She looked at him, surprised at the sharp tone in his voice.
“And I know you’ve chafed at the idea that I control so much of the money, but my brother wanted it that way, and I’m not going against his wishes. I’m a better choice to run those trusts than you. I’m interested in money. I know how it works, how to invest it and make it grow and work for you – and, face it, Laura, you aren’t interested. I’ve seen your eyes glaze over when I show you the financial statements. I can do a lot more with your money for you than you ever could for yourself or Meg.”
“I know.” Laura felt herself relaxing. He was looking at her straight now, and his voice had changed. He no longer seemed patronizing or controlling; he was a man talking about his expertise, and he spoke with authority.
“And, for the record, I haven’t flown back and forth across the Atlantic to harass you. I wanted to be with you and Meg. I have enough to do. I’ve done nothing but work the last six months – nights, weekends, all night flying there and back. I’ve got big shoes to fill. I don’t have Cam’s vision and imagination, he could see possibilities where I don’t, and I have to scramble every minute to figure out where he wanted to take the company next. It’s not my natural bent. But I have to keep things going.” He gave her a grin, unexpectedly attractive in his ordinary face. “I’m more comfortable with my spreadsheets.”
“You’re a numbers person.” She found herself smiling back. “He was – I don’t know, connections. He knew how to connect ideas. I used to see him working on his process charts, and I never could get it, how he could take ones and zeroes and make them do what he drew on those charts.”
“The same way you take notes and words and make music,” he said, and smiled at her astonishment. “What, you think I can’t recognize a genuine artist when I see one? The night I saw you in Rochester blew me away. It was the first time I ever knew what Cam saw in you besides a pretty girl. You were like him, you could take random elements and make a coherent whole. And it got me thinking about him and you, how he could be smart enough to make you his wife and then be such a moron when it came to being your husband. Oh, yes, I knew about his girls. I used to wonder why you didn’t take Meg and leave – then,” he paused, “one night he told me about your family. About San Francisco.”
Her heart stopped. “What did he tell you?”
“About Francie. Your father. The other sister – what is her name? Diana? And the husband. He most definitely did not like your sister’s husband.” She sensed him looking at her hard. “I’d always wondered why you never saw your family. Why Meg didn’t know anything about them. After he told me, I understood that Cam and Meg were all you had. You really hadn’t anywhere else to go.”
She thought, a wisp of a thought, of Richard’s fax: Remember that you have a family here.
Mark said, “But you do have a family here. I can promise you one thing. I’m not my brother. I may not have his imagination and drive, but you can be damn sure that I’ll be a faithful husband. I don’t want to push you, Laura. I know you haven’t had enough time yet. It’s all still so raw. You’re still dealing with the aftermath – see, you’re rubbing your forehead. I know about your headaches.”
“That kid has the biggest mouth.”
He smiled. “She sure does. By the way, what are you going to do with her this fall while you’re on tour? Can Em and I have her?”
“Absolutely. That solves a huge problem for me.” She thought of telling him about her plans, and then stopped, because he was moving over on the bench to sit close beside her, and his hands were sliding up her arms, and he was pulling her gently, inexorably towards him.
Oh no, oh no, oh no. What do I do?
His kiss was gentle, tentative, the kiss of a man trying not to scare a woman off. It wasn’t unpleasant, she thought as he tried to coax a reaction out of her, it was – nice. Diffident. Polite. Comfortable. Just – nice.
She’d been kissed passionately in her life, kisses that had made her forget who she was and everything she believed in – hard, uncomfortable, world-destroying kisses. She wasn’t in danger of losing her soul in Mark’s arms. She felt no stirrings of old feelings, no resurrection of the joy of being a woman held by a man. She felt less than she did during Rochester and Jane’s last embrace on stage, when Roger would clasp her masterfully in his arms and whisper off-color jokes in her ear.
“My God,” he whispered, nibbling at her lower lip, “you are so beautiful.”
She didn’t want tentative, she didn’t want pleasant. Her sisters had known passion. One had married for love; the other had risked all for the love of her life. She’d seen so many other people heart and soul in love. Was she destined never to know that? Was she always to do the dutiful, right thing?
Just once in her life, couldn’t she have what her sisters had?
No, I can’t, I can’t….
She pulled herself away gently with a heavy breath. Maybe he would put her reluctance down to mourning Cam, or observing the proprieties, or not wanting a public display of affection – not that anyone was around to see them – anything except a panicky feeling of being trapped in a predestined future. “Mark.” She managed a shaky laugh. “I’m – I’m not ready. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right.” He was breathing a little harder himself; she saw his breath in the chill air. “We can wait. We have plenty of time.” He leaned back against the bench, and she felt his hand against her hair at the back of her neck. “Maybe – this summer, when you’re done with the show – come on back to Texas, Laura. Don’t wait until fall to bring Meg back.”
“Actually—”
He overrode her. “I’d like for us to spend some time together, see where this goes. I think,” he picked up her hand, “if you’ll give me a chance, you’ll see this is the best solution.”
If only he had not said that, if only he had stopped a few seconds earlier. She might have acted like a proper upper crust widow, looking to the preservation of capital, reclaiming her place at the side of the master of the St. Bride universe. Mistress of the St. Bride house, mother of future St. Bride children. The St. Bride heiress, keeping the St. Bride money in the family.
The best solution. Problem, solved. Bloodless, rational, head over heart. No explosion of heaven and hell, no blood between them. No world lost for love. No man leaning against a pillar. And every minute, her very self vanishing deep inside, until one day she might awake and find that Laura Abbott had disappeared forever.
Two men, united by blood, divided by death, touching her hair, trying to touch her heart.
Always know that you can come home.
I need to ask a really big favor.
Laura Abbott straightened and looked over at her brother-in-law. Her headache had subsided. “About this summer, Mark – I need to ask a really big favor.”
He let his arm drift around her shoulders. “Sure.” Kind, indulgent. Confident that she would come around. He was going to have all of Cameron St. Bride’s toys. “What do you need?”
“I need you to take Meg earlier – June, when her term is up.”
He shrugged. “No problem. Why? Are you taking a trip?”
She looked around her – the darkened park, illuminated only by lamplight, the melting snow, their breath hanging in the chilly air. Far from her September kitchen, wrapped in warmth, reading a message from the past. Six months ago, a lifetime ago, a vast chasm like the darkness between the ghost towers shining up to the heavens.
“I’m going home.”
Chapter 5: The Journey Home
FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER SHE WALKED AWAY from her father’s house, nine months after she saw her life broken apart, three months after she stared into the abyss of a frightening past and an unwanted future, Laura Abbott turned her car towards the East Coast and started on the journey home.
~•~
She drove for three days, fueled by determination and anxiety, each passing mile sweeping her away from her life as Laura St. Bride. Away from the ma
n who wanted her, the daughter she could not take with her, the life she had known for so many years. Closer to the Laura Abbott she had struggled so hard to find again during the last months in London.
Months of hope and grief and anticipation that finally telescoped down to a moment when Laura Abbott drove through familiar ornamented iron gates, followed a winding road through a forest of ancient oak and hickory trees, and mounted the steps to the resurrected Folly to knock on the door.
But now her courage failed her.
She stared at her hand, wavering in mid-air, and all her fine resolutions died a quick and shameful death. She pictured Richard hearing her knock, coming to the door, staring, speaking her name. Finally seeing through her mask to the truth. Slamming the door in her face.
Her hand dropped.
She heard a noise inside, the ringing of a telephone, and her breath caught. The ringing stopped abruptly in mid-ring, as if he answered, and she put her hand against the great door for support, sick with relief at the reprieve.
A minute, that’s all, just a minute, give him time to get off the phone….
She leaned her forehead against the door and waited for him. She even thought that she could hear him faintly, a voice talking, laughing. How many feet separated them – ten? Twenty? He was here now, within her reach. After all these years, with one knock at the door, with one ring of the bell, she could come face to face with the prince of her childhood.
She could, if she wanted, if she dared, reach out to touch his face.
As she had once reached….
She was shaking so violently that she scarcely knew when her feet began to carry her back down the stone steps. Fear, a nasty, tight fear, rode high in her throat as she glanced, once, over her shoulder and stumbled in her haste to escape before he came and found her.
She had parked hundreds of yards away near the oval lake, hidden by the thicket of trees at the turnoff of the main Ashmore Park road to the Folly. Parking there brought her into sight of Ashmore Magna, but she had taken one look at the windows, drapes drawn, and known that it now stood empty. She had seen that a car sat in the circular drive before the Folly – Richard’s car? – and she remembered from an article she’d downloaded that he lived there.
Some instinct of self-preservation had told her not to drive up right up to the Folly. Better to stay out of sight, better to keep their first meeting on her terms, not his. So she had lingered behind the comforting curtain of forest, promising herself small rewards if only she would take the first step toward coming home. Think of it like falling off a horse, finding the nerve to ride again – but then, once she’d fallen off in front of Cam, and she had never ridden again. Scratch that. Think of it like that first concert, walking out to face an audience, unknown, unconvinced, but predisposed to like her.
Remember that Richard had told her to come home.
No, he’d said that she could always come home. He hadn’t promised open arms waiting for her.
She headed back through the trees to the car, its silver lines concealed by the copse, walking faster and faster until she broke into a run to reach its safety.
She collapsed against the car door and waited for her heart to slow down and her nerves to stop jumping. She waited there, how long she did not know, and finally the warmth of the afternoon soothed her and lent her the courage to look back through the trees.
The Folly. Richard’s old dream….
He had made good on that, at least. It stood there now, an incongruous piece of the Gilded Age set against a Virginia hill, limestone-walled and slate-roofed and multiple-chimneyed. His plans to restore the rain-shattered wreck of the Great Lakes shipping heiress’s brainstorm, dismantled stone by stone from a Beaux Arts mansion in Newport because she insisted on living in a bigger house than her mother-in-law, had run like a thread throughout childhood.
“We’ll live here someday, Di,” he’d told her sister, who had glanced at his sketches as if they had nothing to do with the future he wanted with her. Lucy had stomped on the idea with all the confident supremacy of one who hadn’t thought of it first, and Francie had looked pityingly at Diana because, after all, who wanted to live in a hovel – a very big hovel, a very fancy hovel, but still? He’d said nothing, only surveyed his small harem until his gaze rested on the youngest of them all. Well? his eyes challenged, and so Laura chimed in her enthusiastic support, because he was the center of her limited universe and she was his devoted handmaiden. He’d rewarded her well for her loyalty. He had given the others his most superior, aloof smile, and bestowed upon her the honor of a lift home on horseback.
She had nestled against him, his arms reaching around her to hold the reins, while the three traitors trudged beside them, complaining step by step.
Laura shielded her eyes from the sun beating down and peered through the trees, branches waving in the breeze. But she had parked too far away to pick out details easily, and the thicket lived up to its name. She hesitated only a minute before she reached into the passenger seat for the binoculars she had packed for use in the mountains. She was not, she thought ruefully, strong enough to resist the temptation to use them.
But first she needed a safer perch. She started the engine and headed for the house at the end of the wooded road. The great house of Ashmore Park, Ashmore Magna, situated on the highest point of the estate. Five minutes, and she threaded her way up through the front gardens to the portico. And she settled down to watch.
For years she had struggled not to remember. Once, a face in the crowd had caught her eye, and she had turned wildly to stare at an elusive resemblance – the frame of an eyebrow, the cut of the jaw, the set of the shoulders. All too often, his eyes as she had last seen them, blazing, furious, filled with hatred, had haunted her as she slept.
But oh, that shouldn’t matter now! She was an adult. She was Cat Courtney, toast of the West End, with three pending proposals to her credit. She wasn’t his handmaiden anymore. He meant nothing to her, nothing at all, that wasn’t why she was coming home, no matter how he looked leaning against a pillar. Julie had said it best in her message – she wanted only to find her sisters again. She had only come to Ashmore Park first because Diana and Julie lived here with him, and she still hadn’t found any trace of Lucy.
In her hotel room the night before, she had rehearsed it all in front of the mirror. She would drive the remembered path to his home. She would walk bravely to the door, and when he answered, she would be the one to smile, to put him gently at his ease, to gloss over the raw awkwardness of the long-lost runaway turning up on his doorstep.
She would thank him for his note to her. She would tell him she was sorry she hadn’t responded before this. She would tell him of her sorrow at his parents’ death. She would visit prettily, catch up on old times. She would be poised, polished, sophisticated, Laura St. Bride at her Plano matron best.
She would never, ever let him know that she had called him just to hear his voice. That she had tucked away the picture of him leaning against the pillar. Or that she waited here, courage extinguished, binoculars in hand, spying on him for all the world like a teenage girl with her first crush.
She waited over an hour in the shimmering heat, leaning against the same pillar on the portico of the great house, feeling the same warm stone against her back, before she saw him, riding over the rise behind the Folly.
The glasses brought him close to her, so close that surely he saw her…. Oh, but he didn’t, he couldn’t. He sat astride an enormous gray hunter, a tall man silhouetted briefly against the bright morning horizon before he blended into the trees and the glasses blurred.
She knew him at once.
Her heart skipped. She adjusted the glasses to bring him back into focus, starved for all the signs of the years’ passing, starved for the sight of him.
He pulled the reins up quickly and looked back over his shoulder, and did she imagine it or did she hear him call to someone? Diana? Julie? He turned back, and she saw his hand reach to
the pocket of his shirt, as if he wanted…. Oh, no. The impatient movement of his hand as it came away empty brought a warm tide of memory. So many times she had chided him about his smoking; so many times he had tried to quit. “For me?” she’d wheedle, and with a quick smile, he’d promise to try again….
Did he still devour homemade cookies to chase away the craving? He had liked hers best.
He cantered the hunter around, still waiting for his companion, and now she saw the full range of him. Still lean, despite all those cookies (don’t look, don’t remember), but his shoulders had filled out. He had needed that, he had needed to leave that boy’s lankiness behind, gain the stature of a man. She looked at him as he waited on the great horse, and he was perfect.
Nothing had changed, nothing….
I am sick with old longings.
She lowered the binoculars to dash her hand across her eyes, and when she looked again, she saw the girl riding over the rise, approaching him.
Enormous sunglasses and a riding helmet hid the girl’s face, but even so, this must be Julie. Her body was too young, her movements too lithe, her clothes too ragtag, to belong to Diana, and Richard leaned in towards her with the universal protective stance of a father towards a daughter.
Julia Ashmore. Sixteen now, not the newborn who had won Laura’s heart through the nursery glass or the toddler who liked the songs her aunt made up for her. In her infant innocence, clearly the center of Richard’s life, even as Diana receded in importance. No one watching Richard and Diana that last Christmas had missed the obvious deterioration of their marriage, the careful politeness, the contempt coiled beneath the surface. Francie had seen, had moved in swiftly to strike. He just wants to keep Julie, she’d whispered fiercely later, in the shadows of night, or he’d get rid of Di. She doesn’t deserve him, she doesn’t know how to make him happy.
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 8
