Painted Wings Page 2

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT was not until the following morning that Deryn realised there would be yet another problem facing the occupant of the summerhouse. He appeared at the window of the kitchen when she was making herself an early cup of tea, and the sudden sight of the brown, rather sinister face peering at her through the tiny panes made her cry out and almost drop the cup she was carrying. He grinned amiably, then made gestures with his hands that imitated hand washing, and it occurred to her then that there were no bathroom facilities in the summerhouse either. She opened the door a fraction and put her head round, looking uncompromisingly straightfaced in response to the encouraging smile he gave her. 'Good morning,' she said, and he touched his brow briefly with one forefinger. 'I feel a bit like a tramp begging crusts at the back door,' he told her. 'But could I possibly beg, steal or borrow some hot water for a wash?' It was, she supposed, a reasonable enough request in the circumstances, but she was wearing nothing but a short and very flimsy nightdress, and she hesitated. 'I suppose so,' she allowed at last. 'If you'll give me a couple of minutes to finish making my tea, you can have the kitchen for a bit.' 'I'm very grateful.' His humility, she felt quite sure, was assumed, but she merely ignored it for 20 the moment. He moved forward, as if he would come in to the kitchen, but Deryn held the door firmly and shook her head. ' 'You can't come in yet,' she told him. 'I'm not decent.' ' 'Oh, sorry.' His grin suggested all manner of things, and she was pretty certain he must have seen how little she was wearing when he had looked in at the window. Perching himself on the wide stone. doorstep, he looked up at her with a rather sly wink. 'I'll sit here until it's safe to come in,' he told her. 'O.K.?' Deryn nodded as she closed the door, realising that she was now going to have him sitting on her doorstep every morning, wanting hot water to wash with, and heaven knew how she was going to manage to have her own bath. It was difficult enough as it was, standing in an old zinc bath and sloshing water in from a couple of kettles. With Dominic Gregory outside on the doorstep waiting to come in, it would no longer be a rather primitive novelty, but a positive trial, and she sighed as she went to rescue the boiling kettle. She would have to organise something that would not make life too awkward for her, regardless of how he felt about it. She thought she remembered seeing a standpipe and a tap somewhere in the garden, possibly used at one time for watering the garden. Of course it would be cold water, but it. wouldn't hurt him in this warm weather. With a bit of luck, it might even persuade him to cut short his stay, and leave her in peace for the rest of hers. . She poured out her tea, and resisted the tempta tion to throw away the remainder, then called out to him as she went to the stairs door, 'O.K. You can come in now.' He must have already been on his feet, for he came in through the back door almost before she had time to get out of the kitchen, and she heard him chuckle to himself as her bare feet whispered hastily over the cool red tiles. Her peace and tranquillity were going to be completely shattered by having this wretched man around, and she would probably find it impossible to work. Taking her time over drinking her tea and then getting out of bed again was another manoeuvremeant to discourage him, although she was depriving herself of breakfast as well as him by doing so, a fact she was only too well aware of when her empty stomach complained. Twenty minutes should be plenty of time, she decided, for him to have completed his shaving and washing, and she tiptoed cautiously down a couple of steps to listen. There was no sound from downstairs, however, and she went on down to put on the kettles for her bath, such as it was. At the weekend she planned to use twice as much water, by filling each kettle up twice, and relax and soak in the luxury of a real bath, no matter if it was only an old zinc tub and she would be obliged to sit with her knees up under her chin. She filled the kettles and poked at the fire which seemed rather sluggish this morning, noticing as she ran the water into the kettles that her visitor had helped himself to some of the tea she had left in the pot and, very tidily, washed up after himself. 22 Busy with filling her bath some minutes later, she did not hear the door open, only felt the slightly cooler breeze on her lightly clad body and saw the long finger of sunlight that streaked across thetiled floor suddenly. She spun round hastily, the second kettle still in her hand, and met the de finitely amused look that missed nothing of her light garb and made no attempt to look away. 'Get out!' she yelled, holding the kettle as if she meant to throw it, but to her dismay he merely laughed, a sound as uninhibited as her dress, and she glared at him angrily. 'Sorry,' he told her, when he recovered from his outburst. 'But it's a good job I wasn't a few seconds later, isn't it? From your point of view, I mean, of course.' 'Will you get out!' Deryn stormed: 'You have no right here. I'm entitled to have a bath in peace, surely.' 'Of course,' he agreed, obligingly standing behind the door. 'But I'm'fascinated to see how the other half lives.' 'Will you go away?' 'If you insist,' he said amiably. 'But how long is it to breakfast time? I'm famished.' 'Then go and find yourself a hotel,' Deryn retorted. 'I'm not going to run my timetable to suit you!' He was laughing again, and she slammed the iron kettle down hard on the range. 'I'm surprised you have a timetable at all,' he told her. 'You're the genuine Bohemian artist type, aren't you?' 'Thanks for upgrading me from yesterday's 23 ' hippie,' she said sarcastically. 'Now will you go, for heaven's sake, so that I can have my bath before the water ge ts cold ?' 'O.K.,' he agreed, chuckling still. 'I'll be back in about a quarter of an hour for some breakfast.' a Deryn did not reply, but waited until she heard i him walk away, then ran over and bolted the door, drawing the thin cotton curtains over the window too. There was no telling if he would simply walk in again when he came back and she was usually every bit of fifteen minutes bathing and dressing. He was longer than he had said he would be, however, and she was already busy at the cooker when he came back. This time too he knocked first I and she was very tempted to ignore it and pretend I she hadn't heard, only then he would probably revert to walking in unasked and she would have i defeated her own object. ' She called out "to him and he came m, sniffing I appreciatively, his eyes showing approval, too, of the brief red, green and yellow smock she wore which displayed most of her slim brown legs and bare feet. Don't you ever wear shoes?' he asked, while she a served him with bacon and eggs, and she turned a flushed face from the cooker to glare at him defiaantly. 'Not unless I have to,' she told him. s 'Some primitive urge, no doubt,' he observed, as if she was some interesting and little known sped ' men, his eyes still admiring, or at least, noting the i smock. 'What are you this morning? A humming ! bird, as distinct from yesterday's green cockatoo?' Deryn held the frying pan with the same threaten 24 . ing attitude as she had the kettle earlier, and glared at him. 'If you don't like the way I dress,' she said, 'you don't have to look. I could point out to you that it was your idea to eat here, and your idea that I cooked your meals. You don't have to stay, in fact I'd much rather you didn't.' 'Oh, I'm not complaining,' he assured her, grinning at her in a way that was rather disturbingly intimate, especially in view of their sharing breakfast. 'Just criticising ' He sat down at the scrubbed wooden table which she had laid with cutlery but no cloth, looking at the plateful of food she had given him. 'Not criticising either,' he insisted. 'I'm just curious about you. that's all.' 'Oh, really?' Deryn plonked down her own laden plate at the opposite end of the table. 'I was rather under the impression you thought I was curious or something just as uncomplimentary.' He paused with a forkful of bacon and egg half way to his mouth, and she was not sure just how serious he was. 'You're very beautiful,' he told her quietly. 'I can't understand why you feel the need to be such a little gypsy. Still ' he shrugged, 'I suppose one can't have everything.' Deryn did not deign to answer, and he ate steadily for a while, and with obvious enjoyment, then looked up suddenly and smiled. 'Are you working today?' 'Of course.' She refused to meet his gaze for very long, partly because she found it rather disturbing. 'I work every day.' 'Photographing?' 25 She shook her head. 'Mostly I paint and draw.' 'Are you good at it?' She looked up, suspecting sarcasm, but he appeared to be quite se
rious. 'A lot of people think so,' she told him. 'I'm always busy.' 'No social life?' It was rather like a questionnaire, she thought, and wondered if he was always this autocratic, or if she had been singled out for special treatment. 'Since you seem so interested,' she told him, leaving him in no doubt as to how she felt about being quizzed so blatantly, T do have a social life, but at the moment I'm busy, and I never attempt to combine work and pleasure.' 'Oh, but you should,' he told her. 'At your age everything should be a pleasure.' 'At my age?' She resented the implication she thought she detected, and looked at him really closely for the first time. It was possible that he was older than she had first thought. There were quite a few grey hairs among the black ones, especially just above his ears, but it was difficult to put an age on the strong, tanned features, and certainly his eyes gave nothing away. They were creased at their comers, but long exposure to strong sunlight could account for those as it no doubt did for that deep tan, and he moved like a young man. He was smiling at her down the short length of the table, as if he followed her thoughts all too easily. 'The perceptive artist's eye,' he said then. 'I feel as if I'm being dissected.' 'I was just trying to see what gives you the right 26 to refer to my age as if I was about five years old,' she told him, and he laughed softly, as if it was just what he had expected. 'About fifteen years, I should guess,' he told her, and when she did not answer. 'Am I right?' Deryn shrugged. 'I wouldn't know.' He studied her for a second or two in that very intimate way that made her feel so uneasy. 'I should guess you're about twenty, twentyone,' he guessed, obviously bent on drawing her out. 'Aren't you?' Tm old enough to resent being questioned about my age,' she retorted, and he laughed again. 'A lady's privilege,' he allowed, demolishing the last of his meal. 'But probably the fact that you don't like answering means you're older than you look.' 'I'm twentythree,' she told him hastily, rather than be classified as a thirtyyearold who was being kittenish. 'Then it's thirteen years,' he told her. 'Which still gives me a kind of avuncular relationship with you, wouldn't you say?' 'No, I wouldn't.' She could not imagine anyone less like her elderly, rather staid uncles, and she was certainly not contemplating any kind of relationship with him, even an avuncular one. He sighed and shook his head, leaning back in his chair. 'You really are the most unsociable young creature I've ever encountered,' he said. 'You won't even meet me half way, will you?' T don't see why I should,' Deryn declared. 'You're only here on sufferance, after all. I don't have to be sociable as well.' She looked from under her lashes at his freshly shaven chin, and remembered how 27 darkly shadowed it had been earlier. 'Incidentally,', she added, cutting a piece of bacon in two, very carefully, 'there's a tap near the summerhouse. I don't know if it's still working or not, but it's easy enough to find out.' He lifted a cup of strong black coffee to his lips and smiled at her over the top of it. 'And if it is,' he guessed, 'I'm to be condemned to cold water washing while you wallow, in kettles of hot water. You're too kind.' 'It's hardly the lap of luxury,' Deryn cetorted. 'And you can't really expect to come up here and bath every morning.' 'I'm not worried about bathing,' he said. 'I've gone without that luxury often enough in the past few years, and I've even bathed in a river before now, but I had hoped I could at least indulge in some hot water now that I'm back in civilisation again. However,' heshrugged, 'I can quite easily go back to the cold water treatment again, if it'll suit you better.' I 'And don't change your mind,' he interrupted with a wry smile. 'I'd hate you to go all soft and feminine on me. You stick to your HardHearted Hannah routine, then I know'just where I stand." Not usually an unfriendly being, Deryn was already feeling a little guilty, and his ready'acceptance of the idea that he should make do with nothing but cold water somehow made her feel worse. She bit on her lower lip and a small frown appeared between her brows as she prepared to retract, at least a little. 'I didn't really mean you should go to those lengths,' she told him. 'No?' 'No.' She raised her eyes and met with such a steady and curious gaze that she did not quite know where to look. 'Please use the kitchen. There's no shortage of water after all, and it doesn't really take long to heat it.' 'This is a sudden change of heart,' he remarked, eyeing her steadily. 'Are you sure I shan't catch you wandering around in your nightie at the crucial moment?' She shook her head. 'I'll make sure of that. I'll come down and make my tea and then leave you to the kitchen, like this morning. Only I shan't open the door again after you've finished, until I've had my bath and dressed, so don't come back for your breakfast too soon, that's all.' He was smiling again, and raised one hand to shoulder height. 'Scout's honour,' he promised. 'I'll wait until you've had your tea, get my own w&sh, etc., then leave you in possession again.' He extended a hand and after a moment's hesitation, she tentatively placed hers into it. 'Truce,' he said softly, and instinctively Deryn smiled. The intruders, Deryn was bound to admit, caused less of an upheaval than she had anticipated during the next couple of days. That is to say the twolegged one was much less trouble than expected, but the dog was, if anything rather a menace, for he appeared to be almost completely untrained, and chased birds, and anything else that moved, without discrimination. He was big and noisy and Deryn 29 wanted to dislike him because he threatened to make the photographic part of her job well nigh impossible. " It was not easy, however, to dislike the large, boisterous and determinedly friendly labrador and she found herself almost pleased to see him when he appeared at her side. He seemed to have taken to her, although she suspected he was ready to be friends with the whole world, given the opportunity,and he answered to no other name but Hound, as far as she could discover. . His habit of chasing birds, however, she felt was a distinct drawback, no matter how lovable he was, and she reported the fact to his owner at dinner one evening. She made no pretence at cordon bleu cookery, but she was a fairly capable cook when it came to simple things and this' time of year she lived mainly on salads, so there was little cooking to be done at all. Dominic Gregory seemed not all averse to the diet she offered, indeed he ate his food as if he was always hungry, and she wondered if he had been eating rough as well as using primitive toilet methods during the past few years. He was altogether a mystery to her, although she would not for the life of her allow him to know she was curious about him. He was tucking in enthusiastically from' a huge plateful of ham and salad when Deryn raised the question of Hound's misdemeanours. 'He just chases everything within sight,' she told him. 'He's making it impossible for me to work properly.' He looked at the dog, sitting just outside the kitchen door, still for the time being. 'I didn't SO realise he was pestering you like that,' he said. 'He's not exactly pestering me, but he's so so uncontrollable. Can't you do something about training him?' 'It's a bit late now, trying to teach him anything,' he said. 'And anyway he's supposed to be a trained sporting dog. He'll retrieve game for you.You shoot ' 'em and he'll bring 'em back for you.' Deryn showed her repugnance at that idea by pulling a face. 'How revolting!' she said. 'I don't shoot birds, Mr. .Gregory, I paint them.' There was a wicked gleam in his eyes when he managed to capture her gaze, and his excellent teeth showed startlingly white in the brown face. 'Oh, don't you indulge in huntin', shootin' and fishin'?' he asked, with deceptive mildness. 'Certainly not!' 'Well, you don't have to sound quite so indignant about it.' 'I think I do,' Deryn declared, looking very selfrighteous. 'I don't believe in the taking of life.' 'Oh?' He looked, rather too meaningly, at the ham she was eating, and flicked a brow upwards. 'Are you a vegetarian?' 'No, you know I'm not. But that's different.' 'You said you don't believe in taking life,' he reminded her. 'You don't imagine that pig died of old age, do you?' 'Oh, of course not! But it wasn't shot for for fun, either. There's a difference.' 'Of course.' She looked at him through her lashes, wondering how serious he was. 'Do you? Shoot birds, I mean?' He ate in silence for a moment, then looked up so suddenly that she hastily averted her eyes. 'Would it be another black mark against me if I did?' he asked. Deryn hesitated to answer. It was sometimes very difficult to remember that it was only four days ago that she had first met this man. It was t
he enforced intimacy of sharing meals, of course, that made her feel as if she had known him for so much longer and, here in the Httle cottage with bothdoors open and the cooler evening breeze blowing thrpugh, it was so peaceful and quiet that one felt somehow closer to one's companions. 'It it doesn't concern me,' she told him at last. 'It's up to you to cope with your own conscience, Mr. Gregory.' 'My conscience is clear.' She shrugged. 'Then that's all that matters, isn't it?' He smiled. 'There's one thing I wish we could agree on,' he said, and Deryn looked at him suspiciously again. 'I know you're only trying to keep me firmly in my place,' he went on.' 'but it isn't at all in keeping with your Bohemian image to keep calling me Mr. Gregory.' Deryn lowered long lashes in an affectedly demure look, and pursed her mouth. 'I'm simply showinorespect for your age, Mr. Gregory.''Why, you ' He laughed suddenly and shook his head. 'Touche,' he said softly then, and Deryn was bound to smile. 'You shouldn't have been so keen to rub it in,' she told him. 32 'Perhaps I shouldn't.' He was watching her steadily, she knew, although she went on with her meal and appeared unconcerned. 'My friends call me Dom,' he said quietly after a few seconds, but Deryn chose not to hear him. When she spoke again it was to refer to the dog once more. 'I wish you'd try and do something about Hound,' she said. 'I wish .you'd try and do something about my name,' he countered with a grin, and she nodded. 'All right, if you.insist.' . 'That doesn't sound very friendly, but I guess it's all I can get at the moment. In the meantime I'll do my best to'subdue Hound.' She looked at him anxiously. 'I don't want him subdued,' she told him. 'I mean don't do anything too drastic about him, will you? He's a dear old thing really, and I like him, but he does rather ruin my birdwatching.' Til take him down to the river with me,' he told her. 'And tether him to a tree. That'll limit his scope.' Deryn looked at the dog, sitting outside in the sun and, at the moment, yawning mightily, and immediately regretted having told tales on him. 'It's a shame,' she said: 'He does enjoy himself so.' 'I know he does, but he'll just have to learn to behave himself and not go chasing your birds away. It won't hurt him to sit still for a bit, anyway.' 'Poor old Hound!' Hearing his name, and spoken in a definitely sympathetic tone of voice, the dog put his two front feet inside the back door and wagged his tail hopefully. 'Here you are, boy,' Deryn told him, and held out the rest of the ham from her plate, a procedure that the dog's owner viewed with dislike as the animal came in without further ado and disposed of the morsel in one gulp before looking round for more. 'I wish you wouldn't do that,' he protested mildly. 'I never allow him bits and scraps. He has a proper meal once a day and that's his lot. You mustn't feed him scraps.' 'Aah, but he looks so so soulful,' Deryn objected, rubbing Hound's ears, a service, he appreciated by trying to lick her face. 'He is soulful,' his owner agreed, 'but I happen to prefer him slim and soulful, if you don't mind.' 'I'm sorry.' She looked down at the dog again and shook her head. 'Sorry, Hound, I mustn't give you anything else.' 'Have you been feeding him?' Deryn nodded. 'Only little bits,' she confessed. 'Biscuits and things.' 'Crafty old devil! No wonder he spends so much time with you!' 'Oh, but it isn't much,' she protested, and looked up in time to catch the wicked gleam of laughter in his eyes, feeling her own amusement bubbling up inside her until she could contain it no longer and threw back her head to laugh aloud. Their combined laughter was interrupted suddenly by Hound's furious barking as he dashed through the room and over to the open front door, looking back as if anxious that they should not overlook his warning. Deryn sobered suddenly and looked curiously at Dominic. 34 'Someone coming?' she guessed. He got to his feet and followed Hound, opening .the front door wider and looking out.along the path across the field. The only way that gave access to the cottage from the road. 'Company,' he said briefly, glancing at her as she pulled back the curtain the better to see who was coming. 'Anyone you know?' Deryn stared at the approaching newcomer with as much surprise as welcome, and with 'much less pleasure than she would have expected. She had not ,yet thought of a way of telling Gerald abo t, the snag connected with her stay at the cottage, but any minute now she was going to have to think of one, for he was coming along the path, eyeing Hound with apprehension as he approached. Dominic stood on the path by the front door and watched him coining too, one finger hooked into Hound's collar, and Deryn could tell he was curious. She swung her hair back over her shoulders and went out to greet Gerald, looking very small and almost childlike in a bright yellow smock with her feet, as usual, shoeless. 'Gerald!' She was well aware of Dominic Gregory's interest as she tiptoed to kiss Gerald's cheek, and of Hound too, showing uncharacteristic aggressiveness towards him. ' Deryn darling ' Gerald's greeting was much less enthusiastic than his customary one, but possibly the presence of the other man and the, dog discouraged him from a more emotional display. Deryn, for her part, was rather dismayed to find herself surreptitiously comparing him with Dominic Gregory. 35 He was as tall as he was, but thin rather than muscularly lean as the other man was, and he wore his light brown hair long, almost to his shoulders. Light blue eyes took in everything he saw, and took everything very, very seriously as she knew from experience. Gerald Morcome was a very serious young man, particularly about his job as a naturalist and about Deryn, in that order. 'I didn't expect to see you yet,' she told him, his arm round her waist in the old familiar way as they went into the cottage. . 'I came,' Gerald told her with a meaningful glance at their escort, 'because Ivor Rhys told me about some mixup over the cottage. I wondered what was happening about it.' 'Oh, we've sorted all that out,'. Deryn told him airily, determined, not to be stampeded into anything hasty. 'Do you know Mr. Gregory, by the way?'' Gerald regarded the other man steadily and not a little suspiciously. 'Not that I remember.' She hastened to perform introductions, aware that if Gerald was taking it all very seriously, Dominic Gregory was, almost inevitably, finding it rather amusing and not making a great deal of effort to disguise the fact. 'Gregory?' Gerald echoed, when she had named them both. 'Not the ' Dominic nodded, his short laugh surprisingly harsh in contrast to its normal timbre, and his eyes on Deryn rather than on the man who had recognised him. 'The notorious Dom Gregory,' he agreed dryly, and Deryn remembered at last why the name 36 : had been vaguely familiar when he had introduced himself in the first place. It must be over four years ago now that the papers had carried the story of an American millionaire's daughter who had run off with what had rather melodramatically been described at the time as a scion of the nobility. Dominic Gregory was a distant cousin of some earl or other and the American girl had apparently fallen in love with him and followed him half way round the world with the international press in hot pursuit waiting for a wedding. No wedding took place, however, and suddenly, after several months, Dominic Gregory had simply disappeared and the weeping heiress had been fetched home by her pursuing father, swearing that "she had no idea where he had gone to. It was rumoured for a while that he was in Tunisia and, seeing his darkly tanned skin, Deryn could well believe that was where he had been for the past few years. What puzzled her most was how he came to be here now, buried in the heart of rural Wales, pursuing the, for him surely, innocuous pastime of fishing. If he was seeking solitude and escape from yet anotherheiress, surely he would have been less inclined to shun feminine company altogether. 'I didn't realise who you were,' Gerald told him bluntly, and with a determined lack of tact, 'or I'd have been even more worried about Deryn.' Dominic smiled, still retaining his hold on Hound 's collar. 'You don't have to be worried about her at all,' he told Gerald quietly. 'That was all a very long time ago, Mr. Morcome.' 37 'Nevertheless,' Gerald stated firmly, making his first big mistake, 'I'm taking her back to London" with me.'I Gerald did not even bother to look at her to see what her reaction was to the statement, but Dom Gregory's grey eyes were watching her closely, as ifI he knew exactly what she would do about it. 'I'm not going back, Gerald,' she said firmly. 'I'm staying here.' 'But you can't!' He frowned, his thin, clever tea tures both puzzled and annoyed at her refusal. 'Deryn, you can't stay on here, not in the circum stances.' . . 'I don't see
why not,' she insisted. 'There's nothI ing wrong with the arrangements I've worked outi with Mr. Gregory, as you can see for yourself. So I'm staying.' 'But you can't,' Gerald declared. 'You can't just share a a cottage this size with a man you don'tI even know.' He looked at Dominic suspiciously. 'Or did you know him before you came here?' he asked.I 'No! I didn't, and I don't like you making snide: remarks like that about me either, Gerald.' 'I wasn't making what you call snide remarks! about you,' he argued. 'I just don't like you sharing a cottage with him, and I think I have every right to object.' 'If I was sharing the cottage with him,' Deryn 'retorted, 'you might have something to complain about.' He looked at her for a moment, then glanced at Dominic. 'But you are, aren't you?'I 'I live in the summerhouse,' Dominic told him, 38: quietly, although he was quite enjoying the situation, Deryn felt sure. 'I can take you down there and show you, if you'd like.' 'No, no, that's not necessary,' Gerald told him hastily. 'I'm sorry. I appear to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.' 'You have,' Deryn told him, merciless in victory. 'You should have known me better than that.' She was very aware of Dominic Gregory's eyes and wished he was anywhere but there. Gerald resented his presence and he would let him know it without hesitation. As if he suspected his room was preferred to his company, Dominic smiled, one finger still hooked in Hound's collar as he turned to the door. 'I'll leave you alone,' he said, but when it came to the point Deryn realised that they had been part way through their meal and he was about to miss the rest of it if he went now. 'But we you haven't finished your dinner,' she told him, drawing another frown from Gerald. 'I'm sorry, I forgot it in the excitement.,' 'I've had enough for tonight,' he told her, smiling in a way that could have done nothing to put Gerald's mind at rest. 'I'll leave you to your ' He cocked one brow meaningly. 'I'll leave you.' 'Thank you.' He smiled again. 'See you at breakfast,' he promised, and Gerald's mouth opened in astonishment. 'What on earth did that mean?' he demanded, without even giving the door time to close behind the other man, 'It simply means that I do the cooking because 39 there isn't a. stove in the summerhouse,' Deryn told him. 'You mean you mean he's got you working for him?' 'No, of course not! But it's the easiest way of solving the problem.' 'The easiest way of solving this problem,' Gerald retorted, 'is for you to come with me, back to town.' 'I don't see why I should,' she said stubbornly. 'I love it here, intruders apart, and I've no intention of being driven put. Not for anybody, or by anybody.' 'You're stubborn I' 'I know,' she agreed shortly. 'But I've made up my mind I'm spending three months here in this valley, in this cottage, and no one is getting me out on any pretext whatever.' She looked at him, suddenly remembering something else. 'Where are you staying?' she asked. 'In Glanreddin, four miles away,' he told her gloomily. 'It's the nearest I could get in anywhere within reach of this place.' 'Are you staying long?' He looked at her suspiciously, as if he suspected she was trying to get rid of him. 'Why?' he asked. 'Don't you want me around?' 'Oh, of course I do!' She smiled, and put a tentative hand to his face. 'I just wanted to know how far away you'll be if I need to call for help,' she said with a laugh. 'Deryn!' He put his arms around her and pulled her close, his eyes as serious as ever. 'I wish you wouldn't always take everything so so lightly. This 40 E'rious, you know. You realise that people will ip, don't you? Especially when it's him.' )h, nonsense ' she laughed. 'No one knows we're ?, except Ivor and his sister, and I don't think ''re likely to advertise the fact that they made i a hash of letting the cottage, do you?' rhe village people know you're here.' never see them, except when I go to do a bit of >