The Painted Castle

by Kristy Cambron

  It was the oddest thing, to watch Emory step out the back doors of the manor to be swallowed up by the vast acreage and the autumn sun. Keira stood at the window, watching as he trotted down the terrace steps and out to the path toward the cottage.

  Somehow she could feel sadness follow, though she hadn’t a clue why.

  For two men whose manners were so opposite and whose interactions were increasingly layered with ice, Carter Wilmont and Emory Scott didn’t seem to be lifelong friends at all. If there was one thing she’d have paid money to know—almost more than who painted the masterpiece hidden in the manor walls—it was what other stories had been buried at Parham Hill.

  A trip to London wasn’t likely to untangle all that.

  Fourteen

  November 12, 1944

  Parham Hill Estate

  Framlingham, England

  Amelia jumped at the strong-knuckled rap-rap-rap against the cottage’s front door.

  She checked her pocket watch—only half past ten.

  Maybe Luca was so excited to move on to their next chapter that he’d managed to sneak away early that day. She crossed to the door and opened it, only to find it wasn’t Luca who stood on the stoop under the canopy of golden willows.

  “Wyatt . . . What a surprise.”

  Her jittery exhale was a certain telltale sign she hadn’t expected him to find her at her cottage hideaway, and in such a state of disrepair as laboring over a pot of melted beeswax, making candles for their winter stores. She whisked her hair back at the temples, smoothing the locks behind her ears.

  “Hello, Amelia. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  Wyatt looked past her to the collection of beeswax candle jars drying on wooden racks above the worktable, then to the row of leaded-glass windows open along the back wall. If he trailed that glance all the way through the cottage, he’d see back to the private office, the rows of bookshelves, and the prized painting hanging on the wall with them.

  Amelia slipped out to the stone front steps and pulled the brass knob closed with a click behind her, leaving the view behind. “You only disturbed my mad candle making, and I needed a break anyway.”

  “Is there anything you don’t do on this estate, milady?”

  “With an estate this size, who’d have time for leisure? Besides, if we don’t keep St. Michaels in supply of beeswax, how would the townsfolk light candles for their boys who are off at war? It may be a small effort in comparison to the RAF or the US Army, but we still do what we can.”

  “You mean to say we’re all fighting our own war.”

  “Something like that.”

  A smile, rather sheepish, softened his face in reply. “I actually wondered if Luca is about. I have a bribe of sorts, for consideration that I might join the book club.”

  “No. He’s not. But I expect him anytime. He left his journal here again, and he always seems to find his way here when he can sneak away from the dreaded school lessons. So he should be about looking for it.”

  Wyatt held out a rust-red book. “We found a stack of children’s books tucked in with the others shipped to the base from overseas. I set this one aside special.”

  The cover bore the title Curious George in black ink. A tiny monkey and a tall hat were illustrated on the front.

  “Curious George . . . I’ve seen it. It’s quite a popular book in America, yes?”

  “It is. In fact, my nephews loved it.”

  It was the first time he’d mentioned anything of himself. Of home. And of what he’d left behind. Wyatt seemed to smile at a secret memory, and something flip-flopped in her midsection. Thinking of him reading a children’s book to young nephews? Amelia cast the tenderness of the image aside, opting to keep the few feet of distance firmly in place between them.

  “I’d like Luca to have it.”

  She accepted the book and turned it over in her hands. “It’s very thoughtful, of course. He’ll be delighted—even if it’s not of the seafaring bent. But shouldn’t you wait and give it to him yourself?”

  “I wish I could . . .” He glanced over his shoulder to the jeep stopped by the road, as if a clock ticked through the time he had left. “But I brought it for another reason than the book club. You see, the author, Hans A. Rey—Reyersbach—and his wife, Margaret . . . they’re German Jews.”

  The book seemed to pulse with electricity in Amelia’s palms. “They are?”

  “I’ve been thinking of the Pathfinder crash.” He stopped for a breath as his gaze shifted to her temple. “You’re well?”

  “Quite. No damage. And what scar I might have is hidden by my hairline, so I get to keep my girlish looks despite the scratch the enemy tried to inflict upon me.”

  There may have been the ghost of a scar peeking out from her hairline, but the rest was a memory already. No stitches, no harm done. They’d all lived through it, and anytime you could say that after falling planes and a hail of bombs, you moved on with gusto and not a second thought about what might have been.

  Wyatt cleared his throat, as if to shed his voice of its natural husky undertone. “You said something about Liesel and Luca having to leave their home and family to come across the Channel. Is that true?”

  “They did, yes. In 1938.”

  “Do you know anything of their family?”

  “Well, we’re actually trying to find record of their parents, but we can’t seem to find any sign of a Jürgen and Lea Schäfer—at least not that they’re still in Berlin. It seems all the Jews have been moved out long ago. Thompson and Darly are both helping in the hunt, calling in favors from anyone we can. Contacting the Red Cross. But digging from a distance isn’t the best approach, and we’ve had no luck so far.”

  “What brought the children here?”

  “All I know is their father was a third-generation butcher and shopkeeper. They lived in a flat above their family’s shop. Details are fading, but Liesel said soldiers arrived in trucks one night. The Germans shattered the shop windows and burned the building to the ground, with everything the family owned inside. Their father and mother were dragged into the street. Jürgen was beaten in front of his family by soldiers with clubs and taken away, so the kids thought they’d never see him again. And their mother . . . Soldiers inflicted horrific crimes against many of the women. I’ll spare you what Liesel does remember of it all. It was Kristallnacht—‘night of broken glass’—because so many Jewish businesses and homes and even lives were shattered. More than a hundred people were killed in a single night outside the windows where they should have been safe, and their innocence. That died too.”

  Wyatt shook his head and looked down at his boots, as if sickened. “There was coverage in the American newspapers—international reporters could still move around some before Hitler invaded Poland. But all that seems to have stopped, and what’s happened to the Jews of Europe is just a trickle of reports over the wires. I remember reading about it when it happened. It didn’t seem real. Still don’t want to believe it is.”

  “Liesel said they were shortly reunited with their parents, but they set out for the coast soon after. They put their children on a boat and waved good-bye from the port as they sent them across the Channel. When the children landed in England, Liesel carried her younger brother as they boarded a train bound for London. They were taken into a home in the city where they knew no one, had no family but each other, and could barely speak the language.

  “When word circulated that an invasion could be imminent, the Red Cross loaded thousands of children on trains. And one brought them here, with nothing but a paper tag on their coats that said Framlingham and a postcard to send word back home once they’d reached the safety of a country manor. Only I haven’t an address by which to send it—just names: Jürgen and Lea Schäfer. So they stayed with Arthur and me . . . and now with just me. And until I can reach the parents of every single child in our charge, Parham Hill shall remain their home.”

  Wyatt nodded, understanding heavy in the purse of his lips.
“Now I understand why I felt so strongly that Luca should have it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the authors have a similar story.”

  Amelia hugged the book—an unconscious reaction, or connection somehow, to the beloved family the children had been separated from for so long and with so many kilometers in between.

  “Are they alive?”

  “They are.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Hans and Margaret were a young married couple living in Paris before the Nazis marched in. They found two bicycles and in June of 1940 rode hard for the Spanish border—some four hundred miles with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a manuscript for a children’s book in a wicker basket.

  “They reached the United States after having been stopped along the way several times, and made it through by the skin of their teeth only because they could show drawings about a curious monkey and a man with a yellow hat—some kind of odd authority for their cross-country journey. But because of George, they made it through. And barely a year later arrived in New York, where they found a publisher. And here you are, holding the very book—proof that any story can have an ending worth risking everything we have, just to share it with someone else.”

  “They’re safe in America now?”

  “Yes. And grateful for it every day. The number of Jewish refugees the government is allowing in has been shaved down, so they’re lucky to have made it at all. Fortunately, those Jews on US soil were given the assurance they can stay even if their visas expire. So now they live in New York, sharing stories with children who desperately need something to cling to in this broken world. They’d tell you that in many ways, Curious George saved their lives. And through their survival to share this book, they may have saved countless others too.”

  “How do you know all this? Was it in the American newspapers?”

  “It may have been. But I know it because . . . I published them.” Wyatt shifted his weight on the stone steps. “Wyatt Stevens. Associate Publisher, Houghton Mifflin, New York office, at your service.”

  “You never said, so I just assumed—”

  He smiled—dashing, heart-stopping—humbling her with the seeming ability to read her thoughts that if he’d grown up on a farm, he must not have read a book in his life until he’d landed in an English library.

  “Common misconception of Iowa farm-bred boys. But there’s a great big world out there, and I once wanted more than anything just to see it. And here I end up standing on your doorstep, reunited with the story once again as we’re fighting the same evil that allowed it to be shared with the world.”

  “So that’s why . . . in the library? You wanted to read all the books.”

  “That’s part of it. But I suppose in some offbeat manner, they’re a comfort when I’m not in an iron fortress, dropping bombs on what could be my last day on earth. It’s a sobering duty. But if I can walk into a library half a world away from home and still find a reminder that makes me feel at home, I can forget the rest for a little while.”

  “Whyever didn’t you say something? You asked me to recommend books. What a fool you must think me to select them for a man who’s publishing them.”

  “You could never be a fool. Not to me.” Wyatt took a step forward, just shy of crossing the space between them.

  Amelia drifted back until her shoulders grazed the cottage door.

  “I haven’t read all of them. How could any man, with the number of shelves in that library? It would take a lifetime to do it.”

  A lifetime . . .

  Arthur should have had that.

  A lifetime to read books and keep bees and harvest honey. To grow old with her and have a manor filled with the sound of children of their own. Those had been their simple dreams. But he was gone. And Wyatt stood before her—alive, breathing, looking back at her with such openness that she couldn’t bear to break the connection of his eyes fixed upon hers. However well-intentioned that connection was, he wasn’t guaranteed to walk away unscathed either.

  “I pray, every day, that you and the rest of the men have a lifetime—and every ounce of joy in it that God allows when this is all over.”

  “I’m not asking God for a lifetime. I’m realistic about what I have right now. Here.” Something so honest and raw weighed down his voice. “This moment to say it’s not often you meet someone who has more than a passing fondness for the very same thing that impassions you. Please don’t think I have anything but the utmost respect for you and your recommendations. I’ll read whatever you give me. As long as I’m here, I’m here.”

  Amelia heard what he said—really tried to hear it. But flyers didn’t have the choice to look beyond the now.

  That wasn’t the way war operated.

  And it wasn’t what life gave.

  What they prayed for and sat around radios each night to hear spoken in Churchill’s own voice was that the war was over . . . And blessed day when that did come, Wyatt would go home. The library had stories to keep him entertained, even comforted for a time in between missions, but that would eventually fade and the world could get back to marking a lifetime with joy and births instead of lamentations and death.

  Amelia couldn’t see any end save beyond it.

  One day he’d go back to publishing books. The children would be reunited with their parents, one by one. And the manor would be passed on to the next owner—the heir she and Arthur should have seen birthed. It would be a cousin come back from war, maybe with a new bride like she, and Amelia would be pushed out to . . . She hadn’t a clue.

  They were both on borrowed time.

  “Thank you, Wyatt. I’ll ensure Luca receives the gift.” She turned to go, one hand cradling the book to her chest, the other clamping down on the escape hatch of the brass doorknob.

  “I didn’t see blackout fabric over the windows,” he said from behind.

  “That’s because there is none.”

  “They’ve run out of it in town?” Wyatt’s tone was weighty. Careful and concerned.

  She half turned, only able to give him a quarter profile, lest he see how hard it was to look away from him. “No. I never inquired because I refuse to hang it.”

  “But your government issued the directive that all windows must be covered so as not to arm the enemy with a target on English soil.”

  Darly had been insistent too, questioning why Amelia refused to add the veil of protection against the Luftwaffe’s bomb-laden iron bellies. Though she tried, Amelia could hardly explain it to herself, save that something inside withered were she to have no memory of the world before war blew in and decimated the view from British windows.

  Wyatt scanned the cottage’s façade, inspecting the leaded-glass windows on either side of the arched front door, then looked at her again.

  “Is that wise? Given we had a JU-88 sneak past an entire airfield and wreak havoc on the countryside? We can’t account for your safety with the back of the cottage exposed. It could happen again. If it did, the Luftwaffe would have an easy target.”

  “And yet I was not the one to run toward plane wreckage filled with bombs.” Amelia arched her brows, challenging him with the lightness of humor edging in between them.

  “Amelia, I had to.”

  “I know you did. And I mean no disrespect of your courage. I wouldn’t have asked you to be any less than you are by trying to convince you not to go. But in a similar way, I’m asking for your understanding that it’s necessary I leave these windows undressed. I seldom work at night, so there’s no real danger.” A sudden smile curved the corners of her mouth. “I thank you, Wyatt, for thinking of Luca. Though, are you certain you wouldn’t like to wait? I have to believe it more meaningful if the gift comes directly from you.”

  He looked pained, rubbing the heel of one palm on his other, like words ached to come forth, but whatever was on his mind he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say. “Not this time. I’m afraid . . . I have to go.”

  Wy
att nodded. Once. Tipped his uniform hat and slowly walked away. But he hesitated on the path, stalling his footsteps at the gate. He curled his fingers around the top of the gate, squeezing hard to the scroll of rusted iron, then shoved it so the hinge cried out and it clanged against the wall of stone.

  He turned back, no veil between them as he took wide steps back toward her. “Amelia?”

  The hesitation required no explanation; it was the first time he’d ever said her name like that.

  “I . . .” Wyatt dropped his hands into his uniform trouser pockets as he stood under the trees’ mingle of light and shadow.

  “You’re going up again, aren’t you?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Autumn had clung past its due to tired old limbs overhead but finally gave way, leaves dancing on a gentle breeze between them. And all Amelia could do was hug the book in her hands.

  Perhaps she could protect it until Wyatt came back.

  If she was pretending, an image of Wyatt sitting by the fire in a humble cottage, reading Curious George to Luca like he would have to his young nephews in the States, would become as normal and beautiful a scene as any a makeshift family might have had together. If Amelia and Luca could let him into their secret world of coping with war, and grief, and the potential for loss, she’d stand back and look on, beaming from behind a worktable. And in the soft glow of firelight she’d listen to that same husky voice telling stories of adventure and the bravery they all so desperately needed to believe was possible. And Wyatt would gaze at her across the cottage, their souls connecting in a single glance, and they’d be able to say everything in the silence that they couldn’t seem to say in that moment on the path.

  “When?” Amelia managed to utter, even the one word testing her will to speak it aloud.

  “Briefing’s tomorrow.”

  “And you’ll return?”

  “Can’t say. I’ll be training men at the airfield and might not be back for a couple of weeks. But . . . I wondered if you’d allow me to take some books.”