STEELE INSEPARABLE, PART III: Ancestral Steele
AUTHOR: Madeleine Gilbert
SYNOPSIS: S5 continuation; third in a series. Laura begins to fear she's made a terrible mistake in marrying Remington when they discover the truth about his family history.
SEQUEL TO: Part I, "Steele in Perspective'; Part II, "Steele-In-Law"
DISCLAIMER: This story is not for profit and is purely for entertainment purposes. The author does not own the rights to these characters and is not now, nor ever has been, affiliated in any way with Remington Steele, its producers, its actors and their agents, MTM productions, the NBC television network, or with any station or network carrying the show in syndication.
Additional characters from outside the RS canon, apart from historic personages, are fictional and created by the author. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Exceptions are characters in Menton, which are drawn from the author's personal genealogy; the author requests the indulgence of fellow descendants of the Sedilot de Montreuil (Sedlow), Trottier de Beaubien, Cuillerier and Ludwig families.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A different twist on the RS "fear of abandonment" theme, names, identity and the nature of love, along with a possible explanation as to how Remington came by his various talents.
And, in case the number of relatives named "John" in the Holt/Garland/Gale clan seems far-fetched, it's modeled on a real-life family: my own.
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PROLOGUE
(Part 1)
Laura Steele, the woman who rarely cried, watched from the airliner window for the first glimpse of home.
Los Angeles. Home. But where, exactly, in Los Angeles was that? When she got off the plane, where should she go?
Not to the loft in the artists' district, her refuge the last time her life exploded around her. It wasn't hers anymore, except by the strictest of legal definitions. She and her husband, Remington, had found a buyer for it the week before their second wedding. The buyer's occupation had been a source of private amusement for them: she was a moderately successful novelist and would-be screenwriter, which they hoped would drive one of Laura's old neighbors—Nestor Bartholomew, who only pretended to be a writer--crazy. Laura supposed that there was still a chance she could get the loft back, if she really wanted it. After all, they hadn't been through the final closing yet. Rip up the contract, return the deposit and earnest money, undo all the complicated, painstaking arrangements they'd made. The prospect engendered nothing in her but a deep weariness.
A chiming sound diverted her attention towards the front of the plane. The 'fasten seatbelts' light had come on. Instead of obeying it, she loosened the strap around her waist and moved to the empty window seat beside her. It was supposed to be, would have been, Remington's, if he had returned with her from Menton to Los Angeles.
She admonished herself silently not to twist the facts. Well, then: she would rephrase the statement.
Her husband would've been in that window seat if she hadn't left him in Menton.
The house in Windsor Square. She could go there. Though it had been an extravagant, unexpected legacy to Remington from his friend, the former TV star Patsy Vance, it partly belonged to Laura, too. But, no, she remembered, she couldn't go there. It was without curtains and furniture, and full of paint fumes, ladders and drop cloths. Even if that weren't the case, it was the last thing she could imagine, walking up to the front door without him, inserting the key in the lock, stepping inside. She had never made a single visit to the house alone. Tonight was not the time to begin.
Tarzana, the Valley. Gratefully she hugged the image to her. Her sister and her sister's husband, Frances and Donald; support, sympathy and comfort. But after a moment, she had to push it away. The coin that would be required in exchange for temporary shelter was Frances' unsolicited advice and well-meaning, but relentless, questions. Since she couldn't answer the questions or use the advice, it was a price Laura wasn't prepared to pay.
That left only the Rossmore apartment. At the very idea, pain knifed through her, so intense that she had to wrap her arms around her midsection to hold it in. It was at Rossmore that they'd spent the all-too-brief weeks of their married life. It was the scene of their long courtship--funny that she could finally admit that was what it was--and the site of their second wedding night. Remington had once said that everything in it reminded him of her. She knew that the opposite would be true as well: everything in it, down to the most insignificant detail, would remind her of him.
His past. His damned past. She'd known all along that something would emerge from it that, no matter how much she loved him, they wouldn't be able to work out.
The worst of it was that she was couldn't cry. Her throat had been raw for hours, her head throbbing with unshed tears. Both were signs that her old aptitude for self-control was operating as efficiently as ever. It had served her well over the years. Just now, though, she would have surrendered her cherished control without a second thought, if doing so would provide a little relief.
She was longing for him. It was that simple. Physically, emotionally, every way. The not-quite-imperceptible pressure of his hand riding at the small of her back. The tenor music of his voice. His irrepressible sense of humor, that perfect counterweight to her own tendency towards the overly serious. His sleeping presence in the seat next to her, where he ought to have been, his long body folded sideways, facing her, his head resting on her shoulder…
Enough! She clenched her hands into fists in an effort to get a hold of herself. Could she possibly be more ridiculous? They'd barely been apart twenty hours--they'd only been married two months! Yet she, who had always made it a matter of pride not to need anyone, was already wondering how on earth she could face the prospect of living without Remington at her side.
How ironic that she was realizing the difficulty now, when in all likelihood it was too late for them.
Her eyes were burning again; the plane was beginning its final descent into Los Angeles. She rested her forehead against the window and gazed unseeingly at the city vista coming into focus below her.
And tried to make plans for surviving the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, while she set about the task of putting off the life of the happily married Mrs. Steele, and resuming that of the solitary Miss Holt.
(Part 2)
At three thirty in the morning, the quiet summer waters of Menton harbor rippled beneath the floodlights that were strung around it at regular intervals. Ranks of sailboats, which had earlier crowded the harbor like a flock of brilliant tropical birds, were moored now. Even the lights of the handful of pleasure craft anchored offshore--the yachts and large cruisers--were completely extinguished. Passengers and crews were below deck, no doubt, sleeping the sleep of the just.
From the terrace of a hillside villa north of town, Remington Steele pondered how different Menton was from other cities of the Riviera, the ones he knew so much better. Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo: how brightly illuminated they would be, despite the late hour! The bustle and congestion diminished, yes, but the streets still crackling with energy, bars and restaurants open and doing a brisk business. Not like this drowsy Italianate village, where the only traffic, even in July, was the occasional car wending its way homeward, the only sound the tolling of the church bell in le Vieux Menton, the old town. No wonder some writer had once dismissed it as an ideal haven for retired English spinsters.
Yet, for the first time since he and Laura had arrived, he could understand why Daniel had retreated here from Nice two years ago. Menton would have been a welcome refuge from a pace grown too exhausting for a man in precarious health. Its peace must have helped smooth, to some extent, the transition from vigorous middle life to sick old age, from embracing every moment with gusto to accepting death's inevitability.
What a shame it was that he, Remington, couldn't stay long enough for it to soothe the grief and fury that were seething in him.
Had been seething since two mornings ago, when Laura told him she was leaving. Since she had, in fact, left him.
How long had he been out here? Three hours? Four? He had lost track of the time, even though the bell in le Vieux Menton had struck every hour without fail. The terrace had seemed the best alternative to bed, where he did nothing but toss and turn. It had been his haven for the past two nights. A joke on him, that. The man who used to be able to sleep anywhere, mostly because there had been no other choice, had discovered a sudden inability to sleep alone.
He'd always been afraid of looking too deeply into the past. He'd been still more afraid of Laura doing so. He'd known all along that something would emerge that they wouldn't be able to work out, no matter how much he loved her.
A drink sat on the table beside him, untouched, the ice in it long since melted. It had been the same earlier in the day, when he had descended the steep staircase from the villa to the road that led to town in search of a quiet café. There he had ordered a bottle of Chartreuse, his liquor of choice in the days when he'd operated the Riviera alternately as Jean Murrell, smuggler, or Paul Fabrini, jewel thief. But after a while, he had tossed a few spare bills to the serveur and departed, leaving the full bottle behind. Better the solace that would come from hours of walking--or at least the physical exhaustion. Alcohol had never been a solution for him.
As it turned out, neither was the exercise. No amount of it could quell his anger. God knew, Laura had provoked him often enough in the past. Mad enough to hit her with a bataka! Mad enough to turn on his heel and storm off at the Freidlich Spa! Mad enough to rent a hooker to pose as his bride! But never like this. He could quite easily have seized her by the shoulders the other morning and shaken her into changing her mind. Perhaps he should have. It couldn't have backfired more miserably than the strategies he'd attempted: first to kiss her back to her senses; then to cajole her; finally, in a desperate form of reverse psychology, to roar out ultimatums.
It was her bloody composure, the collected, dispassionate way in which she had broken the news that she was leaving, that had set him off. She could walk away from five years together without blinking an eye, it seemed. Meanwhile, here he was, still reeling as if from a physical blow, no longer able to summon the props that used to sustain him in a catastrophe. The past master of the art of creating a new life out of thin air, on the spur of the moment, was woefully out of practice.
A pity, really. It would've been of immeasurable help tomorrow--or, rather, later this morning--in London, where he was due at the office of Daniel's solicitor to receive the rest of his inheritance…and decide on a new direction for his future.
Was it the end of his life as Remington Steele? Could he piece together a new identity out of his heritage, such as it was, and assume it?
More important, did any of it matter, if Laura was gone for good?
He strongly suspected that he already knew the answer to that.
The clock in le Vieux Menton was sounding the hour. This time he registered it. Five. His flight from Nice was scheduled for seven thirty, his meeting with Alix Edwards for ten.
For a moment he sat motionless, face buried in his hands. Then he rose heavily and went to see how much he could salvage from the pitiful wreck he knew himself to be.
TO BE CONTINUED