Chateau of Secrets: A Novel

by Melanie Dobson

  The pout in his smile reminded me more of a kid like Tommy Dawson than of a confident candidate or movie star. “Better to ditch me here than at the altar.”

  “I didn’t ditch you.” I pressed harder on my brows, as if I could massage the pain away. “My mom texted and said she needed to speak with me. I thought it was urgent.”

  “Everything is urgent for your mom.” He set his water bottle beside the chair and reached for my left hand, tugging it away from my face. Then he entwined my fingers through his. “What was it this time?”

  “Something about a filmmaker shooting a documentary in France. Mom wants me to meet him at the château.”

  He leaned forward a few inches. “When does she want you to go?”

  “Tuesday,” I said, “but don’t worry. I told her I couldn’t do it.”

  He eyed me for a moment before speaking again. “Is this a documentary about World War II?”

  At my nod, he leaned closer, his eyes intent on mine. “When will it air?”

  “I have no idea, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no way I can travel to France next week.”

  His elbows propped on his legs, he held up my hand. “These are important details, Chloe.”

  “I have a thousand important details I’m trying to pull together. It’s impossible to keep track of them all.”

  “That’s why you hired a wedding coordinator. To help you with the details.”

  If only it were that easy. I, not the coordinator, would be responsible if everything went awry on August 10. Or, heaven forbid, if I picked out the wrong colors or plates or dresses for my eight bridesmaids—only two of whom were actual friends.

  His eyes narrowed slightly, and I knew exactly what he was doing—developing some sort of a plan. “Would he be interviewing you?”

  I wished I could read his mind. Why did he care if I did an interview on World War II? “My parents want me to tell him some of Mémé’s stories, but it doesn’t matter. I only have nine weeks to pull this wedding together.”

  Nine weeks to achieve perfection.

  “So you run away for one of those weeks and get some rest,” he said with a shrug. “You’ll come back refreshed and ready to tackle what’s left.”

  He drummed on my hand as I processed his words. He made it sound so simple, this running away. I cocked my head, studying him. “You really think I should go to France?”

  “I think you should consider it.”

  Something else was going on behind that smile. I was exhausted, but if I was going to dig, I needed to do it now. Even though we’d be together all day tomorrow, we’d be surrounded.

  “What’s the real reason you want me to go?”

  This time he shrugged. “I want my fiancée to relax.”

  “And . . . ,” I said, pressing him.

  He took a deep breath. “And that reporter at the newspaper keeps hounding Olivia for your grandfather’s war records. No one can seem to find them.”

  I yanked my hand away from his grip. “It’s none of the reporter’s business—”

  “That’s not how he sees it, especially since we keep telling the press that you’re the granddaughter of a war hero.” He put his hands on the floor. “If we tell him you’re being interviewed for a documentary on the war, it might deter him for a bit, at least until after the campaign.”

  I rested my head back against the wall. I’d never asked Olivia to tell the media about my grandfather, but she wrote about him in my bio and then touted his military service.

  I’d certainly never refuted his record, and it was much too late to tell Austin that Henri Sauver wasn’t actually my biological grandfather. Henri was the only father my dad ever knew, and I was proud of him.

  Grandpa had passed away fifteen years ago, but Mémé told me he was an officer in the Armée de Terre before the occupation—and a member of the French resistance after it. They’d met, she said, in Saint-Lô. Right after the war. And moved to Virginia.

  I didn’t remember Grandpa talking about his years before or during the war and as I grew older, I wished I knew more about his story—their story. Unlike Austin and the media, I didn’t even particularly care about Grandpa’s war record. I wanted to know the stories of how my grandparents met. And why they traded a château in France for a trilevel in Fairfax, Virginia.

  Austin’s reasoning for the needed PR was more viable than his urging me to vacate. He had no problem energizing the younger voters, but neither he nor Olivia was convinced that the younger crowd would turn out en masse at the polls. His competitor was a devoted family man with twenty-five years of experience, and Austin needed more than Virginia’s millennials to elect him governor. The campaign needed to show that he was grounded. That he respected those generations who fought in the wars before him. His family’s military roots were shallow—one grandfather was a conscientious objector and the other had married his first of four wives in order to dodge the draft for Vietnam. Even though the details were sparse, my grandfather’s record provided Austin with at least the appearance of roots.

  “You’ll charm both the videographer and the viewers,” he said.

  “I’m no expert on World War II.”

  “I’ll have Olivia put together a cheat sheet for you.”

  I cocked my head. “Methinks you are trying to get rid of me, Governor.”

  “I hate it when you call me that,” he said, but he didn’t mean it.

  I glanced up at the light glowing from the chandelier. When Mom called, I thought traveling to France would be impossible until after the election, but perhaps it was plausible, even beneficial, for me to go.

  Olivia was a pro at creating buzz even when there wasn’t much to buzz about. A couple press releases about an upcoming documentary, along with an interview or two about the war, might convince Virginia’s older generation that Austin was astute enough to be their governor.

  “If Gisèle knows you’re going, perhaps she would remember more stories,” he said.

  “Mémé rarely remembers anything these days, but I know a few stories about my grandfather.”

  “All we need are a few crumbs to throw to the media,” Austin said as if he’d already decided I was going. “Then we won’t have to worry about the records.”

  I wanted to know these stories, every one of them, but it had nothing to do with distracting the media.

  “The château was magical,” Mémé told me when I was younger, after she’d read me one of the Narnia stories. “Like Cair Paravel.”

  She’d told me stories about her and her brother swimming in the lake when they were children. About the gardens and her father’s horses and the glowworms that lit their path in the summer. She told me about her parents and how she adored them, but whenever I asked her about the war, she would tell me about my grandfather’s work. When I asked what she had done during the war, she’d change the subject.

  Austin reached for my hand again and gently squeezed it. “Go and enjoy the French food and the wine and give this guy a few good sound bites for his show. You’ll come back refreshed and ready for the rest of the campaign season.”

  “And for our wedding.” I don’t know why I felt like I needed to remind him, but I did.

  “Of course.” This time he let go of my hand. “The wedding.”

  Chapter 7

  The relentless rhythm of jackboots pounded across the valley and latched on to the beat of Gisèle’s heart. Even though an hour had passed, the rhythm still echoed in her mind, defiant and strong as the soldiers marched along the river path. The path that led to her home.

  The soldiers were gone, but she remained hidden behind the swollen trunks of the beech trees, praying that Papa had fled and that Michel remained hidden.

  She scanned the herds of butterscotch-colored cows grazing on the grassy hill across the river and the forest above them. To her right, the cathedral in Saint-Lô towered above the hills, and to her left, up on the cliff, was her family’s château. Even though wars had raged in the
valley for centuries, the Château d’Epines, protected by the forest and cliffs and stone walls, remained strong.

  Before the French Revolution, her family’s property had stretched across the Batiers’ land, all the way to Saint-Lô. Life turned upside down during the revolution and several of her ancestors across the country had been beheaded. When radicals came for the head of the Vicomtesse Jeanne Duchant, she crawled into the hollowed-out trunk of an enormous elm tree and hid. Leaning back against the crusty bark of a tree, Gisèle petitioned the Blessed Virgin Mary for the protection and patience that had been gifted to her ancestor.

  The French government had thought their country was as formidable as her family’s château, but somehow the Germans had found a chink in their armor. Michel and other Frenchmen might have to hide now, but eventually they would fight. Like they had in the Great War.

  Papa said there was no reason for the Germans to linger in Saint-Lô since they were intent on reaching Great Britain. The port of Cherbourg was a hundred kilometers to the north, and after the Germans took the port, they’d fight for England across the Channel.

  But why were the soldiers still here?

  A black speck appeared above Saint-Lô, and she ducked back into the forest. A yellow engine gleamed in the light as one plane and then a dozen of them flew low over the valley, each one touting a hooked cross on its tail as if they were fishing for the enemy.

  Closing her eyes, Gisèle sank into a bed of leaves and buried her head. If they dropped a bomb on her beloved home, she couldn’t bear to watch it.

  And if they dropped a bomb—what would happen to Papa? And Michel and his men?

  She prayed they were all safe, that Philippe had gotten out of Saint-Lô and Papa had fled during the night. And that Michel hadn’t left the tunnel.

  A minute passed, perhaps two, and the sound of engines had faded. She rose and looked back over the valley again.

  On the other side of her house were fields to the north of the river—farmed by the Polin family, who rented the property from her father—and to the south was a forest filled with treasures: a small lake and caves and a medieval guardhouse that she and Nadine had deemed their meeting place when they were twelve.

  The planes would spot her if she stepped onto the river’s path, but in the darkness she could hide. She knew every step of the valley and the forest on the other side. If she waited until night, the Germans would never catch her.

  She crept back under the cover of the hawthorn trees. They were in full bloom, the white petals like flakes of snow icing the thorns. Bees buzzed among the fragrant blossoms, and they seemed as unafraid of her as she was of them. As long as the sweetness of the flowers quenched their thirst, she didn’t have to worry about the bees’ sting.

  Birds hid among the hawthorn branches, protected by the thorns, the melodies of their songs the only clue to their presence.

  She wondered what it was they sang about. Perhaps it was their hunger or their fright or even their love. Whatever it was, they seemed oblivious to the dangers above them and on the ground. If only she could be oblivious alongside them. Still, the serenity of their song calmed the rhythm in her heart, the hours passing slowly as she waited.

  The steady cadence of their song reminded her of her two years in the convent boarding school near Coutances, the familiar prayers flowing from their lips with the music. She hadn’t appreciated the music as a child. Sometimes she and her friend Odette were downright awful.

  The nuns in their boarding school had known French and Latin and a little English, but not a word of German. Odette had learned German from her grandfather and taught the basics to Gisèle so they could share their secrets without fear of a nun discovering their plans. They had been perfectly naughty during their middle-grade years—salting the porridge of the mother superior, hiding the prayer books of their classmates. When the others sang their morning hymns, she and Odette replaced the words with the lyrics from “Parlez-Moi d’Amour,” giggling about treasures and kisses, bitterness and love.

  The nuns may have suspected that she and Odette were the instigators of trouble, but they weren’t caught until one windy afternoon in March when they were both fourteen. After they borrowed two horses from the stable—and got themselves lost in the forest—the mother superior whipped them both with a switch and sent them home for a week of reflection.

  Papa spared her another round with the rod, but he insisted that Gisèle spend a miserable week in isolation and reflection. There had been no riding for her in the hills near their house, no wading in the lake below the château. Even Michel—the boy who’d never let rules stop him—was disappointed in her.

  In hindsight, Papa was probably more afraid of her getting injured than disappointed in her for taking the horses. After a week of eating alone in her bedroom, she decided to tolerate the rules at school until summer break. The next year her father sent her to another boarding school, one where she rode horses every day.

  During the summers, she’d ridden her horse up into the trees on the other side of the river. When she was fifteen, she’d been fond of a boy who lived in the woods—a boy named Jean-Marc Rausch. He and his parents used to come to the Mass at the chapelle long ago, but after she left for the university, she never saw him again.

  Had he and his parents moved before the war? And what had become of him and her other classmates and of Odette in Paris?

  The birds’ song faded as darkness fell. Gisèle crept out of her hiding place and followed the river until she reached the steep bike path up to the château. In the moonlight, she could see the gray walls of the château, but there were no lights on inside. The other servants, she assumed, had fled like Émilie. Were Papa and Philippe waiting for her in the darkness?

  She scanned the empty courtyard and driveway in front of the château. Perhaps Philippe had hidden his coupé in the carriage house or—she shuddered—perhaps he and Papa had gone on to Lyon without her.

  Two towers soared over the stone castle, and she eyed the one on the far side of the house. Thorns from the rosebushes pecked at her arms as she snuck through the formal garden and around the old masonry oven that hadn’t been used in a century or two. At the base of the tower, she clambered around the hedges and jimmied the top of a window until it opened.

  The lock had been broken for years—it had been an easy way for her to sneak in and out at night to meet Nadine, before her friend married André. Her heart pounding, Gisèle lifted one leg onto the windowsill and then pulled herself through, into the small study.

  “Papa?” she whispered in the darkness.

  Accounting ledgers, newspapers, and the Farmers’ Almanac were piled up on the side of Papa’s desk, and his wireless stood against the wall beside it. When she was younger, she’d been afraid of the dark, and in the evenings, she’d often draped herself over the damask chair beside the desk and pretended to read while he pored over his books. Really she’d been watching him, fascinated as he calculated his figures and talked business on his black telephone and thumbed through La Croix. In the cadence of his work, she found comfort. After her mother passed away, she’d known her father would take care of her.

  But if Papa had already left the château, she would have to care for herself. Like she’d wanted to do in Paris.

  She lifted the telephone receiver from the cradle, to call Tante Corinne and see if she’d heard from Philippe, but the line was dead. Sighing, she dropped the receiver back onto the brass bands.

  She leaned back against the open window, the warm moonlight casting shadows over the office. In the silence of her home, she listened to the sound of her breathing. Was Papa someplace inside the house? Or were there Germans hiding upstairs?

  No matter how much she hoped the Germans had kept marching down the valley, she didn’t know for certain, and she hated this, the feeling that her home was no longer a safe place.

  Something moved behind the desk, and her breath caught in her throat. Clenching her fists, she willed herself to b
e strong, but her courage dissolved within her. She turned to flee back out of the window until she heard the softest of meows from under the desk. The trappings of her breath slipped out as she ducked under the desktop.

  The source of her fear was crouched in the dark corner. A kitten.

  “How did you get in here?” she whispered as she gently pulled him out into the light.

  The kitten reached up with its paw and batted her nose.

  She cradled him close to the window, brushing her face over his soft gray fur. On his neck was a white fleck in the shape of a star, and she could feel his tiny ribs through his skin.

  “If Papa found you, he would put you right back outside where you belong,” she said, scolding him.

  She scratched his chin, and he purred back at her. A kitten could do nothing to protect her, yet somehow it made her feel more secure, bold even, to have it near. She dug through the top drawer of Papa’s desk until she found the flashlight he kept for when the electricity failed. Then, the kitten in her arms, she crept through the large dining salon, past the long table and massive fireplace with the three lambs carved on the mantel. On her left side, a row of windows framed the courtyard, chapelle, and long drive. On the other side of the room four windows overlooked the river valley and the grassy hill and forest across the valley.

  “Papa?” she called out again as she tiptoed into the foyer. No one responded, but the front door was partially open.

  Had someone been here, or had Papa left the door open when he left?

  She closed it.

  On the other side of the foyer was the kitchen, and when she stepped inside, she flipped on the flashlight and set the kitten beside the brick fireplace. Copper pots hung neatly on each side of the mantel and two cast iron kettles rested along the hearth. The fireplace was built when the château was renovated in the seventeenth century, but their cook only used the white gas oven her parents had installed before she was born.

  Gisèle stared at the spokes on the range and then looked at the three drawers beside it. She should make Michel some bread or something else, but how was she supposed to feed her brother when she didn’t even know how to light an oven?