The Dragon's Cave Read Free

stood just inside the entrance, looking about the place with an arrogant expression of distaste. Megan noticed that the waiters were all immediately aware of his presence and that almost everyone looked his way. She felt suddenly proud that he was with her, even if it wasn’t exactly true, because he was so supremely unaware of the effect he had, on her as much as on anybody else.
    ‘I shan’t be a moment,’ she told him.
    ‘I will wait,’ he answered simply.
    Megan took the opportunity to take a look at herself in the looking glass and was dismayed to find that her mascara had run into her tears and that she looked a mess. She turned on a tap and scrubbed her face with a paper handkerchief until it was gleaming. She made a face at herself in the glass and searched in her handbag for her lipstick, applying it carefully to her lips. Without her false eyelashes and her eye-shadow, she looked younger than ever, but she didn’t like to keep the tall stranger waiting any longer, so she hurried out to join him.
    He was talking to Tony, listening courteously to some lengthy explanation from the younger man. He saw Megan immediately and excused himself politely, moving easily towards her.
    ‘Are you ready?’ he asked her.
    ‘I wish you wouldn’t bother—’ she began again.
    ‘That’s what I was telling him,’ Tony put in. ‘I can see you home, Megan.’
    She repressed a shudder, taking a step closer to the stranger. ‘No!’ she said flatly.
    ‘I didn’t mean anything,’ Tony said crossly.
    ‘I know,’ she managed. ‘I expect it was partly my fault.’
    ‘It was ! ’ Tony assured her dryly.
    ‘Are you now warmer?’ the stranger put in casually. ‘If you are, I think we had better go now.’
    Megan smiled up at him. ‘Yes, let’s go,’ she said.
    ‘When will I see you again?’ Tony asked plaintively as they made their way through the door.
    ‘Another time,’ the stranger answered him curtly. ‘This is no place for a young lady to be at this hour of night.’
    ‘She’s a singer ! ’ Tony laughed.
    ‘So she has told me,’ the stranger said flatly. ‘It is not what I would choose for any young relative of mine—’
    ‘But I do sing,’ Megan confirmed eagerly.
    ‘That is something I shall speak to your parents about. Now you will please tell me their address and I shall take you home.”
    At another time, she would have resented his arrogance, but now all she could feel was relief that she didn’t have to see Tony again and that she didn’t have to struggle home by herself on the suburban trains at that time of night.
    ‘My parents live in Kent. If you’ll see me to Victoria Station—’
    ‘I prefer to take you home.’
    She blinked. ‘But it will take you ages !’
    ‘We will take the car,’ he answered simply. ‘My hotel is not far from here. Do you mind walking a short distance?’
    She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ she said in a small voice. ‘But you don’t have to go to so much trouble.’
    ‘I know I don’t.’
    ‘Then—then why?’ she asked.
    ‘Because I choose to do so,’ he said unanswerably.
    She walked beside him in silence for a long moment. ‘I don’t even know your name,’ she objected. ‘I’m Megan Meredith.’
    ‘Megan?’ he repeated. ‘I have not heard this name before. Is it English?’
    ‘Welsh,’ she said.
    He pulled his coat closer about him against the still falling snow. ‘That is why you sing?’ he suggested.
    ‘I suppose so,’ she admitted.
    ‘I am Carlos Vallori Llobera.’
    ‘Oh,’ she said.
    ‘I am Spanish,’ he added unnecessarily.
    ‘You look Spanish,’ she told him.
    ‘ I do?’ He sounded surprised.
    She wished she hadn’t spoken. ‘You’re so tall,’ she said by way of explanation.
    ‘Like Don Quixote?’
    His pronunciation of the name was strange to her and it was a moment before she realised whom he meant. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.
    ‘I am more like him than Sancho, don’t you