Keys to the Castle (10 page)

Sara was suddenly weary to the bone. All she wanted to do was finish her dinner, drink absolutely no more wine at all, and go to bed. She said with a sigh, “That sounds like a perfectly fine arrangement. Maybe we should just keep things as they are.”

His smile was sympathetic. “Or perhaps you should give yourself a bit of time to get accustomed to the situation. This has all been a great deal to absorb at once. Things will look clearer to you in the morning, I'm positive.”

Sara gave him a weak smile, and picked up her fork, at last, to taste the lamb. But by that time it was cold.

Dawn arrived as a touch of gold on the windowsill, painted its way down the rough, white plaster wall, and began a slow, seeping flood across the floor. By the time it reached the puffy silk duvet under which Sara lay, she was fully awake. Yet she stayed there for another moment, sunk in feather bed luxury, listening to some strange bird chirp its heart out outside her window, and watching the ancient room slowly fill with muted light. Overhead, a canopy of gold silk. Beneath her, the gleam of sun-bathed marble. All around her, the fragrance of flowers. She thought, with an odd and wondrous contentment,
I am sleeping in a castle
. Then she thought,
Good God
.
I
own
a castle.

She had called Dixie close to midnight the previous night, before she went to bed. She had said nothing about millions, and had described the charming Mr. Lindeman in only the vaguest of terms. “Slick,” she had said, groggily, “but nice. And kind of cute, in a very British sort of way.” Dixie had kept saying, “A castle? You own a
castle
?” And Sara, fighting the effects of too much wine and a throbbing headache, murmured something about taxes and entailments. Then Jeff got on the phone and wanted to know whether they should call her “your highness” from now on.

Afterward, she tumbled into a sleep that was completely untroubled by dreams, and awoke to find that what she thought she had dreamed was in fact a reality.

She pulled jeans and a cotton sweater from the wardrobe where the maid had hung them, thinking how forlorn her few possessions looked in such elegant surroundings. She quickly applied makeup, caught back her hair in a ponytail, and made her way downstairs. Following the route Ash had taken her last night, and with only a few wrong turns into dark and forbidding-looking rooms, she found the kitchen.

It was a big, windowless space that had been tiled in black-and-white marble and seemed to have been designed exclusively for catering. A butler's pantry covering most of one wall held what looked like a service for one hundred—bonewhite china with a discreet silver rim, glasses of every size and description, serving platters and bowls. There were two old-fashioned-looking white refrigerators and a giant butcher's block in the center of the room. The industrial-sized stove had eight gas burners, and the fuel tank was mounted on the wall a few feet away. A mammoth collection of copper pots and pans was suspended from the ceiling. The space beneath the counter was covered with a plain linen curtain, and rather than built-in cabinets, there were tall wooden cupboards, like pieces of furniture, in which she found an array of canned and dry goods.

There was a bowl of fresh fruit on one of the worktables, and she found a round of cheese in a cloth-covered bowl on a shelf, and next to it a loaf of soft bread wrapped in a colorful linen towel. After some searching, she discovered a black metal contraption that might be an espresso machine, but try as she might she could not find any coffee.

“Try the freezer,” suggested a voice behind her, and Sara whirled.

Ash Lindeman lounged in the doorway behind her, looking drowsy and slightly rumpled in jeans and an untucked shirt. He glanced up from examining the screen of his mobile phone to add, “For the coffee. You Americans are really quite helpless without your breakfasts, aren't you?”

A little annoyed, Sara opened the freezer compartment of one of the refrigerators and found a sack of coffee beans on the bottom shelf. “While you Brits, of course, can leap tall buildings in a single bound fueled on nothing but tea and determination.” She examined the bag of coffee with a small frown.

He smiled and pocketed his phone. “So the story is told. The machine grinds the beans,” he told her, taking the sack. She watched as he snapped together a few parts on the black contraption, poured the coffee beans, added water, and plugged the thing in. Within moments the room was filled with the sound of grinding and the aroma of rich, dark coffee.

“The staff won't be in until ten,” he said, leaning against the counter as the raucous rattle gave over to the hiss and gurgle of brewing coffee. “I didn't expect you up and about so early.”

She said, “I didn't mean to wake you.”

“You didn't. My habits are early ones, as long as I'm in a familiar time zone.”

“Even though you were up most of the night catching up on your phone calls?”

He looked surprised, and then returned an endearingly abashed grin. “However did you guess?”

Sara found a small earthen pitcher of heavy cream, covered with an elastic-rimmed cloth cozy, in the refrigerator. “Let's just say I know your type.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I wasn't aware I had a type. I'm not certain I like that, actually.”

Sara took a plate from the pantry and a knife from the wooden block on the counter, and began to slice fruit. The pears were as soft as butter, the apples crisp and tart. She said, “How old is the castle?”

“It dates from the 1600s, I believe. Rumor is that Louis XIV had it built for one of his mistresses, but there has never been any proof of it. Bad luck, that. Otherwise, we might be able to have it listed.” He helped himself to a slice of apple and bit into it.

“Listed?” Sara took a mango from the bowl and, before cutting into it, brought it to her face to inhale the aroma. It smelled as clean as a tropical island, and her expression softened with the sheer pleasure of it. She was aware of Ash watching her, and she put the fruit on the plate and began to slice it. “What does that mean?”

“The government keeps a list of places with an especial historical significance, particularly those with ties to the monarchy. If a property qualifies, and only a few of them do, it would be eligible for a restoration grant.”

She stopped slicing. “Do you mean the government might pay for restoring the castle?”

“A rather large ‘might,' I'm afraid. The firm looked into the matter for Daniel's parents years ago. Very few properties qualify anymore, and for those that do, it can be a double-edged sword. The property owner is required to use the government's architects and craftsmen, which can double the time and expense, and to meet all manner of other pesky rules and regulations. At any rate, it doesn't apply to Rondelais, so there you are.” He chose a slice of pear and bit into it.

He seemed more at ease in the early-morning kitchen, more casual and approachable. She found she preferred this version of his charm to the very careful and correct form he had shown the previous night. She returned to the pantry and brought two plates back to the table. “You've certainly done your research.”

“It's my job. Not so very different from what you did at Martin and Indlebright when you were trying to impress a client, now, is it?”

She was surprised. “I don't remember telling you where I worked.” Then, before he could answer, she accused, “You Googled me!”

He looked offended. “You needn't make me sound like a pervert. Besides, I didn't Google you; Winkle did. I merely read your file.”

“I have a file?” Something about the mere sound of that filled her with dismay.

He took two cups from the pantry over to the coffee machine. “Information gathering is what we do, my dear. And it's not as though we sought anything that's not readily available to public access. Date of birth, marriage certificate, citizenship, length of residence, state of employment—these are all necessary to complete the forms for property ownership in France.”

She continued to regard him suspiciously. “You certainly are . . . efficient.”

He handed her a cup half filled with rich black coffee. “Of course. We are an extremely well-regarded firm. Careful with that,” he advised her. “The French make their coffee strong.”

She tasted the coffee and grimaced. He filled the remaining half of her cup with cream, then did the same to his own.

“I thought you'd drink tea.” She tasted the creamy brew as she took one of the ladder-back chairs at the table. It was much more palatable now.

“There isn't a decent cup of tea to be had in all of France.” He sat at the chair opposite her, and began to slice the bread she had set out. “Or Italy for that matter.” He shrugged. “One learns to pick up native habits in a pinch.” He transferred a slice of bread to her plate and unwrapped the cheese. “Tell me about North Carolina, Sara.”

She told him about Dixie and Jeff and the kids, and the bookstore, and the little island village that dozed the winter through and burst into a bustling, tropical-colored tourist town in the summer, about art festivals and concerts in the park and the sand that got simply everywhere. Even as she spoke, it all seemed so far away, almost as though she was describing a place she had read about, or seen on television, but had never really been. It was an odd feeling, which she didn't have a chance to analyze, because then he asked, in his easy conversational way, what had caused her to leave Chicago. She surprised herself by telling him.

“I thought I was happy,” she concluded with a brief, puzzled shake of her head. Even now, she was baffled by how she could have been so wrong about who she was, and what she wanted. “Then I just woke up one morning and—I couldn't move.”

When she glanced at Ash, he was frowning into his coffee. But the expression was instantly wiped away when he sensed her gaze on him. He sipped his coffee, his face pleasantly interested, and remarked only, “Happiness is a relative thing, I suppose.”

Anxious to turn the conversation away from herself, she asked, “Who is the other Lindeman in Lindeman and Lindeman?”

“My father.” He got up to refill his cup. “He passed on some years ago. His heart.” When he turned, his eyebrows were drawn together once again, and his eyes looked past her. “He was only fifty-six. Not so much older than I am at the moment, come to think of it.” Then he smiled quickly and resumed his seat, tipping more cream into his coffee. “Rather maudlin, that. You should ask me about my mother, who regularly beats me at snooker, and who once tried to poison the prime minister.”

He made her laugh with stories about his family—his mother in Northampton, and his three sisters, all of them married with, as he described it, “a veritable slew of progeny.” She ate two slices of soft white bread spread with the sweetest, buttery-textured cheese she had ever tasted, and Ash ate pears and drank coffee. She realized, with pleasant surprise, that she felt as comfortable here as she would have in Dixie's kitchen back home . . . perhaps even more so. Because this was actually
her
kitchen. This vast, marble-floored hall with its European coffeemaker and service for one hundred and its scarred wooden worktables belonged to her.

The thought, coming as it did from out of nowhere, made her heart beat faster.

She finished her coffee and sat back in her chair. “Mr. Lindeman . . .”

He gave her an admonishing look. “I had really hoped, now that we've shared our first breakfast together, you might call me Ash.”

She drew in a breath, and returned a small smile of agreement. “All right, Ash. I have some questions. About my . . . situation.”

“Of course you do. And I'll be pleased to answer them all. But first . . .” He put down his coffee cup and pushed back his chair. “I promised to take you on a tour, remember?”

She caught a small sound in her throat that was amusement mixed with amazement. “You really have this all orchestrated, don't you?”

“To the last detail,” he assured her, and his smile was so charming she saw no point in arguing. “Give me a few moments to return some phone calls . . . Upon my honor,” he assured her with an upraised hand, “it's the last time today.”

She started gathering up the dishes.

“Please,” he said, pulling out his phone as he moved toward the door. “Leave the dishes for the staff.”

“Staff,” Sara repeated to herself, wonderingly. She carried the dishes to the big stone farmer's sink. “I have a staff.”

From the doorway, with his mobile phone already to his ear, Ash lifted a cautionary finger. “
I
have a staff,” he corrected. “You have a castle. Or part of one, to be precise.” Then, “Sébastien!
Comment allez-vous?
” His voice faded away as he moved down the hall.

In retrospect, Sara would realize she had fallen in love with the château the moment she got out of the car and started taking photographs of its fairy-tale turrets and crumbling moss-covered walls. But that morning, as Ash took her through room after ancient, majestic, marble-clad room, what she felt was a kind of enchantment. She kept thinking,
Kings walked here
. Princes and cardinals and ladies of the court in their silk panniers and powdered wigs almost seemed to flit past them in the corridors, to disappear just before a door was opened, to whisper their secrets around each corner they passed. She placed her hand against a dark mahogany panel and she thought,
Some craftsman carved this panel four hundred years ago, with tools that aren't even in existence today
. Ash pointed out a nick in the banister that he said was made during a sword fight centuries ago and she caressed it with her fingertips, feeling history rise to meet her.