“There it is," he said, easing his foot off the accelerator, partly because they were at the top of a steep slope and partly because he wanted to savor-and wanted her to savor-the sight below.

"Mm, wild," she said. "But lovely for a week's holiday away from the rat race." She stretched her arms above her head and her legs out ahead of her, and yawned.

He did not want to admit that the mildness of her reaction disappointed him. "The Cartref Hotel," he said, moving over to the far left of the road so that faster traffic could pass them. He pointed to the large whitewashed building at the foot of the hill. " 'Cartref means 'home' in Welsh, you know."

"Yes." She laughed. "You have told me so a million times, John-and that many moons ago it was one of your family homes. It is no more than a cottage in comparison with the others, though, is it? And it is so remote from civilization that I wonder anyone ever came near it. And they would have had to come by carriage, wouldn't they? It must have taken days. Ugh!"

"Everything was sold off or given over to the National Trust by the beginning of the century," he said. "This was the last to go-my grandfather sold it in 1920."

"Probably because everyone had forgotten all about it until then," she said, laughing again.

He pulled right over onto the shoulder of the road and stopped the car. It was not the safest place in which to do such a thing, even though he put on the hand brake, but it was something he wanted to do. Every time he had been here as a boy they had zoomed down the hill, glad to be at the end of their journey, eager to be at the hotel and relaxing in its old-fashioned but luxurious rooms.

To him it had always seemed the loveliest place on earth. He had never minded its remote location on the coast of Cardiganshire in West Wales.