Underbelly (75 page)

“
Shit, shit, shit!” Laura exclaimed as the secluded house that she had rented went up in flames, starting with the room where she tried the first spell that Octavius had given her to increase her power. He had said there was a risk, neglecting to tell her that the spell was designed solely for self-immolation as the room became an inferno, scorching her body, Laura evacuating the room quickly by parting the walls and fleeing the house where she commanded rain to put out the flames. She was badly burnt and staggered along, desperate to get away from the house and the scene – the last thing she wanted was to be examined by doctors who would be mystified by her body. It was bad enough the church pursuing her without the Government wanting to research her. All of the money that she had with her was gone now, and when everything was sorted out she would probably have to sell one of her three homes as her finances were greatly reduced from the sizeable sum of old.

She was able to heal herself but she needed time for that, and privacy. After a brief rest in a ditch, pulling leaves over herself to avoid being seen by passing traffic (including a fire truck and an ambulance), she marched on, stealing a dress and t-shirt from a washing line. She changed into the dress and used the t-shirt as an impromptu shawl, to disguise her singed hair. It was late by the time she returned to the Overton hotel, and when she was refused entry because of her dishevelled appearance she made her own entry around the back and took the lift up to the Greys’ suite where she knocked on the door. She had intended to leave them in peace but she knew they wouldn’t turn her away when she was in need and would know that she’d do the same for them. Grey answered the door, looking slightly dishevelled, and looked at Laura and saw that, despite her attempts to disguise it with her unlikely attire, she was suffering from burns. Laura could see that he was shocked at the sight of her and she joked, “Thank the spirits you took my advice about the trousers,” as she brushed past him.

“
Laura, please sit down,” Grey said with a concern that shamed her a little after the whole Octavius debacle. She had not betrayed him as Octavius claimed; she had merely intervened in a way that benefitted all, save Jack Collinson who no longer had a body to return to. He assisted her as she staggered to the sofa and stood over her. Laura saw a half glass of some alcoholic beverage on the coffee table, and while there was nothing wrong with that, coupled with his rough exterior she picked up a bad vibe.

“
I was hoping that I could spend a few days here on your sofa until I get back on my feet.”

“
Of course you can stay here, but take the bed. What happened?” Grey asked as Laura reclined and removed her shawl.

“
I made a mistake. For such an old woman I can be tremendously foolish. The saying is true. There’s no fool like an old fool. I trusted Octavius, even after everything I already knew about him and the tales you told me. What really annoys me about myself is that even after this I’m still tempted to try out the other spells he gave me just in case they do work.”

“
Is there anything I can do to help you recover? I could call out my doctor who is very, very discreet,” Grey offered, hating seeing her in such a state.

“
I’m not dragging you any further into this. My cure lies in my own hands, and I need to be alone so I will take the sofa,” Laura said, sitting up proving painful and difficult when all she wanted to do was sleep. “I didn’t offer you my bed at Ravensbeck so you shouldn’t offer me yours here.”

“
I insist. I’m not going to sleep anyway so it’s better you have it.”

Laura sensed that Germaine was not in the apartment and she begrudgingly agreed to have the bed for now and Grey aided her into the bedroom and left her alone at her request so that she could start the healing process. She stripped naked and began to heal herself, like a snake shedding skin. Her burns were not as bad as she first believed and took less than an hour to heal. She put her dress back on and walked back through to the lounge and pulled up her sleeves and the hem up a little and said, “I’m fine now, see. That’s why I say you should let me fix your stomach.”

“
I’d rather have you as my friend than as my physician,” Grey said, relieved at her miraculously improved condition. The new skin looked pinker than the rest of her body but did not look unsightly.

“
I can be both, but it’s your choice,” she said, running herself a bath and cutting off her hair, which she had been unable to repair, choosing to shave it all off. She had had less fun as a redhead and decided to let her natural brown hair grow again. As she walked back through she found Grey drinking as he read through a thick tome and she asked him if he had any hats that she could borrow.

“
Plenty of men’s hats. I’ve still got the cowboy one that you’re more than welcome to borrow,” Grey offered, his intentionally poor suggestion having the desired effect of bringing the Laura he knew back to the fore as she rolled her eyes upwards. “Tell me what you’re after and I’ll get you one tomorrow,” he added seriously.

Laura wanted to retire to bed, as she was absolutely exhausted. Before she could do so she had to ask one question. “I take it Mrs Grey is in the hospital. Are you a father yet?”

Grey put his book down on the coffee table and looked to Laura and said, “We’ll talk in the morning. Get some rest.”

His tone suggested that he was trying to protect her, as though the information was damaging. “Is something wrong?”

“
You’re not well, Laura, and I’m not good at talking about this. Tomorrow,” Grey promised.

Laura reluctantly left him and went to bed, where, despite her troubled mind, she fell to sleep instantly. Grey stayed up reading, finding sleep too difficult at present. Germaine wasn’t in his head, and the thought of her appearing in his head absurdly terrified him. He’d lost his wife and his child and if she appeared to him he’d lose his sanity too. She had to be at peace, not stuck in the middle, not even for a second. Her life had been bad enough without that.

He’d spent enough time helping others with their grief, understanding mentally what they were going through without emotional understanding, which made a crucial difference. Grief made anything beyond functioning basically impossible. He knew, rationally, that time would heal the pain, at least to some degree, but it would be a long wait and time moved very slowly. Laura tried to help, and while he did make conversation with her, his words, like his eyes, seemed lifeless. He even told spirits in need of his help to give him some time, unable to do anything for them while he felt so low. He didn’t want to wallow in grief but there wasn’t a choice. He had come to love her greatly in a short space of time, the pieces clicking into place so easily. The void that was left behind – it was so clichéd, he’d heard it a thousand times before, but that was how it was, her sudden departure leaving him, and his life, empty. He felt that a long illness would have been better, something like cancer or leukaemia, to give him some warning rather than having her warm body next to him one moment and a cold corpse there the next instant. That way he would have had to think about life without her rather than just having the life of a widower thrust upon him suddenly.

Grey’s manner of grieving bothered Laura as he appeared cold and distant and came out with things that were unlike him. She was prepared to be a shoulder for him to cry on but he seemed determined to present a cold front...

“
Her death isn’t the cruel thing. I’m not so self-centred as to think that my loss is worse than that which so many others have suffered over the last few years. It’s the timing. It would have been kinder if she’d died with her family.”

“
Then she’d have missed falling in love with you and becoming a wife. The last year of her life has definitely been the most important where she grew the most,” Laura said supportively.

“
There was no point to her going through that pain just to die less than two years later.”

“
You would never have known her properly if she had died then.”

“
I know, and at least then I wouldn’t be going through this now. I know I’m not supposed to say that,” Grey said, aware how bad it sounded.

“
You’re grieving, you’re entitled to say what you want. I hated my husband when he died because he didn’t have to, he chose to leave me, and I described him in terms that would seem inappropriate for a widow. It didn’t make me a bad wife, or mean that I didn’t love him. Eventually the memories make the grief a worthwhile price to pay.”

“
The happy memories are no consolation because they’re in the past. I’ve said to the dead before ‘At least you had those good times’. Happy memories do not make a bleak future any better.”

“
Your future is not bleak though. You’re not going to struggle or starve, and you have friends who’ll look after you, powerful friends like myself, a wealthy friend in Conrad, and a sanctimonious but loyal friend in Delgado. You want your lover and we all understand that – it’s not impossible though I would advise against that,” she said, prepared to try to raise her if he was certain that was what he wanted.

“
She dies only once – her life was tragic enough without me making it worse. She rests in peace forever more.”

Germaine’s body was examined meticulously before it was given to Grey for burial. He arranged for an immediate burial at a local church before changing his mind the night before the service, deciding that she should be buried with her family. It was the least he could do for her. Conrad agreed to fly him and the body to France, helping him cut through the red tape. He met Laura for the first time, Laura going with them for the funeral, and he was pleased that he felt absolutely no attraction, the timing wrong anyhow. The night before they flew Grey opened up the coffin and saw his still beautiful wife and it was like opening Pandora’s box. He had repressed the pain by burying his emotions and seeing her brought all of the tears he had held back flowing down his cheeks and onto the floor. Laura was with him and stayed back, giving him the space to mourn privately. The first time he'd seen her corpse it hadn’t seemed real and now it was unquestionably really happening. The tragedy wasn’t that he had lost her and had to cope alone and he realised that the tragedy wasn’t about what he would do next because it wasn’t about him. The tragedy was that Germaine Cremont was forever gone. Once his tears had dried he stole one last kiss as he gazed on her for the final time.

Conrad managed to land his small plane in a large field on the Cremont farm. Stuart Lambert, a very mild-mannered man who acted as the caretaker for both the Cremont farm and Laura’s farmhouse, banged on the plane as it came to a standstill, berating Conrad.

“
You shouldn’t have landed here. Do you have any idea of how many crops you’ve damaged?” It took a lot to provoke him to anger and such a reckless and inconsiderate act was enough to get him close to it.

“
The owner told me to,” Conrad said, biting his tongue somehow, keen to explode at the criticism and refraining just because Grey would hear any arguments and he didn’t need that.

Grey and Laura emerged from the back of the plane, to Stuart’s surprise, and Grey said, with his head bowed, “I’m sorry, Stuart, I didn’t know where else we could land. I should have thought that you might have been in the field.”

“
It’s not like I would have hit him. You don’t become a pilot with bad vision,” Conrad said defensively, staring at Stuart sharply.

“
I apologise,” Stuart said to Conrad, offering to shake his hand to erase bad feeling, Conrad begrudgingly doing so.

“
It’s been a while, James, how you doing?” Stuart said, shaking Grey’s hand, noticing something wrong about his demeanour. They had become good friends in Ravensbeck, both discharged from the army through injuries sustained in battle. Stuart’s injuries were less debilitating though serious enough to make active service impossible (he had significant injuries to his lower chest and stomach from flying shrapnel). Stuart was fairly reserved, and it had taken Grey some time to get to know him properly, Stuart’s friendship proving to be worth the effort. Even when they had become close friends, close enough for Grey to appoint him as his best man, Stuart still remained a man of few words, though Grey found that his sparse words and occasional stories were thoughtful and interesting. Stuart was happy to listen to others, believing himself unskilled at conversation and happy to hear others speak at length.

“
I’ll tell you inside,” Grey said, choosing to tell Stuart of his wife’s death privately out of consideration for him. Once inside he said, “Germaine died so we’ve come to bury her.”