Memory and Desire (43 page)

With a strangled sputter Alec caught his breath. “I'm all right,” he croaked. “Thank you."

Richard landed a fraternal punch on Alec's arm and backed off. “You thought if you had witnesses you'd have to do the right thing by her?"

“Yes, I did do."

“Conscience is a wonderful thing,” said Claire, but refrained from adding,
I could not love thee dear so much loved I not honor more.

She caught Richard's bloodshot eye and offered him a dry smile. She'd thought he was the last man on Earth who knew what honor meant. She was wrong. But then, unlike Alec, Richard could have his honor and his love, too.

“Alec? Claire? Richard?” A rush of footsteps and Kate flung herself through the door. Her face was daubed with dirt and her blond hair made a halo around her head. “There you are! They brought Diana out, said you were all right, but you didn't show."

Alec squared his shoulders and wiped his arm across his face, which smeared the soot and tears into war paint. “We're all right."

“Right.” Kate tried to smooth down her hair.

“Thank you,” Alec said, relieving Richard of the cardboard box. “I'll leave this off at the house, see to the dog, be back straightaway, Kate."

“Those broken windows want covering,” Richard said. “We should be looking out live embers. The lock's damaged..."

Alec shook his head. “I'll see to the Hall. You see to Claire."

I don't need seeing to, Claire thought. So what if she felt as though she'd been beaten, body and mind. So what if her throat was raw, her eyes burned, her nose ran, and she was wet and chilled to the bone, one raindrop away from trembling. She wasn't any worse off than the men.

Now, though, would be a good time to keep her feminist credentials in her pocket. What needed seeing to was her and Richard. Let Alec do his job. That's what he needed.

She took Richard's hand and tugged. With a nod of assent, he went along. They followed Kate and Alec down through the house and out into a cold, drenching, deadening rain shot with the pulsating lights of fire engines and police cars. Inside an ambulance paramedics worked over a twisting and heaving body. Diana. She was screaming, a high, thin, tearing sound like the cry of an animal caught in a trap, a sound sharp enough to cut through the rumble of engines and the thudding of the rain.

Right now Claire didn't care about Diana. Tomorrow, probably, she'd care. Not now.

It really was all over but the shouting.

Richard waved away Kate's offer of oxygen, escorted Claire to the door of the Lodge, and handed her inside like an eighteenth-century gallant handing a lady into a carriage. But he didn't look anything like an eighteenth century gallant. He looked like Richard, the angles of his face whetted and his eyes smoldering.

“Have a shower,” he told her. “There're clean pajamas in the dresser drawer. I'll be back soon as may be."

Claire looked at the stack of papers on the table by the door. She'd never asked to see that sketch of Melinda again. That work of art, catching Melinda's vitality, her resilience, her sense of humor. Sometime, Claire promised herself, she'd get that sketch out and appreciate it.

A few steps further on she stopped again, considering the height of the stairs. She'd climbed them before to take bladder breaks during her and Richard's videofests, when they'd sat side by side on the couch touching only intellectually. Which wasn't at all a bad place to start a relationship.

By paying close attention to the positioning of each foot she managed to get up the stairs and into the bedroom.

The four-poster bed was spread up, not actually made. A sweater was draped over a chair and a pair of boots lay turned on their sides below it. The top of the dresser displayed an assortment of litter—receipts, a stack of books, an empty vase, a bit of plaster molding, several coins.

Claire opened the top drawer. Socks, shorts, and T-shirts, more or less folded into piles. She tried the next one. Aha—a pair of silk pajamas in a dark blue pinstripe. And where had he gotten those? From the former fiancée? They looked as though they'd never been worn. Whatever. Gathering up the pajamas, Claire crossed to the window and looked out.

According to the clock on the nightstand it was barely past seven. But outside was gloom, the rain teeming down from clouds heavy as lead. There was Kate climbing into the ambulance. The door shut and it pulled out into the darkness. One of the fire engines left, too. Its headlights flashed across the window, making Claire wince, and then vanished.

Blake was hunched beneath an umbrella—her abandoned umbrella, maybe. They all looked alike. He was directing the ebb and flow of people across the floodlit forecourt, every body casting a tenuous shadow. Only two people still sat on the bleachers, reporters, probably. She wanted to lean out the window and yell at them, “The show's over! Go home!"

Even now, though, the show wasn't yet over. Claire turned around. Yes, she could see her and Richard in that bed, their bodies flexing and loosing together until all the hurt was gone. Except the hurt wouldn't be gone. They'd wake up to unresolved issues.

She went into the bathroom, stripped off her wet and filthy clothing, hung them from a handy hanger, and stepped into the shower. No surprise that Richard's shampoo was mildly herbal, soothing to her burning lungs but not at all sweet.

Claire found the hair dryer hanging from a hook and used the comb from the medicine cabinet. Then, with a shrug, she used the toothbrush, too. This was all very intimate. No reason she couldn't have gone back to her flat or at least asked one of the Nairs to bring her some things. But no, intimacy was one of the issues right now, wasn't it?

As for the other issues—her stomach growled, perhaps with hunger, perhaps reminding her that that wail of anguish and fear still lurked in its depths. Her face in the mirror seemed strange, as though her foundations had shifted and a familiar façade had crumbled.

As she stepped out of the bathroom she heard voices downstairs, Nigel's aristocratic tones contrasting with Richard's slight north-of-the-border lilt. Which was rasping into nothingness. She'd better get to the kitchen and put the kettle on. It was her turn to pour tea and whiskey down him.

The door slammed as Claire started down the stairs. She passed Richard coming up. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Oh aye,” he said hoarsely. And, looking up and down her body, added, “That it is."

Between the cool air and the smooth silk, her nipples were sending him a real come-hither message. Her shell-shocked face, though, was probably telling him to duck and cover. With a sound that almost made it to a laugh, Claire went on into the kitchen. The bread was in the breadbox, the cheese in the fridge, the tea in the cabinet. A couple of cookies weren't going to cut it. Lunch had been a long time ago.

Yes, a long, desperate, wrenching time ago. At least no one, especially herself, had died this afternoon. Except Elizabeth. Alec had managed to resolve one of his issues—not that a satisfying resolution had been possible. Claire reached for the teapot. Upstairs the shower turned on.

By the time she had the sandwiches toasted and the tea brewed, the noises of the shower and then the hair dryer had stopped. Footsteps on the staircase coincided with a knock on the door.

Alec's voice croaked something. Richard croaked back. The door shut. Through the kitchen window Claire saw Alec walk into the forecourt, then stop and turn back toward the Lodge. Against the backdrop of the Hall his tall body seemed even taller, like a standing stone. He raised both hands. His mouth moved. He was blessing them, no doubt, or maybe even enclosing the Lodge in a magic bubble of time and space, shutting out the world.

The problem, Claire thought, was that she and Richard had brought the world in with them. She loaded the food onto a tray, carried it into the sitting room, set it down on the coffee table.

Richard was kneeling on the hearth lighting a fire. Claire remembered when her mother had given her The Lecture, she'd used fire as a metaphor for sex—it could burn down your house or it could keep you warm and cook your food. Your choice.

If houses both metaphorical and literal hadn't been burning so recently, Claire would've tried the old chestnut,
Come on baby, light my fire.
As it was, she sat down on the couch and opened the bottle of whiskey. “Is Alec all right?"

“He will be, given time.” Richard brushed off his hands and stood up. A tiny flame nibbled at the tinder. “He said to throw those twigs on the fire."

“As a soporific or an aphrodisiac?"

“We'll be finding out, I expect. Ah, food. Brilliant."

“Eat,” Claire ordered him.

Richard's eyes were less bloodshot now that he was wearing his glasses. He also wore a knee-length bronze-colored robe, exposing trim, strong, shapely calves and feet. He'd look great in a kilt, wouldn't he? And he might not be wearing anything under that robe, either—well, anything other than the T-shirt she could see between its lapels. The cut he'd gotten on his forearm digging up Melinda's body was nothing more than a pink crease. His hair was lying down obediently on either side of a part. If she interpreted that correctly, it meant he was tired, relatively calm, but probably no less determined than she was to see it through.

He poured a dollop of whiskey into her cup as well as his own and recapped the bottle. Its odor was fresh and bracing as a sea wind, complimenting the fragrant smell emanating from Alec's twigs. Claire took a deep drink and discovered she could breathe without wheezing. The toasted cheese sandwich tasted better than frou-frou dishes she'd eaten in five-star restaurants.

Richard folded a last string of melted cheese into his mouth, picked up a second sandwich, set it back down. He refilled his cup with tea and added another drop of whiskey. Did he have a wail of anguish in his gut, too? Claire wondered. The one in hers might have receded for a time but was now coming back three times as strong, like a tidal wave.

Now, she thought. Now we consider the issues. “You didn't confess everything to the trustees this morning, did you?"

“If it all comes out at Elliot's inquest or Diana's trial, then it comes out. I'm not suicidal—my running into a burning house to the contrary.” Richard's lips thinned to fatalistic line.

“If I hadn't come here, if Melinda hadn't come here, nothing would be coming out. You'd be sitting here drawing your plans, making your sketches, and writing out your lists without a worry in the world."

“Maybe not the same worries,” he said. “But then, I'd be sitting here without you, wouldn't I?"

She was glad he was still thinking along those lines. Even so, her own honor demanded its due. “I never thought my needing to find Melinda would hurt anyone else. Diana, well, she asked for what's happened to her. Alec—he did, too, in a way. Elliot, ditto. But you—you've taken collateral damage and all you've needed is to follow your bliss. Because Melinda and I came here you'll lose that. You'll lose the Hall. The village'll lose the Hall. Psychically Somerstowe is going to look like one of those bombed out towns in Bosnia or Kosovo, all because of Melinda. Because of me...” Claire stopped, trying to gulp that tidal wail back down.

Richard set his cup on the tray. “Claire, there was too much going on behind the scenes here. It needed bringing out."

“But you..."

“I have asked for it. I thought the Hall was worth lying for. And I couldn't connect with Melinda."

“You and her, that would've been a lie, too. And I'm not saying so just because I want you for myself."

One corner of Richard's mouth and his left eyebrow loosened, hinting at a smile. “Maybe it all happened because of my ancestor who built the Hall. Or Cecil, who lived a melodrama. Or Phillip, who played at writing it out. Fate or free will? Who knows? At the end of the day, it was because of their own desires, their own flaws—because of mine—that Melinda sent me that letter and Diana read it and ... It's a damned bloody mess, right enough, but you can't blame yourself for it."

“Sure I can. Free will, right?” She tried to smile but the wail filled her throat—oh hell, she was going to cry. She hated crying in front of anyone. She hated looking weak. She hated being weak.

She hated being frightened and yet she'd spent the last few weeks—the last year—frightened first of not knowing and then frightened of knowing, frightened of some nameless criminal and then frightened of Diana, frightened of fire, of the dark, of Richard, even. Because if Melinda had changed her life once, Richard was going to change it again. Either way, by accepting or rejecting her, the rest of her life hinged on this moment. And that frightened her, too.

She sniffed, picked up a paper napkin from the tray, took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes. “Still got smoke in them,” she muttered.

Richard nodded understandingly.

She wasn't fooling him one bit. “I thought when I knew how Melinda died everything would be, well, not all right, I'm not exactly getting her back or anything. But she's the one who'd always tell me, fight the battle and then move on. Let it go. Let go.” Claire sniffed again. “It's just that standing there this afternoon listening to Diana telling me, bragging to me, about murdering my sister—it was what I needed, to know why. And yet the why is so wrong, so petty, so stupid."

A tremor started in her stomach and expanded, shaking, rattling, rolling what thin façade of composure she had left. She doubled over in agony, her cry of pain turning into shuddering sobs.

Richard took her glasses from her hand and set them on the tray. He wrapped her in his arms and rocked her against his shoulder. In only a few minutes her sobs dwindled into hiccups. When she lay back against him limp as seaweed he handed her another napkin.

His voice in her ear was smooth below the hoarseness. He'd always been contradictory. That was one of the things she liked about him. “It's not a matter of pettiness and stupidity. It's a matter of perception. The way Diana needed to see herself as Elizabeth, for example."

“It was Melinda who was really playing Elizabeth. You know, the focus of other people's resentments, guilts, desires. The one who's causing your problems for you. Because your problems are always someone else's fault, never your own."