But get her foster brother to admit to one single blessed thing, even when that thing was obvious to everyone around – that was like scaling Everest in tennis shoes.
“I know,” said Lucy. “I know about last weekend. I know about the woman in London. I know everything now.”
Richard held out the end of the measuring tape. “Make yourself useful.”
Lucy took the end of the tape and stood at the foot of the staircase while he backed up and measured the distance to the front door of Ashmore Magna. She scowled at him as he entered something on his Blackberry. “Didn’t you hear me? I know.”
Richard glanced at her. “I heard you,” he said. “You see all, you hear all, you know all. Ten feet – that’s cutting it close. Do you know how wide a nine-foot piano is?”
So that was what he was doing, measuring to see if the concert grand on its way from Texas would fit into the house. When she’d invited herself over, he’d told her only to meet him up at Ashmore Magna. “I don’t know, five, six feet. Hey,” she gave him a bright smile, “I have an idea. Why don’t you ask your girlfriend? It’s her piano.”
“I could,” Richard agreed. “However, she and Julie went out shopping, and I’d prefer not to bother her unless I need to. Stand over there at the ballroom entrance and let’s see if we can get nine feet past the staircase to the doors.”
Lucy took her end of the tape measure and stood where he pointed, wondering why even as she did it. She was just as bad as everyone else. She’d spent her girlhood seeing her sisters fall all over themselves to do his bidding and had marveled at their sheer brainlessness in not telling him where he could go and how fast he could get there.
“I know you and Laura went away together last weekend. And she’s got to be the one in London. She’s the only one it could be.”
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen the truth about London before this – who was the only woman Julie said he had seen over there? She should have guessed that something had happened before Laura’s return; they had come together too quickly to have caught fire in just two weeks.
“No problem with the stairs,” said Richard, almost to himself. “It’s just the front doors I’ll have to take off….” He opened the doors, richly paneled in etched glass, that led to the ballroom. “For the last time, Luce, get it through your skull, I did not have an affair in London. I did not do anything with any woman. I never even talked to Laura. Julie and I couldn’t get close enough.”
Lucy followed him into the ballroom. “You didn’t need to talk to her. It was enough to see her, wasn’t it? Then you took off your ring. See, that’s where I made my mistake. I kept thinking it had to be someone you actually hooked up with.”
“You? Make a mistake?”
“Oh, shut up. It happens.”
The ballroom was one of the prettiest rooms at Ashmore Magna, a colonial extravagance restored by the post-Civil War railroad heiress whose son had married the Great Lakes shipping trust. Lucy hadn’t seen the room used for entertaining since her wedding reception eight years before, not counting the reception after they had buried Peggy and Philip. It lay now in chilly gloominess, the paintings and silk furnishings secluded from sunlight by the thick drapes that fell from the twenty-five-foot ceiling to the hardwood floors. She’d forgotten how cold the room could get, even in July.
It had been chilly that April day after the funerals. She’d been tense and stressed, eight weeks pregnant with John, and worried sick about Julie, who had been dealt a body blow by the death of her grandparents. Diana had sat in a corner, pale and humiliated, attempting to drink away her rejection at Richard’s hands and the shock of the DUI arrest. And he had circulated, the grief-stricken son, by sheer force of will making himself perform the duties of the master of Ashmore Park a decade before he had ever thought it possible.
She much preferred remembering her wedding.
“Cold?” Richard hooked the tape measure on his belt and came over to rub her arms. She glanced up at him and noticed in annoyance that he was giving her his most indulgent look.
“Don’t think you can stonewall your way out of this. Whatever this – thing is between you and Laura, you need to stop it right away.”
“Lucy,” and his voice was gentle, “has it ever occurred to you to mind your own business?”
She yanked her arms away from him. “This is my business. This is my family, and by marriage, it’s yours too. You are—” She couldn’t say it; the idea of Laura and Richard together was too appalling. “You are involved with my sister, your wife’s sister.”
“My soon-to-be ex-wife, who has made it crystal clear over the last eighteen years that she is completely uninterested in being my wife.” Richard walked away and drew open the drapes on one of the northern windows, letting a stream of light into the room. “Lucy – again – it is none of your business. Keep out of this.”
Lucy shook her head.
“Oh, God.” Richard sounded exasperated. He wheeled around to face her. “News flash. Laura and I are adults. We’re of age, we’re of sound mind, whatever you think, and neither of us owes any loyalty to anyone else. We are entitled to our privacy. So you,” he returned her glower, “butt out.”
They glared at each other. She was up against the monolithic silence that he had perfected over the years. He hadn’t always been like this – growing up, only seventeen months apart in age, they had told each other everything, or almost everything. She’d had to hear about his sixteenth birthday and the tree branch from Diana. But he had kept little else from her until his marriage.
She dropped her eyes, tired of trying to outstare him. He said abruptly, “Wait here. I need to get a drill. The drapery rods are separating from the wall.”
He left her; she heard him walking through the house, and then she heard the back door bang as he went out to Philip’s workroom in the carriage house. Lucy relaxed once he was gone. He’d admitted it. Well, not exactly admitted it, but he hadn’t denied it either. He’d issued no brusque refutation of her words.
He and Laura were lovers.
Lucy went over to the great Adam fireplace on the eastern wall. It stood taller than Richard himself, wider than Laura’s fabled piano. The tapestry above it, an elegant 200-square-foot weave of silks and wools, had been one of the treasures of the Main Line banking heiress of the 1840s, found in a crumbling French chateau. She and Tom had stood here with Peggy and Philip and Dominic in the receiving line; she had posed for her official wedding portrait in this very spot, with the carved fireplace and the glorious silks as her backdrop.
Her wedding. That had been a good day for the Abbotts, one of the few bright spots in their history. “The right man marrying the right woman,” Richard had toasted them, and more than one person had said that he had summed it up perfectly. Later, before she and Tom ran down the steps to their waiting limousine, the Ashmores – Peggy, Philip, Richard, and Julie – had gathered her into a family embrace and reminded her that she was forever and ever an Ashmore in love, if not in name.
Half an Ashmore, half an Abbott, completely their daughter. She remembered another wedding years before her own. Peggy had not been happy that day, and while Philip had said all the right things, welcoming Diana to the family, his smile had not touched his eyes. She’d watched that day as Richard danced with his new sisters-in-law, just feet from where she now stood, she’d seen the rage in Francie’s eyes and the grief in Laura’s, and she’d known that both rage and grief echoed in Peggy’s heart.
No one had said that day that the right man was marrying the right woman.
Her back hurt. She sought out one of the sofas along the wall and flopped down on it.
Oh, Mom, Dad, what do I do? They are heading for disaster. How can I stop this?
If Peggy had lived to see Laura return, what would she think?
Easy, easy answer. She’d be cheering them on. She’d be doing everything in her power to bring about the union that she had wanted ever since Laura had trailed aft
er her hero. From the time Richard and Laura had met as a stalwart boy and a shy toddler, they’d shared such a strong bond that it hadn’t seemed possible that even Diana could come between them, much less Francie.
Peggy had not been alone in her conviction that only one girl was right for her boy; they’d all thought the same thing. Diana had laughed it off; Lucy suspected that she had kept Laura in reserve as a way out of Richard’s plans for the future. Francie had turned her malicious sights on Laura when she wasn’t gunning for Diana. Even Dominic had thought to get rid of the family changeling by marrying her off to the Ashmore heritage, thus preserving his crown princess for her true destiny. Laura would give him grandsons; Diana would bring him glory and fame. Everyone had known how the story was supposed to end.
Only Richard hadn’t known – or had known and hadn’t cared – and somehow he had talked Diana into marriage.
But now – and she’d known this would happen, she’d felt it from the moment that Richard had eluded telling her the truth about Laura’s homecoming – now he knew. Now he’d opened his eyes, and he knew.
And disaster was upon them.
She heard a rumbling noise out in the hall, and then Richard came back in the room, pulling a small flatbed behind him. On the platform lay an extension ladder and Philip’s old toolkit. He gave her a brief glance as he pulled around to the errant drapery, and she got up to steady the ladder for him.
She waited until he settled himself on the next to top rung. “Richard – do you think this is the best thing for you to do?”
He chose to be obtuse, of course. “Certainly. The drapes will come crashing down if I don’t. The hardware is separating from the wall.”
Lucy rolled her eyes at him. “Not that. Do you really think this – thing with Laurie is a wise move? What do you think will happen when Di finds out? She’ll go nuts.”
She heard him exhale in irritation. “Why should Diana find out anything about anyone? We don’t move in the same circles, we have no mutual friends – in fact, the only person we have in common is you. So if you can manage to keep quiet, who I see or what I do should not affect her at all.”
Oh, stupid, clueless man. “Richard, damn it, this is her sister. Do you seriously think Laura is capable of keeping this to herself? Mel guessed before you ever sat down at lunch.”
He answered her by drilling loudly into the wall. “I haven’t thanked you for that yet, have I?”
“You can thank me now.”
“Sending Mel to spy – dirty pool, Luce. Very dirty pool.”
“It showed you your weak link, and that’s Laura.”
“Nonsense. You think Laura can’t be discreet? Use your head. This is the woman who covered her tracks for fourteen years. Yes, I think she can keep a secret.”
And Laura was keeping a big one from him, not that he didn’t already know. “I meant that, when it comes to you, she wears her heart on her sleeve. She’s in love with you, Richard. She always has been.” She craned her neck and looked up at him as steadily as she could. “Are you in love with her?”
He didn’t answer; she hadn’t expected him to. He drilled again, setting a brace and screwing two bolts into the wall, and she watched as he resettled the heavy drapery rod into its newly secure brackets. She held her fire until he descended the ladder. “She’s very vulnerable, Richard. If you aren’t in love with her, what are you doing?”
He gave her a long, weary look. “Good question.”
She had to wait again while he took the ladder and tools back to the workroom. She wandered around the room, touching the silk drapes, running her hand over the backs of the elegant Queen Anne chairs along one side of the wall. Some of the furniture needed reupholstering, and the paint needed freshening in the worst way. The hairline crack in the ceiling he’d pointed out to her a few months ago seemed a little longer now.
Ashmore Magna desperately needed an overhaul. She and Richard had talked about it last winter, when she’d felt able to deal with matters other than her grief for her son. The foundation required strengthening; the wiring needed updating; virtually every room in the house could stand major work. He’d worked up a preliminary budget and shown it to her, not that she really had anything to do with it, but she’d grown up in this house, and he knew her concern. They’d reviewed the balance of the Great Lakes shipping trust, almost a century old now, and had come to the conclusion that Richard had only twenty years before he had to start making some hard decisions. If he renovated the house as it needed, that time would be cut in half.
It had been her suggestion to sell Ash Marine, and while he had hesitated, not wanting to part with any part of his heritage, he had finally accepted that as the best solution. The right price would pay for the restoration, and the remainder would buy him another five to ten years’ breathing space before he and his heir had to start selling off the acreage. But now, instead of selling, he was proposing to give Ash Marine to Diana in return for a quick, uncontested divorce.
No, he was giving it to her only if she behaved until Meg St. Bride turned eighteen. Not that Diana could possibly stay on the straight and narrow for that long, but still, for five years, he’d be unable to sell. He’d have to find some other source of funding to halt the relentless deterioration of the house.
Would it be so terrible? She’s nice and he needs nice, she’s loaded and he needs money. We all know that place is bleeding money.
Richard returned, paused when he saw her staring out at the gardens, and then joined her at the window. She felt vaguely comforted when he laid his arm loosely around her shoulder. “Thinking of Mom?”
“How can I not?” Lucy murmured. Oh, Mom, this is a whole new tack. What would you want? She said, “You know, she wanted you and Laura together. This would make her very happy.”
She felt rather than saw his frustrated look down at her. “Do you ever let anything go?”
“How long have you known me? Did we just meet?”
He laughed. She turned around to face him and leaned back against the sill. He stood there before her, her adored foster brother, her best friend, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen and one for whom she had never felt the slightest twinge of attraction. Thank heavens! Give her middle-of-the-road, salt-of-the-earth Tom Maitland any day. No Celtic knight, no demon lover, just her rock.
She said again, “Richard, she’s so vulnerable. It’s not only Di, I worry about her too—”
His eyes flashed in anger. “You’re not the only one. Do you think you have a monopoly on worrying in this family?”
Lucy started to say something, but he cut her off. “I know she’s vulnerable. Her husband burned to death in front of her eyes. She had no one to bury, and it’s obvious she hasn’t felt free to grieve. It doesn’t appear to me she’s had a single soul watching out for her the last ten months. She’s lived in another country, taking care of a bereaved daughter, with no support from anyone. One of these days, everything is going to catch up with her, and she is going to crash, and crash hard. When she does, someone has to be there to catch her so that she’s not alone anymore.”
Lucy stood stock-still in the heat of his words. Well! He’d certainly said volumes. Richard Ashmore might not think he was in love, but his feelings for Laura ran deeper than she could have ever imagined. She swallowed hard. “I – agree with you. And, I’m sorry, I have to ask this. Given that she is so vulnerable, that she still needs to grieve – is being with her the wisest thing for you to be doing?”
“Perhaps not.” He knew what he was admitting. “But – there’s more here than just the obvious. I hope you understand that. Someone has to watch out for her, and I can tell you right now, I will sure as hell treat her better and take better care of her than that bastard ever did. She’s safer with me than she was with him.”
Lucy didn’t doubt that for a second. But she still had to point out the elephant in the room. “What happens when this ends?”
He shot back immediately, and his words nearly kno
cked her out of her shoes. “Who says it has to end?”
He heard his words at the same time she heard them. They stood there, staring at each other, and she saw that he’d shocked himself as much as he’d shocked her.
She had to ask. He’d put it out there; she couldn’t let it go. “Are you thinking about marrying her?”
Because, really, what else can he do? It’s not like they can just break up and say “Let’s be friends” and go their merry ways.
Like Mel said, would it really be so terrible?
Let me think this through.
Am I nuts? Is he nuts?
Because maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all.
Her question broke the stasis and restored the natural order of things. She meddled, he evaded, and all was right with the world again.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Richard stepped back and scowled. “You are as bad as Mom.”
She smiled, and it didn’t feel like a forced smile. “I know. But if she were here – I definitely feel her around – she’d be pushing Di off a cliff or shoving an annulment down the Pope’s throat so you can get married in a church.”
The truth of that brought a reluctant grin to his face. “I’m sure plenty of rosaries are being said in the hereafter for that very outcome. Look, Luce, I don’t know. Right now, I am concentrating on getting unmarried. I’ll think about the future when I have one to offer, and she might not want what I can give her.” His cell rang. He pulled it from his belt clip and looked at the screen. “Hold on. It’s Scott.”
Scott McIntire.
Which led to Mel McIntire.
Which led to She’s loaded, and he needs money.
He turned away from her, and she wandered across the room, her mind churning. Follow the money. Starting in the 1840s, three generations of Ashmore men in succession had brought home heiresses. Those men had thought nothing of selling their name and heritage, their virility and good looks and Southern charm, for the fortunes their brides brought with them, and the women, from all accounts, had made good bargains. These might not have been great love affairs, but the portraits in the gallery showed couples who had grown old together with grace and contentment. Main Line banking, Chicago railroads, Great Lakes shipping had all secured Ashmore Park while its neighbors went under… then the next three generations had married for love, relying on their professions to pay the bills, backed up by a trust fund that was starting to run dry after a punishing century.
All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) Page 14
