He didn’t speak for a moment. “I thought – we all thought that Cat Courtney was just a way to keep us from finding you.”
Laura heard a quizzical tone in his voice. “Well – I won’t say that wasn’t part of it. It was. But I really liked being able to go to the grocery store, or drive Meg to school, or go shopping without people knowing who I was, and we saw all those tabloid stories about the royals and Hollywood, and I didn’t want any part of that. I didn’t want an entourage or a bodyguard, or to be at the mercy of the paparazzi. So Dell mapped out a strategy to promote me in Europe, so I mostly work over there, and then the rest of the time—” she shrugged— “I can just be myself here at home.”
He said musingly, and ripped comfortable ground out from under her, “I have to wonder how you get away with it, going out in public, and not being seen for Cat Courtney. I look at you, and I see it so clearly.” Oh, she did not like the direction of this at all. “I suspect people recognize you more than you think.”
She shook her head.
“Then how do you pull the wool over everyone’s eyes?”
Her heart was beating hard. “Richard, you’ve seen how I live. I don’t go to parties, I don’t give interviews, I don’t go to openings or fashion shows – I lead a very quiet life. Besides, you know me. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t see Cat Courtney.” She stopped to catch her breath. “My fans are older. They’re not the kind to mob me. They’re the kind to line up politely and pay big money for the champagne receptions so that they can say they’ve met me.”
“Speaking as a specimen of the group, I imagine you sell pretty well to middle-aged men,” said Richard. “And, may I say, Miss Courtney—” he raised an eyebrow at her— “you’re not exactly covered head to toe on stage yourself. That concert we saw – I held my breath waiting for that dress to fall down.”
“Haute couture. It only looks as if it’s going to fall down.” She tried to sound light. “Believe me, I’m pinned and boned within an inch of my life. Those dresses wouldn’t fall off in a hurricane.”
The silence returned between them and stretched into an almost tangible being. She found her fingers shaking and deliberately pressed them against her side. Uncanny, his questions about Cat Courtney, as if he knew – Had he seen a hint of Cat, had he seen the echo of that woman on Ash Marine? Was she turning into as big a fraud as Julie?
I have to do better than this. This is my love. I can’t be afraid to be with him.
The sun had risen high enough in the sky that the light now flooded the western lawn and made the dome gleam white in the light. Other tourists crossed their line of sight, but the grounds absorbed the sound, and in the silence, they might as well have been alone on the lawn. His arm rested around her shoulders, and she felt the heat from his skin sink into her body, and she relaxed. If they could keep it like this, if she didn’t freeze up at the thought of Ash Marine… dragons… maybe she could keep Cat Courtney at bay when he made love to her.
“I’m Laura, you know, not Cat.” The words came out of her mouth before she stopped to think. “Cat Courtney is just a job.”
He said nothing.
In for a penny…. “This—” she gestured at herself. “This is the reality, Richard, what you see right here. No haute couture, no wig. This is it. Gap jeans and – and no makeup and—”
“And a silver Jaguar,” he said unexpectedly.
That stopped her for a moment, until she remembered his terse words to Diana on the voice mail. “Okay. All right. A silver Jaguar. Cam gave me that for my birthday.” A guilt present to talk her back into their bedroom. “It’s extravagant, I know, but it’s not even two years old, and I’ve hardly driven it since I moved to London—”
“Hold it,” Richard interrupted, and held up his hand. “Don’t apologize. Drive whatever you like.”
“Anyway,” she persevered, “I want you to know that I know the difference between Laura and Cat. Cat’s a costume I put on to perform, but – she’s not really me. I’m still Laura.”
She made herself look at him and was disconcerted to see that he was giving her the same appraising look he’d given Diana Friday night.
“What?” The word came out before she could think to stop herself. “What is it?”
He said slowly, as if reasoning through disparate thoughts, “You said it yourself, Cat is a creation. A job.” Her heart dropped. “My God, when I saw you on that stage, I thought you looked like a goddess. Golden, very untouchable and not accessible by us mere mortals, and I have to say that was only reinforced when we were turned away backstage.”
“Oh, I am so sorry—”
He overrode her. “Until we saw you that night, I didn’t realize how much you had changed – at least on the surface. You weren’t the Laura who used to go fishing with me on Saturdays. I get the feeling that you think being Laura isn’t good enough for us – that we’re holding you up against Cat and finding something missing in you.”
She had to head this off at the pass. “You have to admit that Cat makes a bigger splash.”
Oh, stop, stop, stop, what are you doing… don’t explain, don’t excuse, change the subject….
“You may not believe this,” he said, “but you are so much more than Cat. She’s mist and smoke, like a will-o’-the-wisp dream that you forget as soon as you wake up. I’d much rather have you here in your jeans and that little shirt of yours, the wind blowing your hair around.” He stopped, and then his voice lowered into the bedroom voice that had melted her the night before. “I’d much rather wake up next to Laura.”
Oh, please, he mustn’t feel the catch in her throat at his words. If ever a man had fired a warning shot across the bow…. She felt raw and exposed, and more than a little afraid.
“Believe me,” his hand gently swept the hair off her neck, and she felt his fingers in that sensitive area right below her hairline, “you do just fine.”
She tilted her head to glance back at him, and if that happened to give him greater access to her neck so that she could melt right down into the ground, it was just a bonus. “Richard, what are you doing?” Her protest didn’t sound very convincing. “There are people around.”
He looked down at her, laughing. “Definitely Laura and not Cat. And what is it I’m doing?”
“Something you shouldn’t be doing in public,” she said primly, which earned her another laugh. She didn’t resist when he pulled her back against him. She could feel his heart against her back, his breath against the crown of her head, and she could definitely feel the effects of his voice and mouth. Her toes hadn’t curled like that in a long time. “That dome seems so strange to see on the back of the house. Every picture you ever see of Monticello shows the dome – I thought it was in the front.”
“It is in the front.” Richard sounded normal, unaffected by the closeness of their bodies. “There’s no rear to the house. Jefferson considered that the house had two fronts, east and west.”
“Have you ever been up to the dome?”
Oh, Richard, when you kissed me in the dome room, I knew that I was yours forever.
“Sure.” He held up his wrist in front of her so that they could see the time. “Damn. We need to get in line. Let’s go.”
He grabbed her hand and took off across the lawn, and she had to scramble to keep up with him and his long legs. As tall as she was, she couldn’t cover the same ground as quickly as he could. Maybe he didn’t realize how easily he outpaced her, or – she couldn’t shake the suspicion that, deep down, he divined the fraud she’d put over on him the night before, or the night before that, or eleven years ago. Maybe he didn’t know it consciously yet, but he knew it in his bones, and it disturbed him.
Might her playacting – her fleeing into Cat at the first sign of trouble – rip the fragile fabric of the world they were beginning to weave for each other? This man had just told her plainly that he would never want Cat Courtney; he would never want the sham mystery and glamour of the golden goddess. He’d had enou
gh of darkness and mystery and love that drifted away like smoke.
He wanted an ordinary woman of sunlight. The woman she might have been if she’d never sold herself to Cameron St. Bride for two hundred dollars. The woman she might have been if she had never reached for him that afternoon at Ash Marine.
I wonder if I can ever go back.
I wonder if I can give Cat up.
~•~
They waited for thirty minutes in line. While they waited and the sun grew hotter, Richard kept in neutral mode, as if they had come too close to matters best left untouched. Or, Laura thought, he imagined he was being neutral. Perhaps he didn’t realize how much of his mind he was sharing with her.
When he had talked about architecture when they were young, she hadn’t really understood; her job had been to nod and adore. But now she listened and understood, and he showed her how one man could take theory and possibilities from the air and translate it into a solid building that people could see and touch. He unfolded her guide map showing the layout of the house and the gardens, and with a few pencil strokes, he showed her how Palladian theory translated into an American treasure. He did this too, he took ideas and he made them into reality, into homes where families could thrive, museums that could store priceless treasures, churches where worshipers could touch God. He was, she thought, a man of imagination and vision.
She knew that already. He’d shown imagination and vision with her the night before.
How did you even know to do that to me in the forest, Richard, Francie said, who would ever think that you knew how to use your tongue like that….
She ventured, “It’s like writing a song.”
“Exactly,” said Richard. “You start off with a finite number of notes and a finite number of keys, you have an infinite number of ways to combine the notes and keys. Same principle here. You have certain human functions that you have to build around, and you have only so many workable shapes – you can’t construct an inverted pyramid, for instance, not if you want it to stand in a wind – and you have certain immutable laws about materials and their behavior, but you have untold ways to combine any of these into an original structure. And this one,” he nodded at the house, “is an original.”
A couple ahead of them in line had shamelessly eavesdropped as he talked, and now they turned around and asked questions. Two women from New Jersey joined in, and others started listening, and before they knew it, they had an audience.
Richard had an audience. He told them what an extravagance the dome room was – accessible only by a small staircase, useless as living space. He told them the purpose of the Venetian portico on the southern side of the house; Jefferson had built it for privacy so that no one could look in his bedroom windows. He answered questions easily, and as he did, she saw the attention people were paying to him. This was how he appeared to others – a confident, engaging expert in his field.
Laura watched in amusement as two almost twenty-something girls managed to sidle up to his side and look on – oh, so innocently! – as he sketched a Doric column on her map. They couldn’t have cared less who Palladio was. They were more interested in 6′5″ of Black Irish splendor landed improbably in a waiting line.
“How did you learn all this?” One had a Bostonian accent and the hint of a rose tattoo showing over the low bust line of her tank top. “Wow, you’re like an expert.”
“I’m an architect in historic preservation,” said Richard with a shrug, and Laura wondered if he noticed the girl thrusting her considerable charms at him. “I did my master’s at UVA, and Monticello is a lab for preservationists.” As if the girl had the slightest interest in historic preservation other than her own, eventually. But then a professional-looking couple in their forties asked him about the dependencies, and the nymphet’s face fell when he turned to talk to them. The New Jersey women asked him about the layout of the gardens, and a man whose Trust Me I’m a Doctor T-shirt announced his profession started an impromptu consultation about a house that he was renovating, and business cards started changing hands.
By the time the tour started, Richard had educated his new fan club about everything they needed to know to take a knowledgeable tour, and the fact that the docent greeted him cemented his status as a Monticello expert. Unfortunately, it also gave everyone his name, and then it was Richard this and Richard that and Richard what’s a good source for antique glass. Enough people were talking to him, as they trooped into the main hall, that the two Boston girls managed to separate him from Laura. That he and she had been standing together didn’t discourage them at all. Maybe Laura Abbott was so ordinary that a female more than ten years younger didn’t consider her serious competition. Maybe they thought she was his sister.
She worked her way back to his side.
“Oooh, look at all these books!” Boston A said, and Laura missed the last part of the docent’s comments about the library. Something about the Library of Congress, and bankruptcy – she’d have to read the guidebook later on to see what she was missing in all the post-teen pheromones floating around. “Do you think he read them all?”
Maybe she should come to his rescue. Sorry, girls, I know he looks like a Celtic god, but he’s twice your age. Besides, he’s taken, and I am not giving him back.
Richard was a grown man. He could get himself out of this.
She stole a look at him. He wasn’t even paying attention to Boston A and Boston B, despite Boston A being snuggled up close enough for her rose-tattooed breast to brush his sleeve. He was listening to the professional couple about fireplaces, and the doctor was impatiently trying to tell him about some staircase he had seen at an auction. She wished he would forget the others. She wanted to ask him: Is this where you got the idea for your bedroom suite? Did you create it as your personal men’s club as he did? That workroom of yours – do you dream and invent and explore there as he did here in his cabinet? He left no room for a woman in his room – is there room for me in yours? In this ancient house lay a fundamental key to Richard Ashmore, and she couldn’t ask him because a gaggle of silly girls and some people looking for free professional advice wouldn’t leave him alone.
Jefferson’s bedroom was the worst. They stood beside the alcove bed under the skylights and listened to the docent, and over the giggling of the fan club, Francie’s voice came back. When you pulled me down in front of the fireplace under the skylights, I rejoiced to feel your long body over me, around me, in me…. She touched her forehead as pain flickered behind her eyes. Bad enough that she had to listen to post-adolescent nonsense behind her; to have it echo from the past was too much.
“Are you all right?” Richard said from behind her.
Laura glanced up at him and saw his genuine concern, and she nodded. “It’s nothing,” she whispered, and in that moment, she wondered if he really didn’t see what was going on. He’d certainly been oblivious to his effect on women when he was a young man. Francie had flirted with him, she’d had a crush on him, and a couple of Diana’s classmates had tried to get his attention, all to no avail. Maybe he had considered himself off the market for so long that he truly had his blinders on.
In those ten years, I’ve been with a grand total of three women. She hadn’t even thought before that three relationships in ten years didn’t sound like very much for a mostly single man. Cam had probably had twice as many in the same time, not counting the wife who was living with him.
“Oooh, do you think they did it in that bed? It’s so short.” That must be Boston B. She pronounced short as shawrt.
The docent said diplomatically, “It only looks short in the alcove. It is actually Jefferson’s height. He died in that bed on the Fourth of July in 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Ironically, later the same day, John Adams died in Braintree, Massachusetts, and his last words were—”
Laura missed John Adams’ farewell to the world, as the Boston duo giggled something about tall men and big feet. She wasn’t th
e only one growing more irritated by the minute; a few other people in the group were starting to give the girls pointed looks. She would kill Meg if she ever caught her behaving this boorishly in public.
Boston A said, “So do you think they did it on the floor? The slave girl, the one with the DNA thingie – what’s her name, Sally something—”
She heard a muffled snort behind her – the doctor, perhaps – and Richard hissed in her ear, “How the hell do you shut those girls up?”
He was the father of a teenage girl, didn’t he know? But then Julie would make sure that he never had to tell her to mind her manners. This was a woman’s job. With a sigh, she turned around and fixed the girls in her sight.
She made sure that they saw Cat Courtney’s gaze upon them: firm, unfriendly, and unavoidable. She held silence for a measure of four beats, long enough to fix the post-teen deer in the headlights.
“Her name was Sally Hemings,” she said pleasantly. “She was his wife’s half-sister. She was also his mistress for over thirty years, and they had several children together. Now – would you girls mind? I can’t hear anything. You are ruining my tour.”
“His sister-in-law? Gross—” said one.
The other said, “Hey, we paid to be here, same as you. Don’t tell us to be quiet. You be quiet.”
And the other chimed back in, “What are you, anyway, the Sally expert or something?”
“No, I’m not the Sally expert,” said Laura, and then her mind disconnected from her mouth, and the words came, from nowhere, words that would haunt her for the rest of her life. “I’m the Richard expert, I’m his mistress, we were having a nice quiet weekend together, and I would very much appreciate it if you would leave him alone so we can continue our tour.”
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 52
