elain saw. In the legs, as in the face, bones were what counted, and Vinnie Daniels’s ankles were perfect.
“How do you do, Miss Owen?” she said in a warm, crisp voice, reminding Elain of Deborah Kerr. A perfectly aged Deborah Kerr, playing a countess. “How very nice to meet you.”
Dearest Enemy Page 2