Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (16 page)

If only Olivia would insist Austin clean this mess up on his own. Perhaps he would change his behavior.

Marguerite closed her flip phone, and I powered mine down. “You need to get some rest,” she said.

I reached for the handle of my suitcase. “I’d like to sleep in my grandmother’s room.”

“I don’t know which room was hers, but we’ve set you up in the master suite for tonight.” She pointed at my bag. “Pierre said he will carry it up to the second floor.”

Seconds later, a man came rushing toward us, a grasshopper sort of fellow—tall and thin with a white button-down shirt streaked with dirt and underarms soaked with perspiration. The grin spread across his thin lips was so friendly, I couldn’t help but smile back at him.

Marguerite introduced us, and Pierre pumped my hand with enthusiasm. “It is a pleasure to meet you. A real pleasure.”

“You as well.”

He kept shaking my hand. “I hope you find the house to your liking.”

“I’m sure I will like it very much.”

Pierre’s smile started to fade when he looked down at my suitcase and then it dissolved altogether when he tried to pick it up. He set it back on the gravel. “Did you pack a refrigerator?”

I smiled again. “I thought it might come in handy . . .”

He tried to lift it again. “Perhaps you packed two.”

Marguerite scolded him. “Stop harassing her.”

He wiped the sweat from his brow and heaved the suitcase off the ground before he lugged it across the stone pavers. Marguerite reached for the iron handle on the front door and opened it for him.

I hadn’t known what to expect, but my mouth gaped open when I stepped into the entryway of the house. The home might have been vacant, but the elaborate décor remained in residence. In front of me, the hall rose three stories, with a giant tapestry draped over an arched doorway on my right. Beside it, a staircase spiraled up to balconies on the second and then third landing. The marble floors were adorned with oriental rugs of rich indigo, blood red, and deep evergreen.

For a moment, it felt as if I were back in the Plaza.

Marguerite flipped a switch and light cascaded down from a wrought-iron chandelier with electric candles. “The salon is through the arch,” she said before pointing left. “And the kitchen is stocked—”

“The woman doesn’t need food,” Pierre teased. “She carries a refrigerator with her.”

Marguerite ignored him. “I’ll bring you up a dinner tray.”

“That would be wonderful.”

While Pierre fiddled with something in the kitchen, Marguerite gave me a quick tour of the rest of the house. There were a total of ten bedrooms on the upper levels, some with furnishings, others filled with boxes, two completely empty. Almost all of them were covered with a layer of dust.

On the main floor, the windows in the salon overlooked a lush valley and river. On the other side was a grassy hill topped with trees.

The salon, Marguerite said, could be transformed into a ballroom or a dining hall, and then she showed me the library, an office tucked into a turret, the drawing room, and a kitchen with a medieval fireplace. I asked Marguerite if I could try my hand at cooking over the fireplace. She said she didn’t know—I would have to ask my dad.

Behind the kitchen was a small door, and I followed her downstairs into a wine cellar. There were circular brick bins on the walls that reminded me of a red-flecked honeycomb and large casks of wine stacked on the far end of the wall.

“It used to be a prison,” Marguerite said. “Until the Duchants turned it into a wine cellar.”

I rubbed my arms. “It feels strange down here.”

She flicked off the lights. “The ghosts refuse to leave this place.”

I hurried back up the stairs. That’s just what I needed in the middle of the night, to be thinking about the ghosts.

Pierre pulled and I pushed my suitcase up the winding stairs of the turret. Then I followed him into a large room in one of the turrets, complete with a sofa, desk, and canopied bed with wrought-iron posts. Exposed rafters lined the ceiling and a dozen narrow windows lined the walls. Pierre set my suitcase near the armoire, and with a quick nod, he scurried back through the door
as if he was worried I might ask him to lift something else. When he was gone, I stepped toward one of the windows to see the view, but all I saw were tree limbs and gray shadows from the fleeing sun.

Sinking back into the cushions of the sofa, I stared up at the rafters. The past twenty-four hours had been torture—trying to keep myself from melting down as I traveled across the ocean. Now I had no plane to catch, no taxi to find, no train to ride. And no one around to see me cry.

Tears drenched my cheeks.

I hated this feeling, this not knowing who I was without Austin Vale. I had no idea where I was going. For an entire year, my identity had been entwined with his, and now—now I felt like a lost soul.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have gotten on the plane to France—I could have gone to my parents’ house on the lake and hidden away for a few weeks. But Austin would have found me there in days, if not hours, and I couldn’t face him or my family or friends yet. My family would be kind, telling me things like Austin didn’t deserve me or someone better would come along, but I didn’t want to hear that. The problem was, I had no idea what I wanted.

The aching in my heart returned, and I lay on the bed, my arms splayed out on both sides.

Austin swooped into my life last summer with an intensity that swept me away, a handsome, charming politician who seemed to be as fascinated by me as I’d been by him.

Perhaps he had found me attractive early on. He certainly acted as if he had, though he rarely pushed the limits of the boundaries we’d set for our physical relationship. I thought he was respecting my desire to wait until we married, but really he hadn’t
needed to be physical with me. Instead he needed the other assets I brought to the table as his fiancée and wife.

The daughter of a wealthy businessman who contributed heavily to his campaign and would pass along a considerable inheritance to his only daughter and son-in-law.

The granddaughter of a World War II hero.

The elementary schoolteacher willing to give up her career to tout his education reform and raise his children.

The woman who would dote on Austin and smile at dinners and dances and golf tournaments for decades to come.

The wife who would entertain herself while her husband took weekend trips to New York.

I felt sick.

Had Austin seen dollar signs when he looked into my eyes? Had he and Olivia compiled lists of single women in Richmond and narrowed it down to the final three? The morning we’d met in the coffee shop, when he’d spilled my latte . . .

The memory pricked my mind, clearing the fog.

That was why our engagement had been so swift. He and Olivia must have orchestrated our meeting.

A single man his age would probably never be voted in as governor, especially when he was running against an older, much wiser family man. The past year had been a façade concocted by him and Olivia and maybe even Starla to make the media think he was a mature man committed to government and family, and I—

I was nothing but a campaign pawn in order to get him elected.

When I’d agreed to his proposal of marriage, Olivia had rolled me out with great fanfare to the media, and I’d been blinded by all the lights, painfully ignorant of the casting call for a
governor’s wife. It was as if I were a contestant on
The Bachelor
but no one bothered to tell me about the invisible strings pulling my arms and legs and even my mouth.

What was Austin planning to do with me postelection? Show me off like a horse in an arena? Olivia could braid my hair and decorate my tail with ribbons and parade me around for everyone to see. Then they’d probably put me back in the stall until the next show.

Whether or not he won the governor’s house—and whether or not he married another Virginia girl—I suspected Austin would continue to indulge in his trips to New York.

A light blinked outside the window, and it took me a moment to realize that stars had appeared. The château, in all its glory, was a lonely place, and I felt the pangs of loneliness along with the ghosts of the past.

But I couldn’t wallow in my pain. I had to press through it.

My eyes grew heavy.

This trip was no longer a favor for Austin—I didn’t care one bit about the documentary and its benefit to his campaign. But I was in France and curious about my roots, curious about the echo of stories in the château, curious about the girl Mémé thought she’d left behind.

I had intended to stay awake until Marguerite brought up a tray of food, but if she knocked, I never heard her. Exhaustion won out over my hunger, and I drifted off into blessed sleep.

Tomorrow I would search for answers.

Chapter 21

G
isèle and the boy scuttled through a pair of lofty iron gates, into a grassy courtyard. Three children played on a metal merry-go-round, but when she and the boy approached, the children raced inside the manor.

It didn’t deter Gisèle. With the boy’s hand cocooned inside hers, she led him to the back of the house and knocked on the wooden door. The curtain lifted in a window by the door, and the eyes of a little girl looked back at her. Gisèle waved at the girl, and moments later, the curtain fell back into place, the lock on the door sliding back.

A nun in a black habit and white veil answered Gisèle’s knock. She looked like she was in her midthirties, her face pale without any makeup, her smile kind. Behind her, dozens of children crowded around roughly hewn tables, eating from tin bowls.

The nun’s gaze rested on the little boy. “My name is Sister Beatrice.”

He gave her a slight nod.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

When he didn’t respond, Gisèle inched him forward. “He’s hungry.”

The nun put her hand on his shoulder. “One of my sisters will get you some stew.”

The boy hesitated until another child came forward and led him to a table.

“Where did you find him?” Sister Beatrice whispered.

“He was in Saint-Lô. His parents . . .” She stepped into the house beside Sister Beatrice. “They can no longer care for him.”

The nun watched him sit with the others. “He is one of God’s children,” she said, resolute.

“He is,” Gisèle whispered. Though he no longer wore his star. Gisèle looked back at Sister Beatrice. “My mother was Vicomtesse Duchant from the Château d’Epines. She used to bring food for the children here.”

Sister Beatrice smiled. “I remember your mother well. You are blessed with her eyes . . . and her heart.”

The nun’s words warmed her, but the woman had no idea of the fear that clutched at—poisoned—her heart as well.

“Can this child stay with the others, until his parents return for him?”

Sister Beatrice stepped closer to her. “Why don’t you take him home?”

The gunshots from the forest seemed to echo in her mind. The soldiers were prowling the town and the countryside, searching for members of the resistance. If the Germans found the cell hiding under her house, they might kill all of them, including the child.

“I fear it won’t be safe for him, so close to town.” She looked across the great room again, at the children finishing their stew. The boy picked up his spoon and began to eat. “All he needs is a place to sleep and something nourishing to eat.”

Sister Beatrice gently touched her arm. “A child needs more than that.”

“That’s part of the problem, she said with a sigh. “I don’t know what a child needs.”

“If his parents were part of the roundup, the police may come looking for him here. And if they find him—” Sister Beatrice’s voice cracked. “The French think it is admirable to keep families together when they send them away, but if his parents are gone, they would send him away by himself.”

The thought made Gisèle tremble, for André and Nadine and the little girl they adored. “Where are they sending these families?”

“I’m not certain. Perhaps to one of the work camps.”

“He is too small. He’d be of no use to them—”

Sister Beatrice’s voice dipped so low that Gisèle had to strain to hear her. “The Nazis have no patience for people who aren’t useful, especially the Jewish people.”