Part 4

“Mr. Steele?” a voice said in French. “I’m called Dr. Ouellette.”

Remington looked up. He didn’t realize it, but few who knew him would’ve recognized him tonight by his posture, the bent back, lowered head, the elbows resting on his knees.

No one, that is, but Laura, who had seen it before.

At well past midnight, he was the sole occupant of the waiting room that opened off the emergency ward. They’d ushered him to it after he’d filled out paperwork and answered question upon question upon question. It was drab, the little room, with scuffed linoleum and heavy, close-clustered furniture. Not that he’d had any say with regard to his surroundings. He’d come here because it was where they’d directed him to go. Here he would stay until they told him what would happen next.

His first hours were spent pacing up and down while he ransacked his memory for details of the deathbed scene he’d witnessed long ago in San Remo. It was the lapse of time he couldn’t get a handle on. Had Olivier collapsed right away, or was there a period where he’d seemed normal? When had the stomach cramps started? How long between the first complaint that he was cold, and his drifting into a sleep from which he’d never awakened?

No matter how hard Remington tried, he couldn’t come to any definitive conclusions. Too much time had passed; he hadn’t been paying sufficient attention in the first place. So much for drawing reassurance about Laura’s survival from what he remembered. And anyway, wasn’t that the job of the medicos who’d taken her from him, to reassure him? Why the bloody hell didn’t they send someone talk to him?

Was it because they had no hope to offer?

Twice he’d stormed out in search of an authority figure from whom he could demand answers. A doctor, a nurse, even a stretcher-bearer would’ve done. But the corridors were deserted, the official-looking desk unmanned. Unwilling to wander far from his starting point—what if they came for him, and he missed them?--he’d retreated to it. Caged animal: a cliché, but in this case, apt. It was what he felt like. In his distress he could’ve pounded the walls until his knuckles bled, broken the furniture apart with his bare hands.

But eventually anger had exhausted itself. A different sort of blackness had taken over. Unbidden, it had carried his imagination into bleak channels.

How did one prepare oneself to meet the bearer of bad news, presuming that was what he would eventually hear? He hadn’t any practice at it. Did one stand when the doctor, or nurse, or whoever it was, approached? Was a handshake expected? Polite introductions? Small talk? Or did one remain seated, silent, waiting to receive what the messenger had to say? Perhaps it wouldn’t happen here at all; perhaps they would take him down the hall, to where Laurawas, and show him, rather than tell him…Well, he’d always been one for whom actions meant more than words…

He was still trying to work it out when the doctor addressed him from the doorway.

He rose before he knew he was doing it. Peculiar, the way emotion ebbed completely now that the moment was upon him, leaving pure instinct in control over his physical and mental faculties.

But Dr. Ouellette waved him back into the chair. “Please, don’t get up,” he said, taking a seat himself. “Content yourself. Mrs. Steele is resting comfortably.”

His expectations confounded, Remington could only stare open-mouthed. His voice, when he finally found it, came out in a croak.

He cleared his throat. “Then she’s all right?”

“She will be. She’s no longer in danger, as you’ll see for yourself in a few moments. And superb care, which she’ll obtain from me, will restore her to perfect health.” Head on one side, Ouellette studied him. “You were right in suspecting she was poisoned. But I’m curious. How did you know?”

It took a moment for Remington to spur his sluggish thoughts into motion. “Ah…the symptoms. They reminded me of ones I’d seen before. Cold in the feet and hands, severe stomach pains. She’s really all right?”

“Assuredly, or I wouldn’t be here talking with you. Your wife’s fortunate you recognized the symptoms for what they were. Usually the pains are mistaken for indigestion and treated accordingly. And it proves fatal.”

Remington swallowed. “What is it, this poison?”

“Something very ancient, native to the Ligurian Alps. In English you would say it--” Ouellette switched smoothly to that language—“ ‘the silent, beautiful, death-dealing lady’.”

“ ‘La belle assassine silencieuse’. How does it—?”

“—Kill? Administered over a few days, it builds up in the stomach until the blood vessels begin to absorb it. Hence the pains. From there it progresses through the blood stream until it stops the heart.” Something must have changed in Remington’s expression, for Ouelette leaned forward to pat his shoulder. “Be tranquil, Mr. Steele. I’ve conquered it. And you, you’ve done your wife enormous good. Had you not watched to make sure she didn’t sleep, I couldn’t have saved her.” With the air of a man who had no more time to waste, the doctor got to his feet. “But I’ll take you to her now, yes?”

It was as they were striding through the silent halls that Ouellette made an observation that arrested Remington’s attention. He was only half-listening to the doctor’s description of the treatment for the poison, something about transfusions and glucose solutions and IV drips and Lord only knew what else.

Then Ouelette said: “You must have made a powerful enemy in Liguria, Mr. Steele.”

Astonished, Remington could only throw him a swift, questioning glance. He’d revealed nothing to anyone at Saint-Sauveur about where they’d come from tonight. He was willing to stake his life that Laura hadn’t, either.

Ouellette looked back at him, a glitter of…something…in his eyes. “My mother was born in Parnassio. A very old family. The Galbusera-Colombi.” A pause to allow that to sink in. “I shouldn’t go back to Liguria if I were you.”

A friendly warning? An implicit threat? It was hard to decide which. Under ordinary circumstances, Remington would have reacted to the latter either by laughing outright in the other man’s face, or countering with a threat of his own.

What restrained him was the recollection of Laura on the landing at the casa Castagnoli. The fear in her eyes when she had sagged in his arms and admitted that she couldn’t, literally, take another step.

Be damned to all of them, these Ligurians.

“No,” he said slowly. “No. I don’t suppose we ever shall.”

Laura looked just fine to him by the dim incandescent light in the private room into which they’d moved her.

Looked beautiful, as a matter of fact, her hair only a little tousled, right cheek pillowed on her right hand as she slept. Not even the IV tube secured by surgical tape to her left hand could alter the image of peace.

Twenty minutes, they’d allotted him. And don’t waken her, they’d ordered him.

So he bent and softly brushed her other cheek with his lips. And with two fingers at the side of her neck took her pulse. Just to feel it. Just to make sure.

A straight chair stood against the wall at the foot of the bed. He dragged it to her side. Sat uncertainly down and watched her.

No doubt if he were a character in some sub “B”, black-and-white movie from a lesser studio, or one of those wretched, American daytime dramas, he’d sit here and deliver an impassioned soliloquy before his sleeping wife. Overflow with declarations of undying love. Verbally air his fears of losing her. Beseech her to get well for his sake, because he couldn’t live without her.

Not that it wasn’t true. But he wasn’t the sort of man to express those truths aloud—or, rather, not precisely in those words. Nor was Laura the sort of woman to hear them with anything but a quizzical glance and a query as to whether he was feeling all right. Once, long ago, she’d even made a joke of it. The night Carl had shot her in the back, as he recalled. The memory of how much he’d said when he thought her past hearing still had the power to summon a flush of embarrassment from him.

Ah, she’d learned how to read him since then, his lovely love had. She had the ability to pierce the protective armor he wore, would probably always wear, and perceive the emotions underneath. She would know what they meant, the flight across almost six thousand miles to reach her…the breaching of Castagnoli’s stronghold, unarmed and without back-up, to rescue her…the race through two countries to bring her to the hospital he judged was the safest place for her.

Laura would know what the deeds meant. She knew it already.

The idea of parting from her to spend the night at the Villa Montreuil was painful, though it was a separation of only a few kilometers. He’d experienced it before, when Roselli had broken into their office and attacked her, and he’d had to leave her home alone the following morning. It was a physical thing, that ache. A wrenching away of a part of himself, regardless how temporary? Yes, that was exactly what it felt like.

Even so, he rose at the end of the permissible twenty minutes and kissed her cheek again, hovering there longer than he had the first time. Her hair was soft beneath his hand as he stroked it.

On the other side of the door, taking a last look at her before he shut it behind him, he halted.

In this place so far from home, she was friendless, solitary. Vulnerable, should anyone try to harm her. Defenseless.

He was all she had.

Just as she was all he had.

He slipped back into the room. The width of the hospital bed was something between a single and double mattress in the States. Certainly they’d shared closer quarters than these in the past. The one-man sleeping bag on their trip to Howardsville came to mind. So did the cot at the rescue mission in which they’d taken refuge earlier this year, during the forty-eight hours they’d played dead.

Moving with his trademark, carefully cultivated noiselessness, he removed dinner jacket and tie, belt and shoes, tugged his shirt out his waistband and unbuttoned it.

Then he climbed onto the bed with his overcoat as a blanket. He didn’t take her in his arms, but settled himself as close to her as he could without touching, his head resting next to hers on the pillow.

The November heat wave on the Riviera wore on. Temperatures held steady in the high eighties; the skies were a daily, relentless cerulean; the autumn rains that should have already begun confined themselves to the mountains miles to the north.

At the Villa Montreuil, the Steeles were finding afternoon relief in the swimming pool. And Remington was having trouble reining Laura in.

First thing, she’d challenged him to a race--itching, he could tell, to assert over him the prowess she’d acquired in triathlon training. “You’re ten inches taller than me,” she coaxed. “That’s a built-in handicap for me right there. And I’ll give you half a lap’s head start. What do you say?”

What he wanted to say was, no, not a chance, that although this morning’s examination had confirmed her heart hadn’t been damaged by the poison, Dr. Ouellette had cautioned her against exerting herself too strenuously too soon.

What he did instead was flip over onto his back and float, regarding her with a lazy smirk. “I’ve nothing to prove, Mrs. Steele.”

She raised her brows. “Pretty cocky, for a man who can barely breast-stroke across the deep end.”

“It’s one of the things you love about me, isn’t it? My cockiness?”

“Cowardliness is more like it. Afraid ‘the little woman’ will show you up? Chicken.” She splashed him.

He only grinned back at her and with a few kicks retreated out of range.

She followed. “Chicken,” she repeated. “Chicken. Scaredy-cat. Scared you’ll get beaten by a woman.” Each denunciation was accompanied by a splash.

A minute or two of this, and he abruptly switched tactics, regaining his feet and advancing on her in mock menace. “Let’s find out who the real chicken is, eh?”

Now it was her turn to back away, the splashing transformed into a defensive measure for fending him off. By the time he had trumped her--trapping her against the pool wall, fenced between his arms--she was laughing too hard to attempt an escape.

Boyish in his own laughter, he lifted her to the edge of the pool and deposited her there. “Suppose we turn some of this excess energy to better advantage.”

She wrapped her legs around him. “Whose advantage would that be? Yours? Or mine?”

“Ours.”

“In that case…” Her dimple deepened; he could’ve lost himself for hours, days, in the softness of her eyes. “Take all the advantage you want, Mr. Steele.”

As he pressed her against him, he couldn’t suppress a contented sigh. She was back, his Laura, as nearly herself as he could’ve wished.

It had never been seriously threatened, her recovery, not really. But that first morning in the hospital, they’d awakened to face some genuine anxieties. There was a possibility that la belle assassine silencieuse had messed up her cardiac rhythm; Dr. Ouellette would need a full twenty-four hours before he could be certain. Even if she were clear, and Ouellette allowed her to go home, there would be strict curtailments on her activity for a while.

Nothing that would elevate her heart rate, in other words. Until the electro-chemical balance, or whatever it was, had been restored, there was danger that she could suffer a heart attack.

So they’d had to take care. In the first days it was easy; all she wanted was to sleep. He’d filled the hours without her in a way unusual for him, covering page after page in a sketchbook with studies of the harbor, the sea—and her. Enlightening, the contrast, when he contemplated how he would’ve behaved eight years ago in these identical surroundings. Then: Jean Murrell, carouser, womanizer, perpetually in search of night life, the high life. Now: Remington Steele, devoted husband, his excitement confined to the long walks he took in the afternoons when he needed to stretch his legs a little, always returning to the villa in plenty of time to share dinner with his wife.

No question as to which life he preferred.

The day after Dr. Ouellette released her from the hospital, Remington had received a call at the villa from one of Nicolas Giamberto’s assistants. Searchers had discovered Ava Rivaro’s body in a mountain ravine north of Pramagiorre.

It was news he’d have given anything to keep from Laura. Impossible to blunt its impact, however gently he broke it. But she’d taken it with exemplary calm, with only a slight tremble in her voice as she asked him to fetch her handbag. It was among the things she’d left behind in Pramagiorre. Amanda Castagnoli had had them delivered to the villa the previous day.

She had, of course, brought Julia Gittelman’s phone number to Italy with her.

How that conversation played out, he would never know. All he saw on his return to the bedroom to check on her was the aftermath, tearstains, wet eyelashes. He didn’t ask, and she volunteered nothing. She simply stretched out her arms for him. They’d held each other until she fell asleep.

The tragic end to the case aside, the prescription to rest did her the good it was intended to; before long she was able to get up and around. They’d celebrated that day by dismissing their combination cook-housekeeper, Madeleine Trottier, so Remington could prepare dinner unimpeded. Fresh-caught fish, the finest fruits and vegetables from the market, bread baked by hand, all to build up Laura’s stamina. Out on the terrace they’d lingered over it for a long time. And when they were finished, they’d loitered longer still, curled together on the settee.

Later, a celebration of a different kind. The warmth and darkness of their bedroom. Laura’s face buried in the curve between his neck and shoulder, her arms enfolding him; he inside her, almost without moving. The gentle rhythm in which they rocked, the tempo of their familiar dance slowed for once. The pleasure, the treasure, of beautiful, beloved flesh against his.

“Welcome home,” he’d whispered in the aftermath of love, her face cupped at that moment between his hands.

“Welcome home,” she’d replied. When she smiled, he saw in her eyes the confirmation that he’d won it, the thing he’d been after almost all the time they’d been together: her whole trust, with her heart, with her life.

Five days later, he continued to see it, along with the feisty sparkle he’d missed so much.

They resumed their water play, wringing maximum enjoyment from this, their second to last day in Menton. He remained mindful of her limits, though. With a hand at the small of her back he finally steered her towards the ladder. “You’ve had enough for now, I think. Out you get.”

It might’ve been an indicator that she accepted how necessary the limits were, the fact that she neither protested nor blew up at him for bossing her around.

At poolside he wrapped a towel around her and drew her down full length with him on the chaise. Taking up a second towel, he began to dry her hair. “Not cold, are you?”

“It’s eighty-five degrees, Mr. Steele. Besides, I’m depending on you to keep me nice and warm.”

It was lovely, reclining in the sun, just the two of them. Soon he no longer needed the towel and let it drop. But he continued idly to smooth her hair back from her forehead, stroking its length. With a murmur of pleasure she closed her eyes and leaned her head into his palm.

There was an issue with which he’d been privately wrestling for the past several days. Now his thoughts slipped effortlessly into that groove. He didn’t realize how long the silence had worn on until Laura tipped her head back to look at him. “You’re awfully quiet,” she remarked.

“Hm? Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to be bad company.”

“You don’t hear me complaining, do you?” She added more hesitantly, “We could talk about it, whatever it is, if you want.”

“It’s nothing.” He shrugged. “Feeling a little shame-faced.”

“Not a state of mind I’d expect from you, under the circumstances.”

“Yes, well.” He didn’t realize that with his free hand he was tugging at his earlobe, the involuntary gesture communicating as much as his words had done.

“I’m serious. From where I’m sitting, you have a lot to be proud of. I’d even call you a hero, if I didn’t think it would go straight to your head.”

“Cinematically speaking, I meant.”

“Oh.” A beat while her forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “Huh?”

“I’ve decided, Laura. I’m swearing off films for good.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“What’s happened here has made me realize. It doesn’t do, this habit I have, conflating movies with real life.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You know what a fan I’ve been of Notorious.”

“Putting up the poster the minute you moved in at Rossmore was a clue, yes.”

“I’ve seen it over and over. Well, I don’t have to tell you. Completely enthralls me every time. I’ve even imagined myself in Devlin’s shoes. What could be more romantic, daring the worst kind of evil to rescue the woman one loves?”

Judging by the depth of the furrow between her brows, her perplexity had increased. “Okay, but I still don’t get what’s bothering you.”

“There’s nothing romantic about it. We discovered that, you and I, didn’t we I? You, the target of hardened killers. Trapped in their house. Coming close to dying of poison. It was…terrifying.” He swallowed; for a moment the hand that had been stroking her hair lay quiescent at the crown of her head. “Ghastly, to be perfectly honest.”

“I won’t argue with you there. But there’s another way of looking at it.”

Instead of posing the question, he waited for her to go on.

“If it wasn’t for Notorious, you wouldn’t have guessed about the poison. And it would’ve killed me. You and your movies saved my life.” Softly she rubbed her cheek against his chest before looking up at him again. “You shouldn’t give it up altogether. Would it help if I admitted you’ve led me to an appreciation I wouldn’t otherwise have for it?”

“Have I?”

“Especially the scene with the kiss, the three-minute one. The longest kiss in movie history, you said.”

It still surprised him, sometimes, the amount she absorbed and committed to memory when he thought she was hardly listening to him. Meanwhile, as he watched, a faint rose color was displacing the pallor of her cheek. “Why, Mrs. Steele,” he teased. “I do believe you’re blushing.”

“Well, it’s…inspiring...that kiss. Don’t you think so?”

“Mm. Not that we really need inspiration in that department. We do just fine on our own, eh?”

“We’re perfect on our own.” And she pulled his head--and mouth--down to hers.

She was the one to draw back, but it was only so she could slip out of his arms and climb to her feet. Beside the chaise she held out her hand to him. It was a stance he’d come to recognize since she’d assumed it on their first night together in Ireland. Taking the lead. Showing him what she wanted.

How could he deny her when what she wanted was him?

So he rose, too, pausing a moment to gaze down at her. Smaller even than usual, she was, in her bare feet, lacking the weight her body had shed while fighting the poison. But he knew better than anyone what a mistake it was to measure her capabilities by her size alone. She had the heart and spirit of a lion, had his Laura. A hundred times the inner strength, the courage, of the bravest men he’d known.

God, he loved her.

Already she was stretching up on tiptoe, hands clasped at the back of his neck, molding her body to his. Willingly he stooped to accommodate her. But after a while it wasn’t enough, he needed to be closer to her, so he picked her up again, as he had in the pool, and felt her wrap her arms and legs around him.

Still he managed enough presence of mind to remember just why she seemed so little and light in his arms. “Feel all right?” he murmured against her lips. “Sure you’re up to it?”

He saw her smile. “I’m fine, I promise. Besides...I can't think of a better cure for me than making love with my hero."

Those were to be the last words he allowed her to say for a very long time.

FINIS