Chapter Twelve #4
in their new house. Not to mention my pied-a-terre with you and Sash, and a
choice of ten bedrooms at Ma's any time I want to go back
there.”
“Okay. Fair enough.”
“But being on my own, Laurie—being away from everything, I
mean—I've had time to think. I can see some things now that never
struck me before. I can see how hard it must have been for you,
living the way we did.”
Laurie
shifted uncomfortably. “I wasn't sure how much you remembered.
Neither one of us has to think about all that, you know. We both
got out—got new lives.”
“That's just it. I love my new life, and I know it was you who
saved me from my old one.” She put out a hand. She was a precise,
unsentimental creature. She said just what she meant, and her
gestures had a solid-gold sincerity: Laurie, startled, returned her
grasp and listened. “I know now that you brought me up. Not Ma,
certainly not the old monster. Just you. You were only ten when I
was born, and you took all that on. You saved me.”
“Rubbish,” Laurie said hoarsely. The lilacs and the sunshine
were trying to blur in front of his eyes. He didn't need this, not
now. “Didn't we save each other? Anyway, think how it would have
been for me without you—growing up in that bloody hothouse world
all on my own.”
Her dry
little grip increased. They sat in silence for a moment, then she
looked at him sidelong. “Hothouse, eh? Don't tell me you've started
reading reviews.”
“No, of course not. Sasha edits them for me, tells me any
useful bits.”
“He never told you that one.”
Laurie
sighed. He knew exactly what she meant. There was no point in
hiding from her, and this was a curious, stinging relief. “No. I
sneaked that one behind his back, and I...”
“You got what you deserved.” She wriggled round a little way to
face him. “One newspaper said I danced like a gazelle. That was
nice. The next one mentioned a duck. You can't let them get to you,
Laurie. Anyway, all I'm saying is—don't expect your life to be
perfect, just because you're Romeo now and you've got a swish flat
and a drop-top SL.” She craned her neck to glance at the Merc
parked among the wedding cars. “Nice choice, by the
way.”
“Thank you. I don't expect life to be perfect,
Clara.”
“You're bound to have damage after that kind of upbringing. At
any rate if you're human.”
Laurie
considered this. People got damaged on the streets, not in Mayfair
mansions with thick carpets. That had been his rule for himself,
anyway. Sasha had a right to damage, not him. And Laurie didn't
feel hurt, not from any of that. He didn't feel anything about it
at all. “Human,” he echoed thoughtfully. “Am I, though?”
“Well, you're an actor.”
Clara
let go his hand. Lithely she hitched one foot into her lap. They
both examined the narrow, upturned sole. The marks on it were
mostly healthy calluses, scar tissue that would never bleed again.
But Laurie could see that the arch was too high, the bones of the
toes too pronounced. That the musculature of her ankle was slender
but overdeveloped. “Is it meant to look this way?”
“Partly. In part it's because I drill too much. I can't help
myself. I'm not happy unless I do. Don't look so worried,
Laurie—I'm only showing you this so you'll know I understand the
differences, between humans and actors. Or dancers.”
“I should grass you up to your dragon.”
“Don't bother. She'd breathe a little fire at me, but take her
shoes off and you'd see we look the same. She understands the
difference too. So does Sasha.”
The name
hit Laurie like a mild electric shock. “I know he does.
Why...”
“Because you'd go a long way before you found anyone else who
did. My dragon's lived her whole life on her own. Sometimes I think
I might do the same.”
“Nonsense. You're eleven years old.”
“The thing is, she doesn't mind it. I wouldn't mind either—that
way I could just dance, and work, and not have to worry about
anybody else. But you—you do need someone.”
“I have someone.” Laurie shook his head in confusion. “Clara, what's
all this about?”
“You and Sasha.”
“What about us?”
“Something's different between you. There's a
distance.”
Laurie
got down off the wall. He took a few steps away, then turned to
face her, pushing his hands into his pockets. “A distance?” he said
awkwardly. “You just barely missed us doing—er...”
“The thing you don't want me to know about until I'm thirty
one?”
“Exactly. That thing. Distance doesn't seem to be a
problem.”
“Not that kind of distance.” She gestured impatiently,
dismissing sex and all its complexities to its proper place in the
universe. “The important kind. What aren't you telling him, Romeo?
What aren't you telling me?”
She was like a little bird of paradise, there on the wall of
this very English church in her wedding finery. Her eyes shone with
the sanity their mother should have had, as if it had skipped a
generation, and her proud Languedoc ancestry declared itself in the
poise of her spine. Suddenly Laurie wanted to confide in her. Out
of every soul on earth, she would be the one to understand. “I'm
not Romeo,” he said. “Not any more. I've taken a film role in
Hollywood. I won't tell you which one, but it starts in
Blood and ends in
Moon and it's
bollocks.”
It took her a second, for all her mercurial brightness.
“Blood Moon? You
took a part in Blood
Moon? Mon
dieu, Laurie, why?”
“Because I need to get Sasha away for a while. Some of the
people who wanted to hurt him—his father, the Romanian gangsters
Stefan was involved with—they should have gone to prison. But they
didn't, and I think they're here.” It was such a relief to talk. He
couldn't stop. “I've seen him—Stefan, and someone else as well. I
think they're stalking us.”
She
stared at him. She had stopped swinging her feet. She was still as
a frightened mouse, her face a colourless blank. “Does Sasha
know?”
“No. I couldn't tell him—and you mustn't either. He has
nightmares about Stefan. He's been ill.”
“The police, Laurie. Have you told them?”
“I tried. But the man who helped us, Kucharski—the case against
Stefan and all the others depended on him, and he's dead. He was
killed before he could testify.”
“Kucharski? John? That nice man?”
She
burst into tears. Laurie froze with horror. He'd forgotten that
Clara had met him, that he'd visited the Mayfair house several
times to make sure of her welfare in the wake of the Petrica case.
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean—”
“You mustn't go. You can't drag Sasha off to God knows where,
away from everything he knows.”
“You don't understand. The police can't help us. This is my
only way of protecting him.”
“Laurie, it's insane! You must at least tell him. You can face
it together, unless...”
“Unless what?” Laurie asked helplessly. What the hell had he
been thinking? Yes, she was independent, bright beyond her years.
But she was still a little kid, and he had just dumped all an
adult's cares on her. “Oh, Clara, don't cry.”
“Shut up! Unless there's something more going on here,
something to do with your bloody ego, or...” She hauled in a
sobbing breath. “Is it money? Do you need some? Because... I'm
loaded, you know. Or I will be when I come of age, and in the
meantime they give me an allowance I can't even spend, it's so
much—”
“Miss Fitzroy?”
They
both froze. Dracinsky had appeared on the steps of the church. Her
face was grim, but apparently more a beacon of safety to Clara now
than her brother's: she slipped off the wall like a scared weasel
and fled to her, evading Laurie's outstretched hand.
The
dragon cast a look over her shoulder before she led Clara away.
Laurie waited for it to strike him dead where he stood, but it was
more perplexed than angry, as if she would have helped him if she
could.
No-one could help Laurie now. He watched them leave, suddenly
cold in the afternoon sun. He had cast himself adrift—Sasha too,
and he had to make the best of it for both of them.
Your bloody ego... He
shrank from the echo, tried to shake it off like water from a cat's
fur. No. His actions were nothing to do with that. They were proud
and unselfish, not only saving his lover but making the spectacular
best of a bad job. He was going to be Devlin Steele, and build a
new world for both of them.
A shout
from across the green attracted his attention. Sasha was outside
the marquee, waving and beckoning him over to breakfast. He'd lost
his smart jacket, and from somewhere he'd acquired a child. Once
Laurie had waved back, he grinned and turned away, swinging the
infant high in the air, making the little thing shriek with
delight.
O brave new world, that has such people in it!
Laurie touched the golden rose at his lapel.
Already it was wilting, but beneath it, in his inside pocket, his
last batch of paperwork from the studio was safe—a passage out for
two, complete with cleared working visas. Sasha was listed as
staff, a language consultant and expert in Romanian culture.
Well, Blood Moon and all its predecessors had their roots in the Carpathian
mountains, whose wildness sometimes shone from Sasha’s eyes at
moments of passion or fear. Give Sasha half a day with an internet
connection, he could make himself an expert in anything you cared
to name.
Everything had fallen into place. Laurie forgot Clara’s
tears, the grey ghost and the shadow of Stefan. He forgot about
Romeo. Laurie was a man in a play—a man who’d made it so big he
could solve everyone’s problems with one golden touch. He smiled,
tossed away the dying rose, and set off to meet his new
life.