Dearest Enemy

by Alexandra Sellers

  She was being an idiot to think what she was thinking about Math, she told herself ruthlessly. Even if her whole history didn’t stand up and cry out against the risk, the fact was that she was investigating Math’s connection to arson! What a fool she would be to let herself get involved. Somehow the only man to have got under her skin for years was the very one she could not allow herself to even hope to trust. She smiled ruefully at the way life was.

  But she was bloody lucky things were the way they were, she reminded herself ruthlessly. Under any other circumstances, she might have been tempted to run the risk. She had enough self-knowledge to see that. That was why she had been so afraid of him, because Math could get under her skin. She must have sensed that from the beginning. Known even before he touched her that his touch must be avoided. Suppose she had let herself go, in the fortress? Suppose she had let him undress her.... It was like the shower all over again. She went cold and hot at once. Cold with fear, hot with desire.

  What a risk she was running, staying here.

  Oh, but look at the time! And her hair was still soaking wet. She’d better get a move on. She ran to the dresser and pulled out her portable hair-dryer, unravelling the cord as she looked around for a socket. There was none showing on any of the walls. The lamp by the bed must be plugged into the only socket in the room.

  She crawled under the bed, feeling blindly along the wall and finding nothing. The socket must be higher up, behind the springs. The bed was hard to shift and it would only go in one direction; that meant moving the bedside table. As she did that, the lamp came to the end of its cord and tilted gently off the table. Elain caught it just in time, barking her knee on the table as she did so.

  The towel fell off her head and wet hair fell down over her face, blinding her, but she managed to get the lamp safely onto the bed.

  There was a curious silver tinkle in the air, as though a bell laughed. Elain, absorbed, scarcely noticed it. She shoved her hair behind her ears, bent and heaved the heavy bedstead with all her strength. It moved two inches, and that would have to do. She knelt with the plug of the dryer in her hand, felt along the wall in the narrow space, and at last managed to align the three-pronged plug with the empty socket holes and force it in. With a sigh of achievement she stood up, dropped her hair forward and pushed the switch on the dryer.

  There was a small popping sound from the socket and the dryer whined and died.

  * * *

  She went down to dinner wearing a cream-coloured sleeveless tunic dress in knitted silk, with her wet hair held back by a scarf. The dining room was lit by candles, and people were laughing and joking at several tables. Elain remembered suddenly that there were outside guests in tonight.

  “How is Myfanwy at cooking by lamplight?” a woman was asking over the laughter.

  “Myfanwy could cook blindfolded, I think,” said a deep, amused voice. Math. Elain shivered with nerves and forced herself to step into the room.

  “Hi, Elain,” said Jan, appearing at her elbow in the gloom. “Where would you like to sit?”

  One corner of the room was still lit by the rays of the setting sun, the light falling on an empty table for two tucked into the corner. “Over there?” Elain suggested.

  “I’ll just get a menu.” Elain started moving towards the table, and suddenly Math was there in front of her, leading her to the table and pulling out the chair for her. She sank into it as Jan arrived, and he took the menu from her.

  “Would you bring another, Jan?” he asked. Then he pulled out the chair opposite her and calmly, as if it were the habit of years, sat down. He opened the menu and offered it to Elain. “Myfanwy’s garlic mushrooms are on offer tonight,” he said, smiling. “I can recommend them.”

  She looked at him in the half-light, saying nothing as Jan returned with another menu and lit the candle on the table. As soon as the young woman had walked away, Elain, her head bent, said, “I’m sorry.”

  She was clutching her hands tightly on the menu, but when he reached out, she had to give him one. He held it between both of his, his elbows propped on the table, and bent and kissed her fingertips. Then he looked into her eyes, the flame of the candle deep in his own. “Don’t apologize to me,” he said roughly. He released her hand with a controlled urgency that betokened great restraint, and she felt an unexpected thrill at the thought that he wanted to be touching her.

  He picked up the menu and opened it. It was very limited—two or three choices for each course, and all listed on one page. “Do you like the sound of the garlic mushrooms?” he asked. His voice was easy now; no trace remained of the tension that had roughened it a moment ago. She nodded mutely, and he grinned. “Good. Are you a steak eater? If not, the vegetarian omelette is excellent.”

  “The steak, please.” He had put up a hand, and Jan came over to take their order. She wrote in quick code as she questioned them about their choices.

  “And a bottle of Mouton Cadet,” Math told her as he passed her back the menu.

  “Would you like to drive with me into Aberystwyth tomorrow?” he asked, when Jan had gone.

  “Are you going?” she asked stupidly. Math nodded. “Would the library be open?”

  He nodded again. “That’s where I’m going.”

  She was surely safe in a car with him, and she wanted to find out about her ancestors if she could. “All right, yes, please,” she said.

  “I see our ghost is at it again,” Rosemary said loudly, entering the dining room with Davina in her wake. “Most unpleasant timing!”

  Math turned in his chair. “Jess never messes with electricity, Rosemary,” he said.

  Elain smiled. “Why doesn’t she?”

  Math moved his head, grinning. “She doesn’t understand it. After her time.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Rosemary said, striding to a table but remaining standing to deliver as, behind her, Jan lit the little candle. “I was just walking across the room and nearly tripped on the edge of the carpet when the lights went out! Just her sort of trick, I thought.”

  “Believe me, the electricity in this house has all the temperament necessary for a thing like this. It’s just a simple short somewhere, and as soon as Evan finds it, we’ll be fine,” Math said.

  Elain started guiltily. “Oh! I never thought! I—I was just turning on my hair-dryer when it blew. I was in such a hurry I never thought—do you think—?”

  Math burst out laughing. “Jan,” he called. “Go and tell Evan it’s the wall socket in Llewelyn’s Room.” He turned to Rosemary and shrugged good-humouredly. “You see?” he said. “Candles are more Jess’s style. When you get a problem with a candle, you can count on its being her.”

  “I don’t think you understand your own ghost,” Rosemary said, and sat down. In front of her, the candle flame slowly weakened and then died altogether.

  The room burst into laughter, and several people called out things like, “Hi, Jess! Nice to see you again!” into the air.

  Elain was laughing, too, but abruptly she stopped, frowned and tilted her head. “What’s that?” she asked Math. She turned to the other side, trying to hear. “What is it? I heard it awhile ago, too. Up in my room.”

  “What?”

  “It—a funny kind of tinkling, like a—I don’t know, a little bell or something. I can’t describe it. There! Can you hear that?”

  “Usually. Not everybody can. They say it’s Jess laughing. According to tradition, she had laughter like a silver bell.”

  The corners of Elain’s mouth went up in spite of herself. “It is like infectious laughter, isn’t it? It makes me feel like laughing.”

  “Ah.” Math lifted his hands. “Jess welcomes you to the White Lady Hotel.”

  * * *

  The next hour was difficult and nerve-racking, with Math sitting across the small table from her. His attention was always on her, gently, lightly, but there, and it was magnetic. She mistrusted the magnetism, even as it drew her, feeling that he stood on the other side of a
chasm, and if she allowed him to draw her to him, she would fall into the chasm.

  Other men had paid her attention in the past, of course, but with other men she had had no difficulty disengaging. Their attempts to attract her had seemed crude and obvious, and their own self-interest had always been so clear that sometimes she had been hard-pushed not to laugh.

  But Math was different, drawing her out gently, letting her talk about things that mattered to her and seeming actually interested. There was an air about him of acceptance, as though he knew all about her and accepted everything. He was like a farmer, sniffing the rich earth of her character and finding it good—embracing the truth, as the farmer does, that in fertile ground there is always rot and decay.

  It was this that unsettled her, though probably she could not have put her feelings into words. To her, it was as though he were painting her; and by that she meant the feeling she sometimes had of loving her subject, whatever it was, with all its warts and flaws.

  It was a wordless invitation to lower her guard, and it naturally frightened Elain, who had lowered her guard once in the past twenty years, and had then been utterly defenceless when the boots came in.

  Suddenly she was remembering what lines this conversation should have taken this evening. She glanced down at the evening bag in her lap. Inside, her tape recorder lay unused.

  Math was saying, “There’s plenty of time to visit the library on a wet day. If it’s sunny tomorrow, perhaps you’d rather go up Cadair Idris.”

  She had a feeling of being trapped. How close would he get before she found it impossible to get away from him, before she was sucked into a vortex of trusting him, needing him? She was already nearly defenceless, as she had been with...

  “I’m not sure I’m going to be here long enough to do everything I ought to do,” she said with a smile.

  “We must try to keep you here,” he said. That sounded offhand, as if he didn’t much care, so why was her heart beating as though it had been a threat?

  Elain opened her bag and took out a tissue. She pushed the Record button, closed the bag and laid it casually on the table. She felt better suddenly, more in control. She had a job to do, after all.

  “It’s certainly a wonderful place,” she said truthfully. “I think I could spend years here, painting. But I suppose the peace is going to be shattered soon.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Is it? Why?”

  “Well, when you start renovating, because of the fire. You’ll be doing that soon, won’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t afford to do much till the insurance pays up. It doesn’t look as though that’s going to be soon.”

  “Oh, why not?” She wondered if the question sounded as false to his ears as to her own. But he didn’t seem to notice.

  “I imagine they’re looking for proof of arson. That’s the usual excuse for delay.”

  “Oh! Do you think they’ll find any? I mean, do you think it was arson?”

  He shrugged again. “The circumstances are unusual. Nobody remembers ever seeing those petrol cans in the cellar. Yet they are certainly fifty years old. But I can’t see who would have wanted to do it, or why.”

  Elain frowned. “But who do they think could benefit, except you? The Welsh Nationalists?”

  “Certainly not me,” he said matter-of-factly. “The Welsh Nationalists do a certain amount of firing, but never, so far, of Welsh-owned property. It would be little short of amazing if they had decided to torch this property, three years after the English owner had sold up. And I’ve had to let half a dozen people go since the fire, all of them Welsh, and all from this community. They wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  Elain grunted. “Is there no one else?”

  “If anyone wants me out, they’ve been extremely reticent about saying so. There have been no expressions of interest in the place since I bought it, and Vinnie says there was none at all before I came along. The place hasn’t been renovated since just after the war, and the plumbing, as you’ve probably noticed, dates from the Victorian era. Nowadays, tourists want bathrooms en suite and central heating. Even in peak season it was rarely fully booked, and until I brought in Myfanwy, few non-residents came to the restaurant.” He spoke as though he was still trying to work it out, as though something about it bothered him.

  “Why did you buy it, then? Are you planning major conversions?” That was what the company suspected, Raymond had said, that he had torched it so that he could rebuild from scratch on the insurance money.

  “I am planning restoration,” said Math.

  Elain blinked. “What?”

  “I don’t want a hotel. I plan to remove most of the Victorian and all of the postwar additions and restore it to something closer to the original. Llewelyn’s Room, where you’re staying, is restored.”

  “And what then?”

  As if absent-mindedly, he picked up her hand and held it between both of his, turning it over and looking at the palm. “Then live here, of course. What else?”

  “And won’t you be able to do that now?”

  He traced her lifeline with one long finger, and she felt the whisper of its passing along her scalp and spine. She closed her fingers and took her hand away.

  “I can, of course. And I will. But some very beautiful seventeenth-century woodwork has been destroyed by the fire, and there was a fifteenth-century tapestry hanging in the back sitting room that was a museum piece. It will be impossible to replace, even if the insurance pays its antiquarian value.” She could hear the regret in his tone.

  “What was the subject?”

  “It was a scene from the Mabinogion. ‘The Dream of Rhonabwy.’ Do you know it?”

  Elain had heard of the collection of ancient tales that made up the Welsh national epic, but that was all. She shook her head. “I’ve never read any of those stories.”

  “‘The Dream of Rhonabwy’ tells of a game of gwyddbwyll played between Owein ap Uryen and King Arthur. The tapestry showed them at the game in the centre of a host of tents and pavilions and the troops of the various leaders—Rhuvawn the Radiant of Deorthach, Caradawg Strong Arm, March ap Meirchyawn and Cadwr, Earl of Cornwall—who have come to do battle with Arthur against Osla Big Knife.”

  “Oh! I wish I could have seen it!” Elain exclaimed spontaneously, her imagination abruptly falling under the spell of his voice and the romance of the names.

  “Yes, the woman who did it was certainly an artist of the needle. The story describes the colours of the horses and troops, and they were faithfully reproduced in the tapestry.”

  “Do you have a picture of it? There are people who—”

  Math shook his head. “I had Sotheby’s due to come in October, when the season was over.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “I am, too. Even more so because—” He broke off.

  “What?”

  Math let out a deep breath. “It was irreplaceable. It was unforgivable of me not to have taken better precautions. A piece of history that probably took a lifetime to produce and had lasted centuries went up in five minutes of smoke.” He shrugged. “I had been told it ought to go into storage or to a museum, but I liked living with it.”

  “How much was it actually worth?”

  “Somewhere over fifty thousand pounds, perhaps.”

  “Really,” Elain said. If that was what was bothering the insurance company, it seemed like a lot of fuss over a relatively small amount. After all, one oil tanker could cost them hundreds of millions.

  “At auction, one never knows,” Math was saying. “Traditionally, needlepoint tapestries haven’t the same value as woven tapestries, which might be worth half a million, but this one was rare and in very good condition. And of course, there is an increasing interest in Welsh traditions and history.”

  “Still, it’s a fair bit of money.”

  He grinned at her. “It wasn’t valued at that sum. The last valuation was done twenty years ago, at about five thousand pounds. It will b
e the devil’s own work, trying to prove a higher value.” His look was rueful. “No, it was a complete loss. There’s no silver lining to this story.”

  Chapter 6

  Elain sat on her bed with the tiny cassette tape in her hand. He hadn’t done it. They could scarcely think him guilty of arson when he was so badly underinsured. Pulling out a pen and the folder of labels, she wrote the date and marked it with a star, to remind herself of the importance of the conversation, then fixed it to the tape.

  She supposed her job was over now. She would phone Raymond from the village tomorrow, and no doubt he would tell her to return.

  Idly she slipped the tape into the machine. Maybe she should make notes so that she could give Raymond exact quotes tomorrow.

  The machine played both sides of a tape automatically, an hour and a half’s running time altogether. In addition, the mike was voice sensitive, so that in periods of silence it simply shut itself off. Elain wound it back to the beginning of Side One, put her headphones on, lay back and pressed Play.

  “Yr wyf i yn dy garu di,” she heard Math say again, and shot up to a sitting position as if she had been scalded. What on earth was this! “Fy nghalon i.”

  And then there was her own voice crying, “Math, Math,” and sounding nothing like her.

  Her heart beating wildly, Elain chopped her hand down onto the controls and stopped the tape. How on earth had this happened? She must have... When he picked her up, perhaps, or when he laid her down, somehow the machine had been turned on.

  She wouldn’t listen to it. She couldn’t bear to hear all that—her panic, her... She would just wipe it. Raymond was going to want the tape, and she wasn’t letting anyone hear this!

  But slowly, impossibly, her finger reached out and pressed the machine into play. “So beautiful,” he said in that deep, hypnotic voice. “How beautiful you are.”

  That was what had brought her to her senses, because she wasn’t beautiful. If he hadn’t said that, would she...? No. It was when he’d touched her breast that she had really panicked. When he had begun unbuttoning her shirt. Elain glanced up into the full-length mirror standing across the room. She saw deep auburn hair and delicate eyebrows curving exotically out over grey eyes, skin the colour of rich cream, a small but full-lipped mouth.