All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (67 page)

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 enough 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 the 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.”

Her words fell into an appalling well of silence, a black hole absorbing all other sound. Everyone heard her, there was no doubt, not from their faces, and, in that second, she finally heard her words, staking a devastating claim to the man standing in shock beside her.

It was the voice cracking before an audience, the heel coming off a shoe during an entrance, the sneeze during a soliloquy picked up by an open mike. It was every embarrassing moment she’d ever imagined, rolled into one.

She reacted on instinct, fight-or-flight adrenaline overtaking that first wave of leaden horror. She had one thought, to live through the next minute, the next hour. Not to stand there, rooted in icy horror, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to muster a covering laugh that would say,
I’m joking, I’m joking! Of course, I’m not his mistress!

But of course, she said nothing. Laura St. Bride, having said it all, had nothing to say.

And then, salvation.

Not missing a beat, Cat stepped in, Cat who could outstare, outwit, outlast anyone. Cat, who would always survive. Cat, who had the courage – or the nerve – to give the entourage a blinding smile and take her speechless lover’s arm.

“Let’s go, Richard, I don’t want to miss the rest of the tour.”

Cat, who practically dragged him out of the bedroom.

Her bravado lasted most of the way through the parlor tour. She was aware of Richard standing silently beside her, of the attention from his newfound friends: speculation from the doctor, unwelcome interest from the professional man, comrade-in-arms respect from the wife, disapproval from the New Jersey women, who, she now noticed, wore crosses and probably couldn’t wait to report to their Bible study group that they had met Jezebel in the flesh. On the plus side, the Boston girls scurried to the other side of the group after she glared at them.

She’d been a mother for thirteen years. She’d perfected the art of the quelling glare.

It took a few minutes of standing in the sunny room, with its gorgeous view of the western lawn where they had so recently stood, half-listening to the discussion about the artwork and the original panes of glass in the windows, before the adrenaline flood began to recede and reality began to wash in on her, and the full weight of what she had done in Jefferson’s bedroom fell on her.

I’m his mistress.

Oh, dear God, had she really said something that crude? She hadn’t, she couldn’t have. Those words, that scene – that wasn’t her. That wasn’t Laura Abbott, who gave new meaning to holding up the wall. That wasn’t Laura St. Bride, who never caused anyone a moment’s unease to anyone.

Those immortal words.

I’m his mistress
.

Not
girlfriend
, with its innocuous claim of ownership, unlikely to cause anyone discomfort. Not that quasi-legal term,
partner
, meaning anything. Not
wife
, the ultimate keep-your-hands-off.