“So Di went back after that?”
“She found out she was pregnant.” Lucy paused. “There was no way she was going to cope with that on her own. So Richard told her to come back and they’d try to make a go of it—” She lifted her hands. “That’s when everything really went south. I hated to go over there, frankly. I don’t think they ever talked to each other except when someone was around. Di said once that the silence broke her.”
“My lord.” A memory nudged at her – that last Christmas, the contempt in his eyes when he looked at his wife. “But they stayed together—”
Lucy said softly, “Until Julie was five. Those two lived in the same house – maybe shared the same bed, who knows – and they hardly ever spoke. Sick, isn’t it?”
“Definitely.” Obsessed, actually. Terrible that neither Diana nor Richard, in the face of such silent wreckage, had let go. Thank heavens Cam had known when to admit failure. “Why didn’t they get divorced? Why don’t they now? They’re obviously never going to reconcile.”
“Di doesn’t want a divorce.”
“Well, what about him? He can’t like living like that, can he?”
“Who knows? He won’t tell you. More tea?” Lucy pushed the teapot towards her. “Everyone has a different theory, and not one of us has the nerve to ask, because—”
Laura chimed in, “Richard won’t talk,” and Lucy laughed.
“See? You’ve caught on already. His marriage is off limits. Okay, here goes.” Lucy leaned her head back against the chair, settling in for a long cozy gossip. “Tom is his closest friend. I know Richard talks to him, because Tom sometimes does work for him that I’m not allowed to see. Tom’s theory is – ready for this? – that Richard won’t divorce Di because he feels sorry for her.”
“No.” The man who had so decisively taken her apart in her kitchen had not spared any sympathy for a wife whose sickness was completely self-inflicted.
“Agree,” said Lucy. “Tom doesn’t like Di, but he feels sorry for her, so he’s probably projecting his own feelings. But it does make sense, if you remember that Di’s crazy. You saw her the other night at dinner. Did she act like a normal human being? I wasn’t sure she was even here on earth.”
Laura said bluntly, “She was stoned to the gills.”
“And you know why? She’s a failure. She’s failed at marriage, she’s failed at motherhood, she’s failed at any kind of career. Oh, you know how talented she was, what a beautiful voice she had! She’s wasted it all. Her voice is shot now – all those damn drugs, Dominic railed at her to take better care, and she ignored him.” Lucy drummed her fingers on the desk. “I can’t think of anything that Di has ever accomplished, except give birth to Julie. Richard knows that. He knows what a low opinion of herself she has. He knows that the one thing she clings to, like a badge of honor, is that she is still married.”
“I don’t buy it.” But – Diana is my wife. Maybe he clung to that badge too.
“Okay,” said Lucy. “Try Di’s theory. She thinks Richard likes the status quo. It renders him unattainable. He doesn’t have the hassle of a wife, but he has the perfect excuse to hand any woman who might expect him to cough up a wedding ring.”
“Surely not.” Laura didn’t like that any better. “He’s not that cold-blooded.”
“Oh?” Lucy raised an eyebrow. “His own wife believes it of him, and you don’t? Don’t want to admit your hero isn’t perfect in every way?”
“His wife, to quote you, is crazy. And don’t twist my words.”
“I don’t have to. You do that all on your own.” Lucy’s eyes rested on her speculatively. “It might surprise you that Julie’s theory is pretty much the same, except that, of course, she puts a more charitable spin on it. Julie’s daddy does no wrong in Julie’s eyes. She thinks Richard is holding on to Diana for his own sake, to keep himself from caring about a woman again.”
“That is a daddy’s girl speaking.” Laura relaxed and reached for her tea. “In other words, Julie doesn’t want a rival for her father’s affections.”
“Maybe.” Lucy grabbed at the blanket as it went drifting to the floor. “She definitely has an advanced case of hero worship. I blame Richard. He’s created a world where his frailties are never spotlighted, so of course she thinks he slays dragons.”
Richard, fiercely protective of Julie’s right to an unblemished father…. The stark poignancy of that had escaped her until now. “So what do you think?”
“I have two theories.” The sunlight through the window glinted off Lucy’s hair, creating an undeserved halo effect. “I think Richard will file for divorce in two years, when Julie turns eighteen.”
“No way.” Laura shook her head. “Once you decide, waiting is intolerable. I know. And why then?”
Lucy said softly, “It was intolerable for you because you had nothing to gain by waiting. Put yourself in the position of a man who has already survived a bloody custody battle. On her eighteenth birthday, custody disappears forever. Oh, he’d win if he filed today, no doubt about it. He’s done a wonderful job with Julie, she adores him, she scarcely knows Di, and what she knows she doesn’t like. But custody would still be an issue, don’t you see? And Richard will never run that risk again.”
Richard, smiling at Julie, as if all his world stood there in his arms. And Francie saying, he just wants to keep Julie, or else he’d get rid of Di.
Lucy steepled her hands under her chin. “How about you? Got any ideas?”
Bizarre, and not very generous, to sit here in this sunny office, dissecting that very private man for their personal amusement. Laura shook her head. “No. I’m not like you, Lucy. You should have been a psychiatrist, not a lawyer. Have you been analyzing me all these years from my lyrics?”
“Of course.” Lucy didn’t miss a beat or blink an eye. “Sexually repressed, a virgin when you married, a faithful wife with no imagination. I got all that from Waterfalls. Tom disagreed about your virginity, Di said you’re into bondage, and Richard thought you might have strayed once or twice. How far off the mark were we?”
“Oh, Lord.” She had to laugh. Served her right. “Wait. Why did Richard think I cheated on Cam?”
“Ask him,” suggested Lucy sweetly. “Trade him that for info on his women.”
“What about them anyway?” She grabbed at the topic. Better Richard’s sex life than her own. “Does he get involved there?”
“I don’t know.”
She thought that not knowing must just kill Lucy. “Come on, you must know something. I can’t believe you haven’t asked.”
“I have a spy in his household.” Lucy’s eyes gleamed. “Unfortunately, she knows next to nothing because Richard doesn’t bring his lady friends home to meet his daughter. Tom knows, but you know that male bonding. They must swear an oath of silence.”
“He’s not seeing anyone right now.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked.”
“And he didn’t take your head off?” Lucy looked impressed. “Normally, I can only tell when he becomes unavailable for dinner on Saturday nights.” She half-closed her eyes and surveyed Laura. “I’m afraid the only one we know about is—”
“Francie.” She still wished that she hadn’t betrayed Francie. “Is she the reason he won’t get involved? Did she burn him that badly?”
“Heavens, no.” Lucy shook her head. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Richard loved Francie. He’s loved only one woman in his life. He liked Francie, and she made herself very convenient. She wanted him, she was willing to break the rules for him, and that must have appealed to him.”
“Lucy….” But her sister wasn’t done.
“Sometimes,” and Lucy casually picked up a paper clip and began to unfold it, “the most attractive thing a man sees in a woman is the way she feels about him. Let’s say, she has a crush on him, and they’re apart for a long time, so she never grows out of it. Then they meet again, and he’s lonely, and she’s all grown up now
– sparks fly between them – sparks that normally lead straight to bed, but they know better, they see the dangers, so they deal with all that tension by fighting all the time—”
Laura’s mouth dropped open in horror.
And Lucy said softly, “I thought so.”
~•~
Too late. She’d fallen into the trap. Oh, clever Lucy, baiting her, outlining her pet theories, goading her to his defense. She’d not seen the steel jaws closing in on her. And how did Lucy know about that first night! Surely, Richard hadn’t admitted how she had curled into him like a kitten seeking warmth, how instinctively he had wrapped himself around her.
But Lucy had guessed.
“Richard refused to talk about the evening he found you.” To give her credit, Lucy masked her triumph; compassion and regret laced her voice. “I figured out right away that something had happened, because he didn’t want to be around you, and he gave Julie the same impression. Then when he made that comment about you interfering in his marriage, and he got after me for telling you that he’s been seeing others – well, I thought, what is the one subject that Richard never talks about? We’re very close, Laurie. I know how much he made last year, I know his cholesterol level, for heavens’ sake. So what, I thought, can he be concealing from me?”
She wanted to find the nearest hole and crawl into it. But she couldn’t move. She could only sit there, prisoner in a comfortable leather chair, and listen to her sister autopsy her innermost thoughts under the cold harsh light of insight.
“And then I remembered how you used to feel about him. We teased you about it. Even Di used to laugh about sleeping late on weekends, because you’d stand in if he wanted to go fishing or riding.” Maybe Lucy didn’t see the pain she was inflicting, or maybe she did. Maybe the pain was necessary, Laura thought, even as she scrambled to remortar the wall around her heart. “Your crush was very safe, because – face it – you were a quiet, mousy child who never spoke unless spoken to, and Richard was never going to give you the time of day anyway. But you’re not that child anymore. You’re a successful woman who has made more money than the rest of us ever dreamed about, you’ve been through a marriage and you’ve raised a child, you’re a beautiful woman now.”
“Lucy—”
“A beautiful, single woman, living dangerously close to a man you still want. A man who thinks he has reason to avoid you. A man who isn’t involved with anyone else, putting him in a lonely and vulnerable position – and how do we know this? Because you asked him. You asked him enough about his marriage to make him very angry. And you took him to task about the other women in his life.”
Laura sat perfectly still, hoping that Lucy had finished so that she could slink away and disappear. She willed it with such passion that it surprised her when Lucy merely left her perch behind the desk and came around to take her hand.
“Laurie,” no resisting now the gentle timber of Lucy’s voice, with all its rich history of healing ancient hurts and dispensing unwanted wisdom, “you must stay away from Richard.”
“According to you, Richard won’t give me the chance to do anything else.” She heard her voice from far away, brittle, falsely upbeat, denying the truth of every word her sister said.
“Actually,” said Lucy, and stroked her hand, “I’m not worried about Richard, at least not as much as I am about you and Di. I care about this family, Laurie. Someone needs to. I foresee a disaster if you can’t get your feelings for him under control. You’ll hurt yourself and him both, and I shudder to think how it might affect Di.”
She saw the lifeline of her control floating away downstream; she grabbed and just barely caught it. “You exaggerate, Lucy. Just because I used to hero worship him—”
“Then what happened when you came home?”
Of course, she couldn’t answer. That moment of their bodies’ recognition, that language of hand against back, of cheek against shoulder, of lip against hair – oh, she refused to share that. She yanked her hand back and walked over to the window, touching Lucy’s antiques, picking up the fallen quilt. Lucy watched her, letting the silence ride out, probably (Laura thought, stopping before a pretty framed pencil sketch of Diana that gave no hint of her demons) letting her imagine that she might avoid an answer.
Lucy and her damned power struggles. Whoever spoke first lost.
Lucy waited her out.
She was well-schooled in silence. She waited Lucy out.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Lucy said eventually. “If things were different, I’d encourage this. I think you’re lonely. You’ve no man in your life, your marriage was unhappy, it ended horribly – you’re entitled to one hell of a fling, and I hope you have it soon.”
“Thank you,” Laura snapped. “But I’m not in the market.”
Lucy ignored that. “You will be. Give them a signal, guys will be lining up.”
“Oh, my God, Lucy!”
She might as well not have protested, as far as Lucy was concerned. “As for Richard, I’d prefer that he see someone who gets him and that whole Ashmore Park mystique instead of some little girl who just sees that face and that house and decides that she wants to play lady of the manor. I worry about him. He’s a good man, and he’s so lonely, rattling around out there in the country with only Julie. He needs someone else to love, he needs a woman who will shake him up and bring him alive again. I watched him once at a fundraiser, talking to a woman he left with later, and he was smiling, laughing, but somehow,” and Lucy paused, “he didn’t seem quite real, like he was playing a part. And I thought, how sad, he’s let Di and Francie bring him to this.”
Laura scarcely had time to picture the scene – Richard standing close to the woman, talking, smiling, admiring her with his eyes (the way he had looked at her) and the woman (young, pretty, soft-voiced) brushing an imaginary speck of dust off his jacket – before Lucy thrust her rapier home.
“So – don’t push your feelings for him into an already bad situation. Leave him alone. He’s not your romantic hero anymore. He’s a man struggling to balance his own needs with the welfare of his wife and daughter. He doesn’t need you. If he wants a woman, he’ll find one. But not you, Laurie. You stay away from him.”
The words neatly found their target, stabbed her, and ran her clean through. In a few words, Lucy had done what no one else ever had. She had explored Laura, filleted her, and laid her most precious thoughts open to view.
I will not let her do this to me.
Please, no tears. She dared not betray any weakness now. She said merely, and marveled at her pleasant boredom, “I’m not interested. Richard is quite safe from me.”
“Then why doesn’t he think so?”
She managed a shrug, a tolerant movement to convey bewilderment. “We don’t see eye to eye about Di, that’s all. I – I didn’t expect their marriage to be in such disarray, and I’m shocked at how far she’s fallen. Naturally, I was concerned that he wasn’t doing all he could to help her.”
Quiet. Then Lucy smiled, a smile of respect. “You’re good, you really are. You may get rattled, but you recover quickly. You’re entitled to your shock. You’re entitled to talk to Di about it; in fact, I encourage you to. God knows we’ve talked until we’re blue in the face! Make her sing for you. It’ll do her good to embarrass herself in front of Cat Courtney. Just don’t talk to her about Richard. Stay out of that marriage, and keep away from him. Please.”
She made her voice light, and, dear Lord, what it took out of her to say the words. She felt all the exhaustion of a swimmer, drowning, finding the last vital energy to swim for shore. “Because I remind him of Francie?”
She managed to throw Lucy there. “No! Why do you think that?”
One afternoon, when I was young, and blood and tide ran high….
“Don’t I remind him of his great lost love?”
No answer behind her. She couldn’t stand it; she turned around, away from Diana’s picture, and she saw that Lucy had risen, come to stand behind her so
that, when she turned, she looked straight into her sister’s eyes.
“Oh, yes,” said Lucy softly, “you remind him. Remember I had one more theory? Richard won’t divorce Diana because he can’t let her go. After all this, Francie, lovers, other women – he still loves her. Oh, you remind him, Laurie – of Diana.”
~•~
Through a night of precious little sleep, as she sat on the window seat overlooking the pool, her face buried in a compliant Max’s fur, Laura St. Bride looked deep into herself.
She wanted to hate Lucy. Damn Lucy anyway, for that X-ray vision, for those soft words with their knife-sharp edges, for the glistening tears that had nearly called Laura back before she had walked out. Damn Lucy for calling later, on a pretext, reaching out in reconciliation; damn her own inability to slam down the phone.
Damn Lucy for reminding her that forever and ever Richard belonged to Diana.
Damn Lucy for being right.
She faced facts. All right, she was infatuated with Richard Ashmore. Childish, mortifying – she passed over all that with scarcely a thought. Not too surprising, actually, that she’d fallen straight back into the old emotional patterns with him; she’d never had a chance to grow out of them. Look how quickly she’d reverted to being Lucy’s little sister.
But Lucy had forgotten, Laura thought, enjoying the steady throbbing of Max’s purring against her breast, that Richard had been her friend. She’d gone fishing with him those early Saturday mornings, helped him cart his RC models to meets, baked endless batches of cookies for him, because she liked him. Oh, yes, she’d dreamed of him, hung on his every word, even written a secret poem to him. (Had she destroyed it? She hoped so.) He’d been her hero, but he had also been her best friend.
And their friendship lay broken now, casualty of his pride and her loss.
She pondered leaving it that way.
If she did, refusing to mend matters between them, she’d please no one. She and Richard would meet rarely, and when they did, they’d speak briefly and coolly, separating as soon as courtesy permitted. She’d never get to know Julie; Richard would see to that. The coolness would spread. Everyone would soon know not to invite her to any function that Richard wanted to attend. She didn’t doubt that Richard would hold everyone’s loyalty; he’d been here, part of the family, during all the years of her exile.
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 26
