Keys to the Castle

by Donna Ball

  Sara said, without knowing why, “It will take a while for the water to heat.”

  He hesitated, and turned back to her. “So it will.” The coffeemaker began to gurgle and hiss. “Would it be all right, do you suppose, if I joined you for breakfast?”

  She said, “Let’s eat on the terrace.”

  She busied herself with gathering fruit and cheese and hard rolls from the bread box and jams from the cupboard and a fresh round of butter—which had survived the lack of electrical cooling just fine in the insulated refrigerator—surprised at how familiar she had grown with this kitchen in such a short time. She could hardly remember the layout of Dixie’s kitchen. When she returned home, would she constantly be turning to the left instead of to the right to look for silverware?

  She thought she should probably make an offer on the Peterson house as soon as she set foot on North Carolina soil. And yet, whenever she made up her mind to do that, she kept hearing Ash’s voice, demanding, But what will you do?

  Damn him, anyway.

  They carried the tray of food and coffee to the terrace, and Ash went out of his way to be helpful. He never ate breakfast. He could only tolerate coffee if it was mostly cream. This morning-after encounter was, predictably, awkward.

  Finally they sat at the stone table with plates filled and coffee poured and Ash said, his eyes calm and steady, “Sara, do I need to say anything?”

  She burst out almost before he was finished, “I really wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Because it seems as though there are things that need to be—”

  “No, there aren’t. Honestly.”

  “All right, then.” He hesitated, his gaze unflinching, seeing far too much as he looked at her. “You’re Daniel’s widow,” he said. “I respect that. I wouldn’t want you to think I would ever take advantage.”

  She felt heat creep into her cheeks, and she had to shift her gaze away. “I don’t,” she said. “I mean, I would never . . .” She foundered, feeling flustered and confused and oddly guilty, even though she had done nothing to feel guilty about. She sighed and looked at him apologetically, her face still hot. “I’ve had a wonderful time these past few days,” she said. “But . . . it’s probably a good thing I’m leaving now.”

  He nodded, and then he shifted his gaze away.

  She brought her cup to her lips with both hands and sipped the strong black coffee without meeting his eyes again. He buttered a roll, and left it on his plate. She reached for a tangerine at the same time he did; he withdrew quickly and her hand fluttered to her lap. It was all too much a 1940s romantic comedy and, despite herself, she smiled. Almost as though reading her mind, he did, too, and just like that, the tension between them was gone.

  He said, “Halves?”

  She nodded and he took up a fruit knife and sliced the tangerine. “What time is your flight tomorrow? Shall we drive in together?”

  “That would be nice. My flight’s at two.”

  “Excellent.” He placed half the fruit on her plate. “I can get a 1:45 back to London. What a pity you didn’t plan time to stay over in Paris. I would have enjoyed showing you around.”

  She said, smearing jam on her roll, “You know you don’t have any more time to spend showing me around.”

  “I could make time.” He looked momentarily wistful. “It’s been years since I was a tourist in Paris.”

  She was tempted, for one wild moment, to cancel her flight and take him up on his offer. But it was just for a moment. “You know the world of international law is falling apart without you, and my guess is that if you had to spend even one more day relaxing, you would do yourself serious harm.”

  He laughed. “No doubt you’re right.” He peeled the fruit. “So what would you like to do with your last day in France?”

  Her last day in France. There was a little catch in her chest when he said that, and she thought how incredibly predictable it was, that she should have fallen so completely under the spell of this place. She wondered if she would be another cliché, weeping all the way home on her flight back to the United States.

  “Let’s go down to the village.” She bit into her roll. “Maybe I’ll see Pietro there.”

  At first he seemed startled, and then he laughed. He said something in French that she did not understand and he refused to translate, and she threw the remainder of her roll at him.

  It was a good morning, after all.

  They took the car so that Sara could box up and send home the items that wouldn’t fit in her suitcase. They visited some of her favorite shops and had lunch at an outdoor café. Some of the vendors were beginning to recognize them, and smiled at Sara and waved her over to show her their latest merchandise when she walked by. “You’ve been here less than a week,” Ash teased her, “and already you’re their best customer. That’s what we all love about Americans.”

  He held her hand as they strolled the streets, and it seemed completely natural.

  It was midafternoon when they returned to the château, and there was a black Citroën parked in the circular drive. When Sara glanced at Ash, his answer was a shrug, and he looked as puzzled as she was.

  The woman who turned to meet them in the bright marble hall was slim, fiery-haired, and dressed in a deceptively simple jade green couturier dress that hugged her body like a second skin. Even before she turned, even before she felt Ash stiffen beside her, Sara knew who she was.

  “Michele,” Ash said coolly. “What are you doing here?”

  She smiled beatifically and spread her hands, palms up. “Mon cher, is that any sort of greeting? And after I have made a special trip just to meet your . . .” Her eyes were fixed on Sara and her smile didn’t waver as she seemed to search for the word. “Friend.”

  Inexplicably, Sara felt a flush creep up her neck. She wasn’t certain whether it was because the way Michele said the word made it sound dirty, or because, next to her, Sara—with her braided hair and cotton sundress and comfortable flats—felt dull and frumpy and completely American.

  Ash said flatly, “Michele, may I present Sara Orsay. Sara, Michele Dupuis. Now, what are you doing here?”

  There was in the distance the clattering sound of small running feet, and like a whirlwind, a little girl burst around the corner and raced toward Ash with open arms. “Petit-papa! Je suis arrivé!”

  Ash looked as stunned as though someone had struck him, yet he automatically bent and scooped up the child, resting her on his hip and kissing her hair. “Alyssa, ma petite chou!” he exclaimed softly. “Comment ça va? Quel joli ruban!” He tugged at her hair ribbon and smiled, although his eyes still held nothing but shock, and they were fixed on Michele’s.

  The child couldn’t have been more than five or six, and she was adorable, with curly black hair tied back with a red ribbon, and big dark eyes. She wore a plaid skirt and kneesocks, like a school uniform. She chattered on in a stream of sweet, high-pitched French, playing with the buttons on Ash’s shirt, and then she said, “But my English, she is very goodly, yes?”

  Ash laughed, though it sounded strained, and he said, “Very goodly indeed, little one. “

  Sara couldn’t stay silent any longer. She said, smiling at the little girl, “Ash, you didn’t tell me you had a daughter.” She didn’t know why this should hurt her, but it did a little. She had told him all of her secrets, and he hadn’t even mentioned his offspring to her. “She’s darling.”

  Michele came forward, her laughter light and tinkling. “Mais chérie, Alyssa is not Ash’s child.” She looked at Sara with malicious amusement tightening the corners of her otherwise flawless eyes. “She is Daniel’s.”

  TEN

  There are certain moments in every life in which a curtain seems to be drawn, forever separating what was from what will never be again. One of those moments had occurred when a police officer had stood dripping icy rain in the dark on Sara’s porch. Another such moment was now.

  It was now.

  The air in the great hall didn�
�t really suddenly evaporate; time wasn’t really frozen, and the silence that echoed after those words didn’t really last a lifetime. But it felt like that to Sara. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t breathe. All she could do was stare at Ash, and at the child he held in his arms.

  Ash murmured several swift, light-sounding sentences to the little girl, then set her on her feet and spoke in the same deceptively pleasant tone to Michele. The words were in French, and his eyes, when he looked at her, could have frozen salt water. He finished in English, perhaps for the child’s sake, but very politely, “Or I will wring your bloody neck.”

  There was a flare of anger in Michele’s eyes and a quirk of temper about her lips, which she purposefully subdued with a cool smile. She took Alyssa’s hand with a shrug, and said, “Très bien, ma petite, viens avec moi.”

  And she led her off, at a deliberately casual pace, toward the kitchen.

  Sara said the only thing she could manage, at that moment. “She called you ‘papa.’ ”

  “It’s a nickname.” Ash’s face was tight, the muscle in his jaw knotted. “It means . . . it doesn’t matter what it means.”

  “Were you going to tell me?” Now her breath was coming back and her voice began to rise as she closed her hands into fists. “Were you ever going to tell me? Don’t you think that’s the kind of thing I might have been the tiniest bit interested in knowing? I mean, did you think it wasn’t important enough to mention? Are you kidding me? For the love of God, Daniel had a child?”

  By this time she was practically screaming at him, and, with a quick glance around, Ash grasped her arm and pulled her into one of the empty reception rooms. It was a display room, furnished in horsehair settees and Queen Anne chairs upholstered in ivory and gold damask with delicate tables and china clocks. It was as big as a hotel lobby, and the only light came from two tall, velvet-draped windows at either end of the room. Motes of dust, disturbed by their entrance, were captured in the thin rays of sunlight that penetrated the thick glass.

  Sara wrenched her arm away as soon as he closed the door. “How dare you?” she demanded lowly. Every muscle in her body was tensed with outrage and her words echoed about the vast, cold room. “How the hell dare you?” But even as she spoke she knew her anger wasn’t at Ash, but at Daniel. Daniel hadn’t told her. And there was no way for her to know whether he ever would have.

  Ash drew in a sharp breath. “Listen to me. The reason I didn’t tell you was because it’s not true. Alyssa is not legally Daniel’s child.”

  Sara stared at him, hardly believing her ears. “Legally?”

  He thrust a hand through his hair, his eyes a storm of anger and apology and regret and bitterness. “God, it’s such a sordid story.” Another breath. “A woman contacted Daniel some years back with a two-year-old she claimed he had fathered when he last was in France. Daniel was adamant the child was not his and sent her away rather abruptly. I advised him to take a paternity test, just to circumvent any further complications, but he refused. He insisted he wasn’t even in France at the time of the child’s conception, and that the whole thing was just a scheme to get money.”

  He compressed his lips tightly, gathering his thoughts, or perhaps unwilling to speak them. “And within the week the woman, the mother of the child . . .” He paused here, and turned away from her, his gaze fixed on the far window. “She committed suicide, I’m afraid.”

  Sara sat down abruptly in one of the stiff, uncomfortable chairs.

  It was a long time before he spoke again, and then his voice was heavy, flat and stiff and deliberately devoid of emotion. “It was all simply ghastly. There were no relatives, and the police found the child, Alyssa, with her mother’s body, trying to wake her up.”

  Sara pressed her fingers tightly against her lips.

  “Daniel felt—well, you can imagine how Daniel felt. It knocked him off his feet. He thought he was responsible. And when he realized there was no one to care for the child, he wanted to set up a trust for her.”

  Sara thought, a little hysterically, He thought he was responsible? He thought?

  She had married a man who had fathered a child and refused to acknowledge her. She had married a man who was responsible for another woman’s death. She had done that. She had done that and she had never known, had never guessed, had never even imagined . . .

  Somehow, in the spinning, sucking vortex of her wild thoughts, Ash’s voice came through, anchoring her.

  “That’s when he came to me for money, and I offered to buy shares in the château. The trust is enough to keep her in good schools with room and board and on to university, and perhaps to set her up in a small place afterward. Since Daniel lived abroad, the law firm—well, I, actually—assumed legal guardianship, in case of a medical emergency or such as that. We managed to place her in a very nice school in Lyon. There are so very few of them that take children her age. Whenever I’m in France I visit her, and send her gifts for the holidays—that’s why she calls me her petit-papa. Her almost-father.”

  It was a long time before Sara could speak. But she thought, I can deal with this. I can. I’ve had to deal with so much . . . I can do this. When she spoke at last her voice was hoarse but almost steady. And the question she asked was not really what she wanted to know at all. It was simply all she could think of. “Why—would you do that? Any of it? Give him money, assume guardianship of a child who was a stranger to you, visit her at school . . . why would you do that?”

  Through the entire speech his gaze had remained fixed on the window, his face in profile to her. Now he looked back at her. The corners of his eyes tightened just a little, but his expression was otherwise unreadable. He replied simply, “It’s what we do, Sara. The Lindemans have been taking care of the Orsays for generations—straightening out their finances, managing their estates, cleaning up their messes. It’s what we do.”

  He spoke of a world she did not know, and didn’t want to know. For the first time she felt the full foreignness of this place—this culture, the man she had married, the man with whom she had just spent a fairy-tale week in a castle. She had never known any of them.

  “But . . .” She foundered, still trying to find something to cling to, struggling to make her voice work. “You’re telling me that Daniel . . . that you . . . did all this, mortgaged his inheritance, set up the trust, found the best school—all for a child who wasn’t his?”

  Ash’s eyes were weary, and his expression sad. “There was never any proof of paternity,” he said. “But if I have to be honest . . . I can’t say whether Daniel ever knew for certain.”

  Sara thought dimly, I never knew him. I never knew him at all.

  From the doorway, Michele said lazily, “Don’t be absurd, mon cher, of course he knew. Daniel was many things, but he was no fool. He must have been convinced the child was his long before he invested money in her.”

  Ash turned on her, every ounce of his being radiating disdain. His tone was glacial. “This is beneath contempt, Michele, even for you. Where is Alyssa?”

  Michele shrugged and responded in French, but he cut her off.

  “Speak English, goddamn it.”

  Hatred darkened Michele’s eyes and Sara stared at Ash. The smooth Prince Charming to whom she had grown accustomed was gone, and in his place was a man she barely recognized. This man did not play games, or mince words, or make allowances. This was the man who made multimillion-dollar deals happen with a single phone call, who crushed his competition without a qualm, and who never looked back. She had always known, of course, that man was there, just beneath the surface. She had simply not expected to feel so dismayed when she met him face-to-face.

  Michele turned to Sara and gave a slow, exceedingly polite nod of her head. “The child is with Cook, having a sweet. She is happy as a bird.” She even managed a smile for Sara, and strolled over to sit on the little settee across from her. She took out a cigarette and tapped it on the back of her hand. “The château is a marvelous place for a little o
ne to play. I remember how much I enjoyed it as a child.”

  Ash said, “Don’t smoke in here.”

  Glaring at him, Michele thumbed the wheel on her small silver lighter. In a single stride, Ash snatched the cigarette from her and ground it beneath his heel on the marble floor. Michele surged to her feet with eyes flaming and Sara exclaimed, “Oh, for God’s sake!” She stood as well, and pushed past the two of them. “Do I have to be here for this?”

  It was with a visible effort that Ash rearranged his features into something almost resembling civility, and he glanced at Sara. “I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “You’re right. This is no way for adults to behave.”

  He turned back to Michele. “How did you get her out of school?”

  She seemed to hesitate a moment before deciding that her own interests could best be served by controlling her temper, and then she shrugged. “It is no matter,” she murmured, smiling a little. “Soon I shall smoke wherever I want, cher, and then I will be grinding you under my heel.”

  She settled back on the settee, crossing her long legs and stretching one arm out over the back so that her breasts pushed firmly against the silky green fabric. She answered Ash’s question with another little shrug. “It was not so difficult. The school, it is on spring holiday, as any proper guardian would know. When I identified myself as Mrs. Lindeman, wife of the sweet child’s guardian . . .”

  “I am going to have every person at that school sacked,” Ash said tightly. “You are not Mrs. Lindeman, and you are not her guardian. They had no right to release her to you.”

  Michele just smiled. “Now, that is where you are wrong . . . or soon will be, I think. You see, as Daniel’s only living relative, I think it is only right that I assume . . . what is that word? Custodianship, yes, that is it. Custodianship of his child.”

  A heartbeat passed, no more than that.