Titus eased Julien’s boots in, clicking the door closed behind them. He braced his hands against the door, holding fast. “You’re in good hands, Julien. If what you’ve said about her is true, then she’s the toughest Lady we’ve ever had at this castle. If anyone will get you through, it’ll be her.”
Vi felt the soft nod of Julien’s head against her thigh. He watched his brother out the window, through eyes that were turning glassy and unfocused, warning that time was wearing thin. She fired up the engine, and Titus backed up, only to be summoned back when Julien called his name.
Titus reached in, grasping Julien’s bloodied hand through the open window. “Oui?”
“Titus? The castle . . .” Julien looked up at her, his eyes locking on the brooch pinned to her collar. “It’s hers. Lady gave me her answer. Said she wants to stay. So I want her to have it. The chapel, the rock wall, and the ruins—all hers.”
Titus glanced over to her as rain dripped in through the open window and cried latent streams of water over the bullet holes in the windshield. Vi hadn’t thought anything about staying, not on her own. Not for a castle; only for him. But she nodded, willing it would make Julien happy in that moment.
If he needed a dream to fight for, then she’d agree to anything.
“Promise me, Titus.”
“Je te le promets, Julien,” he whispered back, setting the promise in stone with a shake of his brother’s hand. “Always, I promise you this: The Sleeping Beauty is hers.”
THIRTY-ONE
MAY 26, 1790
LES TROIS-MOUTIERS
LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE
An assemblage of men, women, and children—a mass nearly a hundred thick—poured down the road to the castle. Aveline gripped tight to Robert’s forearm, fingernails digging into the sleeve of his morning coat.
The last memory they had of an assemblage descending upon the castle was the night of the attack. And now, even as they’d stepped from the chapel christened as husband and wife that morning, the savagery of France’s bloody battle for independence seemed intent to strike at them again.
“It’s alright,” Robert whispered. His solid tone did little to convince Aveline, however, as he’d stepped forward, edging his shoulder to ease his body in front of hers. “I will speak with them.”
“We will speak with them.” Aveline slid her hand down to grip his. “That is, if you believe we can reason with an assailment of a company this size?”
“They’re not carrying torches, Aveline.”
“Perhaps not, but look—” She pointed to a number of horse-drawn wagonettes, filled to the brim with sacks of grain and wooden handles hanging from the end. “They carry tools of some sort.”
“Garden tools. And children. I don’t think they’d arrive to attack a couple on their wedding day with their families in tow.”
“Robert, the last time the populace came down that road, the castle was nearly burned to the ground. The Second Estate may not exist any longer, but the hate remains. In Paris, it is growing. You know the Commune de Paris holds the power of the government now. Even with the municipalities redrawn, the king’s rule is in peril. Why would they come here if not to threaten us as members of our families’ former rank in the peerage?”
“You know how I appreciate your interest in politics, my love.” He pecked a kiss to her lips. “But la noblesse is dead. And we are not in Paris now. These people are our family. Philippe has no interest in this estate and has given it to my charge. That means I am still master vigneron here. If they wish to speak with me, then I’ll allow it.” He laced his fingers with hers, squeezing a light tap against her fingertips. “I will not live in fear for our lives. And I won’t give them a foothold against us, even on a day as special as this.”
Aveline’s heart jumped in her throat when Robert took a step forward, cutting the people’s advance to the castle.
The gathering slowed to a stop before him. They were restrained, as if forbearance held them to a hush. Robert stood before her, legs braced in a wide stance in the center of the road. He waited, hands at his sides, open to the crowd.
“Master Robert, vigneron and son of the Duc et Vivay.” Fan stepped out and bowed in front of the group, a smile lighting her features. “We have come to speak with Madam Vivay.”
Aveline swallowed hard. It was the first time she’d been addressed as Robert’s wife, and though the sentiment should have warmed her heart, caution overwhelmed it instead.
“My wife is here.” Robert eased to the side, hand extended to her. “If you wish to speak with her, you have but to ask. It is to her to decide who she will take audience with.”
“It is because of who she is that we are here.”
Fan stepped forward and took a span of folded paper from her apron pocket.
“Some time ago, a rumor persisted in Paris that a woman of great wealth and rank in the king’s court had once attended a paupers’ burial in the heart of the city. It was said she was so moved by what she’d witnessed that she sought to tear down a wall between the nobility and the people. She purchased a very large trousseau for her impending marriage to a high-ranking member of the French peerage. But instead of keeping the wares she’d purchased, she bartered them and sent wagons of provision to the people, instructing that a bundle of color should go into the hands of each one she’d blessed.
“She thought to stay out of sight, but the men hired to disperse the goods hadn’t payment enough to quiet their tongues to keep it secret. And her family’s coachman has confirmed what he, too, saw of her actions.” Fan placed the missive in Aveline’s hand, tendering the exchange with a gentle squeeze. “This letter proves that woman is you, madam, and we would like to convey our happiness that you are here, and our wish that you should always remain.”
Fan stepped away, easing back toward the group.
“Gentlemen? If you please?”
Men opened the wagonettes at Fan’s bequest, and the people went to work unloading sacks of seed, opening them, filling seeding bags, and, with the children at their sides, dispersing the promise of wild violets all along the road to the castle. Spades cut earth in the garden. Hoes and picks tilled the ground along the stone wall. And the laughter of men, women, and children rose up, carrying through the gate; a harvest as great as the arbor rows owned beyond.
“Aveline?” Robert stepped forward, easing the letter from her hand. He scanned it, brow furrowed as the words sank in. “Is this true? I’d heard rumors. They came all the way from Paris here; the lady and her violets are known as far as the Loire Valley. But I never imagined . . .”
He stood back, staring, the usual kindness in his eyes a comfort to see once again.
“Félicité’s letter,” she cried, tears bathing her eyes. Aveline took the letter and pressed it to her heart, covering the fox brooch she’d worn for the ceremony that morning. “After all this time, I’d forgotten. I thought it was lost in the fire last year. But Fan saw I’d dropped it, right before I received your note . . . and the gift that saved me.”
“You are remarkable.” He leaned in, his arm collecting the small of her waist, and pressed a kiss to the base of her neck where the scars met her gown. The praise he’d whispered, but she felt it soar high as the canopy of trees overhead. “And a treasure, worth more than any jewels to which the Vivay family could lay claim. It is you who saved me.”
It was all Aveline had wanted, to come back, walk the road to their castle, and see him standing in its path, looking on her as though beauty were more than skin deep. It was true that scars could heal to make something exquisite again; the castle would be brought back to life in the same way—scarred by stories in their generation and perhaps rebuilt in one they might never know.
If the smile of a bride on her wedding day is felt on her face even more than it is seen, Aveline looked to Robert, knowing it was true.
“I wonder if I might make a request before we, too, pick up tools and go to work in our garden?”
He l
aughed, no doubt because what bride would till the earth in her wedding gown, save for one who had a voracious love for violets?
“Anything.”
“I would like to sit for a portrait, as soon as it can be arranged.”
“Another portrait?”
She nodded to him. “We don’t need the old one. I should like to be painted as I am now. I don’t know the lady in the former portrait any longer. I only know the one who stands before you. The one who loves this place, and loves you in return.”
“Is that all?” He paused, brow tipped, thinking it over. “Then if we’re agreeing on the making of concessions, I would request one from you. To start off on the right foot as a husband, of course.”
“Very well.”
“The Renard Reserve . . . You know of it?”
Fanetta had mentioned it. Once, quite some time ago.
“I do.”
He tightened his hold around Aveline’s waist and with softness added, “Bien. Then our most renowned label should be yours. Just like the castle . . . this land . . . and the people in it. I want the evidence of your heart forever tethered to the Vivay family. So—L’Aveline. That’s its new name.”
L’Aveline . . . She’d not have smiled at the sound of her own name, had he not said it in a shiver-inducing whisper against her ear.
“Then we should start anew while our Sleeping Beauty takes her time to awaken. Perhaps christen a new wine with a new life entirely. I favor the site on the ridge. We could build an estate house where we first dined and danced with the people. With a dining hall large enough to accommodate our friends. Where we can open our doors, work side by side, and celebrate when the harvest is drawn in, and when the wine flows in abundance. We have a gate now, between former worlds. You’ve opened it to me, and I pray it will never be sealed. I would like to know that we breathed life back into the castle.”
She paused, watching as beautiful, laboring hands scattered seed on the grove floor.
“I want this place to always tell the story of God’s faithfulness, just as we’ve received it here.”
“Aveline, if the presence of your beloved violets is any indication, it always will.”
THIRTY-TWO
JUNE 18, 1944
LES TROIS-MOUTIERS
LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE
“What did you say about me?”
Vi jiggled Julien’s uninjured shoulder, then pressed her toe down to give the car more gas. Her hair whipped against her face, the wind playing at will.
“Come on, Julien. Talk to me. I said, what did you tell your brother about me?”
The road to Loudun lay ravaged.
The carcasses of cows, bloated in the summer heat, lined barren fields. Smoke rose from somewhere, cutting a black line across the sky. Trees flew past the windshield with its glass all but shot out. And Julien had begun to fade. Even then, his gaze drifted out the window, and that terrified her more than any barren landscape could.
“Fine. That’ll be your secret. Brothers are entitled.” She turned around a sharp bend, swerving to avoid an abandoned vehicle in the road.
“I want to know about the painting. The one in the library, of the woman with the scars on her face. Can you tell me who she is?”
His eyes drifted closed.
“Please. Julien, talk to me.”
Tears and rain, they swept over her face, blurring her vision and choking any words she could find. She swiped at the wetness on her cheeks and kept driving.
“What if I tell you my name? Hmm? My real one. Would you talk to me then?”
They eased up over a rise, past trees and the heart-stopping sight of sandbag barriers, and came through the edge of town. A medieval gate rose beyond it; that must be the Porte du Martray.
Please don’t let them be under siege.
“Viola . . .”
Vi had been so desperate for his voice that she nearly turned them into the side of a building at the sound of it. “How do you know my name?”
“I’ve known it since the first day you broke into my chapel.”
“But how? You never said.”
The cathedral—her heart raced when she saw the spire rise over the buildings. She turned down the street without care. Not knowing if they’d be shot at by hidden enemies in buildings lining the drive.
“Last winter. Viola Hart disappeared in Paris. The SOE sent out word about a missing linguist . . . black hair . . . violet eyes,” he whispered. “If we found you . . . we were to keep you safe until the Allies could get you out. I let them know you were with us that first day.”
Vi pulled up to the front of the cathedral and pulled to a stop, blasting her horn.
“That was my job . . . Lady . . .”
Heaven help her, but Julien was shaking so badly, she could scarcely understand him.
“To . . . keep you . . . safe.”
“And you were brilliant at it, my love. I am safe now. See? We’re at another chapel.” She banged the door open and swept out, enough to stand over him and press an upside down kiss to his forehead. “And I’m wearing your brooch, so I’m staying at your invitation. My heart will never leave.”
Vi struggled to lift Julien out, his shoulders a deadweight as she hooked her arms under them. She blasted the horn again, and heavy doors opened. A man ran down the steps, meeting her, working at once to shift the bulk of Julien’s weight into his arms.
“Please, help us,” she begged, the sight of so much blood causing her own voice to shake uncontrollably. “He needs a doctor.”
The man started when she spoke but called out over his shoulder, drawing men and a woman with a cloth pallet stretcher from the inside. They swarmed the car, rushing on all sides of her, lifting Julien from her.
“Please . . .”
“What is it?” When she didn’t answer, the man blasted again. “Quickly! Shrapnel? Gunshot?”
“It was a paratrooper . . .” She battled to think, trying to stay close even as they eased her back. “Um . . . gunshot from an FG 42, I think. His right side.”
She didn’t need to be told that life could slip from him; Julien had never held her hand that way before. Vi gripped his palm as long as they’d let her, until they moved up the steps and she finally lost the warmth of his skin against hers.
“I have to go with him!” she cried, her gaze following the path of the stretcher until it faded into the depths of the chapel.
Vi pressed fingertips covered in dried blood and dirt, brushing them to her lips, kissing their last connection.
“Miss?”
Devastation. Exhaustion and shock—they hit her at once. Trying to look up at the man who’d rushed out to them caused her to falter on a stair. She fell down, knees smacking on the steps as she crumpled. He moved with quick reflexes, catching her at the elbow, helping her sit. He slipped a coat over her shoulders, even as they still trembled.
“We’re your friends here, and we will help you both. But I need to know if you’re hurt too. Now is this your blood or his?”
Vi stared over her shoulder, the darkness of the chapel an abyss. “Why can’t I stay with him?”
How quickly she’d forgotten everything, that she was soaking wet, covered in a horrific mix of mud and blood-red stained upon her clothes, with her senses faded to listless.
“Don’t worry about me.” She swallowed hard, feeling her hand form a fist on its own, as if she were ready to fight the world if he dared try to help her. “Just get him to a doctor.”
The man reached out, hand on air, trying to calm her.
“I am a doctor—Captain Frederick Carver, American OSS. I’m one of the medical staff here. He’ll receive the best care, I promise you. And I’ll take you to him as soon as possible. What’s his name?”
“Um . . . Julien.” She sniffed, trying to find her wits enough to think, let alone speak. Courage felt lost and she feeble in trying to summon it. But Julien deserved better, that his name be spoken in accordance with who he was and what he’d done.
So she notched her chin. “His name is Julien Vivay, commander of the Maquis resistance at Château des Doux-Rêves, and winemaker at the Renard vineyard in Les Trois-Moutiers.”
“And your name, miss?”
“My name?”
Vi looked up at him, wishing it were as simple to answer as giving her name. But she wasn’t Viola Hart anymore—just Lady. A hidden chapel . . . a photo taken at castle ruins . . . a family and a man she’d come to love in the mere weeks she’d known them—they’d changed everything about her, who she might have once been.
All of it started with her name.
“You spoke English over there and with the accent, I have to ask. Are you a British citizen? How did you end up here, fighting with the French?”
With a deep breath Vi slipped the strap of Camille’s camera over her head and set it on the steps beside her. She reached down, twisted the heel of her shoe until it unlocked and came off in her hand. Turning it over, the tiny black witness of microfiche film spilled into her palm.
“I am French now. I’m Lady Vi Hart. And if you are our friend, Captain, then you can help me get this to 64 Baker Street in London as soon as possible. It is intelligence information from the headquarters of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, of the Third Reich’s 7th Panzer Division.”
“Hitler’s commander?” He paused a breath when she didn’t confirm he was the same. “His car took a direct hit from a 20mm in Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery just yesterday. It’s said that his injuries are near fatal. And the Nazi strongholds are falling all over France. We may still have a fight ahead of us here, but after Normandy, we believe the war could turn. You really didn’t know?”
It must have shown on her face, the shock of the world going on outside of what had occurred at the castle ruins. War was happening everywhere, but it was so much more personal in her small view of it that she’d nearly forgotten it wasn’t over yet.
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