Finding Laura (12 page)

Amelia hadn’t mentioned Daniel. Was he here? Did a man who held the financial reins of a vast family business have to “go into the city” to work on weekdays, or was the big desk in the study meant for him? He lived here most of the time, Laura believed, though he made frequent trips out of Atlanta on business and sometimes stayed away for weeks or months.

Was he here?

Of course, Laura’s information was culled almost entirely from Cassidy and her tabloid sources, and there was some doubt as to its accuracy. He was single, that much seemed certain, and there had been no mention of a particular lady friend. He was thirty-two, though he looked older. A financial genius, it was said. A hard man, it was said.

Was he here?

“Already hard at work?”

His deep voice came so suddenly upon the heels of her wistful musings that Laura jerked and looked up at him with wide eyes. He was standing no more than a few feet away, moving on panther feet she hadn’t heard, and he was dressed less formally than she’d last seen him, in dark slacks and a white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled carelessly back over his forearms.

He was … 
more
than she remembered, though that hardly seemed possible. He was bigger, more powerful-looking, a more intense jolt to her senses. She felt oddly light-headed, looking at him, as if she had lurched too suddenly to her feet. It was a sensation that was both familiar and strange, like the echo of something she had felt at some other, long-ago point of her life.

Realizing he was waiting for a response, she got a grip on herself. “Why not? Amelia wants her portrait.”

He slid his hands into his pockets and nodded slightly.
“So she does. And you want to find out if you’re a real artist. What’s the verdict so far?”

“It’s too early to tell. I’ve only done one sketch.” Try as she might, she couldn’t read what lay behind the pale sheen of his eyes, and that hard face gave away nothing of his thoughts. Did he still believe she had been his brother’s mistress?

“Have you been bothered any more by the press?” he asked.

Laura shrugged. “Not very much, no. Or the police. Try as they will, they can’t connect me to your brother before the day he was killed.”

Daniel smiled slightly. “Still protesting your innocence to me, Laura?”

She hugged the sketchpad to her breasts, wishing it were a shield. “I don’t like knowing that you don’t believe me. Especially now. I’ll be spending so much time here, under your roof—”

“It’s Amelia’s roof,” he interrupted. “As long as she lives, this house is Amelia’s. So why does my opinion matter?”

She stared at him, baffled by what she felt, by the longing to go to him now with the pure and simple attraction of iron filings to a magnet. Yet she was wary of him, not afraid but apprehensive and uneasy, sensing once more an intensity she couldn’t define lurking just below his calm surface. When he showed so little, how could she possibly know what it was he felt?

“Laura? Why does my opinion matter?” he asked very softly.

“Because it matters,” she whispered.

“Why? Why do you care what I think?”

She felt her heart beating. It was beating very hard, because she could feel it throughout her body, in every limb and under every square inch of her flesh. And she could have sworn she could hear it as well, thumping
through the wall of her chest, through her breasts, against the sketchpad she held so tightly.

His eyes had changed. There was warmth there, heat, shimmering like molten silver. It was desire. No, more than that, far more. It was the same longing she felt, the same aching need, something so powerful it was essential to his very being. It was alive in him as it was in her, struggling to escape, to find satisfaction. It called to her like a siren song.

Laura had no idea what she might have said or done if Amelia had not come back into the conservatory just then. But she did come back, her brisk voice cutting through a silence that had become profound.

“You have a phone call, Daniel. Laura, lunch is ready.”

Laura looked at her, blinking as though she had just awakened from a deep sleep. Then she looked back at Daniel, and his eyes were enigmatic once more.
Or have they always been? Am I imagining what I want to see?

“Thank you, Amelia,” he said politely. “May I join you and Laura for lunch?”

“Of course.” She was equally polite.

“Then I’ll see you both shortly.” He turned and went into the house, moving easily for a big man, gracefully.

Laura couldn’t stop watching him until he was lost to sight.

“Ready for lunch?” Amelia asked brightly.

Still holding her sketchpad to her breasts, Laura slowly got to her feet. Her whole body was aching, and not because of sitting for so long. She moved to meet Amelia, not really conscious of the other woman until thin fingers gripped her arm tightly.

“Child—I have to warn you.”

Laura stopped and looked down into worried brown eyes. “Warn me? About what?”

Amelia glanced around nervously, then lowered her voice until it was hardly more than a whisper. “Be careful
of Daniel. He’s a dangerous man, Laura. He’s a very dangerous man.” She released Laura’s arm and quickly moved toward the house, almost scurrying as though she were panicked.

Laura stared after her, chilled.

S
he caught up with Amelia just as the old lady went into a parlor down a hallway from the conservatory, but as desperately as she wanted to, Laura was unable to press Amelia on the subject of Daniel for the moment. The parlor was occupied.

“Laura,” Amelia said, bright and seemingly untroubled once again, “I’d like you to meet Kerry, Peter’s wife. This is Laura Sutherland, Kerry.”

Kerry Kilbourne came as a total shock to Laura, and quite effectively distracted her from confused thoughts about Daniel. Kerry was young, for one thing, probably no more than twenty-three or twenty-four. But her age wasn’t the real shock. Her appearance was. In most any eyes she would have been seen as plain at best, with a thin, pale face and indeterminate features. Her hair was by far her best feature, thick, shining, and the lovely shade of creamy gold that could never come out of a bottle; she wore it simply, pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck with a dark ribbon. She was about Laura’s height,
but carried too little weight, and her angular body appeared positively bony in an ill-fitting dark blouse and too long skirt.

Unwarned but innately sensitive, Laura managed not to wince when Kerry turned her head toward the guest, revealing the left side of her face. It was badly scarred. From just under her eye all the way down to at least the collar of her blouse, her pale flesh was puckered and furrowed in what must have been the result of some kind of terrible burn.

Both her eye and her mouth were undamaged, and when she offered Laura a tentative smile, the scarred half of her face seemed to writhe and darken, as if mocking the gesture. “How do you do,” she said softly, her polite tone that of a child with manners drummed into her.

To the courteous greeting, Laura could only reply, “Fine, thank you, Mrs. Kilbourne. I—I’m so sorry about your husband.”

Kerry’s smile was unutterably gentle, and there was nothing in her hazel eyes to hint at her thoughts or emotions about Laura’s presence here, or even the general strain she had to be feeling. “Thank you.”

“There are too many Mrs. Kilbournes in this house, Laura,” Amelia said in a decided tone. “We’ll be less confused if you use everyone’s Christian name.”

Laura saw an almost imperceptible nod from Kerry, and said, “All right, Amelia, I’ll do that.”

“Fine. Kerry, where’s Madeline?”

“I haven’t seen her, Amelia.”

“Anne?”

“No. I suppose she’s still out shopping.”

Amelia was obviously displeased, but all she said was, “Well, we’ll start without them then. This way, Laura.”

Kerry moved with striking grace, her angular body seeming to flow and take on an almost sensual presence, and as Laura followed the younger woman and Amelia
from the parlor, she had to wonder if fate had a sense of justice or merely cruelty to attempt to balance ugliness with traces of beauty.

She also had to wonder at the decidedly odd couple Kerry and Peter had been. They couldn’t have been married more than a few years, and since it seemed certain that Peter had been in a motel room with another woman the night he died, he had clearly not been faithful to his young wife. Why had he married her? Had he, in his own way, loved her? Pitied her?

And what about Kerry? Married to an incredibly handsome and charming philanderer, what had her life been like?

Laura couldn’t help remembering Cassidy’s merry recitation of tabloid gossip.
“I haven’t even mentioned Peter’s wife Kerry. Don’t you want to hear about her and the chauffeur?”

Somehow, Laura doubted that this sweetly smiling, damaged young woman was playing footsie with the family chauffeur, but one never knew, after all. Perhaps she
had
found a lover when her husband’s attention had wandered. Perhaps theirs had been a marriage based on the understanding that each was free to find pleasure elsewhere, or perhaps they had married for purely businesslike reasons and emotion hadn’t entered into it.

Laura told herself that no outsider could possibly know what brought two people together, and that she was being unfair in trying to understand Kerry and Peter’s marriage when she knew so very little about them both. But it was yet another odd note in this situation, and there was no way she could keep herself from speculating.

That speculation was cast aside, however, when they reached the formal dining room to find Daniel there. Either his telephone call hadn’t required more than a minute or two of his time, or else he had considered being here more important; Laura didn’t know which it was, but
would have bet the latter, if only because she had the idea nothing went on in this house without his awareness and attention.

“You can leave your sketchpad on the sideboard, Laura,” he told her, and it was only then that she realized she was still holding the thing like a shield. She put it where he suggested, then saw Amelia make a slight gesture indicating where she was to sit, on the old lady’s right hand. Daniel immediately pulled out the chair for her, and Laura was so rattled by then that she took her place with awkward stiffness.

“That’s normally Alex’s place, Laura,” Amelia said, waiting regally for her grandson to hold her own chair, “but I believe I’ll move him across the table to Peter’s chair.”

Kerry was quietly taking a chair on the other side of the table and one place down from Amelia’s left hand, not waiting for Daniel to seat her and apparently unmoved by Amelia’s words. It was Daniel who spoke, as he seated his grandmother, his tone indifferent despite the hint of sarcasm in his words.

“This house is full of rituals, Laura, most of them Amelia’s.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a routine,” Amelia retorted. “I like for things to be in their proper places.”

“And people as well,” Daniel noted, but not as if he cared one way or the other.

It seemed everyone had his or her assigned place at the dining table, at any rate, Laura thought. There was a place set beside Kerry on Amelia’s left hand, empty at present; the other three chairs on that side of the table bore no place settings. On Laura’s side, there was a place setting at the chair next to her, then a chair without a place setting, and then one last place setting.

Daniel went to his place, leaving two empty chairs between him and Laura. She turned her head slightly to
glance at him as he sat down, and she was afraid her disappointment showed because she could have sworn she caught a hint of amused understanding in his pale eyes.

“He’s a very dangerous man.”

The truth? Or merely another chess piece moved in the subtle game between Amelia and Daniel? Was the old lady genuinely concerned about Laura’s safety and well-being, or was she bent on making certain that Laura was
her
pawn rather than Daniel’s?

Laura had no way of knowing. But after Amelia’s seemingly panicked “warning,” she felt more than ever that she had let herself get involved in something far beyond her understanding. Something dangerous.

“Where’s Josie?” Amelia asked.

“Coming,” Daniel replied. “The phone caught her as I left the library.”

“And Madeline?”

“Sleeping. The doctor left some pills with me, and I thought she needed sleep worse than lunch.”

Daniel’s voice was matter-of-fact and certainly without provocation, yet Amelia stiffened and stared down the table at him as if he had quite deliberately offended her. “I wanted her to meet Laura.”

Daniel smiled pleasantly as he unfolded his napkin. “You didn’t want a scene, did you, Amelia? Mother isn’t far from a breakdown, I think we both know that. Sleeping today will help. She can meet Laura tomorrow.”

Before Amelia could respond to that, Josie hurried into the room, apologetic and somewhat harassed. “I’m sorry, Amelia—it was that dratted plumber again, making excuses for not being here today when he promised he would be. Tomorrow, and this time he
swears
. Hello, Laura.”

“Hello, Josie.” Even more than before, Laura felt that insidious sense of being drawn into this household, this family. It was unsettling. The matter-of-fact acceptance of
both Kerry and Josie made her more wary than at ease, and she couldn’t help being thankful that at least one person in this house—the missing Madeline—seemed to be behaving normally regarding Peter’s death. The poor lady was also no doubt upset by Laura’s presence here in the house, something Laura completely understood.

In fact, Laura would have felt better if one or two of the people seated at this table looked at her in open suspicion or even haughty dislike. That at least would have seemed more normal. More expected. And Laura would know, then, how to attempt to defend herself; she would know why she felt so uneasy and threatened. As it was, all she knew was that she felt very much out of place despite the calm acceptance of those around her.