Keys to the Castle (21 page)

“I want you to get help from the village.”

“I don't need any help. I can—”

“For God's sake, Sara, you can't even cook! I'm sending someone up.”

She glared at him and he reminded her sharply, “Alyssa is my ward. I won't have her starving to death. And you don't even know how to work a European washing machine.”

“How hard can it be?”

“I'm not going to argue with you.”

“Three days a week. And she has to speak English.”

“Every morning, six days a week. Learn French.”

A smile, very tiny and almost indistinguishable, twitched at her lips. “I'll manage, Ash,” she said.

He blew out a breath. “I well imagine you will. Sara . . .” How much easier this would have been if he could have touched her, drawn her into his embrace, stroked her hair. As it was he could only stand there awkwardly, offering an uncertain gift with the most earnest intent, knowing it was unlikely to be received. “I don't want you to think of Daniel as a monster,” he said quietly. “He came from a different culture, with values that were different from those you and I might hold. If you stay here, you will be part of that culture. I just want you to know that.”

Her lashes shadowed her cheek, and he saw her throat convulse. She looked suddenly frail, and vulnerable, and he hated that he had done that to her. Or that Daniel had done that do her.

“And by the way,” he added, his tone hardening, “your offer is rejected.”

Her head jerked up. She stared at him. “What?”

“By the terms of my contract with Daniel,” he informed her flatly, “which is transferable to his heirs and assigns, my shares in the château may be purchased with accrued interest at current market value in cash. No allowances are made for payments over time—that was merely a suggestion I made to you on a day I was feeling generous. I am feeling slightly less generous today, so unless you have approximately 3.7 million in ready U.S. dollars, we have no deal. I will of course make certain you are reimbursed for the amount you've paid in taxes. I assume Winkle has your bank account information.”

Her expression hardened. “Mr. Winkle said you might pull something like this.”

“Good for him. I hope he also pointed out that you'll thank me for this someday.”

“You're not going to get away with this.”

“I already have,” he assured her. “You're not going to kick my ass, and I'm not going to kiss yours. This is a compromise. Take it or leave it.”

“You son of a bitch.”

He smiled. “
Bonjour, chérie
. And
bonne aventure
. I'll be in touch.”

Before he left, he scooped Alyssa up into the air, and kissed her soundly on both cheeks. “Take care of your aunt Sara,” he whispered to her before he set her on her feet again. “She needs you very much.”

Ash let himself into Michele's Paris apartment, tossed his blazer over the back of her sofa, poured a Scotch, and made himself comfortable in one of her Louis Vuitton leather chairs. The room was decorator perfect, with art pieces collected from each of her previous three husbands. Ash's contribution was a framed copy of a letter supposedly written to Louis XIV from the mistress for whom he built Rondelais, which he had purchased from Daniel's father for two hundred pounds, back when he was first falling under the dark spell of Michele's enchantment. It wasn't worth that, since it had already been proven to be a nineteenth-century copy of a seventeenth-century document that may or may not have ever existed, but its language was explicit, if not downright erotic, and Ash had thought it would amuse her. After the divorce, he had offered to buy it back from her for a thousand pounds, simply because it annoyed him that she should have it. She of course had laughed at him.

He wandered around the apartment for a time, smoked one of her cigarettes—which reminded him immediately why he had abandoned the habit years ago—and eventually returned to the chair by the window. He sipped the whiskey slowly and listened to the muffled sounds from the busy streets below, watching the sun set over one of the most magnificent cities in the world. Michele kept excellent Scotch, and he was almost sorry when he heard her key turn in the door before he was even half finished.

Her heels were three inches high and her skirt about three inches too short, but like most Frenchwomen, even at her age, she could pull it off. If she was startled to see him sitting there in the twilight, she did not show it.

“And so,
mon chéri
,” she murmured, dropping her packages on the table by the door, “at last you have come to your senses.” She came over to him in a drift of musky perfume, rouged lips upturned in a practiced vixen's smile, her fingertips threading through the back of his hair.

“Indeed I have.” He let his eyes examine what she offered: the swell of an ivory breast, the curve of a silk-clad hip. “I've come to understand, my love, that subtlety is lost on you. So I will be explicit.” He took one last sip of the Scotch and stood. She was so close that their thighs brushed and his face was mere inches from hers. He took her chin between the fingers of his hand and he said, softly, “You will withdraw your petition for custody before nine o'clock in the morning or at five after I will have you charged with abduction and child endangerment, is that quite clear?”

Her brows drew together in an annoyed moue and she tried to turn her face away, but he held it firm. “And you will never—please understand me, Michele, I said
never
—molest either Sara or Alyssa again under any pretense whatsoever. You have seen what I do to people who get in my way. You don't want to be one of them.”

She struggled to pull her face away from his grip. “You're hurting me.”

“Good.”

But he released her abruptly and she took a half-stumbling step back, rubbing the red marks his fingers had left on her chin. Her eyes were smoldering green embers in the dim room, but her voice was deliberately casual. “I am no fool, my love. The silly petition has been already withdrawn. But the damage, she is already done,
n'est-ce pas
?”

He looked at her without compassion. “It's over, Michele. This time you've finally gone too far.”

He started to move past her, but she stopped him with a hand flat on his chest. Those eyes, those hard, dark gems, moved back and forth over his face, as if collecting his secrets, tasting his thoughts. “When will you abandon this foolishness?” Her breath, hot and sweetly perfumed, fanned across his mouth, her fingers closing slowly around the fabric of his shirt. “When will you stop chasing something you are not? You think your American would not have you if she knew you inside, and you are right. But I know you, Ashton.” Her breasts tantalized his chest and her nails closed on his skin, stinging, bringing fire. “I know you,” she whispered, her mouth against his now. “I know you because inside you
are
me.”

He felt her heat, and it was a fever in his own skin. The taste of her breath, the sharp, hot caress of her nails, caused his heart to pound and his throat to grow dry. He reached for her hands, his fingers closing tight around hers. He stepped away.

“No,” he told her. “I'm not.”

He released her hands with a motion so abrupt that she stumbled a little on her high heels, and he pushed past her and out of the door without another word.

Yet into the hallway, into the street, into the taxi, and all the way to the airport, her words clung to him like the scent of her perfume. He couldn't get them out of his head. And what troubled him most was that deep inside there was a part of him that was afraid she was right.

Ash left sixteen messages on Sara's voice mail over a period of half as many days. The first was when his check for five hundred euros, along with a very nice note from Mrs. Harrison instructing Sara to use the money to purchase whatever Alyssa needed for the summer, was returned without comment. He then requested that Mrs. Harrison go out and secure an assortment of “dresses and playclothes and underthings and such as that” for a five-year-old girl, along with a selection of toys and picture books, to be boxed up and sent to Rondelais posthaste. When that box, too, was returned unopened, he left a perfectly polite message asking Sara to call him. The next message was not so polite. Nor was the next one.

She did not return any of his calls. She did, however call his office and leave a message with Mrs. Harrison explaining that she had already taken Alyssa shopping and there was no need for him to send any more boxes.

He was annoyed. “Impossible. There's nothing in the village but T-shirts and sundries. The only clothing Alyssa has are school uniforms. She'll need shoes and—”

“I believe Ms. Graves said something about Lyon, sir.”

“She took her to Lyon?” Ash didn't know why that surprised him so. “How?”

“There is a train,” Mrs. Harrison pointed out.

Ash muttered, “Yes, I suppose there is.”

“Apparently she needed some things to make their stay more comfortable,” Mrs. Harrison went on, “since the château is not set up for young visitors. She asked if I could recommend a supplier of children's furniture, so I rang up Mr. Finnish and asked him to send her a catalogue. I trust that was appropriate.”

He looked at her suspiciously. “It sounds as though you had a lovely chat.”

“She seems a pleasant enough person. Quite attached to the little one.”

“She'd be a lot more pleasant,” replied Ash irritably, “if she'd return my calls.”

The next voice mail he left pointed out that as Alyssa's guardian and administrator of her trust, it was his responsibility to supply her basic necessities and Sara was not to return any more of his checks. Furthermore, he reminded her in no uncertain terms that part of their agreement was that she would keep her mobile phone turned on and with her at all times. The next several messages pointed out that she was in unquestionable violation of her part of the bargain and that there were consequences—he stopped short of spelling out what they might be—for her behavior.

She sent a message, via Mrs. Harrison, to remind him that she had agreed to keep her phone turned on and on her person and that she had done so. But that did not mean, “And I quote, sir,” said Mrs. Harrison, “ ‘that I have to answer every time the fool thing rings.' ”

Ash glared at her. “Did she say anything else?”

“Yes, sir. She wondered if I thought teal would be a suitable color for draperies in a little girl's room.”

Ash considered and rejected a number of pithy remarks—none of which would be suitable for Mrs. Harrison's ears—and finally decided on, “Oh, bloody hell. Get Argentina on the telephone for me.”

To which she replied, “The entire country, sir, or is there someone in particular you had in mind?”

He decided then and there that he did not approve of Sara's relationship with Mrs. Harrison. She was definitely exerting a bad influence.

Dixie said, sounding alarmed, “Wait a minute. Are you telling me you're moving to
France
? Right now? Without talking to anyone or packing or . . .”

“No,” Sara said. “I mean, yes. What I mean is, not exactly.” She blew out a breath and sank down on the floor, leaning her head back against the wall. “I don't know.” She closed her eyes briefly. “God, Dixie, it all happened so fast. I didn't have time to think. I just had to do something, and if I hadn't done it quickly, I mean, within a matter of hours, that crazy woman, that ex-wife of Ash's, would have filed a suit that could have kept the estate tied up in court for years. I couldn't have cared less, personally, but the little girl, Alyssa . . . she's an orphan. This is all she has. I couldn't let someone steal it from her like that.”