All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (8 page)

When was the aspirin going to take effect? “What’s that?”

“Marry one of us. We’ll help you break that trust.”

For a moment, Laura and Terry both sat in shocked silence. Then he started laughing, and Roger laughed, and Laura felt the elves put down their hammers. She didn’t think she had laughed since the moment she had first seen the burning tower. “You know, I might take you up on that. So who gets me? I’m a wealthy widow. Make your case.”

Terry pointed a finger across the table at Roger. “Back off! I called dibs on her months ago.”

“Forget it. You have a steady paycheck. I, on the other hand, survive at the whim of the audience. I need that trust more than you do. Besides, I’m better-looking.” He dropped to one knee and kissed her hand. “Laura, will you marry me? I won’t hound you for sex, I won’t spend all your money, and I wear a smashing tux if you want arm candy. And, if you ever want out of the marriage, trust me, I’ll supply you with plenty of grounds.”

“Unfair!” Terry took her other hand. “I cook like a dream, I
will
hound you for sex now and again – not that you have to feel under any obligation – I
will
spend your money on the kitchen of my dreams, and I at least own a pair of jeans. You don’t go to parties anyway.
Plus,
I won’t declaim to the rafters when I ask you to pass the salt and pepper.”

She looked at her two dear friends – she didn’t care what Leviticus said, these were the most wonderful men in the world. “How can I choose? Can’t I marry you both?”

They flipped a coin for her, but they wouldn’t let her see who won.

~•~

Christmas was salvaged when a sinus infection kept Mark from flying. She and Meg spent their first Christmas without Cam quietly, attending the liturgy at Westminster Cathedral, sleeping late, exchanging presents by their pretty tree, cooking their traditional dinner. After cleanup, Meg vanished into her room to work out at her barre, and Laura curled up by her bedroom window, sipping hot chocolate and staring out at the snow-topped roofs of her neighbors.

She had not spent such a solitary Christmas in her entire life.

The Christmases of her childhood – she leaned back and closed her eyes. The sisters in their winter finery, much of it hand-me-down because money was always tight. When one outgrew the teal winter coat with the fake fur collar, the next in line inherited it. Midnight Mass, their voices singing out in the choir, Diana’s dramatic coloratura, Francie’s pretty lyric tones, her own coloratura mezzo. All of them with carefully trained vibrato. Lucy, under the protection of the Ashmores, lucky enough to escape the command performance. Dominic, in his severe black suit, reminiscent of the monk he had once been, critiquing their performances.

Christmas dinner at Ashmore Park, all of them on their best behavior. Awed not only by the magnificence of the house, its shining elegance in sharp contrast to the genteel poverty of their own, but also by the son of the house, with his confident manner, secure in his place in the universe. Warmed by the welcoming smiles of Philip and Peggy Ashmore. Envious of Lucy, who enjoyed this every day.

That last Christmas at home, when she was seventeen – Richard and Diana with Julie, their eyes sliding past each other, the emotional distance yawning between them. Francie watching, waiting, planning. Richard coming to Laura after dinner as she watched the lights on the tree from the loveseat, pulling over the ottoman to sit opposite her, the light from the fireplace casting a glow across his dark hair. He had been wearing a beautiful blue ski sweater that his mother had given him.

Laurie, I need to ask a really big favor.

Sure, Richard. What do you need?

Across the years, Laura remembered him taking her hands in his.

I’m finishing up my thesis. Can I hire you to type it for me this week? I really need an expert – it’s full of footnotes and equations. You’re the best typist around.

The thrill that he was entrusting her with something so important to his future. Through the vicious headache from the cold she’d had all week, her eager agreement.
Of course!
You don’t have to pay me, Richard. I’ll be glad to do it.

Great! Why don’t you come back with us tonight? And of course I’ll pay you. I know how you like to save up.
No knowledge of what she was saving up for.
You’re not my slave.

But, in her heart of hearts, she was. She would do whatever Richard Ashmore wanted her to do.

Fast forward thirteen years to last Christmas, she and Cam circling each other gingerly, wondering if the pregnancy that had resulted from a post-separation night of passion could herald another chance for them. This pregnancy had seemed different from the others. The first trimester had passed uneventfully; she felt pregnant, she was even beginning to show. So far, everything looked good. They had agreed to tell Meg that evening. Then, as she prepared Christmas dinner, the excruciating cramps, the blood, the heartsick feeling of loss, because this time she had dared to hope….

Her doctor telling Cam forcefully,
For God’s sake, man, get yourself fixed! You can’t put her through this again.
His desolate eyes, as they looked at each other wearily and knew that their dying marriage had run out of hope….

Laura buried her face in her hands.

Two Christmases. Each, in its own way, the end of the line.

Pain began to flicker behind her eyes.

She rose from the window seat and went to the dresser where she had put Richard’s fax. It was folded tightly, hidden beneath her hosiery where no one would ever look. She spread it out beside her on the window seat and read it again and again.

Looking for – what? What was she going to find there that she hadn’t seen before?

For the first time, in her mind’s eye, she imagined Richard writing the note to her that terrible night. Unable to sleep on his side of the Atlantic, as she had been on hers, watching CNN as obsessively as she had. Recognizing Cam’s picture (
How had he known? Had he been at the concert with Julie?
). Pondering the best course of action, finding the fax number on the St. Bride Data web site, bending his dark head over the paper as he wrote to her, choosing his words carefully so as not to frighten her with this intrusion from the past, but opening the door in case she ever wanted to come home.

He must never have found her out. It seemed impossible, after all these years, that her cover still held strong, but it had to be true. No man could write such words to a woman who had—

No. There be dragons….

She ran her fingers lightly over his handwritten words, touching him. His words, his signature, his telephone numbers scrawled beneath his name.

His telephone numbers.

She stared at them a long time before she reached for her satellite phone. Her fingers shook as she dialed the number he’d marked with (W) – then hit
End
. Of course, he wasn’t at work today. It was early afternoon in Virginia. He and Diana were hosting the annual dinner in the great ballroom of Ashmore Magna, the first Christmas since Peggy and Philip had died and they had become lord and lady of the manor. The long table was gleaming with luminous china, polished silver, sparkling crystal that picked up the lights from the twenty-foot tree. The chandelier was reflecting back the flames in the fireplace in a waterfall of light, and Diana was escaping her hostess duties by playing carols on the grand piano.

If her sister wasn’t spending Christmas in jail. In the crush of dealing with Cam’s death, she had forgotten her father’s death three weeks before September 11. In the face of great evil, Dominic Abbott’s petty malevolence had slipped into insignificance. She had no idea what had really happened to Dominic, but whatever Diana had done, it probably hadn’t been painful or bloody enough.

Forget Daddy. He doesn’t matter anymore.

And Francie – she would not remember Francie, nor think of Richard’s part in Francie’s loss, or Diana’s. She would not remember what had happened within minutes after she had agreed to type his thesis, Francie moving in for the kill, seizing the opportunity to take her revenge against Diana for the jealousies and rivalries of their childhood.

She started to dial the (H) number beneath his name, then hit
End
again. She had to mask her number; she wasn’t ready to come in from the cold.

She dialed the St. Bride Data voice mail system, put in the code for an outside line, and listened while the signal winged its way into space, bounced off the satellite, and then flew back through the atmosphere to Texas, to speed through the phone lines to the great house outside Williamsburg. One ring, two… how long would she give it? Not long… three, four….

“Hello?” A young, sweet voice. Julie? Or did Richard and Diana have other children?

She was surprised to find her voice calm, collected, with a hint of the British clip she tended to pick up in London. Despite the chilly room, she felt feverish in her sweater and jeans and wool socks. She pressed her cold hand against her heated cheek. “May I speak to Richard Ashmore, please?”

What would she say if the girl asked who was calling? But her niece, it seemed, was a typical teenager, oblivious to such niceties. “Dad! Phone for you!”

She counted off the seconds by her heartbeat, breathing in and out to keep from hyperventilating. She heard music, footsteps approaching, a masculine laugh, a “Don’t be such a sore loser, Luce.” She heard him picking up the phone. “Hello?”

She clutched the phone. She couldn’t speak. His voice… he sounded just like Richard.
Hello, what have we here, Laurie?
Her hero, the prince of her childhood, always out of her reach.

A wave of such intense longing swept through her that she felt sick.

“Hello?” Sharper, slightly irritated. Her chest and throat tightened. “This is Richard Ashmore.”

She hit
End
in a panic.

At that moment, the little elves that had knocked around playfully behind her eyes all day attacked with a vengeance, with the most appalling headache she had experienced yet. She stumbled, her phone falling to the floor, afraid that she might throw up, and managed to make it over to her bed before she collapsed. She had just enough strength left to crawl under the duvet.

She was shivering in reaction, overheated and chilled at the same time.
I am desolate and sick of an old passion….
Well, she had proved one thing, at least. For all her brave words to Cam –
I’m going home
– she was not ready to face Richard.

She lay there for a long time, until her heart rate slowed and the shivering stopped. Inside the cocoon of the duvet, warmth and peace seeped into her through the December dusk. The house was silent except for the faint strains of hip-hop coming from Meg’s room. Gradually, she relaxed into the mattress, and the elves muted their hammering in response to the echo,
This is Richard Ashmore, this is Richard Ashmore
…
.

Eventually, she fell asleep, a deep, dreamless sleep.

When she awoke, she felt more rested than she had in months.

~•~

Cat Courtney gave the show her all for six months, but told the producers regretfully at the four-month mark that she did not want to renew her contract. Almost everyone – her manager, Meg, Roger – argued with Laura. The show was a success;
she
was a success. She had proved the doubters wrong. Why turn her back on that now?

“Big mistake,” said Roger. “Do
not
leave me to the mercy of that understudy of yours, I beg you! The woman
cannot
carry a tune. Who do you think she’s shagging?”

“Are you sure?” Dell, her manager, said. “We don’t have anything scheduled until fall. What are you going to do with yourself?”

“Don’t I have another album on my contract?”

“Yes, but there’s no time limit. I thought you weren’t writing.”

“I’m working on something.”

“Mind telling me about it?”

“Not yet. I’m not ready. And – by the way – please don’t tell Mark about all this just yet.”

A long silence across the Atlantic. “Laura, I don’t have a choice. I work for Cat Courtney, Inc. He’s my boss.”

She could not tell anyone that Laura St. Bride, the woman they knew, was spending long hours alone groping her way back to Laura Abbott, wrenching lyrics so painful from a heart so rent that she put them away until she could gain some distance from them. The first song she wrote burned with images of smoking candles, the second with mountains crumbling to dust, the third with the longing of a woman lying on a shore. In the fourth, a woman called an old lover just to hear his voice.

Her performance took on a new depth. One critic, coming back to see if she had sustained her initial performances, wrote that she brought a new prism to one of literature’s great heroines.

In the mornings, after Meg went off to school, she wrote, gradually regaining confidence in her creative abilities. In the early afternoons before she had to report to the theater, she took a leaf from Cam’s book and brainstormed strategy, thinking hard about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. First priority was to get Mark off her back. Then – where to live? Where to raise Meg? Where to take Cat Courtney next? Hard to look to the future yet, she acknowledged, while the past still wrapped its tendrils around her. Somehow, somewhere, she had to find the strength to move beyond Virginia.

Beyond Dominic. Beyond Francie. Beyond…
him
.

Finally, one afternoon, she took a deep breath, sat down at her laptop, and typed
Richard Patrick Ashmore
into the search engine. She pressed
Enter
and knit her fingers tightly together as the search criteria went out across the world.

Thank heavens for the global desire to put everything online! His firm’s web site immediately popped up at the head of the list. A picture showed him on site, conferring with another man over a blueprint, wearing a hardhat. Terrible picture – it showed him only in profile, obscuring his face. He was wearing glasses – had he finally stopped fighting his far-sightedness? The
About the Principals
page linked to a book he had written on Palladian architecture in Virginia. She ordered ten copies air-shipped to her. He had been one of several architects profiled in another book about restoration architecture. She ordered only one copy. He wasn’t getting royalties from that one.