“I’ll take them down, but I’m coming back. I want to fight with you.”
“No, Lady. I need you to do this. This will help the fighting more than anything else.”
Vi shook her head in furious denial as the smoke began to build around them. “I’m going with you.”
“You’re not. Not now. Brig is at the bridge. If the fight comes that far, we can’t take the chance that she’ll be killed before she hits the trigger on her explosives.”
“Camille?”
“Already gone to the grove. She’ll meet up with Elder, divide the fighters between the bridge and the road, and then she’ll man Gertie at the castle. Now, I promised my brother I’d keep our family safe, but I can’t do that if I’m worried that something’s happened to you.” He looked down on her, strong in battle, as she expected. Eyes sharp and unyielding. Brow creased and begging her for an answer. “Please—protect our family? I’m entrusting them to you. You’re a part of us now.” He paused a long second. “You’re a part of me.”
Planes seared the sky with the roar of engines, and a fresh blast shook the library windows. Vi shrieked as Julien covered her head, ducked them into the library doorway, and slid them both down to the floor in an alcove with empty shelves. The planes passed by, merciful to the estate house a second time. But a fresh blast broke far out beyond the vineyard, orange lighting the sky on the horizon in a series of booms.
A painting she’d noticed before hung in the darkness—a lovely lady of the eighteenth century keeping watch as the eerie orange-yellow blasts reflected against the painted canvas.
“Take this.”
Julien eased the cold metal of the Sten from her palm and pressed something in its place, curling her fingertips around it.
It, too, was metal but oval. With tiny beads or rocks that pricked at her skin. Vi would have looked at it, but a blast shook them again, closer this time. Julien waited, eyes watching the ceiling for seconds only, to ensure the planes wouldn’t bombard the estate a second time. “Do you remember what I asked you? The day in the bunker?”
Vi nodded, smoke and tears burning her eyes.
“If you’re wearing this the next time I see you, I’ll know your answer.” He pressed a hand to the apple of her cheek. “And I’ll know you want to stay here with me, Lady, and together we’ll rebuild. We’ll take that castle and make it our dream. Together.”
He kissed her then, the kind of defiant embrace that had little to do with momentary passion and everything to do with survival, and love they’d been too afraid to confront until that moment. For the seconds it lasted, the connection as they fell into one another and he threaded his palm through her hair became all there was in the world.
“I wish there was more time. I’d give anything for it right now.” He drew back, eyes locking on hers.
“I would too,” she murmured, hands shaking as her fingers found his palms, lacing fingers, pulse to pulse.
“I need you to take the children down, lock the cellar door, and keep it sealed at the cottage end. Promise me you’ll stay safe. All of you.”
Vi nodded. “I promise.”
“And if you must find me—only if you need help—I’ll be at the chapel. You can find me there at dawn.”
“The chapel. At dawn. I’ll remember.”
“You’d better believe we’ll chuck all of this back at them—and then some.”
Julien branded a final kiss to her lips and, with a stalwart smile, swept off through the cloud of smoke floating in the hall. She watched as night carried him away. And then she was alone, as the estate house groaned around her and fresh blasts shook the ground outside the windows.
With hands shaking, Vi leaned against the wall and opened her palm. In it, she found a brooch. A fox, the symbol of the Vivay land, gleaming in gold and amber stones that reflected the firelight against her skin.
Resolve took over.
Planes could rail against them and bombs could fly, but they’d never win. Not as long as the people fought back. Vi pinned the brooch to the front of her collar, and with a strengthening of will she hoped Julien would be proud of, she swept up her Sten gun and flew into action.
She was a maquisard fighter now, and battle number one was to shuttle their family down the cellar stairs.
TWENTY-EIGHT
APRIL 30, 1790
LES TROIS-MOUTIERS
LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE
Aveline didn’t mind the rain.
The Château des Doux-Rêves stood at the end of her long walk, proud with sections of a new roof sloping its highest floor. She stared up at the façade, heedless of the rain collecting on her cape. From where she stood, only beauty emerged with the transformation. The rich smells of freshly cut timber, the cadence of raindrops hitting stone, and the glint of leaded glass panes back in the window frames all drew her.
The front doors had been replaced with hickory—an homage to the grove—and scrolled door handles that parted in the center with the Renard crest fashioned in iron. She pulled the door open, a rush of new overtaking her.
No longer open air, the foyer had been roofed and refinished first. Its former winged guests had been banished back to the trees. A magical addition of a chandelier hung with prominence, fashioned not of crystal, but iron made to look like twigs had grown out of the ceiling. The floor had been blocked, checkered in black and bright white marble, all the way back to a reception hall that had once been the grand ballroom. Now it stood humble, empty save for unadorned windows overlooking the water, and hickory shelves with row after row . . . of books.
A single looking glass hung above a sideboard on the wall. Instead of greeting guests with a succession of gilt mirrors as before, the castle would offer only one, arched at the top and engraved on the sides with long rows of violets stringing down the wood.
No longer concerned with the pigment of her skin, Aveline stopped before the glass. Only then did she see her image staring back—not as a woman scarred, but a reflection of the portrait she was once to gift Philippe, which had been hung on the opposite wall, tucked safe in a high alcove created by the curve of the stairs. And then, movement. The edge of a shirtsleeve clouding the side of the mirror’s reflection in white.
She turned, her breath arrested.
Robert walked toward her, a book in hand and a hint of astonishment showing in his smile. “I heard someone come in.”
“I didn’t expect there to be a door at the top of the steps. So of course the instant I saw one, curiosity took me through it.”
Rain tumbled down, a backdrop of pitter-patters on the front stoop from the door she’d left ajar. Aveline slid her cape hood down from her brow, laying lavender velvet down across her shoulders so she could look about freely. “I can’t believe all you’ve done.”
“You should have said you were coming back. We’d have had everything ready for you.”
“I didn’t know I was. The Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen convened in Paris three days ago. And before you ask me to say that ridiculously long title again, I’ll tell you they’ve shortened the name to Club of the Cordeliers. It was a political meeting of the populace and women were encouraged to attend, so I did. Without my father’s approval, I might add.”
“But Philippe approved your joining the cause of the people?”
“Not quite. I do not support violence in any way. The nobility is still being railed against, and there is rumor that the king will be forced from his throne. But I am merely trying to listen to both sides. That is not altogether dissimilar to the son of a duke rebuilding a castle and defending his land for the benefit of the people, is it?”
“It’s not done, as you can see. The rooms are barren. But at least we keep the rain out. The entry and upper floors behind the façade have been enclosed and the library is new, of course. I’m just shelving some of the books now. But the remainder of the castle will take time to bring back.”
“Quite a luxury. No furnishings, yet you pos
sess a room for books.” She looked out the front window, to the green of the woods beyond. “A stone wall with a wide gate . . . and a portrait.”
He set the book on the sideboard, fingertips drifting along the edge of the wood. “Oui. A portrait.”
“I’d forgotten all about it.”
“As you are the future Duchess et Vivay, it’s not appropriate for public display. I didn’t think it right that anyone should see something so private before your husband. So it’s been held in wait here, safely tucked out of sight, until Philippe should return for it.”
“But with a felled castle and only a humble winemaker’s cottage to take up residence, I’m not certain the future Duc et Vivay should like to spend much time on this estate. He told me such the day we left.”
“And yet he approved of your travel here?”
“No. He never would have approved. Nor my father. I have lately broken with my parents and my father has given me the sum of my dowry to let me go.” She raised her chin before him, willing herself not to feel her scars an infirmity. “So that is why I summoned a carriage and came on my own.”
“On your own?”
“Well, almost. There is a coach and four at the gate, with Durand—my father’s coachman, who’s looked after me since childhood and insisted that both he and his musket make the journey. I had interests in Paris and it was of my volition to stop here.”
“You will stay in Paris now?”
Aveline didn’t answer. How could she tell him that Paris was no longer her home? And as England would never be, that left few places for her to imagine hanging a portrait.
Robert hesitated, their conversation polite on the surface.
“Philippe may take possession of the portrait whenever he desires. I intend to stay here, restoring the castle, working the land with each harvest. Neither my father nor my brother have much care for it now. So whenever you’re ready to return, the portrait will be waiting for you.”
“But . . . is it not waiting for me now?”
He started, eyes flinching at the implied meaning of her question.
It was easier to look to the girl in the portrait. Her creamy skin. Lavish gown with russets of satin and gold furnishings fabricating a world of courtly perfection around her. Outside of the painted likeness Aveline was not the idealized image of perfection, not the subservient bride of her parents’ ambitions, nor a great lady of the French peerage.
She dusted her scarred fingertips along the front edge of the sideboard, stopping short of Robert’s hand. “I have come to tell you the joyous news that you and I are now related through marriage.”
He nodded. “I received no missive. But I assume congratulations are in order.”
“They are, perhaps—but not to me. Your brother and my sister have been married just this month. The carriage waiting outside holds me alone.”
Aveline untied the cape, letting the waves of velvet fall to the floor. His gaze fell to the collar of her traveling dress, and the brooch that was the lone adornment she’d pinned there.
“It was you who chose the symbol of the Vivay land for me to wear, isn’t it? When I realized that, I couldn’t conceive of living a life with a man who would not allow me to work at his side. I want an equal partnership, not a husband who is merely willing to overlook the disfigurements of my skin, or my will.”
Robert took an authoritative step forward, his hand brushing the scars on hers. “But you’re not—”
“I know.” Aveline paused, searching him. Eyes misting as hope grew. “But you see me, don’t you?” She took his palm, eased his fingertips to her face, slowly, hand trembling for fear she’d been wrong, that his affections hadn’t grown to the same depth as hers. “Where others only seek to build walls, you succeed in tearing them down.”
“Aveline,” he breathed out, eyes softening, face lowering. “I would tear down every wall. Every one, for you. You have but to wish it of me.”
Robert stopped time, pressed his lips to hers, arms hemming her in with strength, the way he’d done so many months before when she’d broken apart. His fingertips, not abhorred by the touch of her skin beneath them, just as the day they’d stood side by side and he’d held her hand, watching the smoke rise as the history of the castle burned.
Aveline smiled before him now, thinking how right it was that the castle and the people supporting it should no longer find an impasse of stone between them. Whatever may come with the crumbling of France, they could see to rebuild everything together.
“I do wish, Robert. I wish to stay here, at the castle. With you. To be the lady who disappeared into the grove one night, and never returned.”
TWENTY-NINE
PRESENT DAY
LES TROIS-MOUTIERS
LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE
The scrolled-iron gates were parted at the center of the long road, as if the castle waited for them. Maybe even welcomed their return.
Ellie and Quinn paused, hovering at the threshold of the road to the ruins, both staring down a long path broken by fractured sunlight cutting through the trees.
She grinned, rolling her palm over the curve of a rusted scroll. “Titus?”
“And to think I was goin’ to give you two guesses this time.”
Quinn met her smile with an easy one of his own, but the air turned sober as he tipped his head and looked down the road once more. He ran a hand over the back of his neck for a long moment, refusing to look at her, like he was battling in some way.
Hands in his pockets, he asked, “So, you want me to go along with ya then?”
“Well, you are my tour guide.”
“I don’t know this place well enough to give anybody a tour, Ellie. Told ya—this would only be the third time I’ve seen the grounds from inside. Twice with you and just one other time before that.”
“But that one time . . . it was special, wasn’t it?”
Ellie watched him stare out beyond them, the moments they’d shared in the winery suddenly making sense. Emotion could be wrapped in detachment as easily as a zealous pursuit of truth. Quinn was running as much as she, only in the opposite direction. With his quiet way and casual approach to life, she’d judged his flight as apathy when all along, he’d been fighting to exist with both roots and wings.
“The one walk you made here was with Juliette—your mother. That’s how Titus knew you’d change your mind about taking me in to see it.”
He nodded. “She was everythin’. Used to tell me and my brother stories about the castle when we were young. Cormac’s a bit older, so he wasn’t sold on them like I was. But she said there was a princess once who’d been lost somewhere out in the fairy-tale wood. She disappeared. Never came back, and the castle was named for her—The Sleeping Beauty, because she wouldn’t tell her secrets. Just like the ruins. Now that legend is hauntin’ the land with stories of the past.” He shrugged it off, maybe not ready to talk about the family dynamic that had shut down areas of his own past. “Childish tales.”
“Childish or not, they matter to you.”
“Yeah. They do. And I haven’t thought about ’em in a long while. I suppose I have you to thank for that.” His gaze searched Ellie, drifting from her eyes up to her brow and her hair, spilling out over her shoulders. “She said every woman needs a scarf. A real one, from France. That if a lady was ever gifted one, she’d remember it for the rest of her life.”
It wasn’t like Quinn to stand defenseless before anyone. But something about the moment felt like a wall was tumbling down. For him. For her. Both of them, choosing to travel that road together because they were no longer content to walk alone.
“Sure you’re wantin’ to do this?”
“Yeah.” Ellie drew in a deep breath. “I’m ready for answers. Whatever they are, I can’t leave without them.”
Ellie couldn’t think of going home, or of the e-mails that had increased, Laine calling her back to face Grandma Vi’s decline. She knew she’d have to go, maybe tomorrow. And at his own admission, Q
uinn would be packing up his guitar case and drifting off again soon. They’d been tossed together by a story and would be separated the same way. He must have understood that it meant they’d walk together in the moment and then walk away after, because he spoke to her heart, so gently, without the necessity of words.
He just reached for her hand.
It felt safe, and right, and . . . like home somehow, to lace her fingers with his.
Quinn was content to walk at her side, as slowly as she needed to absorb every detail of the castle they’d seen rising out of the trees.
The overhead canopy mingled with birds, and the leaves with late-autumn breezes. Timber snapped somewhere in the depth of the wood—one of the fox perhaps, creating mischief in Titus’s Fox Grove. The sound of their shoes against the road . . . somehow, even that became magic.
Ellie’s heart swelled to see the chapel, its spire and moss-covered roof peeking through the trees to her right. And then the long span of the rock wall and gate, creating an enchanted garden boundary all along the edge of the arbors behind.
Quinn let go of her hand, pulling her attention back.
“What in the name of St. Patrick do ya think you’re doin’?” he shouted, racing up the castle steps.
Titus waited beneath the castle’s grand façade, patient and resolute as always, his walking stick buried against the stone at his feet. He held his palm on air until Quinn found it and moved to support his forearm.
“Are you mad? You could slip on the rocks, fall in the water, and drown before anyone could get to ya, stubborn old goat.”
The hint of a smile swept Titus’s lips. “I believe I am acquainted with this castle a bit more than you, my boy. Even blindfolded.” He nodded, then reached up until his palm met Quinn’s cheek and gave it a light tap. “But I’m warmed by the concern. And when I received the call from the Gendarmerie that they had indeed let you go, I knew I should wait. I wanted to personally welcome Lady Vi’s granddaughter for her first visit to the Château des Doux-Rêves.”
The Lost Castle Page 29
