Keys to the Castle

by Donna Ball

  “He’s teaching me French,” Sara said. “Well, a little anyway. I guess it will take more than a couple of days to learn. He speaks five languages.”

  He took her to visit a local cathedral and spoke with easy expertise on the architecture and history of the place. On another afternoon he arranged to take her to a reception at the château she had seen on the hillside across from the chapel, which wasn’t as intimidating as she had thought it would be, because he knew the hosts personally, and there were four other American couples there.

  “And get this,” Sara told Dixie, “they’ve all bought and restored ruins—that’s what they call these broken-down old French mansions. None of them is as elaborate as Château Rondelais—they were all so jealous when they heard I’d inherited it—but they love living here in the valley. Apparently, everything we’ve heard about the French hating Americans doesn’t apply when you pour tons of money into preserving their culture and settle down among them. Oh, and you should have seen the château! It was like something from a Hollywood set. It sits right smack in the middle of a vineyard, and everything smells like grapes. Of course, it was more of a palace than a château—big and white with lots of rooms and tall windows. Rondelais has a lot more character. All the Americans invited me to come visit them at their homes,” she added, and a touch of wistfulness in her voice surprised even her, “to see how they’ve restored them. But I won’t be here long enough.”

  “Why not?” Dixie demanded. “What do you have to rush back for? It sounds like you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “I am,” she admitted. “But I’m a little homesick, too. Besides, Ash has gone out of his way to make sure I had a good time. It won’t be nearly as much fun without him.”

  There was a note of teasing in Dixie’s voice as she observed, “It sounds like you might have the teensiest bit of a crush on this guy.”

  Sara’s cheeks flamed, even though there was no one there to see it. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Her voice was a little too sharp. “He’s just being nice, that’s all. Besides, I haven’t even been widowed a year. What kind of person would I be if I could get interested in another man, just like that?”

  “A human one,” said Dixie sincerely. “A living one.”

  Sara scowled, extremely uncomfortable now. “This is a stupid conversation. I know the difference between charm and sincerity. He’s not the kind of person I would ever get involved with. We’re business partners, that’s all.”

  Dixie hesitated. “Sara . . . you’re sure you trust him? That this deal he’s set up is legitimate?”

  Sara laughed, on easier ground now. “For heaven’s sake, Dixie, you’re the one who looked him up on the Internet! Didn’t you say there was a picture of him at a White House dinner?”

  “It was during the previous administration,” replied Dixie archly, “which doesn’t necessarily prove anything at all about his character.” And then she added, somewhat reluctantly, “But you were right. He is cute.”

  “And I’m not stupid. I’m not signing anything without checking it out first. But it’s going to be a solid deal. He doesn’t do any other kind. And this is the best thing to do with the property. I’m sure of it.” Then she sighed a little. “I might not like it, but I’m sure.”

  “Well, we miss you, honey. Jeff went to look at the Peterson property for you. He says now that you’re going to be rich, you can really afford to do it up right.”

  Sara laughed, sitting on the bed to towel dry her hair. As much as she loved the marble bathtub, she had soon discovered there was an impractical side. There was no attached shower, and she had almost drowned trying to wash her hair. “I guess that could be almost as much fun as restoring a château.”

  “A lot more practical, anyway.”

  Sara reconfirmed her flight information and arrival times for Dixie, and even as she did so she was surprised to feel a stab of nostalgia. As reluctant as she had been to come here, that was how sorry she would be to leave. Secretly she was beginning to fear Ash might be right . . . that she was already beginning to outgrow Little John Island and everything on it. And if that were true, what was left for her?

  The two sisters talked a little while longer, until Dixie pointed out in alarm how much Sara was spending on international phone calls. She said good-bye, and went to finish drying her hair. She plugged in her blow-dryer, careful as always to use the adapter to European wattage that Dixie had insisted she bring, and the minute she pushed the switch the room was plunged into darkness.

  Sara stumbled from the bathroom into the bedroom area, feeling her way along the walls. Though there might have been a faint twilight remaining outside, the draperies were drawn across the huge window that overlooked the valley and the room was as dark as the inside of a tomb. “Great,” she muttered, holding on to the doorjamb and desperately trying to orient herself. “Just great.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Sara? Are you all right?”

  She almost went limp with relief. “Ash?”

  “Stay where you are. I have a torch.”

  He opened the door and swept the room with a beam of light. She winced and shielded her eyes when it found her. His tone was dry. “You just had to plug in the blow-dryer, didn’t you?”

  She said defensively, “I’ve used it before, and the lights didn’t go out.”

  He crossed to her, keeping the flashlight beam low. “Hold this for a moment,” he said, handing it to her. “Shine it toward the bed.”

  She followed him with the flashlight beam as he crossed the room. “I used the adapter,” she insisted.

  “You have an adapter for a seventeenth-century château? Well-done, then.”

  She noted that he had changed from the jeans he had worn in the afternoon to soft gray trousers and a pale shirt that was closed only by one button at the chest, clinging to his wet skin in dark patches. His hair was damp, and it occurred to her she had roused him from the shower as well. As she made these observations the flashlight beam wandered; he collided with a piece of furniture and exclaimed, “Damn!”

  She quickly corrected the beam. “Sorry.”

  He rummaged in a drawer in the delicate little bedside table, then turned a key on one of the sconces that flanked the bed. There was a hissing sound, and he lifted the glass globe and struck a match. With a soft sucking sound, the sconce flared to light. He skirted the bed and repeated the procedure with the other lamp. The room was filled with a shadowed, golden glow. “Gas lights,” he explained, shaking out the match. “It was all the château had until the 1970s. All in all, more reliable than electricity to this day.”

  She switched off the flashlight. “Are the lights off all over the castle?”

  “I’m afraid so. I’ll get someone up from the village in the morning.”

  She crossed the room—carefully, because the shadows were still deep—and returned the flashlight to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “And thanks for rescuing me.”

  He smiled. She could see the moisture on his face and the dampness of his collar where his hair had dripped. “My pleasure.”

  She was wearing a nightshirt that did not quite reach her knees, but she refused to be embarrassed about it. His eyes swept her briefly, from wet hair to bare feet, and he said, surprising her, “You smell wonderful.”

  Now she was embarrassed, or at least a little flustered. She pushed self-consciously at her limp wet hair, and gestured vaguely toward the bathroom. “It’s the shampoo . . . or the soap. It came with the castle.”

  The creases at the corners of his eyes deepened. “I shall have to discover the supplier.” He held her eyes a little longer, smiling, and then, just before the moment became uncomfortable, he turned to place the flashlight on her night table. “I’ll leave this with you, then. Will you be all right? Do you need anything else?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m fine. Or at least I will be, as soon as I figure out what people did with their hair before blow-dryers were invented.”

  “When you
find out, let me know, eh? Good night, Sara.” He touched her arm in a brief, companionable gesture, and turned toward the door.

  His eyes fell on her suitcase, open on the bed. He looked back at her. “You’re packing already?”

  She moved to the bed and closed the suitcase, foolishly feeling the need to hide her underwear from him. “I thought I’d get a head start. I’ve bought so much since I’ve been here—presents for the boys, and all—I wasn’t sure how I would fit it all in.”

  “We can ship some of it back for you, if you like.”

  When she straightened up, he was closer than she had realized, so that she would have to edge around him to step away from the bed. His face was bronzed by the lamplight, and his eyes a deep indigo. The small line between his eyes seemed puzzled. “Odd,” he said. “I don’t think I realized how close the time was to your leaving.” He lifted his hand, lightly pushed back a strand of damp hair that tickled her cheek, and dropped it again. “I’m going to miss you, you know. You’re very fine company.”

  She could smell the citrusy soap, and the dampness of his shower. She said, “You are, too. I’ve had a great time these last few days. And you were as good as your word about the phone.”

  He smiled. “It was no hardship, actually. I only wish . . .” But he didn’t finish. In another moment he gave a small nod of his head, as though punctuating the unfinished sentence, and took a step past her toward the door. “Well, then. Good night.”

  She said, “Good night, Ash.”

  He turned back to her, that puzzled, contemplative line reappearing between his brows, and he said, “Actually, there is just one thing . . .”

  He stepped into her and gently pushed back her hair again, with both hands. He drew in a breath as though to finish his sentence but instead his lips covered hers, tenderly at first, a gentle good-bye, and then simply melting into her, swallowing her, consuming her whole.

  It was the kind of shock in which all the senses seem to explode at once and then freeze, like separate particles of brilliantly colored light, for a single suspended moment. It was as though she had never been kissed before. And perhaps she hadn’t, not like this, not so unexpectedly, not so thoroughly, so sensually, so completely; not by someone who wasn’t Daniel. It took her breath away.

  All the blood in her body surged to her skin, to the brief, sharp flash of sensation in her nerve endings, and her knees buckled. She lifted her hands to his arms to support herself but it did no good; she sank to the bed and he followed, his hand on her hip atop the thin fabric of her nightshirt, now sliding to her waist, now pressing downward to her bare thigh. His hands were warm, deft, and where he touched fever flared. She let herself be touched. She tasted his tongue against hers, and she let the weight of her head fall back against the support of his strong fingers. She let herself be kissed; she drank him in. There was a part of her that couldn’t believe she was doing this, another part that seemed to have simply been waiting for it all along.

  He kissed the curve of her jaw, her ear, her collarbone. She pressed her hands against his chest, feeling the heat of him, the dampness of his shirt. She was light-headed, breathless, all of her senses singing with pleasure. She turned her mouth to his again, and then, with a very great effort, she pulled away.

  “Ash,” she whispered. She could barely hear her own voice for the thrumming rush of her heartbeat in her ears. She closed her fingers around his biceps, clinging to the strength of them. “I’m not going to have sex with you.”

  “Oh, thank God,” he murmured. He pushed her hair away from her neck and placed a deep kiss there, tracing the throb of her pulse with his tongue. “For a moment I was in danger of . . .” And then he stopped, and lifted his face. His skin was flushed and his eyes were dark, pupils dilated with desire. But there was something else in his eyes, a kind of surprise mixed with confusion, and he finished softly, “Falling quite utterly for you.”

  He lowered his lashes, shading his eyes from her, and placed his forefinger lightly across her lips. “I am an idiot,” he said. “Forgive me.”

  He stood, and crossed to the door. When he opened the door he hesitated and her heart caught, because she did not know what she would do if he came back to her. She honestly didn’t know.

  But he didn’t come back. He simply gave a single apologetic shake of his head and repeated, “A complete idiot.”

  And he left, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Sara’s sleep was, not surprisingly, restless, and she awoke later than usual to find there was no hot water—which was only logical, since there was no electricity either. She splashed cold water on her face and did the best she could with her makeup in the dim bathroom. She dressed quickly, pulled her hair back into a braid, and made her way downstairs, hoping that the housekeeper might have arrived early and that she knew how to change a European fuse.

  The kitchen was dark and deserted when she entered, and when she rather optimistically pushed the button on the coffeemaker, nothing happened. Typically, Ash spent the morning hours catching up on business and allowing her to enjoy her “American breakfast habit” as he called it, alone, although he usually joined her for coffee on the terrace at midmorning. And this morning, of all mornings, she did not want to face him without her first cup of coffee. She began to search the kitchen, the pantry, the small laundry area, and even the spooky, stone-walled storage closet for anything that looked like a fuse box.

  It finally occurred to her that a building that had been retrofitted with electricity would probably have located the electrical box on an outside wall, and she opened the back door—just in time to see a man crawling out of the rosemary bush. She gasped and quickly stepped back, shielding herself with the door, but he called cheerfully, “Buon giorno, signorina!”

  He appeared to be in his twenties, olive skinned, with thick black hair and merry black eyes. He was accompanied by an older, sour-looking man in baggy brown trousers with a cigarette hanging from one lip who carried a wooden ladder. The younger man came toward her and she tightened her grip on the door, but didn’t entirely close it.

  “You will be the beautiful American who owns the palazzo, sì?” he declared, grinning at her. “The signor, he says, the signorina she must have her coffee, so I come quick to bring you the light. Do you know Brad Pitt?”

  Sara shook her head. Italian, she realized slowly. He was Italian. And what was he doing rummaging around in a French herb garden before nine o’clock in the morning? “Um . . . who are you?”

  He shrugged. “It is no matter. I will make you the coffee, yes?”

  He made as though to step inside, and, alarmed, she started to slam the door shut when suddenly she understood. “Light!” she exclaimed. “You’re the electrician!” She opened the door wide. “Yes, come in, please.”

  He strode confidently inside, accompanied by the man with the stepladder. “I am Pietro,” he told her. “I come many times to make the repairs. This is my papa, the finest builder in all of Lugano. He no speak inglese but you got something broke, he make it right.”

  As he spoke, he helped his father unfold the stepladder, and climbed toward the ceiling. Sara, clasping her arms across her chest against the morning chill of the kitchen, stepped back carefully out of the way, and watched as Pietro pushed aside a ceiling panel and reached his hand inside. He found a lever, pulled it with a snap, and exclaimed, “Voilà! Eh?” as the refrigerators hummed to life.

  Sara laughed out loud, both with relief at having the electricity restored, and at the sheer outrageousness of having an electrical panel hidden inside the ceiling and discovered by a French-speaking Italian in a four-hundred-year-old castle.

  “Bueno!” she declared, clapping her hands. “Is that right? Is that Italian?”

  Ash said behind her, “Close enough, I think. Buon giorno, Pietro, Signor Contandino. Grazie!”

  He was wearing loafers with no socks, rumpled khakis, and a blue silk robe. He went on in a rapid, easy stream of Italian as he took some
bills from his pants pocket and paid the men, but that was all Sara understood. She quickly occupied herself with making the coffee, trying to appear at ease and un-self-conscious, trying not to look at Ash.

  Pietro conversed easily with Ash while his father packed up the ladder and dropped cigarette ashes on the kitchen floor. Then he came over to her. “Do you know Tom Cruise?” he asked.

  Sara, turning, found him much too close for comfort. She braced her hands against the counter and leaned back to give herself some breathing room, smiling uncertainly. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  He shrugged. “Ah well, it is no matter.” He smiled at her. “You need fixing again, you ask for Pietro. I come . . .” He snapped his fingers twice in quick succession. “Like that.”

  Sara, her bright smile frozen in place, replied, “Yes, I will. Thank you.”

  She didn’t completely exhale until they both had left the kitchen, and the door was firmly closed behind them. “Wow,” she said. “He’s . . . larger-than-life, isn’t he?” And she glanced at Ash. “An Italian family of handymen living in the Loire Valley?”

  “It’s a long story,” Ash replied. “Suffice it to say, every small town has its eccentrics, whether they be in America or a village on the Loire. And by the way,” he added with a raised forefinger, “do not call Pietro. He is a walking Italian cliché, and will try to bed you quicker than . . .” He broke off with a sudden realization, staring at her, then gave a soft, embarrassed exhalation and a shake of his head. He turned to leave. “I think I’ll go upstairs and finish the shower I started last night.”