Miramont's Ghost

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Text copyright © 2015 Elizabeth Hall

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

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ISBN-13: 9781477820469

ISBN-10: 1477820469

Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014946050

For June

PROLOGUE

Manitou Springs, Colorado

S
he sat at the piano, fingers still poised over the now-silent keys. The notes of the night serenade dissipated in the cool air, ghosts of sound, lingering in the periphery of light and shadow. The sun had set. Shadows crept across the room. But Adrienne stared straight ahead, lost in a trance of remembering. The music had carried her away, to another time and another place, when she was young and in love and the future still sparkled with possibility.

Somewhere on the hillside a dog barked and jolted her from her reverie. Adrienne turned her head toward the window, filled now with the blue dark of evening. She stood and moved to the glass and stared out into the dusk.

Color faded from the sky. Stars winked in the canyons. Lights in the houses on the hillside flickered to life, bathing the windows with gold and spilling out into the streets. She could hear them—families gathering for dinner, plates clattering on the table. She could smell what they ate—garlic and tomato in the house below her, chicken with rosemary at the house across the street.

The little girl who lived in the blue house on the corner rode up and dropped her bike on the sidewalk. She turned and looked up at the castle, and for a moment, their eyes locked on one another. The girl stared for an instant longer, and then ran up the steps and in the front door of her house. Adrienne heard the screen door slam, watched as the girl raced into the amber light of the living room.

It had been many years since anyone had actually
seen
her, actually looked at her. Those eyes, locking on her own, sent a jolt like a bolt of lightning into the core of her being. Connection, however small, was something she hadn’t experienced in far too long.

But as soon as the little girl turned away, as soon as that connection was broken, Adrienne was flooded once more with the weight of her isolation. She thought she had managed to put all that away from her; she thought she had become adept at living with seclusion and silence. Now the force of her solitude threatened to knock her to her knees. She ached with longing—a longing she had not felt for many, many years.

The pine trees were completely black now, only silhouettes against the almost-black sky. Shades of gray filled the streets, as if all of life’s color had drained away with the setting sun. Adrienne wrapped her arms around her chest and stared at the falling darkness. Outside the window, crickets chirped. Wind rattled the leaves in the cottonwood tree. They click-click-clicked as they hit against each other. An owl hooted, his voice low and sad.

Memories of her dream came back, enveloping her like the gray of a rainy day. She was in the confessional, in a church she could neither see nor remember. The space was close and small. She watched the light, dim and dappled by the confessional screen, as it fell across her skirt and the hands resting in her lap. She could smell the onions that the priest had had for lunch. He was the priest from her childhood, Père Henri. As a child, the smell had always made her draw back and wrinkle her nose, but she remembered his voice as being deep and kind. He always listened quietly to those oh-so-innocent sins of her youth. She had pulled her sister’s hair. She had made a face at her aunt Marie. She had raised her voice to her mother. She remembered how hot and red she had become when she confessed that she had told her sister to “go to hell.” He never laughed, never minimized her sins or blew them out of proportion. He seemed to know instinctively that Adrienne was one of a handful of souls who took everything to heart. If she mentioned something, then it was because it weighed heavily on her mind.

How was it, then, that as she got older and her sins became greater, she had ceased confessing? She could not recall the last time she had stepped inside the confessional, could not recall the last time she had unburdened her heart. But waking from the dream last night, and now, as she stood at the window staring out into the dusk, she remembered how she always left that small, dark space feeling lighter. She could smile and laugh, and know as soon as she had said her five Hail Marys that all was well, that she was free to start fresh, to begin again, unshackled by guilt or shame.

And oh, how she would love to start fresh, to unburden herself of all that had happened. Because no matter how she had tried over these many years to justify her behavior, no matter how she tried to blame the situation and the circumstances that had led her to that point, the truth was that she had committed the worst of all possible sins. She had taken a life—and in fact, more than one.

She had thought, at the time, that it would end her torment, would allow her escape. But that was not the case. If anything, she was more trapped, more isolated, more haunted than before. And just a few moments ago, when she looked into the eyes of that young girl in the blue house, she felt once more the heavy burden of guilt and shame that she carried.

Adrienne looked back at the blue house. The family was sitting around the dinner table, lit up like a Norman Rockwell painting. They were laughing and talking and enjoying their evening dinner—a perfectly normal family and a perfectly normal evening. Normal. Adrienne sighed, and laid her forehead against the glass.

CHAPTER ONE

Beaulieu, France—1884

F
our-year-old Adrienne leaned out her window into the warm May morning. She smiled and closed her eyes, giddy with the perfumes of spring. She smelled the lilacs, the chestnut trees, Grand-père’s tulips and roses in the garden below. She turned her head, toward the Pyrenees Mountains to her left, and sniffed again. She could smell the mountains, the scent of pine trees wafting on the air, and a faint whiff of spice that could only be from Spain.

She opened her eyes and drank in the sights of the little village of Beaulieu in the valley below her. Whitewashed walls, red tile roofs, birch trees and chestnuts and pines. The steeple of the church rose above it all, a finger reaching into the sapphire sky. Smoke curled from the chimney at the
boulangeri
e
; three boys ran down the road toward the river, their arms and legs jerking about like puppets on strings. The river separated the château grounds from the village like a shiny gray ribbon. She loved how small the village looked from her window on the hill, as if it were a collection of toy dollhouses built just for her. Standing in this window, surveying the kingdom, she felt like a fairy princess, straight out of one of Grand-père’s storybooks.

The white curtains billowed inward, and Adrienne’s eyes locked on a sharp stab of light, the sun reflecting on a window in town. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. She stared at that bright flickering gold spot, and her mind drifted. A story opened up before her. Adrienne could see Madame Clemenceau, standing before the mirror in her bedroom. She was admiring herself in her new hat, turning her head this way and that, inspecting the peacock feathers and the blue-black velvet, and the pleasing way it set off her eyes in the glass. Adrienne watched as madame’s eyes grew large and her features froze with fear. The woman moved quickly, snatching the hat from her head and stuffing it in the hatbox. She dropped the box to the floor, and shoved it with her foot so that her skirts covered it. Adrienne watched as the woman’s husband entered the room, his face puffy and red. He looked like one of the seven dwarfs, and Adrienne covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.

Another reflection caught her eye, and once again, Adrienne saw things that were not actually visible from her window in the château on the hill. Monsieur LaMott had his arms around Madame Binoche, kissing her in a way that made Adrienne blush. The woman’s robe could not conceal her breasts, and he bent and kissed each of them. Then he opened the door of her kitchen and left, blowing her a kiss, and whistling as he walked down the back street to his own home, two blocks away. Adrienne watched as he composed his face into something serious and walked in the back door of the patisserie, where he lived with his wife. Madame LaMott was stirring a pot of cereal on the stove, but when she heard him, she turned, her face contorted with rage. Adrienne could see her, yelling, trying to hit him with the spoon. Monsieur put his arms up to protect himself from her assault. Adrienne winced, as if she herself had been struck.

“Adrienne? Adrienne?”

Adrienne heard the voice of her governess as if from a great distance. She turned her head toward the sound, but it was as if she was at the end of a long tunnel. It took a moment or two before she recognized Lucie’s face, before she remembered her surroundings.

“Adrienne?”

Lucie let out a long sigh. “Your grand-père is waiting.” She held Adrienne’s sweater in her hands.

Adrienne slipped her arms into the sweater and ran through the room and down the hallway.

The Comte de Challembelles waited at the bottom of the wide staircase. His own blue eyes sparkled, a mirror of Adrienne’s, as he watched his little granddaughter hurrying down to meet him. He was smitten with the child, as she was with him. The comte was now in his eighties, easier with this granddaughter than he had ever been with his own children. His hair was a soft, milky white, his eyes cobalt, his jawline still strong. The traces of the lieutenant colonel who had served under Napoleon still rested in the proud lift of his chin, the strength and dignity of his shoulders and stance.

“I’m ready, Grand-père!” Adrienne hopped from one foot to the other, trying to be patient as he reached for his hat.

He took her hand, and they strolled out the front of the castle and down the hill to the village. The sun was warm, the air thick with the aromas of spring. Birds sang, a chorus of tiny bells and flutes in the trees.

Adrienne dropped his hand to run after a butterfly. She stopped and sniffed the bluebells at the side of the road. The comte smiled. Her joy at the sights and sounds of the spring morning was contagious. There was nothing like this grandchild, giddy with the wonders of spring, to make him forget the ache in his knees. It was so different than what he had had with his own daughters. When they were young, he had been much more concerned with the issues of discipline, with instilling good behavior and creating proper French ladies. He had often been called away from home, burdened with the duties of a comte. Now he had time to enjoy the intricacies of little-girlhood. He had the resources to spoil her, and damn the consequences. Truth be told, neither of his girls had ever displayed the joy in life that Adrienne seemed to possess. She savored everything, from snowflakes to dragonflies, and in her eyes, he saw the world anew. He, too, could see the wonders in a pink tulip; he smelled afresh the heavy scent of the pines.

They wandered down the dirt road that connected the château to the village, walking past vineyards and farm fields, over the creek that separated the village from the estate grounds. When they reached the village, the comte stopped and looked down. “Would you like a pastry, my sweet? We won’t tell your mother,” he whispered with a wink.

Adrienne’s smile faded. She turned her gaze to the window of the patisserie. “Not this morning, Grand-père, thank you. Madame LaMott is in a sour mood.”

The comte’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”

Adrienne stared into the window and sighed. “She and Monsieur LaMott are fighting.” Adrienne leaned forward and lowered her voice
to a whisper. “He was kissing Madame Binoche.” Adrienne raised her hand to stifle a giggle. “And she did not have all of her clothes on.” She raised her eyebrows, as if she actually understood all that her words implied.

The comte stared at the window of the patisserie, as if he could see into the lives of the LaMott couple. He turned to face the little girl. “Adrienne . . . what makes you think this?”

“I saw it. When I stood in my window this morning.”

The comte looked back up the hill toward the castle. Though less than a mile away, the distance was too great; trees obscured the view. “How could you see it?” He leaned down on one knee, and put his hands on Adrienne’s waist.

Adrienne sighed. “Sometimes . . . when I look at something shiny . . . I see this little picture. Here.” She touched her fingers to the middle of her forehead. “I can see what people do. I can hear what they say.”

She leaned close to him, lowered her chin, and looked up at him through thick eyelashes. “I heard what Madame LaMott said when monsieur came home this morning,” she whispered. “It was not very nice, Grand-père.”

The comte swallowed. The icy finger of the past brushed against his neck, making his hair stand on end. He stood, wrapped Adrienne’s hand inside his, and they wandered down the street. “What else have you seen?”

Adrienne turned her head and stared at the milliner’s shop, hats perched on display like peacocks, strutting for the customers.

“I saw Madame Clemenceau in her bedroom. She was standing in front of the mirror, looking at the hat she bought yesterday.” Adrienne scrunched her nose. “It looks like a dead bird.”

The comte smiled at her expression.

“But then she yanked it off her head and put it in the box, and hid it. Her husband was coming,” Adrienne explained. “He doesn’t like for her to spend so much money.”

The comte pressed his lips together, and turned his head toward the village chapel, attempting to hide his amusement. Monsieur Clemenceau was often heard complaining about how much his wife spent on “fripperies.”

Adrienne stared at a little gray bird, splashing in a puddle at the side of the lane. “And Maman’s new baby? The one in her tummy? It’s a girl,” she said with a frown. “I know she wants a boy . . . She talks about it all the time.” Adrienne shrugged her shoulders and heaved a deep sigh. “But . . . this baby is a girl. She has yellow hair. Like Maman.”

The comte looked down at the reddish-brown curls, catching the sunlight like jewels. So similar to his late wife, this little girl, with her auburn hair and blue eyes. The comte stopped in the lane, his brow tense as the memories flooded over him. Marguerite, too, had been able to see. She, too, had known things that she should not have known. She knew that their daughter, Genevieve, Adrienne’s mother, would have yellow hair. But there was no joy, no anticipation, in that knowledge. She saw the blond hair of that baby, but she also saw her own body, lifeless and still. She knew, almost from the time she became pregnant, that this yellow-haired daughter would cost her her life. The comte had tried to reassure her, tried to tell her she was only nervous, that it was just the normal jitters and fears of carrying a baby. But her knowledge hung heavy on them both. She’d wake up at night, bathed in a cold sweat, her hands on the child growing inside her. He would pull her close and wrap her in his arms, but she could not be consoled. She knew what she knew, and there was no way to pretend otherwise.

Adrienne stopped walking, and turned back to him. She stood still in the middle of the lane. The comte stared straight ahead, lost in memory.

“Grand-père? What was my grand-mère like?”

The comte turned back to his granddaughter, and exhaled slowly. “Hmmm? She was much like you, Adrienne. Her eyes, her hair.”

“Did she see pictures? Like I do?”

The comte looked down at the girl. His throat burned. He nodded. “Yes. Yes, she did.” His Adam’s apple bobbed above his collar. “She knew that your maman would have yellow hair. Even before she was born.”

Adrienne smiled.

The comte looked toward the river on their left. He remembered other visions, other things she had known. Like the way she knew that their son, their only son, would not live to his first birthday. He remembered the times she had cursed her gift. She had hated seeing the pain that awaited them both—hated that she could do nothing to change things. The visions had torn at her, leaving her exhausted and often lost in her own melancholy.

The comte put his hand on top of Adrienne’s head. She was rapturous with the joy of spring at the moment, completely innocent. She had no idea that the pictures she saw were anything more than fairy stories, like the ones in her books. They were entertaining, nothing more. He stared at her, his eyes filled with sadness. He would not have wished this gift on his worst enemy.

Adrienne gave his wrinkled hand a squeeze.

The comte sighed, and glanced up the hill. “We should be getting back now. Your aunt Marie should be here soon.”

“Yes, I know.” Adrienne frowned. She dragged her foot back and forth through the dirt. “She isn’t very nice, is she, Grand-père?”

The comte stared at his granddaughter. She could not possibly remember Marie; she had been only a few months old the last time Marie had been home. But she was right. Marie was not very nice, though he would never say so out loud about his own child. Though petite, only five feet tall and ninety pounds, she was quite a forceful woman. More than one man had been cut by her sharp words, her icy glare, the force of her iron will.

Guilt washed over him once again. He had neglected Marie after the death of her mother; he knew that. Marie was thirteen at the time, and the loss had hit her hard. She had become sullen and angry. But the comte had been lost in his own pain, his own guilt. He went to Paris as often as he could, trying to evade the memories that hung in the air of the castle. And that meant leaving baby Genevieve with her nurse, Marie with her governess. They had all suffered, but privately, in their own separate worlds, unable to connect to one another.

He’d come home from Paris to find that Marie had taken over the role of lady of the house. Even at the age of thirteen, she had mastered the art of managing the servants. But her bossiness and manipulation did not stop with the servants. She was equally harsh and demanding with her baby sister, and with anyone from the village who happened to cross her path. He had hated returning to Beaulieu back then, hated the way she reigned over the castle like a queen.

The comte exhaled, trying to rid himself of the darkness that remembering that time always brought. It wasn’t until the birth of Adrienne, this granddaughter who stood beside him now, that he had finally been able to make amends for his neglect. To Adrienne, he gave all the attention and love and concern that he was unable to bring to his own daughters in those dark days.

Adrienne looked up at him. “She brings you a present, Grand-père,” she confided. “It is a . . . ray . . . re-tab-lo. A little wooden saint. The Indians in New Mexico make them.”

The comte tipped his head and nodded. “Ahhh.”

“Grand-père . . .” Adrienne tipped her head to one side. “What are Indians?”

The comte studied Adrienne’s face. She was such an intriguing mixture of knowledge and innocence. So like his late wife. He felt very old, suddenly. As if he had aged a decade since they left for their walk.