Judgement By Fire

by O'Connell, Glenys

  “And Lauren?” Jon’s voice filled with angry menace, but Stephen didn’t notice.

  “Lauren was meant for me. She was so beautiful…but she was twisted. Just like them all! The moment she met you, she knew you were the richer prize and she dropped me like I was dirt so that she could whore with you! It’s your fault, Jon! You, with your greed and power—you destroy everything you touch! That’s why Lauren had to die—so that you would know what it was like to lose everything and know that you were responsible! And now, Cousin, it’s your turn!”

  Stephen began to raise the gun, his face devoid of anger but filled with an apostolic purpose. He was delivering a just punishment to the guilty. Rage and fear pulsed through Jon and tinged his vision red as he threw himself upwards and forwards. Stephen muttered an oath as he fell backwards and the gun went clattering down onto the stones.

  There was nothing in Jon’s mind now but the need to end this, to kill this man who threatened everything he held dear. Scooping up a huge rock, he raised it in both hands above his fallen cousin.

  * * *

  Moments earlier, Lauren had felt her heart momentarily stop. Now it sent great pounding waves of icy fear through her body as she watched the tall man in the snow-streaked rocky clearing below raise a heavy boulder over his felled opponent. The man next to Lauren pressed her shoulder, his eyes pleading for silence, but Lauren couldn’t hold back any longer.

  As she scrambled to her feet, a shower of pebbles rattled down the hillside. A cry tore from her throat, “Jon! No! For God’s sake, stop!”

  The tall blond man below looked up. Their eyes locked. In that instant of distraction, he failed to see his adversary’s raking fingers seek out and then scoop up the wicked-looking revolver. He saw nothing at all but her face.

  Then a thunderous explosion filled his ears, his eyes closed reflexively and the boulder dropped as the earth rocked around him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Time was playing tricks on her again. Its flow had slowed in the blazing cottage as she struggled to free herself; then it had raced too fast to that moment on the edge of the incline when she’d seen the man she loved about to kill his own cousin. Finally it had stopped entirely when that gunshot had echoed through the trees.

  Now, lying in Jon’s arms on the guestroom bed at his farmhouse, Lauren was plagued by memories of the moment when she thought a bullet from Stephen’s gun had ended Jon’s life. Questions pounded her brain: Would Jon really have brought that boulder down on his cousin’s head, killing him? Would Stephen have actually shot Jon, in that moment of distraction? If she had not distracted him, would Jon have been able to wrest the gun from Stephen, preventing the deranged man from killing himself?

  Even though she knew Jon would never have forgiven himself if he had killed Stephen, would he ever be able to forgive her for that interference which may have stolen his chance to save Stephen?

  Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, stinging the cuts which were a relic of Stephen’s assault, and sobs began to rack her.

  Jon’s arms tightened around her, but even the gentle kiss he dropped on her cheek could not still her fears.

  “It’s reaction, love, don’t worry. Just let it all out. You’ve been through an awful ordeal.” Jon held her, his own heart breaking as he listened to her sobs.

  * * *

  The thought that he had put her through so much, that his blind loyalty to family had led him to miss all the warning signs and put the woman he loved in jeopardy, would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Gentle, ethical Lauren had seen him in a rage so murderous it must have changed her view of him. He’d never know if he would actually have killed or seriously injured Stephen; he only knew that in that moment, he wanted his cousin dead. What kind of man did that make him?

  Certainly not one who deserved the love of a woman like Lauren. He pulled her sleeping form close to him, wanting to savor every moment, because he knew this would be the last time they would lie together.

  Somehow he fell asleep, to awake from a nightmare where he watched helplessly again as Stephen placed the snub nose of the gun inside his own mouth, raised his other hand in a grim salute, and pulled the trigger. The slow motion horror of the dream memory sent him clawing his way back to consciousness to find the dawn was already painting glorious pink streaks across the glittering brightness of an early Ontario morning.

  Lauren, awakened by his sleep-drugged struggles, was clinging to him, her lips seeking his, her hands softly caressing him. She held him to her and kissed him slowly, deeply, a kiss full of longing and need and love. Jon groaned, every fiber of his being wanting to love her. God, how he’d like to give in to her sweet temptation, to taste the sweetness of her lips, to bury himself in her beauty and hope for forgetfulness!

  It took his last ounce of willpower to pull away, and in that moment he felt his heart was broken.

  Gently, he moved her hands from him and slid from the bed.

  “Jon?” her question was sleepy and puzzled.

  “No, Lauren. I can’t.”

  He stood staring out at the growing dawn and heard her move in the bed behind him.

  Lauren spoke softly, her voice puzzled. “It’s all right, Jon—we’ve both been through so much—just come back to bed and hold me.”

  “No.” She didn’t understand; how could she? He couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

  * * *

  Lauren watched as he stood in front of the window, his back to her, and she shuddered as she flashed back to the time the last puzzle pieces had begun to fall into place as she had seen Stephen’s back view, lit against her own living room window.

  But Jon didn’t notice her shiver or the remembered horror that flashed across her face. Instead, refusing to look at her, he said in a tight voice, “I’m of no use to you, Lauren. I can’t love you.”

  Shocked and frightened to her core, she gasped and began to rise from the bed. Then common sense got the better of her, and she said quietly, “Jon, it’s only natural that there should be difficulties, after all that happened yesterday.”

  “No, Lauren. I mean I can’t love you. But you’re right—everything that happened yesterday did make me see that.” The coldness in his voice made her shiver again. She pulled on his discarded shirt, breathing in the scent of him. Tentatively, she went to stand behind him and slid her arms around him.

  He moved away and her breath caught in her throat. Feeling unable to breath now, Lauren wanted to clap her hands over her ears to prevent herself ever knowing the words that he was about to say.

  “It’s over, Lauren. Over. Whatever we had, it’s gone. Be grateful for that.”

  “Jon, I love you…”

  “Then be glad it’s ending now. I can’t love you. Stephen got one thing right. I’ve destroyed everyone who has ever loved me. Don’t you see that? My mother left me, and my father….I did everything I could to hurt him, and when he needed me, I was off playing soldiers in some misbegotten desert war. Stephen,” he almost gagged over the word, hatred, and pain warring together within him. “My cousin, we grew up together. And I didn’t have a clue what was going on inside him. Didn’t see his hurt, his pain, his hatred.”

  Lauren swallowed hard, trying to hold down the pain that swelled in her breast. She wanted to hold him, soothe him, but his rigid back and harsh words held her back.

  “You weren’t responsible for what Stephen did…” she began, trying to find the words she needed to say.

  He cut across her thoughts.

  “I should have seen what was happening. I would have seen if I’d been more human and less involved in the business. The same thing happened to my father. The company was everything and it didn’t matter who got hurt, or who needed him when he wasn’t there.

  “What happened to you was my fault. I was too blind, too preoccupied, to see what was going on under my nose. It was only the grace of God that you weren’t killed in that cottage.” Then, without even glancing at her, he was gon
e.

  Lauren collapsed back on the bed, tears running down her face as she replayed over and over each and every word he’d spoken and the impact of each shook her like a blow.

  * * *

  Mary knocked gently at her door, bringing in a small breakfast tray and the news that the police were waiting downstairs to take her statement. Although Lauren tried to hide the fact that she’d been crying, she knew Mary looked with pity on her tear stained, swollen face.

  The older woman was obviously aware of what had transpired between her and Jon. With a sorrowful look, she told Lauren, “Mr. Rush said to tell you he’ll be away for the next few days.”

  She was grateful for the woman’s compassion, but they both knew they were helpless in the face of Jon’s determination.

  So, before going down to see the police, Lauren had telephoned Paul and Lucy.

  “Could you come and pick me up?” she’d asked, and Lucy’s sensitive ears had picked up the desperate emotions in her friend’s voice.

  Without asking any questions, she’d told Lauren they would drive out to Jon’s farm immediately and take her home to West River and Haverford Castle.

  * * *

  A detective from Toronto was in the large, bright sitting room. He and a uniformed colleague from West River had been sipping coffee and enjoying some of Mary’s homemade raisin oatmeal cookies when Lauren finally entered the room. She’d hoped to see Chief Ohmer’s familiar face, but the two officers treated her with kindness and courtesy as they took her through the events of the past few days

  “We may need to talk to you again, but this all seems very straightforward,” The Toronto detective said. He was an older man with sad eyes and a ‘seen-it-all-before’ expression .

  “I’m glad you think so,” Lauren had told him, fingering the bandages that swathed her painful, swollen wrists and fingers.

  The man’s eyes rested on her bandaged hands. “You’re an artist, aren’t you?” he asked. “What does the doctor say about your hands?”

  Lauren shrugged. A short week ago, painting had been her reason for living. Now it barely seemed important whether she would ever paint again.

  “The doctors said to wait until the swelling goes down before I try to pick up a paint brush, but that the worst damage seems to be the external burns and should heal. There doesn’t seem to be any nerve damage.”

  * * *

  When they had left, she returned to her bedroom. She knew Jon was still in the house. She could feel him as if her heart had grown an extra sense that quivered at his nearness. Yet he’d told Mary a lie to pass on to her. Anger penetrated her hurt. If he really didn’t want to see her, then fine.

  She’d managed her life well enough before she met Jon Rush; she’d do just fine again. But she didn’t believe her own lies.

  She heard a car racking gravel along the driveway, and then Mary Wilson opened the front door to visitors. Even the familiar voices of Paul and Lucy Howard didn’t rouse her to gather her things and join them. Her heart screamed at her to stay, to try to see Jon, to reason with him, to force him to talk things out.

  But she knew he was never going to forgive her. It was an irony that she, who had been so afraid of Jon Rush taking over her life, had effectively undermined his own self-determination. In trying to stop him defending himself, she’d taken away his control over his own actions. She’d interfered in something she didn’t understand—the relationship between two cousins who looked so alike and were so different—and it had almost cost Jon his life. Even the fact that Stephen had chosen to put a bullet in his own head would forever cast a shadow between her and the man she loved. She had interfered. Now she had to pay the price.

  Finally, she steeled herself to pick up the few items she had with her. Last night a nurse had gently cleaned her face and hands, and Lauren had managed to clumsily clean her own teeth before falling into bed with Jon, clad in one of his oversized shirts.

  She desperately wanted to shower, but the bandages had to be kept dry and the thought of struggling to wash herself with bulkily bandaged hands encased in plastic bags was too exhausting. Instead she shrugged into the black wool jacket and pants that Mary had had cleaned and then stored from Lauren’s previous visit.

  With her sprained shoulder supported in a sling, even brushing her short auburn hair was too great a challenge. It didn’t really matter how she looked, anyway.

  Nothing mattered anymore.

  * * *

  Jon watched from an upstairs window as Lauren walked stiffly to Paul Howard’s car, the older man and his wife gently supporting her, Mary bringing up the rear with a small bag. It amazed him that, after all she’d endured, face pale where it wasn’t swollen from the cuts and bruises his cousin had inflicted, she still looked so radiant to him. He’d hurt her desperately, yet she walked out of his life with her head held high.

  Not even the ordeal of yesterday, or its aftermath including having to face the police alone this morning, could dim that bright spirit. This was all for the best, Jon decided, standing at his high vantage point and watching the scene below. Her pride and her courage would help her through this loss, too, and eventually she would find another man to give her wonderful, generous love to.

  Yet the thought of another man sharing the passionate gift that Lauren had bestowed upon him caused his stomach to tighten and his heart to pound with possessive jealousy. It was all he could do to stop himself rushing downstairs, pulling her into his arms, and claiming her for his own.

  He couldn’t do that. Mustn’t do that. He had to let her go. He loved her too much and he knew that he’d wreck her life as he’d destroyed the lives of the others who had loved him, needed him. He was, after all, his father’s son.

  Yet his eyes were bleak as he watched her get into the car and speed away.

  * * *

  If Lauren had glanced back as she left, she would have seen Jon standing in the upstairs window watching her go. She didn’t, because her heart knew he was there and she knew also that he was in pain as he stood there.

  He did nothing to stop her leaving, and that meant that she could do nothing either.

  She needed time to think, to sort out what had gone wrong. Then, perhaps, she could try to put it right. Jon had made it very clear how he felt and she was too hurt and too proud, at this moment, to go after him.

  She had taken too great a battering over the past few days and her pride was a tattered rag, but it was all she had left and she couldn’t lose it, which meant they were at stalemate.

  Chapter Twenty

  The weeks that followed passed in a womb-like calm for Lauren, sheltered under Lucy’s broody-hen wing from anyone who would have ruffled the designer calm that lay over the Haverford Castle in general and the Howard cottage in particular.

  Not that any great fuss was made. Lucy continued to closet herself in the separate studio as she toyed with ideas for her next book, while Paul followed his own interests. The three of them came together over supper and spent the rest of the evening watching television or a movie with a bottle of good wine and occasionally a take-out pizza. The temporary calm was broken only on one occasion when Lauren had insisted, to Paul and Lucy’s horror, that she wanted to go to Stephen’s funeral service.

  “Just the graveside service, I wouldn’t go to the church,” Lauren said firmly.

  In the end, rather than have her go alone, all three of them had joined the long line of expensive cars that turned into the broad driveway of Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. In a perverse way, Lauren had always been fond of the vast, open cemetery, partly because her own father rested there and partly because its vast vistas and the strange, gaunt shapes which unfolded in the marching lines of monuments were pleasing to her artist’s eye.

  Today though, with spring well underway and bright sunshine spilling down on the dark-coated assembly, she found herself wishing as fervently to be far away as she had wished earlier to be there.

  As far as she could tell, the whole entou
rage was from Rush Co., with other business associates and a handful of media people hovering discreetly at a distance. The only real mourner stood beside the grave, his blond head bowed and his tall figure looking isolated and lonely despite the group gathered around him. Lauren’s heart cried out, ready to burst with his pain, yet she found herself frozen to the spot some hundred feet away, where she stood with Paul and Lucy.

  Jon, I love you, she screamed silently within herself.

  But he doesn’t want you, replied the voice in her mind, and she bowed her head to hide the tears. Lucy placed her hand on Lauren’s arm and whispered to her that it was time for them to leave if they wanted to avoid getting caught up in the crowd as the mourners left.

  Lauren nodded, but as she raised her head for one last look, she caught Jon’s gaze fixed on her over the heads of the crowd and the intensity in his deep blue eyes took her breath away. It was all she could do to stop herself stumbling unheeding through the crowd to throw herself in his arms, but the next moment he had looked away, making it plain he wasn’t going to acknowledge her.

  You imagined that look. You wanted to see it there, and you did. But he didn’t even look as if he recognized you. He’s forgotten already.

  Numbly, she pushed through the mourners towards the Howards’ car, her tears earning her startled looks from those who were there only because of business connections with Rush Co. or curiosity over the strange death of a member of one of the city’s richest families.

  “Not too many tears being shed there today, eh?” Paul grunted as they drove slowly through the cemetery and onto Mount Pleasant Road.

  “No,” his wife, sitting beside him in the front seat, agreed, “I’d say the only mourning being done was by Jon and he must have some pretty mixed feelings.”

  Then, catching sight of Lauren’s pale face in the rear-view mirror, Lucy changed the subject entirely, chirruping on with a brightness she didn’t feel about a whole new story idea she’d conceived for her line of children’s books.