Chapter 2
Laura flicked through earlier pages of her diary and scanned the most recent entries, mentally checking the dates. It had been sixteen days since they had gotten married – sixteen crazy days!
They had left for their 'honeymoon' in Mexico a couple of days after the wedding on the boat, but had only stayed there for four days before returning; it had not been a great success, as Mr Steele had spent most of that time as a wanted fugitive. Then they had jumped into what they thought was the Metzger Case, which had brought them to London – whereas all the time, their strings were being pulled by Tony Roselli, who had wanted Mr Steele in London for his own purposes. And then, as Laura read her diary entries, she saw it had been on the twelfth day of her 'marriage' that they had arrived in Ireland. What an even more hectic time it had been here in the Emerald Isle – a whirlwind of spies, double agents and plotting which had culminated in Tony Roselli's arrest.
Within an hour of Tony Roselli's being taken away by the police, Sean O'Gleason, the head gardener, had reported that two car loads of men had taken up a discreet – actually, not so discreet – watch on both the main entrance to the castle at the bridge over the lake, and at the rear entrance. It seemed that Petrossian had sent out the Russian goon squad from the embassy, determined to find out what had happened to Sterling Fitch and Sergei Kemadov. Laura had feared that they might actually attempt to storm into the castle, and Mr Steele had had Mikeline and the other staff ready to fight them off as best they could, with ax handles and shotguns, if that had happened. Luckily, the Russians had not invaded the castle, but had maintained their station at the exits, checking everyone who had attempted to enter or leave the premises.
Laura had had to admit, she had been worried then. But things had sorted themselves out a couple of hours later when Inspector O'Brien of the Garda had arrived back at Ashford Castle, accompanied by a blond, saturnine faced young Englishman, who had introduced himself as Alec Trevelyan, representing "Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service". Mr Steele had explained his plan to Trevelyan, who had immediately seen its genius and set things in motion.
The Englishman had left discreetly, but by the time of the early evening news on RTÉ One, it had been announced that Daniel Chalmers had been killed apprehending the British double agent Sterling Fitch and his Russian handler, Sergei Kemadov, both of whom had also been killed. In order to fool the Russians, the police had backed off rather than making their presence known when, much later that evening, the three caskets had left the castle in three hearses. They had been briefly opened and checked by the Russian thugs, before being allowed to pass through the main gate – it looked on the surface as if all three men were indeed dead. After that, it had been a simple matter to dispatch all three caskets to Dublin, with Kemadov apparently being routed to the Russian Embassy while Fitch and Daniel Chalmers were transported thereafter to Shannon Airport. Of course, along the way, the hearses were switched and Chalmers's body ended up at the Russian Embassy under Petrossian's care, while Fitch and Kemadov made their escapes via the airport. Since they were believed dead by the Russians, their information would be of that much greater value; if they had been known to be in the hands of MI6 and the CIA, the codes they used, the plots they were privy to and the double agents that they had turned, would all have been quickly eliminated.
After the caskets left the castle, the next two days had been strangely becalmed, and Laura had found them oppressive. The Russian goons had left and life had assumed a semblance of normality; although, without the zaniness of the previous days, it had been so peaceful – oh, so peaceful – that in truth it had seemed a little boring. Laura had called Los Angeles to belatedly wish her sister, Frances, whose birthday had been on the same day – 20th May – that Tony Roselli had been captured and the Fitch plot had come to a head here in Ireland. There had been only one other mundane distraction: giving statements to the mysterious Alec Trevelyan and Inspector O'Brien, in a follow-up debriefing.
For the rest of the time, Mr Steele had seemed preoccupied, and Laura had wondered if he was suffering from delayed grief over Daniel Chalmers's death. Apart from attending meals – which were always served in the dining room in a very formal fashion, rather strangely given that there were only the two of them and Mildred in the echoing room – he would sit for hours in the library, Seán O'Casey's The Shadow of a Gunman open on his lap, pretending to read but all the while simply staring into the fire. Laura had tried to shake him out of his torpor – had tried to make him talk about the thoughts that preoccupied him – but Mr Steele had not responded. As was his wont – as was the way of so many men, including her own father, Laura remembered – Mr Steele had repressed his feelings, resisting talking about his emotions and instead adopting the role of the strong, quiet man. Damn him!
At night, she and Mr Steele had shared the immense master bedroom, of course, just as they had intermittently since the wedding. After their return from Mexico, they had had a night in the apartment before going into work the next day, and had slept in the same bed, but neither of them had made a move to touch the other one. There was still a strange, brittle atmosphere to their relationship – they had been tiptoeing around each other. For her part, for the entire two weeks, Laura had been putting on a front; her devil-may-care attitude to let the chips fall where they may actually masked her fear and anger about the wedding. If Mr Steele – Remington – had tried to make love to her, Laura wasn't sure how she would have reacted: with bravado or with terror. In the event, it had been a moot point; Mr Steele had not made a genuine move to touch her, probably still unsure of how things stood. He'd play up his insouciant act as the lascivious new husband, challenging Laura to have sex with him, but only when he knew that they would be interrupted – when Gladys Lynch was in the next room or Tony Roselli was on the scene.
Yesterday, Laura had finally managed to persuade Mr Steele to stop brooding in the castle's library, and they had gone for a long ride in the grounds, passing through the heavily forested estate and heading out of the glen and up into the windswept Wicklow Mountains. Mr Steele was an expert horseman and an élite class polo player, and Laura too, although she was a city girl, had always enjoyed horse riding, as long as her hay fever didn't act up. One of her treasured possessions was a framed black and white photograph, which she displayed on her coffee table at the loft, of a ten-year old Laura with her favorite pony.
The ride had seemed to revive Mr Steele's spirits. And then had come last night: watching the news coverage of Daniel Chalmers's funeral, before finally turning that corner in their relationship that they had put off – or had allowed to be put off – for so long. They had both known that the moment was coming, and they had both wanted it. Laura was glad she had finally made love to Mr Steele, after holding back for such a long time.
It had been hard, no doubt about it, for her to fend off Mr Steele's advances for so long. How easy it would have been to give in to one of his many sexual overtures. Women might not have sex on the brain like men, but Laura was no virginal schoolgirl either; she had been attracted to him since she had first laid eyes on him – not just in a 'this-man-is-good-looking' way, but with a soul-searing lust. It had been difficult for her to stop herself from sleeping with him, and it was only the fear of how he might hurt her that had held her back from falling into his bed. She wasn't abnormal for wanting a commitment – she was not the type of woman to just hop in the sack with anyone.
But, as she stared at the lines of writing she had put down in her diary, she knew she was still unsure of what came next, now that they had experienced that magical moment.