All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (56 page)

“There was—” he began, and paused. “When I came back here last night, I didn’t intend,” he gestured, “what happened. That wasn’t my intention at all. I shouldn’t have left you, Laurie. No matter what had happened between us, I shouldn’t have left you alone, not after what you went through yesterday. I realized that once I got home. I just left you here, part of the debris of – this whole damnable mess, and I couldn’t let you face that by yourself.”

He stopped and waited for her. She had to say something. And the honesty in him demanded the same of her. “I thought,” she moistened her lips, “I thought – when you left – I thought that was the end.”

“And it nearly was,” he said. “I realized that, if I didn’t come back, we were finished. We’d never survive the way we left things.”

She saw the truth of that. She’d laid too heavy a burden on him, she saw now, with that desperate confession. She had made it impossible for them ever to meet again, except….

Her heart was beating fast now. She took all her courage in hand. “Richard—”

He looked at her, and waited.

She gestured blindly, and to her horror she felt the burning of tears in her eyes. “But you came back. And you – you said that there was no going back. That sex changes things.” Oh, God, she was not going to cry! She was going to face this squarely. After everything else she’d endured, she
would
face this. She said desperately, “Has everything changed?”

Silence. She blinked away the sting in her eyes and stared hard at him, across the table, across the whole of their lives, and waited for the answer she could not read in his eyes.

He said quietly, “That’s up to you.”

She drew a painful breath.

Richard’s hands closed around hers, and she surrendered to the warm, firm touch of his fingers on hers. “I was wrong last night,” he said, “wrong for more years than I want to think. You were right, I never saw you. But I do know I’m doing the right thing, Laura, when I tell you that you can decide that last night changed nothing. If you want to write off last night as an experiment—”

“No—”

“We can, you know.” He overrode her words, ignoring the way her fingernails were digging into his hands. “We can decide that last night we laid some old ghosts, satisfied some old curiosity. We grew up together, and it’s only natural that, after all these years apart, our friendship has turned into attraction. But we can take care of that. We can sit here rationally and decide that last night changed nothing, and we put it aside and go on from there. And, I promise you, we can make that work.”

Her heart sank.

“Or,” he continued, “we can decide that there’s no going back, last night changed everything. We can go forward, see what we have to give to each other. Laura,” and his voice made her look at him, “it is up to you.”

She wanted to look away, but couldn’t. She whispered, “What do you want to do?”

“What I want,” Richard said, “is to do what you want.”

“I don’t—” and now she had to look away. She couldn’t stand to keep looking at his unflinching gaze. “I don’t want last night to have been – some kind of casual sex – it wasn’t, was it?”

“No,” said Richard above her bowed head. “I’ve never had casual sex. I’ve never made love with a woman I didn’t care about, and last night was no exception. Laura. Look up at me, Laura. It wasn’t casual.”

She regained her voice. She
had
to say it; she couldn’t let it languish unspoken between them. “Last night – last night I told you I loved you.”

The gift so long unclaimed… and did he claim it now? Or ever?

He took a deep breath, and his eyes turned grave and distant. “I know,” he said, “and of all the gifts you’ve given me, that one I deserve the least. I’ve abused your feelings for me for longer than I want to remember. But, after all that, you still love me. And – and of course you want it returned, don’t you? I wish I could say it, Laurie. But I can’t. I just don’t have it in me anymore.”

The morning stood still. She didn’t breathe.

“I was in love once,” he said, “you know that. I’ve been in love with one woman in my life, and what a disaster that turned out to be. I don’t trust being in love. I don’t trust feeling that the world is well lost for love, because I nearly lost the world for it, and it wasn’t worth it. Still—”

He lifted a hand and touched her hair. She lifted her free hand and held it to his, and she felt the lifeblood in his wrist against her face.

“It felt very right waking up beside you this morning.” And now the distance had dropped away from his eyes. “The world has felt very right for the last couple of weeks, ever since you came home. Dear God, Laurie, I never realized how much I missed you, what a hole you left in my life. Maybe I’ll never be in love with you, maybe I’ll never be able to give you all that you want and deserve, but I do love you, you’re part of me and part of my life, the best part too. When I think back to the best moments of my life, you were always a part of those, you’re as interwoven into my life as the air and the sun here in Virginia, and that’s worth a lot to me, and we can build from there – if you want to.”

So it was up to her, as he had said. She thought, a wisp of a thought to tuck away and take out later to ponder, that he had laid his heart in her hands, no matter that he thought he hadn’t a heart to lay.

She didn’t trust her voice. She nodded vigorously, and held on hard to his hands.

“Then,” and she heard him controlling his voice, “we certainly owe ourselves a chance.”

Joy sparkled in her blood.

She wasn’t aware of her movement, that she stood up or that he pulled her towards him, but somehow she ended up in a rush in his arms, on his lap, her arms around his neck, her cheek against his hair, his head resting warmly against her breast. And for all that he could never love her – he held her tightly against him, as if he could never let her go.

~•~

“All right,” Richard said presently, when they came back to themselves and reality, and she was warmly tucked in at his side, “let’s get busy. What are your plans for today?”

He sounded so businesslike that Laura decided to have some fun. She had precious little experience in flirting with him, anyway. “To see if you can repeat your performance a third time in twenty-four hours.”

He had been pulling out his Blackberry, so her words caught him off guard. She watched with interest as a dull color hit his cheekbones. “I said today, not tonight,” but his mouth was twitching in laughter. “Any plans?”

She helped herself to the remains of his bagel. “Nothing that can’t wait. Why?”

“I thought we might get out of here for the weekend.” He was consulting his Blackberry. Oh, heavens, so he was as gadget-happy as Cam… she had much to learn about this man. “Julie said you like antiques. There’s an antique fair up near Gettysburg and another at Charlottesville. We could go up to Pennsylvania first and then come back down this afternoon and stop in at the other one.”

She didn’t need time to think. “I’d love to. Are you going to fly us?”

“Yes. We can stay in Charlottesville tonight – I know a great B&B, and then—” he gave her a smile, “I made you a promise years ago that I didn’t keep, that I would show you Monticello. I’d like to take you there. Next to Ashmore Park, it’s my favorite place in the world.”

A romantic weekend away… and more of his heart. “Give me ten minutes.”

~•~

It took thirty minutes, though, to pack, set out food and water for Max, and leave word that she would be gone. Laura pondered the wording of her email to Meg and Mark – how much truth to include?  – but then wrote tersely that she was going for a long drive in the mountains and not to call her unless there was an emergency. She’d hear from one or the other soon enough.

Oh, and wasn’t
that
going to be a pleasant conversation…
I’m going away with my lover, no one you’ve met, but he has been the defining arc over my life…

She spared a moment for a practical matter. A quick glance at a private calendar on her computer confirmed that last night was safe; she had nothing to consider for another few days, long enough certainly to get through the weekend. But by the end of the week she was going to need that diaphragm tucked in the upper right drawer of her dresser in the London flat. She wrote a quick email to Terry, who had an extra key.

Laura clicked
Send
and had a sudden mental image of Terry’s face when he received the message. No doubt he and Roger would fire back emails demanding details after they sent her package on the next plane. She powered down her computer and looked across the room at Richard, pacing around while he called for a reservation for the night.

All this technology, she thought. Two hundred years ago, she might have written a quick letter and run off with her lover on horseback, turning their backs on a world that would have roundly condemned their liaison. Now… cell phones and call forwarding to shield their location from discovery, and emails to summon birth control on the next transatlantic flight – all the trappings of a modern couple, and yet here they were in this old-fashioned room, engaging in a timeless lovers’ gamble.
Will I win your heart? Will you love me?

Richard finished his call. “We’re in luck. One of my professors and his wife run a B&B in Charlottesville, and they’ve got their best room open.”

She wondered if the professor had ever met Diana, and immediately shut away the thought.
He’s mine now. She doesn’t count anymore. Not after what she did to him.

“Just one more call,” he said. “I need to send Julie over to Lucy’s for the weekend. She wasn’t awake when I went home this morning.”

~•~

For most of the night, Julie Ashmore had sat waiting, arms wrapped around her knees, listening for her father’s return.

Something terrible was happening. She could feel it.

It had happened at her grandfather’s house earlier that day. The sight of Laura’s car outside the house had surprised her, at first, as she drove past, and only when she slowed down did she notice the front door standing open.

And, when she’d parked next to the Jaguar, she’d seen the splashes of red on the veranda.

She’d stood outside, screaming for Laura, for ages. Her throat still hurt. But no one had been in the house, no one alive at least, and all the time she screamed with answer only from the birds, she had remembered the last time blood had stained this house.

Finally, because she had to know, she’d taken the only weapon in the trunk, a lug wrench. Heart beating so hard that it hurt, that she could scarcely breathe, she had entered the house. Eyes darting constantly, making sure that her back was covered – she hadn’t watched hours of television drama for nothing – she’d searched through the house.

Her mother’s tote bag lying carelessly in the music room had brought fear high into her throat. And the room itself – she’d seen right away that things were slightly out of place, sheet music in disarray, the piano bench pulled out, the metronome no longer front and center. She’d dropped the lug wrench in favor of the metronome, because those ugly spikes could inflict far more deadly damage, and she’d crept upstairs in search of Diana and Laura.

Diana and Laura. Two sisters. One not quite right in the head – she knew that, no matter how it hurt to think that about the woman who had given her birth – and the other still a stranger, subtly mysterious, subtly dangerous in her secrets. What had happened between them that blood stained the house and her mother’s car was missing?

Then, in Diana’s room, she’d found a horror beyond imagination. Even a body, she thought now, rocking herself in the heart of the night, would have been less terrifying. At least she would have
known
. But no fallen sister had haunted the room. Only a shattered mirror, shards of glass lying on the floor, and a gold silk ball gown damaged forever by bloodshed.

Had Diana turned on Laura, or Laura on Diana? And why?

She’d torn downstairs and called her father in Charleston. He’d been mildly irritated at first at being called out of his meeting; his irritation had turned to alarm as soon as she’d stammered out what she had found. “Get out of there!” he’d snapped. “Now!” And she’d dropped the phone and run to the car, conscious now of her stupidity in entering a deserted house where horror hung in the air.

And then – silence. She’d driven home as fast as she could, car doors locked, and run into the house as if all the furies pursued her. And there, protected by the fortress of land and security gates and passworded keypads, she’d waited in silence for word.

Surely her father would return soon.

Tom’s phone call mid-evening had broken the silence, but despite the urgency in his voice, he told her nothing. “Tell him to page me. Doesn’t matter how late. I have to talk to him ASAP.” And she’d dutifully written the note for her father, and worried what was keeping him.

The house was still. She didn’t mind being alone. Now that she had her license, Richard no longer obsessed about leaving her by herself if he had to work late. Normally, she welcomed the solitude; she could play her CDs as loud as she wanted, dance around the living room, and watch junk movies on the satellite TV. She could play the piano in the conservatory and shake the rafters. She could call anyone she wanted for as long as she wanted. She could chat on the Internet without her father asking her what she was doing.

She found solace this evening at her piano. She hadn’t practiced in a couple of days – not since Laura had ripped off good-Julie’s mask – and she had a lesson the next day. Out came Tchaikovsky, and for two hours she immersed herself in notes and arpeggios and pathos. When the bulb in the lamp burned out and thrust her into the twilight of a darkened room, she ignored it and kept on playing.

She kept part of her mind disengaged, listening for the faint hum of Richard’s car.

Then – late, later than she would have ever thought – she heard him pull up in front of the house. She traced his footsteps up the steps to the door; she heard the front door open. And, in the light filtering in from the great room, she saw him toss his suit jacket down on the back of the sofa.