Overseas (48 page)

“He loved her,” Arthur said. “You don’t understand. He loved her. They were perfect for one another. You should have seen them together: the match of the age.”

Each word he spoke, with laser precision, penetrated my brain with its own specific sensation of pain. “Of course,” I said. “Of course.” Keep him talking. Distract him. The car rumbled uneasily below my legs, eager to be back in motion.

“I don’t mean to be cruel. You’re a nice girl. Pretty, in your way. But Flora! We all worshipped her, Julian and Geoffrey and I.”

“I know. Julian”—I swallowed—“speaks of her with such warmth, such regret.”

Keep him happy. Just keep him happy.

“He loved her so,” Arthur said wistfully. “And she loved him, of course. How could she not? As beautiful as he is. His character, his noble soul. His
spotless purity. A star, glowing above us all. There’s no one like him in this world. No honor, no decency, no
fidelity
. How I wish we had never been brought here. How I wish…”

“You love him,” I said, almost inaudibly, turning my head to read, with dawning astonishment and pity, the expression on his face. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Who doesn’t?”

“I mean you’re
in
love with him, aren’t you?”

He snapped his face to mine, and I lost him. “
In
love with him!
In
love with him! You
sordid
woman, with your commonplace vulgar mind! I loved him, I love him, with a pure love, a noble love, something as foreign to you as the age in which we were bred. And his love for her! To think he would dishonor that love, betray it, with the vile sensuous
fleshly
passion he feels for you, into which you’ve corrupted him!”

“You,” I said, “are seriously sick.” The headlamps of a passing taxi shadowed across his face, and something connected in my brain. “You. It was you following me around. You at the Starbucks that night. No wonder Julian let you…”

The crosstown light turned amber, and I felt the car poise upward, ready to take off at the green.

A screech of tires ripped through the air behind us. We both turned to see a sleek dark car whip around the center island from Ninety-second Street. Julian’s Maserati.

The lights turned green, and Arthur’s driver punched the accelerator, throwing us both back against the seat. I grabbed my seat belt and snapped it in.
Don’t,
I begged Julian.
Don’t race us. Just call the police. Don’t risk yourself. Please. Please
.

Our car was fast, but the Maserati was built for speed. Within a block it was alongside us, then pushing ahead, trying to force us over. I saw there were two figures inside: who was with him? The passenger glanced back at us; I couldn’t see his face in the shadows. I leaned forward, pressing against the window glass, trying desperately to peer through.

My window began rolling down, exposing my skin to the outside air, and then I felt something cold and hard press against my right temple, turning my guts to water. Instantly the Maserati slowed down, backing off. It dropped behind us, at a close but respectful distance, and I tried to turn and look around, to glimpse Julian’s face, but Arthur snarled, “Don’t move. Just sit.”

Don’t shake. Don’t panic. Relax. Think happy. Think Julian holding you, think of his arms, his face, his smell, his kiss. Everything will be okay. You won’t die. We haven’t even had our wedding night. Can’t die without
that.

We turned right onto Ninety-sixth Street. I wondered if Julian was still following us. We must be going onto the FDR, I thought. Nothing else in that direction.

But we didn’t go onto the FDR. We stopped instead on the block between First and Second avenues, and Arthur pulled me out of the car and up the stoop of an ordinary tenement-style walkup building. He pressed a button on the row outside the door, and someone must have been waiting for him, because it buzzed at once and he burst through the door, dragging me with him, just as a shout outside told me Julian and his companion had jumped out of the Maserati and were running after us, into the building.

They just caught the door before it closed, and I heard them running across the bare shabby lobby behind us. Arthur was pulling me up the stairs; I dragged my feet, slowing him down, and tried to look around behind us. He yanked me up on the first landing and spun me around and pressed the gun against my temple, hard.

Geoff. Geoff was the one with Julian. They both froze, staring at us.

I tried to keep my face composed. I didn’t want Julian to panic, to do something rash. His eyes locked on mine, ablaze with emotion.
I’m okay
, I mouthed to him.
Okay
.

His head made a tiny motion, perhaps a nod, and his eyes shifted to Arthur. “Put the gun down, Arthur,” he said softly. “You’ve no quarrel with her. It isn’t her fault. It’s mine.”

“No,” I squawked.

“Hush, Kate,” he said. “Put the gun down, Arthur. Let her go. We’ll all sit down and chat. Of course you’re upset. Of course you are. Just let her go.” He placed his foot casually on the next step up.

“Stop,” Arthur said. “I’ll shoot her.”

Julian stilled.

“You’re right,” Arthur went on. “It isn’t her fault.
She
didn’t know my sister.
She
didn’t betray her. Betray every principle we once held dear.”

“No, she didn’t,” Julian said. “So let her go. Let her go, and I’ll come with you. We’ll sort it all out.”

“No!” I said. “Julian,
no
! Don’t go with him.”

Nobody noticed me. Julian and Arthur stared at each other, like dogs in a ring, sizing one another up. Geoff stood there quietly, impassively, a bystander.
Do something
, I thought.
They’re your friends, for God’s
sake.

“Let her go,” Julian said, in his coaxing voice, the one I could never resist. “I’ll come with you. Willingly. No trouble.”

“Julian, no,” I whispered. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Silence hollowed out the stairwell. I heard a pair of thumps from somewhere upstairs, then another; a baby’s cry echoed faintly, fretfully, through the walls.
Won’t somebody come,
I thought, agonized.
Won’t somebody hear something, see something, call the police
.

“Very well,” Arthur said. “Have I your word of honor?”

“My word of honor.” Julian’s shoulders eased. “Let her go, without any harm, and I’ll go with you. Wherever you want. We can sort it all out.”

Arthur made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Your gun, please. Slowly.”

“He doesn’t
have
a gun,” I said.

Julian didn’t seem to hear me; he only regarded Arthur for a few seconds, opaque and thorough, eyes narrowed. Then, without any change in expression, he drew open his suit jacket and reached inside. His hand, when it emerged, held a small dark object that caught the light from the bare hallway bulb with a dull gleam.

He began walking up the steps toward us. “Oh my
God
! You had a
gun
on you?” I said.

He didn’t reply, didn’t even look at me. His eyes remained locked with Arthur’s.

“Slowly,” Arthur repeated. “Your word of honor, remember.”

Julian stopped two steps below us, his face a perfect mask, but I could see the steady rise and fall of his chest, slightly faster than usual, and the quick tick of his pulse at his throat. He placed the gun in Arthur’s empty left hand and backed down three steps, precise and measured, one foot resting watchfully on the step above.

Arthur shoved the gun in his left outside pocket and looked over at Geoff. “Well, Geoffrey?” he asked brusquely. “Give me a hand?”

And Geoff, the Judas, the filthy betraying mongrel, walked up the stairs, past Julian, and took me by the arm. “Come along. I’ll walk you outside.”

“You bastard,” I hissed. “How can you do this to him?”

He looked at me coldly and didn’t answer, only pulled me down the steps with him. I kicked out, trying to break his grip, but his arms only tightened around mine, until he was practically carrying me.

“Julian, no!” I said, as we passed him on the stairs. “This is ridiculous! He’ll try to kill you! He’s nuts!”

He paused. His hand reached out to my cheek. “Trust me, Kate,” he said. “Go home. Wait for me. Promise you’ll wait. I’ll be back, I swear it. Promise you’ll wait.
Don’t go anywhere
.”

“He’ll kill you!” Geoff was dragging me to the bottom of the steps, like the strongman in some stupid action movie. “He’s crazy, Julian!”

Geoff dragged me to the corner of the lobby and turned around, locking me in his arms. I kicked and struggled, fighting him.

Arthur was saying something to Julian; Julian nodded and turned around, walking down the stairs. Arthur followed him, the gun lowered now.

“Where are you taking him?”

“Where he should have been all along,” Arthur muttered.

Julian walked by me without even a glance; Geoff jerked me behind them, through the doors and onto the sidewalk. Cars drove by; no one noticed us. This was New York, after all. Weird stuff happened. You just pretended you didn’t see it.

Arthur opened the rear door of his car with a cordial air, and motioned Julian inside. My husband started to climb in, and then seemed to remember me; he turned his head over his shoulder and looked at me intently. Then he ducked into the car, his golden head disappearing from view, and Arthur followed him and slammed the door shut.

I turned to Geoff. “You asshole! You freaking asshole!
I love
him!
”

“Not as much as he loves you,” he said angrily. “
A Blighty one
,” he added, in a harsh mutter. He let me go, so suddenly I stumbled to my knees, and strode across the sidewalk to Arthur’s car, where he flung open the front passenger seat and jumped inside. The car leapt ahead, and something flew at me from Geoff’s window, before the black mass accelerated down the block toward the river and the FDR Drive.

I stared after them, not quite believing it. Then I looked down at the sidewalk to see what Geoff had thrown me.

A set of car keys. For the Maserati.

26.

I thought for an instant about following them. I had Julian’s car, after all. It was more than a match for Arthur’s sedan.

But I’d already lost the taillights in the traffic, and Manhattan crawled with anonymous black sedans, ferrying the affluent around town. And what did I know about car chases, anyway? I’d get lost somewhere in the South Bronx in a hundred-thousand-dollar sports car, and what use would I be then?

Trust me, Julian had said. Go home. Wait for me.

I bent down to pick up the car keys. My fingers had gone numb; my whole body teetered on the brink of shock. What had happened? Was it a dream? I’d just gotten married, the happiest day of my life; Julian had kissed these lips, these fingers; we were supposed to be leaving for our honeymoon.

Now Julian was gone. Driven away in a black sedan with a man who quite possibly wanted to kill him.

Nausea coiled around me; I placed my hand over my belly. Our baby. Julian’s baby. I went around to the driver’s side and got in and started the engine. The seat, my God, the seat was still warm. Julian’s warmth.

I thrust down the clutch and put the car in gear and merged into traffic, crossing First Avenue, which went uptown, and then turning down York. I cruised without even thinking, stopping automatically at the red lights, my brain just shutting down. Shutting everything out.

Somewhere in the Seventies my hands began to shake. I pulled over to the curb.
Trust me. Trust me. Go home. Wait for
me.

Julian, I can’t. I can’t just
wait
. Wait for how long? What if you never come back? The shaking intensified, crawling up my arms to my torso.

Okay, think. Be calm. Stop panicking. Think this through. Every problem has a solution. Who might know where they’d gone?

The answer came quickly: Hollander. The world’s leading expert on Julian Ashford. I pulled away from the curb and drove back across the avenues to Park, turned onto Julian’s street, and pulled into the garage, where I left the keys in the ignition for the attendant and hurried across the street to Julian’s house. Our house.

Eric stood on the steps, with his cell phone glued to his ear. He saw me and hung up and went forward to grab me by the arms. “Mrs. Laurence! What happened?”

“Everything’s okay,” I said brightly. “Mr. Haverton… got sick downstairs. I was just helping him back to his apartment. I’m so sorry you all were worried. Is everyone inside?”

His eyes narrowed. “Where’s Mr. Laurence?”

“Mr. Laurence thought it might be best to take him to the ER. They’re there now.” The lies ran easily off my tongue. One thing I knew for certain: I couldn’t tell anyone other than Hollander what had happened, at least for now. Because what would happen if everyone knew the truth?

Eric knew I was lying; I could see it in his face. They probably taught that kind of thing in bodyguard school. But he just nodded and opened the door for me. “Everyone’s inside,” he told me. “I’ll be waiting here.”

“Thanks, Eric. I’ll let you know if we need you.”

“You do that, Mrs. L.”

The living room was full of our dinner guests, and they all looked up when I walked in. “Honey!” Mom called out, and ran toward me. “What happened? Julian and Geoff just got up and ran out the door, and the next thing…”

“Oh, everything’s fine!” I said. “So sorry to worry you. Arthur just got completely sick on his way to the bathroom. Vomiting blood and everything. Horrible. Like a
House
episode. So instead of waiting for an ambulance,
I just jumped in the car with him to Lenox Hill and called up Julian. Of course he freaked.” I laughed. “Anyway, they’re all there right now, waiting for a doctor to see him. Total drama.”

“Blimey,” said Paulson.

“Oh, dear,” Mom said, studying me. “Are you going to miss your flight?”

“No, Mom. It’s a private jet. They’ll wait. We can’t just go off on our honeymoon with poor Arthur…” My voice caught, not on purpose.