Megan Lloyd was bored.

A tall, slim girl with long, sleek, dark hair caught back in a bow at the nape of her neck, she was dressed in dark blue slacks and a green cotton top that reached to her hipline. Her expressive face with its high cheekbones, small, square chin and bright, dark eyes under their well-shaped brows normally gave her an alert, intelligent look but at the moment she looked discontented and unhappy.

It was August 1942 and she had just completed a three-year degree course at Aberystwyth University and was undecided about her future.

What she wanted to do immediately was to join up in one of the services and help her country like so many of her fellow students were already doing, but her father refused to give his permission for her to go ahead with her plans.

Her father, Lewis Lloyd, was the owner of a slate quarry in North Wales. A tall, broad man in his early fifties with a shock of thick black hair and piercing dark eyes, he was both wealthy and powerful. His family had lived in the area since the Middle Ages and their imposing grey stone ten-bedroom mansion Yr Glaslyn had been built in the 1600s.

Although the war had been raging between Germany and Britain since 1939 it had made very little difference to his way of life. As the owner of one of the largest slate mines in North Wales, he was held in high regard by his employees and, since many of them had allotments or large gardens, the wartime shortages and food rationing had not made very much difference to him or his way of life.

Items such as eggs, chicken, joints of lamb and pork, and even milk as well as vegetables and fruit in season, which many people were unable to buy because they were in short supply, or rationed, were brought along to him as tokens of their loyalty by the men who worked for him.

He accepted all this as a matter of right and consequently his family never went short of anything. Occasionally his wife Bronwyn, a small, dark-haired woman five years younger than Lewis, weakly protested about them accepting these items, but he would brush her remarks aside.

'Speak sense, woman, if they needed the stuff for themselves they wouldn't be bringing it along here for us now, would they?'

'They only do it because they want to keep in your good books,' she told him.

Lewis gave a derisory laugh. 'If that's the case then believe me they're wasting their time. They won't be getting a penny more in their pay packets from me just because they bring some trifling thing along and hand it to me.'

'You do pay them, I hope, Lewis, for the produce they bring in surely,' Bronwyn admonished.

'Half the time I don't know which of them has brought what in,' he said irritably. 'I leave it to the foreman to attend to that side of things and no doubt he takes his pick of what's been brought in before it's handed to me.'

'You should thank them personally, Lewis; it is very, very kind of them to give up items of food and for the wives to give up their clothing coupons just so that we can have more.'

'The women probably can't afford to buy new clothes anyway and as for the food, most of the fruit and vegetables they bring in is what they've grown themselves.'

'All the more reason for thanking them then,' she insisted.

'Nonsense! They probably have a glut of it and they would have to throw it on the midden or dig it back into the ground if they didn't give it to us.'

'No, Lewis, you know you are speaking nonsense,' Bronwyn told him, her small mouth tightening into an uncompromising line. 'What you're saying might have been true at one time, but these days what with rationing and shortages, every scrap of food is precious.'

'They would far rather be digging in their own gardens than fighting a war over in France,' he told her derisively.

'I'm sure they would but that doesn't mean we shouldn't say thank you to them for the sacrifice they are making.'

'It's their way of saying thank you to me for giving them the opportunity of working here in safety, in a reserved occupation, rather than being sent over to France or some other place where they'd be risking their necks in the midst of all the mud and bullets.'

Although the Blitz had been raging since 1940 with German bombers attacking London on fifty-seven consecutive nights, the only disruption that Lewis Lloyd was aware of was the occasional difficulties in transporting slate to other parts of the country or other areas of the world. So many of the larger seaports both in Britain and abroad had been bombed either by the Germans or by the Allied Air Forces. In addition, shipping was constantly under attack from the air as well as at risk from submarines.

Nevertheless, Lewis Lloyd was determined that his life would continue as smoothly as possible. Megan's twenty-first birthday party that April had been the highlight of the year in Beddgelert. It had fallen in the middle of the Easter vacation and all her university friends as well as her many local friends had been invited. For almost a week the Lloyds' mansion Yr Glaslyn had been filled with her friends from Aberystwyth. Lewis Lloyd had gone out of his way to regale them with tales about the history of his ancestors.

He was proud of the fact that his family dated back to the days of Llewellyn the Great and claimed that one of his relations had been present when the famous Prince Llewellyn had returned from a hunting trip and found that Gelert his faithful dog which he had left to guard his son was covered in blood.

Prince Llewellyn had immediately thought that the dog had attacked his small son and killed it. But after the dog had died he found the body of a wolf nearby and realized that his faithful dog had, in fact, saved the life of his son. Prince Llewellyn was so overcome by grief that he began digging a grave for the dog with his own hands and, according to legend, was often to be seen at the graveside where he watered it with his own tears.

Although Megan had returned to university immediately after her birthday, it had been her final term there and in no time at all her course ended. Degree achieved, her future hung in the balance.

Now her student life was over, everything seemed to her to be dull and uneventful. Most of her friends of her own age were already serving in the forces; boys in the Army, Navy or Air Force while the girls had joined the ATS or the WAAF or the Wrens. Some had even become Land Army girls working on farms throughout Britain.

All through July and August Megan lazed around playing tennis, partying, swimming, dancing and generally enjoying herself with those who were still awaiting their call-up papers or who were home on their first leave after completing their basic training.

Megan found that it was sheer torment to listen to their exploits and adventures and it made her all the more keen to join them, but no matter how many times she brought the subject up her father adamantly refused to even discuss her joining up.

She would have loved to become a Waaf or a Wren, but her father was strongly against it. To him she was still just a 'little girl', someone to protect from the harsh realities of life. He wouldn't even allow her to work in the offices of his own slate quarry.

'What do you think the men would think if I brought my daughter into work?' he intoned furiously. 'They'd think I was mad, that's what they would think. Anyway, it's quite unthinkable to have a woman working in a slate quarry.'

'I...