Echoes of the Dance by Marcia Willett Read Free Book Online Page B

valued was hardly a major step, and that she remained uncommitted to any further move, but deep inside she felt she’d behaved shabbily. The real problem was that she knew that Roly loved her: ever since David had first introduced them in London nearly thirteen years ago, Roly had not quite been able to hide his feelings for her. David had recognized it too, though they’d both agreed that they should spare Roly’s pride as far as possible and never let him know that they’d guessed. Roly and Mim were two of David’s oldest friends; David was godfather to Roly’s son, Nat.
    David had been Roly’s tutor at art college and it had come as a great surprise to Kate when she’d learned that the brother and sister had been born and brought up in Cornwall. They were so very much a part of David’s London circle: that group of actors and artists, dancers and writers to whom – also to her surprise – she’d become so attached. When she’d first met David he was already a well-known artist, an RA; it had been an oddly emotional meeting, tied up as it was with the untimely death of a mutual friend, and within a very short time they’d passed beyond social formalities into an unusual intimacy.
    His ability to disarm her had taken her by surprise. Perhaps it was because his arrival in her life had coincided with a time of particular loneliness, with her twin boys grown up and away at university; not that she was a stranger to loneliness, having been a naval wife for ten years until her marriage to Mark Webster had finally collapsed. When her one truly passionate love affair with Alex Gillespie had also come to a disastrous conclusion she’d agreed to sell her cottage and buy the house in Whitchurch with her brother, Chris, who worked abroad and wanted a base in the UK. For the next thirteen years she’d concentrated on bringing up Giles and Guy, managing to avoid any kind of emotional commitment – until she’d met David.
    Somehow, he’d managed to break down the barriers of loneliness and fear she’d so carefully erected: not that she’d made it easy for him.
    â€˜You must see that we’re simply poles apart,’ she’d said to him. ‘I don’t see how it can work. You in London, me here. I hate cities. You’d be bored rigid in the country . . .’
    She’d never believed that their relationship could survive, divided between London and Dartmoor, but they’d both worked hard to make it succeed. David had been such a giving, sharing man: optimistic and a lover of life. He’d died after a long illness and she missed him terribly. With David he’d stepped out of her quiet, safe shelter and, for the third time, taken a chance on love. This time, with a much older and experienced man, she’d discovered the real happiness forged within a close companionship that was nevertheless flexible enough to give her new confidence room to grow.
    Now, alone again, she was trying to build some kind of a life without him. Swallowing back her grief, Kate drove on through Fivelanes and joined the A30. She was afraid that in her loneliness she might mislead Roly, for she loved him very much, and she was trying to walk a fine line between love and friendship. It was much harder than she’d imagined. Instinctively, as she pressed her foot down on the accelerator, she glanced into her driving mirror as if half expecting to see the noble head of her dear dog and companion, Felix, gazing out at the passing countryside. Even after three months the emptiness of the car still came as a shock to her and she gripped the wheel more tightly, staring resolutely ahead. In the distance the great tors and hills of Dartmoor stretched from east to west across the horizon; powerful and dramatic, dominating the plains to the north, yet peaceful in the afternoon sunshine.
    The familiar sight soothed her: all her life the moor had remained her one