Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (23 page)

“But you don’t remember Adeline?” I asked.

His voice sounded broken. “My memories are like a shattered picture, Chloe. There are all sorts of little pieces, but I don’t know how they fit together.”

“What did Mémé tell you?”

“That I was born in the château before the war, and my first years were happy. She has pictures of me playing on the lawn and one in a swing.”

She had shown me those pictures too. “She must have taken your birth certificate when you moved to the States.”

“I have it now,” he said. “But I wish I could remember more of my childhood in France.”

“What do you remember?”

“I don’t know what was a memory and what was a dream, or even bits from a book I read and made my own.”

I stared down at the birth certificate again. “Perhaps I could help you piece some of it together.”

Instead of answering, he changed the subject. “Your mother wants to know what you think of the filmmaker.”

I tapped my iPad and glanced at Riley’s cocky smile. And the beautiful woman entangled in his arm. “I think he is competent.” I propped my feet on the small table. “Why does Mom want to know?”

“Your mom enjoyed talking with him on the telephone.” Knowing Dad, he’d probably shrugged as he said this. He might act casual but something was brewing in his mind. “When she found out he was single . . .”

I shot up. “You set me up!”

“I had nothing to do with it. Your mom thought it would be nice for you to meet Riley before your wedding day.”

I groaned. As if I needed my mom’s meddling in my relationships. She must not have looked at his pictures online. “Please tell her that it’s easy for someone to be nice when they want something from you.”

“When are you doing the interview with him?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Then why don’t you come home right after it?”

As I lay down, I mulled over his words. But I knew I wasn’t ready to return home yet. Not just because I wanted to stay away from the media and Austin. I wanted to dig a little deeper here, find out what happened to Adeline Rausch. Was it her presence that seemed to haunt the house?

A breeze came through the open window and I jumped as it ruffled the bedcoverings. Standing up, I shuffled toward the
window and closed it, clasping it shut. With the lights off, I looked across the hill and saw a light on in the farmhouse.

Was Riley awake as well?

It didn’t matter one bit to me.

Leaning back against the pillows, I began to drift to sleep. The breeze skipped across my eyelashes, my cheeks and forehead, as if they were stones in a puddle. In the coolness, I slept, and it wasn’t until morning that I remembered I’d closed the window before going to bed.

Chapter 31

D
esperation drove Gisèle to the
chapelle
, Adeline strapped on her back. The major and his men had left last night, but they said they’d return tomorrow. To take over her home.

How was she supposed to entertain their enemy, the very men who had killed her father?

As two of the village women prayed near the altar, she lit candles for both her mother and her father and then knelt with Adeline beside a pew. Her mind racing, she begged God for wisdom, strength, and, most of all, courage in whatever it was that He required of her now.

For so much of her youth, she’d focused on what she wanted—riding her horses when she was a girl and then going to Paris. And one day perhaps marrying and becoming an elegant noblewoman like her mother, returning each year to visit Michel and his family at the Château d’Epines.

The Germans had changed everything. After her father’s death, she knew she must care for her brother until the Nazis left France, but how was she supposed to do that with the enemy under her roof?

Above the pew was a stained-glass window, orange and red and cobalt blue. The pieces of colored glass melded together to
form a picture of the body of Christ, broken and bloody after being taken down from the cross. The Roman soldiers beat Him terribly and yet He forgave them.

Her eyes wandered to the front of the room and the statue of Mary holding Jesus. Had Christ’s mother forgiven the soldiers as well?

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

The Germans had killed her father and now they were destroying her country. How was she supposed to care for the men who had killed him? And even more, how was she supposed to love them—love evil? She despised everything they were doing.

Jesus had resisted the devil in the desert, but then He showed love to the men who tortured Him, forgave those who killed Him. When was she supposed to love her enemy and when was she supposed to resist? And somehow, in the great mystery of faith, was it possible for her to do both?

She asked God to take her pride and, trembling, she asked Him to take her very life if He had to, like Christ had done, in order to save those in her care from destruction on this earth. But if He didn’t take her, she would cling to the hope of her future, that one day God would right all that had decayed in this world.

Her thoughts and prayers wrestled together. The commandment from the Scripture weighed against what she thought God would have her do.

She didn’t think it was possible for her to love the Nazis, but perhaps she could pray.

As rain trickled down the stained glass, tears trickled down her cheeks. She wiped away her tears and crossed herself.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Her eyes closed, Adeline squirming beside her, she recited one more prayer—a petition to Saint Michel.

Saint Michel the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Was it possible to love your enemy even as you hated—as you battled—the wrong that drove them? Perhaps that was what Jesus did on the cross. He forgave those who killed Him and in his death, He also defeated the sin that blinded them.

She could pray for her enemy, but she also had to fight against evil, and she had no doubt that the Nazis embodied the hatred of their führer. Lucien had said she must care for the men or they would claim her property and perhaps send her to one of the work camps as well.

What would Papa think, knowing the Germans were going to stay at their house, and knowing that Michel was planning to resist them? Her heart ached at the loss of the man who had wanted to protect her from all this.

She was glad she didn’t go to Lyon so long ago, but sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she had made that choice. Papa would want her to take charge of the property now, and Michel was relying on her for food.

Perhaps in love she could fight.

When she finished, she opened her eyes. One of the women was gone. The other was an old friend of her mother’s, Madame Fortier.

Madame Fortier eyed Adeline. “Who is the girl?”

“My dau—” she began to say, and then stopped. The people in Agneaux knew she didn’t have a child. “I have told the Germans she is my daughter.”

Her eyes widened with horror. “Oh, Gisèle, you must hide her.”

Gisèle gazed at the candlelight flickering on the stained glass, the warmth of the blond wood. This was her hiding place, her protection. Those who came here worshipped the same God she did. They were like family. “But no one here would say anything—”

“They might not want to bring harm on you or this child, but if they are questioned . . .” She glanced back toward the door. “They might stumble with their words.”

“I will tell them I’ve hidden her for the past year,” she said. “I married a French soldier right before the Germans came, and I feared for her life.”

Madame Fortier brushed a lock of brown hair away from Adeline’s face. “And now?”

“Now the Germans are coming to occupy the house, and no matter my shame, I must speak the truth.”

The woman eyed her again, and Gisèle knew that Madame Fortier was keenly aware of the consequences for repeating this lie.

“I will spread your story, but still, you shouldn’t bring her here,” she whispered. “People will ask too many questions.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

Madame Fortier bent her head toward Adeline and then studied Gisèle’s face. “You have the same eyes—I will tell my friends of the similarities.”

Adeline rested her head against Gisèle’s shoulder. “I pray the Germans will be too busy to concern themselves with her story.”

“I wouldn’t be too certain.” Madame Fortier glanced back at the door. “I fear they may go to great lengths to demonstrate their power, both big and seemingly small.”

It was possible that Major von Kluge and his men wouldn’t return to the château. Perhaps they would march on to Cherbourg, or perhaps their entire convoy would be destroyed by Allied
bombers. She’d heard on the wireless that the Allies were fighting against the Germans. And that the number of people resisting inside France was growing.

But if the Germans did return, she had to be prepared.

After Madame Fortier left the
chapelle
, she almost slipped down into the tunnel, but Michel would be angry if Adeline began crying again. She would go down in the morning and warn Michel before the Nazis returned. The next time Major von Kluge heard voices, he wouldn’t believe it was a cat.

She left Adeline in the kitchen, with Émilie, and slipped back down into the
cave
. The light bulb flickered on in the cellar and she wandered down the passage, pressing against the brick and peering inside the bins. The room smelled of damp earth and old wine.

In the casing of cool bricks, she could hear the echoes of voices, muffled shouts of men below or beside them. The ghosts in the tunnel.

Michel had said he was going to leave soon, but when he returned, she feared it would be too difficult to feed him and the other men through the hiding place in the
chapelle
. If she could find another entrance to the tunnel in the house, she wouldn’t have to go to the
chapelle
for any other reason than to pray.

Minutes passed as she searched, the faint voices in the tunnel no longer audible. Feet shuffled down the steps, and she turned, thinking Émilie had come with Adeline. But a man stepped through the doorway instead, his wide shoulders ballooning across the doorframe.

The man wore the grayish-green uniform of a German officer, his hair black as ink, his eyes brown. Instead of the Aryan people the Nazis idolized, he looked more like the pictures she’d seen of Hitler.

Her mouth gaped open, but no sounds came out. The Germans weren’t supposed to return yet, not until tomorrow night at the earliest.

“What are you doing down here?” the officer demanded in German.

She pressed her lips together and swallowed hard before she replied in French. “
Je ne comprends pas
.”

I don’t understand.

She hoped he would stomp away in frustration. Or find Lucien to translate.

His torso turned back toward the steps as if he was considering a retreat back up to the dark entrance.

She shifted herself to the center of the passage, ready to hurry upstairs behind him, but he didn’t leave. When he looked back at her, she shuddered. In his eyes was something more sinister than desire, like she’d seen in the eyes of the soldier in Saint-Lô. It was a thirst for power. Conquest. And the only thing to conquer in this
cave
was her.

Everything within her cried out for her to run, but it would be impossible to get around this giant of a man.
A man will only respect you if you respect yourself.
Her mother’s admonition flooded her mind, and she rolled her shoulders back, trying to maintain the Duchant dignity.

She slid a bottle of wine out of a bin and, clutching it in her hand, took a small step toward him and the exit. “If you would excuse me . . .”

His hulking form loomed over her. She tried to muster confidence, but inside her stomach clenched with terror. If he attacked her, no one above would hear her scream.