Your marriage is dead. Diana is gone.
“Richard?” Tom said again, and he sounded suspicious. “Was Laura there?”
He had to shut that avenue off decisively. Only Francie and his father knew, and they were both gone. He said swiftly, “No, she wasn’t,” and skimmed through the subpoena again. “What’s the impact? Bottom line?”
“Bottom line? Zip. Zero. Nada. An affair that ended fourteen years ago after Diana had refused you your marital rights for three years? After which time she then lived with you another three years? With no witnesses and no written documents? It doesn’t even matter that it produced an illegitimate child.” Richard winced. “Let’s face it, the child’s adoptive mother is never going to divulge that, and Kevin doesn’t know to ask the question. Here’s what will happen. Laura will be served, she’ll notify the St. Bride lawyers immediately because she won’t want to testify, and they’ll file a motion to quash. I can imagine the firepower St. Bride kept on retainer. Kevin doesn’t stand a chance. They’ll demand a hearing, and we can sit quietly by as they trot out all the reasons why this is pure harassment. Then, if Laura can’t prevail at a hearing, the deposition will get delayed and she’ll get a call to return to London. Then she’ll get whisked onto a private jet and out of the jurisdiction.”
And she would never be able to return.
Richard said bluntly, “She’ll lie if she has to testify.”
“Yes, I’m afraid she might. And I hope it doesn’t come to that, because I’d have to report known perjury to the court.” Tom sounded calm. “No, let Laura’s attorneys file the motion to quash. I’ll hold off on ours, because it’ll look better if we act as if we don’t mind her testimony. We’ll take the position that she is welcome to testify because she knows nothing that hurts our case, and we want to get this whole matter out in the open.”
But he didn’t, he thought after Tom hung up. All the reasons why he had never told anyone, why he had never confessed his guilt, still held strong. He had never wanted his parents, and now Julie, to know what he had done to his marriage vows. He did not want to risk his stature in their eyes. He did not want them to know that he had failed to meet their high standards.
That he had surrendered to a pair of hungry eyes and a young man’s desire too long denied.
But Diana – Diana, whose own sins couldn’t bear the light of day – Diana had forced his hand.
And she had forced Laura’s as well.
Either Laura lied, and Tom felt himself honor-bound as an officer of the court to report her perjury, or she ran again to avoid testimony.
And if she ran, this time there was no coming home.
Not unless he divorced Diana.
~•~
I should have divorced her years ago. Julie would be safe. Laura would be safe. Meg would be safe. I wouldn’t have to worry about her hurting Julie. I wouldn’t have to worry about her.
I’d be free to build another life. I’d be free to love another woman.
Laura.
He stood again in her kitchen, feeling her body against his back, her hand sliding down his arm, as he fought his arousal and she fought his resistance. He remembered her lovely soft skin underneath his hand, and his pen in his hand trembled in remembrance. His body reacted in memory of hers beneath him, her pale breast lying warm to his hand, her mouth opening to meet and love his in return.
And Laura, as he had left her, stricken with rejection. No matter that he had not rejected her, but rather the situation in which they found themselves. The woman that his parents had thought perfect for him had walked back into his life after all these years, and she had still loved him enough to risk her heart and her pride. Laura, knowing the worst, had still loved him, and he had handed her heart right back to her. She had laid herself wide open, after a lifetime of silence – I’ve loved you my whole life, I came back for you – and he had walked away.
Diana is still my wife. I may not like that fact….
God! What had he done?
You can have all the years ahead with me.
And he had told her that the future didn’t matter because the past still lived.
Well, that at least I can change.
~•~
By the time Tom called back, thirty minutes later, he had outlined a plan. He glanced down coolly at the legal notepad in front of him, with its columns of pros and cons and numbered items, and the financial spreadsheets that detailed the price of getting rid of the past. This was no more than a business deal, a buyout of a troublesome partner.
“Guess what,” Tom said. “I found the NTSB reports—”
It took Richard a few seconds to orient himself. The NTSB reports. The putative plane crash. “Really?” But he didn’t care. Laura had lied for her own reasons, and he’d find those out in good time. “So did you find anything?”
“Sure did,” said Tom. “There was a plane crash, all right. A Kate St. Bride, resident of Plano, Texas, who just happened to be St. Bride’s mother, was a passenger on a private plane that went down in the Texas Panhandle five years ago, killing all aboard. But no Francesca. I ran every name variation I could think of, and there are no matches on any private plane crashes in the last fourteen years. I did get a hit on a Francesca on an international crash a few years ago, but I don’t think it’s worth pursuing.”
“I agree.” No, Laura had lied classically; she had woven facts from something she knew and gambled that no one would ever find out. Who knew how Francie really had died… and heaven help poor little Francie, the truth might be so much worse than a plane crash. But time for that in the future. He drew the pad closer to him. “Back to Diana. Here’s what I want to do.”
Tom was silent.
“Monday morning,” Richard said, “file for divorce. I want this clean and simple. We haven’t lived together for over ten years, and that should be reason enough. I want Julie, I want my company, and I want my separate property. Specifically, I want the Park and all the belongings. She keeps her separate property, she relinquishes any claim to my mother’s jewelry, and she drops any custody threat. In return—” He consulted his notes. “I’ll pay her a generous allowance until Julie turns twenty-one, and I’ll give her Ash Marine, my father’s cottage and all the land in a trust, to be turned over to her unconditionally at that time. It’ll be worth a fortune in another year or so. I’ve already been approached by developers who want to build a resort.”
Dead silence at the other end. He could imagine Tom’s surprise.
“There are two nonnegotiable conditions,” he added. “I’ll waive any claims of adultery against her, if she’ll do the same for me. And she has to drop the subpoena against Laura immediately. I will not have Laura harassed by her sister.”
More silence.
“Well? What do you think?”
He heard Tom suppress laughter. “What do you expect me to say? High time? Good riddance?” He sobered down. “That sounds comprehensive. Do you really want to give up Ash Marine?”
“Yes. We’ll have to find somewhere else to fly RC.” He rubbed his eyes. “This way, I won’t have to worry about her. She’ll have enough money to live on the rest of her life if she’s careful. And she gets it only if she behaves herself. She welshes on any part of this deal, and it stays mine.”
“Fax your notes over,” Tom said. “I’ll start drawing up papers. Do you want me to approach Kevin with this first?”
“File,” he said. “Have her served. I know Diana. That will scare the hell out of her. She’ll be much more amenable to an offer then.” Cold, ruthless way to talk, he thought wearily, the way he might talk about an enemy, not a woman he had adored. “And, before I pay her a cent, she drops that subpoena and signs a custody agreement.”
He added, as he put his notes into the fax machine, “Oh, and one more thing, Tom. Write this in. No more fake suicide attempts.”
~•~
For a man who had just tossed away a potential fortune, he felt curiously light of heart. In o
ne evening, a marriage of eighteen years – half his life! – ended; in one evening, his daughter’s emotional safety secured; in one evening, the long-planned restoration of Ashmore Magna postponed for the foreseeable future, the money now to be given to the woman he had once promised to cherish for life. In one evening, his future returned to him….
You can have all the years ahead with me.
No. No, better not to think of Laura, not to think of that silky pale skin beneath his hand, better not to feel that sudden splendid rush of longing. Come upstairs. Better not to think that, if not for Diana, by now he would have explored her, tasted her, met her desire for desire. Better not to think of her at all.
Come upstairs, come upstairs, come upstairs….
He dressed in jeans and polo shirt, comfortable clothes for doing paperwork, but he was loath to return downstairs to his desk. He lay on his bed in the dark, hands clasped behind his head, and thought longingly of a cigarette. For once, he was tempted to break his own rule and smoke in the house, as if the simple mindless pleasure of nicotine could chase Laura’s specter away into the night.
His shoulder ached of an old wound.
But not as lethal as the wound he had dealt Laura all those years before.
You might have turned to me.
She was right. Had she not come down with the flu, she would have been there with him that New Year’s Eve night. Oh, Laura would never have thought, as Francie had, to bring a bottle of her father’s finest champagne, so something else would have loosened the bitterness he felt welling up as Diana danced out the door on her way to her overnight trip to Washington. He might still have voiced his deep, biting suspicion that Diana did not intend to spend the night alone, the first crack in his monolithic silence about the disintegration of his marriage. And Laura, a warm, lovely young woman, witnessing the despair and pain he could no longer conceal, might have put her arms around him to comfort him.
It might have begun as innocently as that, as it had with Francie (and hadn’t it? hadn’t it?), and lost all innocence as he saw in her lovely upturned face the ghost of Diana past. And when he lowered his head to kiss her – face it, damn it, you did! – she would have opened her mouth for him.
And he might have fallen into that sweltering morass of desire and guilt with her instead.
But he had chosen Francie instead, simply because Francie was there.
You never saw me. And she was right about that. He never had.
The temptation was too great. He lit a cigarette, drew on it too deeply, and coughed.
I saw you there on Ash Marine. My God, you made sure of that.
But impossible to dwell on that terrible afternoon, impossible to avoid the memory of Laura under the kitchen lights an hour ago, defiant, lashing out in pain and anguish. Crumbling beneath the weight of a lifetime of unspoken longing, sinking to the floor in his arms, touching his face, finally recognizing in him what he had so long refused to recognize in himself. Laura….
And Laura there, as he left her, stricken again, as he walked off in the self-righteous certainty that he had done the right thing, and when, he asked himself savagely, when had he ever done the right thing for her? All those years before, when he had let Francie blind him to her desperation? I was getting ready to run. She had planned her departure for over a year, according to Julie, but in all that time, he had seen nothing wrong. Had he done the right thing by drawing Francie away, causing heaven knew what hatred and unspoken jealousy between the sisters, and then throwing the intolerable burden of her sister’s pregnancy on a seventeen-year-old girl? Had he done the right thing in London, accepting St. Bride’s harsh rebuff without protest when she might have needed him? Had he done the right thing since the night she had come home, holding himself aloof, rejecting her, letting the chasm of the past yawn between them?
And tonight… he had left her there, alone as usual, to face the emotional wreckage of his rejection, just one more piece of debris of his damnable marriage. He had left her there.
He had a sudden mental image… not even a memory… of standing at his car and glancing back through the night. She had stood in the doorway of the old house, and slowly, slowly, she had slid down the door frame.
He swung his legs to the floor in one movement, stubbing out his smoldering cigarette.
~•~
She lay there for minutes; she lay there for hours. She no longer knew. Her mind had emptied of all thought, all feeling, when he had left her. Better to empty than to feel the great onslaught of pain that surely waited if she remembered any part of him.
She was aware of the chill coming in from the starlight outside the open door.
The part of her mind that still thought, but could not feel, knew the beginning of shock, but it could not rouse her from the fugue that had trapped her. He had left her. He had wanted her, he had rejected her, and then he had left her. Across the years, across her life, he had occupied the greatest part of her heart, and in one hour that corner of the universe had crashed down into dust.
She did not think she could ever get up again.
It seemed to her finally that he came back to her. The door, half open, he flung wide, and the long tall silhouette stood there for a moment against the night. He called her name, first quietly, then in urgency. He even knelt there beside her on the floor, displacing Max, and his voice as he spoke to her was urgent and worried. She heard a frantic element in his voice that she had heard only once before, and maybe she heard something new, something that might have been precious but now could only be unbearable for what it wasn’t. She imagined his hands running over her, smoothing her hair, touching her face, calling her name again and again. You wake up now, Laurie. Wake up, wake up! She even imagined that eventually she opened her eyes and saw him through the light in her mind.
She thought she said his name once, “Richard,” and she dreamed that he lifted her up against him, that he pulled her against his body and enfolded his arms around her.
That he said, in a voice shaking with some unfathomable emotion, “Oh, my dear Lord.”
But this really wasn’t happening. She had so disconnected that she only imagined his hand against her back, his heart beating hard against hers, his arms trembling because – because why? Why? He didn’t ache for her; his heart didn’t beat for her; his arms didn’t tremble to hold her.
This couldn’t be real.
“Richard.” Did she really whisper? Did he hear?
“Laurie,” he whispered back in her mind, “oh, my God, Laurie.” She filtered his words into the meaningless void of her pain, vaguely aware that if she woke up and remembered any of this, she might want to seize upon those words, ponder them, tuck them away in her heart.
Perhaps then she imagined him forcing her to stand up in his arms, coaxing her up the Chippendale staircase, step by step by step. Come on, Laurie, keep walking, don’t you stop…. Maybe she dreamed the warmth of his arms holding her, beside her that long journey down the hall to the room she had chosen for her own. She had gone so far into insanity that she dreamed the sight of him pushing that door open, guiding her through the door to that bed overlooking the pool. But, in a dream, she wouldn’t have winced against the light he turned on by the bed, her arm coming up instinctively to shield her eyes.
“No.” She even sounded normal.
Surely a dream figure would not have turned off the light at her protest. In the soft light from the window he stood there, a tall dark ghost against the darker wall. She knew that dark shade, she had dreamed it through the years, she had glimpsed it from the corner of her eye, felt its presence behind her wherever she had walked in the time of her exile. But she had never known him in the night, in her bedroom, the two of them alone in a room that now had become the entire world.
And she had never conjured up the reality of him stepping forward into the starlight, flipping back the comforter and blankets on her bed.
He came to her and led her to the bed.
“Get into bed,
Laurie,” and his touch felt real and warm against her cheek. “You’ll be more comfortable.”
She stared at him.
He drew in a ragged breath in the darkness of the room. “Laurie,” he said, “stop looking like that, are you in shock—” and she felt his hand along her face again. “Come on, get into bed.”
She obeyed the pressure of his hands on her shoulders, and sank down onto the side of the bed. And she heard him sigh, perhaps in relief, as if – as if some burden had just lifted from him.
He moved away from her then, towards the chair, as he had moved away earlier that night. She watched him widen the distance between them, once more putting time and space between them, and a terrible rage bubbled up through her. She hadn’t even known it lay there within her, a vast unknown magma chamber of fury, until the moment it erupted, burning its way up through the layers of shock and despair into her heart and mind and soul.
She screamed, and he swung around at the sound.
“No! No, no, no, no—”
Terror, fury, rage propelled her then towards him, across time and space, towards that tall ghostly silhouette, and she reached for him, reached before he could vanish.
“You left me!”
He stood stock-still, as if her scream had stabbed him clean to the heart. She felt only his reaction, as his hands reached out to hold her.
“You left me! Oh, my God, you left me,” she cried, as her mind shattered and the anguish she had tamped down flooded into her heart, and she pushed against him even as he tried to hold her, and her panic escalated. “You left me—”
His voice, shaking, the words torn from deep within.
“I came back.”
The words hung there between them like a talisman.
Who moved first remained forever unknown. They met in the center, body to body, mouth to mouth. Neither offered restraint or gentleness; neither accepted it from the other. “Laurie,” he whispered, and “Richard,” she whispered back, and their whispers set fire to the smoldering embers and all that remained unspoken and unresolved between them roared up in flames, and he kissed her again, a second, harder kiss that drove them back against the wall.
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 41
