playing tricks with her. It was all very well contemplating this visit from the calm and civilised environs of her mother’s world, and quite another encountering the stark facts of reality. Here she was, miles from anything or anyone she knew or cared about, in the company of a man who had identified himself only by means of a photograph and had since made no attempt to tell her anything about her father or even about himself.
‘Relax.’
The calm word startled her into awareness and she stole a look at his shadowy profile. ‘Do you know my father very well?’ she asked.
Hywel Benedict inclined his head slowly. ‘You might say that. We’ve known each other since we were children together, so I suppose I know him as well as any man could.’
Tamsyn nodded. ‘So you’ll know—Joanna, too.’
‘Joanna is my cousin.’
‘Oh!’ Tamsyn swallowed this information with difficulty. ‘I see.’
‘What do you see, I wonder,’ he commented wryly. ‘Very little beyond that small nose, I shouldn’t be surprised.’
Tamsyn unbuttoned and then buttoned the jacket of her suit. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘No? I would have thought a bright little mind like yours would have fastened on to the fact that if Joanna is my cousin she must have known your father a long time, too.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Yes, that. It may interest you to know that Joanna was going to marry Lance long before he met Laura Stewart.’
Tamsyn gasped, ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘I don’t suppose you did. It’s not the sort of thing your mother would have told you, is it? I mean—well, it puts her in a different position, doesn’t it?’
‘My mother is no femme fatale, if that’s what you’re implying,’ stated Tamsyn hotly.
‘No. She was never a handsome woman, I’ll give you that,’ he remarked annoyingly. ‘But she had charm, when she chose to exert it, and I think Lance was flattered.’
‘How do you know what she was like?’ demanded Tamsyn.
‘Because I knew her, too. We were all in London at the same time. I even went to their wedding.’
Tamsyn was stunned. ‘I see,’ she said, rather uncertainly.
‘I didn’t approve of Lance marrying your mother,’ he continued complacently. ‘She wanted Lance to be something he could never be—an intellectual. He didn’t belong in London. He pined for the valley. For the simple, uncomplicated life. And eventually he gave up the struggle and went back there.’
‘And I suppose you encouraged him,’ accused Tamsyn scornfully.
Hywel shook his head slowly. ‘Oh, no, bach. It was nothing to do with me. I was in South Africa at the time, and I knew nothing about it until I came home and found Joanna and Lance together again.’
Tamsyn compressed her lips. ‘And I suppose you approved of that.’
‘Naturally. Joanna has made your father happy. Would you rather he had been miserable all his life?’
‘How dare you imply that my mother would have been responsible for his own lack of confidence?’ Tamsyn was furious.
‘Call it familiarity, Tamsyn Stanford. And don’t get so angry. You didn’t expect to hear good things of your mother in Trefallath, did you?’
‘It seems to me that my mother was justified in refusing to allow me to visit with my father before now.’
‘Why?’ Hywel shook his head. ‘There are always two sides to every question, aren’t there? Perhaps if the two had been more evenly balanced, it wouldn’t have come as such a shock to hear the other side now.’
‘You don’t imagine I believe everything you’ve said, do you?’ exclaimed Tamsyn disdainfully.
Hywel made an indifferent gesture. ‘No matter. You’ll learn, bach.’
It was nearly half past eleven when they began the descent into the valley. Tamsyn, who had not expected to feel tired yet, was beginning to sense a certain weariness in her limbs, and her head dropped several times. But she would not allow herself to fall asleep and risk waking to find herself with her head on his shoulder. Somehow she needed to avoid physical contact with Hywel Benedict.
Trefallath was, as Hywel had told her, merely a cluster of cottages, a public house, a school and a chapel. They ran through the dimly lit main street and then turned on to the rough moorland again, following a narrow road which badly needed re-surfacing. At last the station wagon slowed and turned between stone gateposts, and came to a shuddering halt before a low, stone-built house with lights shining from the lower windows.
‘Welcome to Glyn Crochan, Tamsyn Stanford,’ he remarked, almost kindly, and then slid out of the car.
As Tamsyn got out, light suddenly spilled on to her, and she realised the door of the building had opened and a man had emerged followed closely by the small figure of a woman.
The man greeted Hywel warmly, and then came round the car to Tamsyn with swift determined strides. ‘Tamsyn!’ he exclaimed, and there was a break in his voice. ‘Oh, Tamsyn, it’s good to see you!’
Tamsyn allowed her father to enfold her in his arms, but she felt nothing except a faint warming to his spontaneous affection. ‘Hello, Daddy,’ she responded, as he drew back to look into her face. ‘It’s good to see you, too.’
‘My, how you’ve grown,’ went on Lance Stanford in amazement. ‘I—I expected a child. It was foolish of me, I know, but I could only think of you that way.’ He released her shoulders but took possession of her hand. ‘Come! Come and meet Joanna again.’
He drew her firmly after him round the car to where Tamsyn’s stepmother waited. Tamsyn had been so intent on appraising her father, noticing how young and lean he looked, how his hair still sprang thickly from his well-shaped head, that she had paid little attention to anything else. But now, as she followed her father round the car, she looked towards the opened door where, in the shaft of light, Joanna Stanford was standing.
And then an almost audible gasp rose to her throat to be checked instantly. Joanna was small and dark and attractive, in a yellow silk dress that moulded her figure in the slight breeze that blew off the moors. She was also most obviously pregnant.
Tamsyn’s eyes darted swiftly to Hywel Benedict’s and she encountered his sardonic gaze resentfully. He could have told her. He could have warned her of what to expect.
And yet that was exactly what he would not do. He would make nothing easier for the daughter of Laura Stewart.
‘Joanna darling,’ her father was saying now. ‘Here she is, at last. Here’s Tamsyn! Don’t you think she’s grown into quite a young lady?’
Joanna smiled and kissed Tamsyn’s cheek, welcoming her to Trefallath. In a more receptive mood Tamsyn would have glimpsed the appeal in Joanna’s
