Chapter 36 Other Engagements
Other Engagements
Nerys was alone in the studio, apart from Pompey, whom she was painting, although a large collage with a blue background was pinned across one wall, showing evidence that the girls had spent the morning there.
‘What have you been saying to Verity?’ she demanded the moment she saw us, looking intrigued.
‘She just came in here like a whirlwind, gathered up her stuff, said you’d totally insulted her and she expected I’d believe every word you said.
And then she said she was leaving first thing tomorrow morning! ’
‘That’s what we’ve come to tell you about,’ said Rhys. Then he told her everything we’d discovered and described the final scene with Verity.
‘Well, I can’t say I’m really surprised.
I always had her down as a two-faced bitch and I never believed she kept putting her foot in it by sheer accident,’ Nerys said bluntly.
‘Especially after she came here when you and Annie divorced and was all over you like treacle till she realized she wasn’t getting anywhere. ’
‘I don’t think any of us ever really liked her,’ said Rhys. ‘I put up with her being around for years because she was Annie’s best friend – or we thought she was, anyway.’
‘Verity – never was a woman more misnamed!’ I said, and Nerys gave her sudden, attractive grin.
‘I’m so glad she’s going, and that she’ll never be able to show her face here again.’
‘She’s not coming down for dinner, either,’ Rhys told her. ‘She wants it in her room.
‘A meal of bitter herbs, perhaps?’ suggested Nerys.
‘Better not, because she’s already said she’s going to demand a refund for the days of the retreat she won’t be spending here, and you don’t want to give her any more ammunition.’
‘I suppose not. It will have to be Bronwen’s finest cooking, as usual, but it is a shame,’ she said regretfully. ‘What are we going to tell the other guests about her dining alone and then leaving at dawn?’
‘We can let Bronwen and Tudor know the real reason, but we could just tell the guests that she’s feeling so washed out by her flu that she’s decided to go home early to recover properly.’
‘Or that she needs to go home in order to fill up her poison sacs again,’ suggested Nerys. ‘She’s a toothless viper at the moment, but if that’s how she gets her kicks, then I expect she’ll soon be looking round for a new victim.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Rhys said. ‘She should come with a health warning.’
Then he turned to me. ‘Come on, Ginny, let’s go for a walk. I think we’re both in need of some fresh air and a soul-cleanse after all that.’
‘Mel and Cariad have gone to the cove to look for more pebbles and anything interesting they can stick to their collage, so you might meet them while you’re out,’ suggested Nerys.
‘There’s certainly no shortage of pebbles in the cove,’ Rhys said.
‘Ah, but they have to be the right pebbles,’ she said, before turning back to her canvas.
Her subject matter, Pompey, was still fast asleep on a length of sumptuous, embroidered fabric, like a changeling prince.
*
‘Let’s go the long way round to the cove, shall we?’ he suggested as we left the house. ‘There’s no hurry, and I want to breathe some good clean air into my lungs first.’
As we headed up the now-familiar track towards the oak grove he took my hand in his. When I glanced up at him, however, he seemed deeply lost in thought so that I wasn’t sure he even realized he’d done it. I let it lie, anyway.
It was a milder kind of day, the air laying damp hands on my face, and as we wandered through the wood and then up to Mab’s Grave, I had a sudden feeling that we belonged together and in this ancient landscape … that we were right together.
There was nothing now to keep us apart, not even Annie’s ghost, except, of course, for my nervousness about going from being a solitary bee, buzzing around in her own little world, to a worker in a busy hive.
That, and my fear that my bloodhound of a mother might have sniffed out something unsavoury about Cosmo Caradoc.
Up on the windy crest of the headland, with its view across the estuary to mountains, Rhys turned and, silent, took me in his arms and echoed some of what I’d been thinking.
‘We belong together, don’t we, Ginny? I want you to marry me, but I completely understand that you need some space alone, between your old life and the one I hope we can build together.
It’ll be a major step from living alone to moving into Triskelion as part of the family – although, of course,’ he added, ‘it turned out you already were part of the family, through Arwen’s father. ’
‘Only really distantly,’ I said, then added honestly that becoming a permanent part of the Triskelion household was quite a scary prospect.
‘I was terrified before I got here, although actually I’ve found the company relatively easy to get used to – as long as I have my studio room to retreat to, when it’s all too much.’
‘Of course you do, and you’d have a studio of your own. You could keep the room you have, or there’s one almost identical to it in the family wing. But we can make plans later – if you will marry me. Will you, Ginny?’
I looked up questioningly into his rugged, attractive face, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze and his amber eyes lit by a warmth there could be no mistaking.
‘I might, but …’ I began, but before I could finish the sentence, he’d kissed me – and I was lost again.
*
‘You didn’t wait for the end of what I was saying, Rhys,’ I said breathlessly, some time later, then held him off when he would have kissed me again.
‘It wasn’t just the change in my lifestyle I’d be making if I married you that was bothering me.
I’m also worried about Evie’s research into the family.
I’ve read the letters that Milly Vane sent to Arwen.
She swore me to secrecy about the contents for the present, but there are some things in them that Nerys really isn’t going to like. ’
‘But if you marry me, Evie’s not going to wash any dirty family linen in public, is she?’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it. She’s still transcribing a journal Milly started in one of her sketchbooks when she came here to visit Arwen, and goodness knows what’s in that!’
‘Don’t worry about it too much, I think we’re all braced for some kind of disclosure about the family, because Evie did drop a few hints the other day. Whatever it is, I’m sure we can weather it together – if you really will marry me, that is?’
His eyes searched my face anxiously and there was no way I could resist him … even if I’d wanted to.
‘Yes,’ I said, and then I had no breath to say more, for he hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe and then we were lost to the world again for another eon of time …
*
It was the scream of a seagull swooping close by that brought us back down to earth and we broke apart.
‘We’d better move before we freeze to the spot,’ Rhys suggested, taking my hand. ‘I don’t know if the girls will still be at the cove, but we’ll go back that way and see.’
As we walked we discussed a few practical matters, like my staying on a few more days at Triskelion until my belongings could be brought up to the lodge and I could move in.
‘And we’ll have a nice, traditional engagement, until you feel ready to marry me,’ he promised. ‘All the time you need.’
‘That sounds lovely,’ I said, privately thinking I might not, after all, be able to hold out all that long.
‘But I don’t see why we should keep our engagement secret, and I want to tell everyone,’ he continued. ‘We’ll start with Cariad, if she’s still at the cove.’
‘I hope she doesn’t hate the idea,’ I said nervously.
‘Hate it? She’ll be delighted,’ he assured me – and so, when we arrived at the tiny pebble beach and found the girls still there, she was.
*
Cariad was in fact so ecstatic that I was marrying her daddy that she and Mel ran back to the house ahead of us to announce it to everyone who had turned up for tea, which was all of them, except Verity.
There were lots of congratulations, although I heard Kate mutter: ‘This place is getting more like Love Island every day.’
That gave us all a surprising insight into her viewing preferences!
‘I don’t know why we’re all pretending to be surprised when we’ve seen it coming on ever since we got here,’ Evie said, and Rhys grinned at her.
‘Ginny took some persuading and she’s still going to move into the lodge, so we can have a nice, sedate, traditional engagement while she gets her head around the idea.’
‘I don’t see why Ginny can’t marry you right now, Daddy, and live here with us,’ Cariad said.
‘She needs to get used to the idea first, dear child,’ said Noel, who had also come for tea and was sitting next to Evie.
‘Ginny’s a creative person, Cariad, and has to figure out how to balance her work with sharing her life with someone else. Of course, it helps that Rhys is a writer and so understands that. You need to work it out, as Timon and I did,’ said Nerys.
‘Oh,’ said Cariad doubtfully. ‘Well, don’t take too long, Ginny!’
‘I’ll try not to,’ I promised.
‘Daddy, are you driving Mel home after tea?’ she said, turning her attention to Rhys. ‘If you are, can I come for the ride?’
‘Yes, and yes,’ he agreed, ‘but we’re only dropping Mel off, not staying long enough for you to announce the engagement to the entire castle!’
Mel said seriously that she would tell everyone instead.
‘Good, then they can start saving up for the wedding presents,’ joked Timon. ‘This is wonderful news. I couldn’t be more delighted.’
Everyone seemed so genuinely pleased by our engagement (except for Opal, who had said nothing at all, just kept eating) that I felt quite warmed by the goodwill as I went upstairs after tea, thinking I’d finally do some work, or maybe just sit and dream for a while.
But Evie followed me up and, to my surprise, invited me into her room to, as she put it, ‘let our hair down together’.
‘You couldn’t let yours down,’ I pointed out, sinking into one of her armchairs. ‘You could flatten the spikes a bit, but that’s about it.’
‘Figure of speech – don’t be pedantic,’ she replied, seating herself in her swivel chair and turning it to face me, and I hoped she might finally be prepared to answer some of my questions about the letters, or to tell me what else she’d found out from Milly’s sketchbook journal.
First, I told her what Rhys and I had discovered about Verity’s part in Annie’s death and what she’d said when we faced her with our knowledge.
‘So that’s why she’s hiding herself away and leaving first thing – I wondered. Nerys said something about her having a migraine and feeling that she needed to go home early to convalesce, but she’s not a good liar. Unlike Verity herself, it would seem.’
‘No, Verity could get an Olympic medal in it, if it was a sport,’ I agreed. ‘Nerys and Timon know what I’ve just told you, and she’s probably telling Noel right now, but there didn’t seem any reason to inform the other guests.’
‘I can’t say it’s a complete surprise, Ginny, any more than the news of your engagement to Rhys was. I told you he was the serious type.’
‘Yes, well, it took me a while to realize that, after what had been between us – or not been between us – in the past,’ I said wryly. ‘And then Verity sweetly telling me, for my own good, that he was a philanderer, didn’t help.’
‘More fool you for believing her,’ Evie said unsympathetically. ‘I take it you’re staying here and moving your stuff into the lodge for a little bit?’
I nodded. ‘You were right about it being a halfway house, but Nerys put it best when she said I needed to work out how to continue my work while being married to someone and also living in a houseful of people after so long alone.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ she assured me bracingly.
‘Whatever you might have thought in the past, you weren’t cut out to become a hermit crab.
And Rhys will be sensitive to what you need.
I mean, we’re not talking about a Plath and Hughes situation here, are we?
That really was a juggling act … although actually, because of the respect they had for each other’s writing, it so nearly worked,’ she added thoughtfully.
I dragged her back before she could explore this interesting side avenue.
‘Rhys is sensitive, kind and thoughtful, and we do seem to have so much in common to start with,’ I said, and elaborated on some of those things, until I noticed her dark blue eyes were glazing over.
I remembered that I’d meant to ask her more about what else she might have discovered in her research into Arwen.
‘I told Rhys I’d read Arwen’s letters to Milly, but not what was in them,’ I began. ‘So he doesn’t yet know what it is that Nerys isn’t going to be happy about.’
‘Well, now I’ve finished transcribing Milly’s journal and had time to think about it, and in the light of your engagement, I think it might be time I called a family conference to discuss my findings and where we’re going to bury the bodies.’
She grinned slightly wickedly but I must have looked aghast, because she added quickly, ‘Metaphorically speaking, that is.’
‘Thank goodness for that! I hope you haven’t found anything worse than we already knew about Cosmo Caradoc?
I did wonder, when I read Arwen’s last notes, if Cosmo Caradoc was so vile to her when he met her coming away from her tryst with Edwin that that’s what turned her mind so firmly away from marrying. ’
She eyed me thoughtfully. ‘At first Milly suspected Arwen’s change of mind about marrying was because Edwin had gone a little further than he should have done that morning – further than Arwen, who was so much younger, was happy with.
But yes, her scene with Caradoc immediately afterwards was the main cause, as you will see for yourself when you read the journal. ’
‘I’m dying to see it. Can I read it now?’
‘I will let you read it, although not the rest of the family, because so much of it is personal to Milly and her life with Arwen after she left here – but not just yet.’
‘Oh, couldn’t I read it now?’ I pleaded.
‘No, I think, on the whole, I’ll give it to you after the family conference, which I’ll suggest we hold tomorrow morning.’
I’ve said it many times before: my mother is the most maddening woman in the world.