Keys to the Castle (18 page)

She sat up and swung her legs to the ground, tossing the cigarette away. “You mustn't feel badly,
chérie
,” she said, rising. “This game of seduction, it is what Ashton does. It is what he knows. You take my advice, you forgive, and you move on. It is a—how do you say—a lesson of life. I only wonder . . .” She regarded Sara speculatively. “Has the seduction gone beyond the business yet? No? How very peculiar. He is generally so much quicker in such matters. But never mind. It will come. And then,
chérie . . .”

She crossed slowly to Sara and stood near her, smiling. “You have a treat in store. Ashton is very good in bed,” she confided. “After all, I taught him everything he knows.”

Michele moved past her, laughing softly, brushing Sara's arm with her silk sleeve. For a moment Sara didn't move. And then she turned sharply on her heel.

“Michele,” she said.

The other woman turned.

“You're wasting your time with me.” Sara's voice was strong, and even, and for that she was very proud. “I don't want your husband, your château, or your advice. I don't want anything that has been or ever will be yours. All I want is to go home.”

Another time, she might have appreciated the slight wavering of the certainty in Michele's eyes, even though her steely smile did not fade. But as Sara jerked open the heavy door and moved quickly into the house, she didn't even notice. She walked calmly up the stairs with her shoulders square and her head high, and she closed her door quietly. Then she crawled up onto the enormous, silk-clad bed, buried her face in one of the tufted pillows, and sobbed out her fury, her disappointment, her bitter, bitter loss until she had nothing left.

Nothing at all.

She awoke to the sound of her own weeping with burning, puffy eyes and a throat that felt gummy. The room was dark, and the pillow beneath her cheek stiff with the salt of dried tears. The weeping wouldn't go away. And as Sara rolled over groggily, trying to focus in the dark, she gradually realized the weeping was not hers.

She sat up, rubbing her hands over her itchy, swollen face, and fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp. The soft glow of light stabbed pain through her eyes and she squeezed them closed briefly. There it was again, muffled but unmistakable. Someone crying. She got up and stumbled to the door.

The corridor outside her room was dark. Ash was the one who knew where all the light switches were and he was not here. The sound was not in her imagination; it was in fact clearer now, and it was coming from somewhere in the dark. It made her flesh prickle. She ran her hand along the wall for a moment, looking for a light switch, and then remembered the flashlight that Ash had left in her room the night before. Had it been only last night? Or a lifetime ago?

She returned to the corridor, sweeping the beam across the vast space, every muscle in her body tensed for the sound . . . and there it was again. A heartbroken, hiccupping sob that made Sara's breath catch and her blood go cold. It was not a ghost. It was not an hallucination. It was a child.

She followed the sound with her heart racing and the flashlight beam bouncing as she increased her pace to a desperate jog. She opened one door, and then another. The third door she opened revealed a small huddled figure crouched against a massive, sheet-draped piece of furniture, sobbing as though her heart would break.

“Oh my God,” Sara whispered. “Alyssa?”

Her hair was tangled and her face was dirty and tear streaked. She had lost her hair ribbon and had torn her white shirt. When she saw the light she stretched out her arms to Sara, and wailed.

It took only half an indrawn breath for Sara to recover from her shock and rush toward the little girl. “Oh, sweetie! Oh, baby, it's okay. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

She dropped to the floor and Alyssa flung herself into her embrace, wrapping her arms around Sara's neck so tightly that it was difficult to breathe. Sara tried quickly to check her for injuries, but soon gave up and simply held her, rocking back and forth on the floor, murmuring softly to her while Alyssa, her thin arms like a vise, sobbed wetly into her shoulder and her little heart beat like a wild bird's against Sara's breast.
“J'ai peur, j'ai peur!”
she kept saying, and Sara just patted her back helplessly, rocking her.

“You're going to have to speak English, sweetie. I can't understand you.”

And Alyssa whispered brokenly, “Afraid!”

Everything inside of Sara seemed to break in two. They had left her. The only adults she knew, the ones responsible for her care, the grown-ups she trusted had simply walked away and forgotten her, leaving her alone and terrified in a dark castle to fend for herself. Had she gotten lost exploring? Had she exhausted herself with playing make-believe and fallen asleep, only to awake in a cold dark place with no one in the whole world knowing where she was? When Sara thought of what might have happened—the stairs, the moat, the empty swimming pool; the dark passages that led nowhere, the unsafe garden walls, the kitchen filled with knives and matches—her throat convulsed and she could hardly breathe. They had left her.
They had left her.

Sara closed her eyes and hugged Alyssa tightly, as though the simple force of her embrace could protect her, could take away the terror of this night, could assure her that she would never, ever be abandoned again. She hugged her so fiercely that she didn't even notice that Alyssa had stopped crying, and only when she began to squirm in protest did Sara loosen her grip.

Alyssa sniffed, wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand, and inquired solemnly,
“Ou sont les toilettes?”

Sara smiled in spite of herself. “
That
I understand.” She set Alyssa on her feet and took her hand, picking up the flashlight. “Come along.”

After attending to the little girl's personal needs, Sara managed to find enough light switches to illuminate their way to the kitchen. By this time Alyssa, overawed by the splendor of Sara's bedroom and with the unique resilience of children, had recovered from her fright and regained her sense of adventure. She surprised Sara by chattering all the way to the kitchen—not in French, but in English.

“I do well to speak the
anglais
,” she assured Sara happily. “I know many of the words. Shall I tell you to them? Lamp,” she said, pointing to the grand chandelier as it blossomed in the hall. “Stairs. Boy.” She pointed to the portrait in the entry way. “Table. The flower is on the table. I am called Alyssa. I be five years of age. What is you called?”

“My name is Sara,” Sara told her, smiling down at her. “And I'm a lot older than that. I wish I could speak French as well as you speak English.”

“I teach you,” Alyssa volunteered generously. “My English is very goodly.”

And even though it was the last thing she felt like doing, Sara laughed.

She spread jam on a thick slice of bread and poured a glass of milk for Alyssa, and while the little girl ate, Sara took out her cell phone and, smiling disingenuously, stabbed out the telephone number she had found on the letterhead of Lindeman and Lindeman. A recorded voice informed her, “The hours of Lindeman and Lindeman are Monday through Friday, nine to six . . .”

She resisted the urge to throw the cell phone against the wall.

“Plate,” said Alyssa, pointing. “The bread is on the plate.”

Sara sat beside her, smiling as she wiped a smear of jam off her face with a napkin. “Do you like to swim, Alyssa?”

Apparently Alyssa was not quite certain what those words meant, because she simply munched another bite from her jam sandwich and gazed at Sara with those big brown eyes. Eyes that went straight to Sara's heart.

Eyes that looked just like Daniel's.

Sara struggled not to let her smile falter, and she smoothed back one of Alyssa's tangled curls with her fingers. “Well, never mind. You're going to like my bathtub. Where have you been playing, anyway? In the dungeon?”

“Qu'est-ce que c'est dungeon?”
inquired Alyssa with interest, and Sara spent the rest of the brief meal trying to define English words for an inexhaustible French-speaking five-year-old.

Sara washed out Alyssa's filthy school uniform in the sink and watched while Alyssa splashed and played in the giant bathtub. And even through the terror that gripped her chest whenever she thought about what might have happened, and the rage that flamed through her body when she thought about what
had
happened, she couldn't help laughing at the innocence of a child's play, and the ease with which she immersed herself in the moment. Sara scrubbed her down with the expensive-smelling soap and washed her hair with the expensive-smelling shampoo, then towel dried her and swaddled the little girl in one of her own cotton nightshirts. It dragged the floor when she walked, and Sara showed her how to hold it up in front like a court gown so that she wouldn't trip, with a train trailing behind.

She wished she had not already shipped home the toys she had bought for the boys, and she searched around for something to keep a five-year-old entertained. All she could find was a book of photographs of the Loire Valley that she had bought for Dixie, and she settled Alyssa atop the big bed with the picture book.

“Now you stay right here,” she told her, “and look at the pretty pictures. I've got to go try to find a way to call your . . .” What had she called him? Something papa. “Your papa. He'll be worried about you.”

Alyssa regarded her solemnly. “I have no papa.
Je suis un bâtard.
”

Sara stared at her. She did not have to understand French to know that word.
Bastard.

“Ma maman,”
she went on matter-of-factly, “she is
morte
. There is a cat at
l'école
. Now he is
mort
.” She turned a picture in the book, and her face lit up. “Voilà!” she exclaimed, pointing to a photograph of a château with round turrets and a drawbridge. “I am here! She is my
maison
!”

Sara hesitated, then sat down on the bed beside her, looking at the picture. “Yes,” she agreed. “It looks very much like your house. But it's not. Your house is called Château Rondelais.” She settled back against the pillows and pulled Alyssa close. “Let's see if there's a picture of it in this book, okay?”

She turned the pages of the book, reading the captions and pointing to the photographs, until she could see the little girl's eyelids begin to droop. She closed the book and tucked Alyssa under the covers, kissing her forehead lightly.

“Close your eyes now, sweetie. Time for sleep.”

Alyssa gazed drowsily at the gold and blue canopy overhead, the satiny curtains surrounding her.
“C'est très belle,”
she murmured.

Sara smiled. “Fit for a princess.”

She started to get up, hoping against hope that Ash had left something in his room, or elsewhere in the castle—a business card, a list of emergency numbers—something, anything, that would tell her what to do now. She didn't even speak enough French to contact the local authorities, or to try to find the housekeeper who had come in so reliably every day . . . but who would not be here tomorrow because, of course, she thought the château was empty.

She slid off the bed, but before she could take a step toward the door a small, fierce hand gripped her sleeve. Sara looked back at Alyssa. She was practically lost in the giant bed, a tiny doll with big, frightened, shimmering eyes. As Sara watched, a tear spilled from one of those eyes and splashed fatly on the starched white pillowcase. She said nothing. She did not have to. The dread in her eyes spoke it all.

Once again Sara felt her heart rend, quite simply, in two. She climbed back up on the bed, and lay down with her cheek on the pillow next to Alyssa's. “Of course I'll stay,” she said softly. She held Alyssa's hand. “Don't be afraid. I'm here.” She smiled, and another tear slid down Alyssa's plump cheek. Sara wiped it away. “Would you like to hear a story?”

Alyssa nodded uncertainly, still-damp curls bouncing, and Sara suspected the little girl was not entirely sure what a story was.

“Okay. But you must be very quiet, and close your eyes, and cuddle in close.”

Obediently, Alyssa squeezed her eyes closed and snuggled close to Sara, holding on to her hand, tucking her head underneath Sara's chin. Sara closed her eyes, too, and in a moment she began, softly, “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful fairy princess who lived in a castle . . .”