Keys to the Castle

by Donna Ball

  “And of her property.” Ash’s voice was soft, and tinged with something like relief—or perhaps it was a touch of admiration. “So that’s your scheme.”

  Sara felt as though she had stumbled, somehow, into a bad play. All she wanted to do was get away from them both, from the ugliness that seemed to emanate from them and taint the very air of the room. She reached for the door.

  “Sara, wait,” Ash said, though he barely glanced at her when he said it, as though he was cautious about taking his eyes off Michele. “This concerns you.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she said flatly, and she left the room.

  Ash found Sara less than an hour later sitting on the grassy bank beside the moat, her arms encircling her updrawn knees, absently tossing stones into the clear blue water. Three swans floated in effortless circles in the distance, watching her incuriously.

  He was, not surprisingly, on the phone even as he walked down the hill toward her, but he finished his conversation abruptly and pocketed the phone before he reached her. He was wearing sunglasses that reflected the lake and the sky, but she could see the grim lines of his mouth and the set of his jaw.

  “Sara,” he said without preamble. “I need to be in Paris before seven to meet with the French avocat, and I’ll be flying back to London tonight. It’s all very complex, but basically the problem is this: According to the French laws of succession, the claims of a child, even an illegitimate one, supersede the claim of a spouse on a deceased’s estate. The only way Michele can file a claim on Alyssa’s behalf is to file a petition for custody. She seems determined to do that and unless I can preempt her this could get very ugly indeed.”

  Sara tossed another pebble into the water. One of the swans noticed the splash and began to glide from the center of the lake toward it. “She’s the child’s only living relative.”

  “She’s not a relative,” he returned impatiently. “And even if she were, an alley cat’s a better mother than she would be. She has no chance of gaining custody and she knows that. But she also knows if she challenges the estate, we won’t be able to dispose of it until the courts clear it—which could take years in France. That’s why I have to take care of this right away.”

  Another pebble. The swan circled the ripples.

  “I don’t think there’s anything for you to worry about at this point,” he went on, “but I’ll need you to sign the settlement papers as soon as possible. My office will have them waiting for you when you arrive home, and you’ll fax them right back to me, yes?”

  She said lowly, without looking at him, “I hate that you’ve done this. I hate that you’ve ruined my memories of this place. And of Daniel.”

  He seemed startled, perhaps even hurt, and even as she said it she knew she was being unfair. It wasn’t his fault her husband had had a child and neglected to tell her about it. It wasn’t his fault that the innocence had been stripped away from everything she believed about her marriage. She knew that. But she didn’t know who else to blame.

  Sunlight glinted off his dark glasses as he glanced back at the castle, and then, quickly, at his watch. She could sense his frustration. He said, “I’ve ordered a car to take you to the airport tomorrow. Michele is leaving. Will you be all right here tonight by yourself?”

  She didn’t bother to answer.

  He started to lean down as though to—what? Touch her? Kiss her?—and then he changed his mind. “I’m so sorry it ended like this, Sara,” he said quietly.

  She replied, without looking at him, “So am I.”

  Still, he hesitated. “I tried to protect you from this. I’m still trying to protect you. But I have to leave.”

  She did not look up.

  He lingered for only a moment longer. “I’ll be in touch.”

  She didn’t answer, and he walked briskly back up the hill.

  She waited until the sound of the Fiat’s engine had completely faded away before she got up and walked back to the château. The black Citroën was still in the drive, and to avoid an encounter with Michele she walked around the walled gardens toward the back terrace. By the time she smelled the cigarette smoke, it was too late. Michele, stretched out on one of the teak loungers like an exotic lizard luxuriating in the sun, turned a lazy gaze on her.

  Sara hesitated at the edge of the terrace, and then, feeling like a fool for allowing this stranger to intimidate her, she moved on toward the door at a determined pace. Michele turned her gaze back to the view, inhaling cigarette smoke, ignoring her. It wasn’t until Sara drew abreast of her that Michele spoke.

  “It truly is magnificent, isn’t it? To think of the generations of my family who have trod these halls, who have gazed upon this valley . . . it truly can take the breath away.” And she glanced at Sara. “You have nothing like this in America. You cannot imagine the feelings it stirs.”

  Sara said flatly, “No. I can’t imagine.” She turned to go inside.

  Michele drew again on the cigarette and exhaled a graceful stream of smoke. “My Ashton, he is so very clever. Too clever for his own good sometimes, I think. This agreement he has reached with the hotel . . . did he tell you he had been attempting to persuade Daniel of the same thing for years?”

  Sara turned slowly to look at her.

  “I wonder why Daniel would have refused?” Michele continued, pretending not to notice Sara’s surprise. “It could have made him a rich man, and he did, after all, have a family to support.” She smiled then and glanced at Sara. “But I am being indelicate, no?”

  Good God, thought Sara distantly, and with something that felt like amazement creeping into the repulsion she was beginning to feel toward this woman. All she needs is a basket of poisoned apples.

  Michele blew a thin stream of cigarette smoke into the air. Sara found herself unable to look away, unable to stop listening. “Here is something you must know about my Ashton,” she said. “He is fascinated by all things Orsay. It is like a sickness with him. I think it is because, for all that he has acquired, there is something he can never be, and the Orsays—the last of the grand French aristocracy—are that. And so he is obsessed with what is Orsay. This château, me, Daniel . . .” She slanted a look at Sara. “Daniel’s wife. Why do you think he worked so hard to find a way to own shares of this property? He could have given Daniel the money; he has it to spare. Or loaned it to him on other terms. And even now the contract he negotiates with the hotel is not for sale, it is for lease. He remains in control.” She took one last draw on the cigarette, gave an elaborate shrug, and blew out the smoke. “I tell you this only so that you do not imagine this inheritance of yours will ever be truly yours. He is very clever, and he will not give it up.”

  She sat up and swung her legs to the ground, tossing the cigarette away. “You mustn’t feel badly, chérie,” she said, rising. “This game of seduction, it is what Ashton does. It is what he knows. You take my advice, you forgive, and you move on. It is a—how do you say—a lesson of life. I only wonder . . .” She regarded Sara speculatively. “Has the seduction gone beyond the business yet? No? How very peculiar. He is generally so much quicker in such matters. But never mind. It will come. And then, chérie . . .”

  She crossed slowly to Sara and stood near her, smiling. “You have a treat in store. Ashton is very good in bed,” she confided. “After all, I taught him everything he knows.”

  Michele moved past her, laughing softly, brushing Sara’s arm with her silk sleeve. For a moment Sara didn’t move. And then she turned sharply on her heel.

  “Michele,” she said.

  The other woman turned.

  “You’re wasting your time with me.” Sara’s voice was strong, and even, and for that she was very proud. “I don’t want your husband, your château, or your advice. I don’t want anything that has been or ever will be yours. All I want is to go home.”

  Another time, she might have appreciated the slight wavering of the certainty in Michele’s eyes, even though her steely smile did not fade. But as Sara jerked
open the heavy door and moved quickly into the house, she didn’t even notice. She walked calmly up the stairs with her shoulders square and her head high, and she closed her door quietly. Then she crawled up onto the enormous, silk-clad bed, buried her face in one of the tufted pillows, and sobbed out her fury, her disappointment, her bitter, bitter loss until she had nothing left.

  Nothing at all.

  She awoke to the sound of her own weeping with burning, puffy eyes and a throat that felt gummy. The room was dark, and the pillow beneath her cheek stiff with the salt of dried tears. The weeping wouldn’t go away. And as Sara rolled over groggily, trying to focus in the dark, she gradually realized the weeping was not hers.

  She sat up, rubbing her hands over her itchy, swollen face, and fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp. The soft glow of light stabbed pain through her eyes and she squeezed them closed briefly. There it was again, muffled but unmistakable. Someone crying. She got up and stumbled to the door.

  The corridor outside her room was dark. Ash was the one who knew where all the light switches were and he was not here. The sound was not in her imagination; it was in fact clearer now, and it was coming from somewhere in the dark. It made her flesh prickle. She ran her hand along the wall for a moment, looking for a light switch, and then remembered the flashlight that Ash had left in her room the night before. Had it been only last night? Or a lifetime ago?

  She returned to the corridor, sweeping the beam across the vast space, every muscle in her body tensed for the sound . . . and there it was again. A heartbroken, hiccupping sob that made Sara’s breath catch and her blood go cold. It was not a ghost. It was not an hallucination. It was a child.

  She followed the sound with her heart racing and the flashlight beam bouncing as she increased her pace to a desperate jog. She opened one door, and then another. The third door she opened revealed a small huddled figure crouched against a massive, sheet-draped piece of furniture, sobbing as though her heart would break.

  “Oh my God,” Sara whispered. “Alyssa?”

  Her hair was tangled and her face was dirty and tear streaked. She had lost her hair ribbon and had torn her white shirt. When she saw the light she stretched out her arms to Sara, and wailed.

  It took only half an indrawn breath for Sara to recover from her shock and rush toward the little girl. “Oh, sweetie! Oh, baby, it’s okay. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  She dropped to the floor and Alyssa flung herself into her embrace, wrapping her arms around Sara’s neck so tightly that it was difficult to breathe. Sara tried quickly to check her for injuries, but soon gave up and simply held her, rocking back and forth on the floor, murmuring softly to her while Alyssa, her thin arms like a vise, sobbed wetly into her shoulder and her little heart beat like a wild bird’s against Sara’s breast. “J’ai peur, j’ai peur!” she kept saying, and Sara just patted her back helplessly, rocking her.

  “You’re going to have to speak English, sweetie. I can’t understand you.”

  And Alyssa whispered brokenly, “Afraid!”

  Everything inside of Sara seemed to break in two. They had left her. The only adults she knew, the ones responsible for her care, the grown-ups she trusted had simply walked away and forgotten her, leaving her alone and terrified in a dark castle to fend for herself. Had she gotten lost exploring? Had she exhausted herself with playing make-believe and fallen asleep, only to awake in a cold dark place with no one in the whole world knowing where she was? When Sara thought of what might have happened—the stairs, the moat, the empty swimming pool; the dark passages that led nowhere, the unsafe garden walls, the kitchen filled with knives and matches—her throat convulsed and she could hardly breathe. They had left her. They had left her.

  Sara closed her eyes and hugged Alyssa tightly, as though the simple force of her embrace could protect her, could take away the terror of this night, could assure her that she would never, ever be abandoned again. She hugged her so fiercely that she didn’t even notice that Alyssa had stopped crying, and only when she began to squirm in protest did Sara loosen her grip.

  Alyssa sniffed, wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand, and inquired solemnly, “Ou sont les toilettes?”

  Sara smiled in spite of herself. “That I understand.” She set Alyssa on her feet and took her hand, picking up the flashlight. “Come along.”

  After attending to the little girl’s personal needs, Sara managed to find enough light switches to illuminate their way to the kitchen. By this time Alyssa, overawed by the splendor of Sara’s bedroom and with the unique resilience of children, had recovered from her fright and regained her sense of adventure. She surprised Sara by chattering all the way to the kitchen—not in French, but in English.

  “I do well to speak the anglais,” she assured Sara happily. “I know many of the words. Shall I tell you to them? Lamp,” she said, pointing to the grand chandelier as it blossomed in the hall. “Stairs. Boy.” She pointed to the portrait in the entry way. “Table. The flower is on the table. I am called Alyssa. I be five years of age. What is you called?”

  “My name is Sara,” Sara told her, smiling down at her. “And I’m a lot older than that. I wish I could speak French as well as you speak English.”

  “I teach you,” Alyssa volunteered generously. “My English is very goodly.”

  And even though it was the last thing she felt like doing, Sara laughed.

  She spread jam on a thick slice of bread and poured a glass of milk for Alyssa, and while the little girl ate, Sara took out her cell phone and, smiling disingenuously, stabbed out the telephone number she had found on the letterhead of Lindeman and Lindeman. A recorded voice informed her, “The hours of Lindeman and Lindeman are Monday through Friday, nine to six . . .”

  She resisted the urge to throw the cell phone against the wall.

  “Plate,” said Alyssa, pointing. “The bread is on the plate.”

  Sara sat beside her, smiling as she wiped a smear of jam off her face with a napkin. “Do you like to swim, Alyssa?”

  Apparently Alyssa was not quite certain what those words meant, because she simply munched another bite from her jam sandwich and gazed at Sara with those big brown eyes. Eyes that went straight to Sara’s heart.

  Eyes that looked just like Daniel’s.

  Sara struggled not to let her smile falter, and she smoothed back one of Alyssa’s tangled curls with her fingers. “Well, never mind. You’re going to like my bathtub. Where have you been playing, anyway? In the dungeon?”

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est dungeon?” inquired Alyssa with interest, and Sara spent the rest of the brief meal trying to define English words for an inexhaustible French-speaking five-year-old.

  Sara washed out Alyssa’s filthy school uniform in the sink and watched while Alyssa splashed and played in the giant bathtub. And even through the terror that gripped her chest whenever she thought about what might have happened, and the rage that flamed through her body when she thought about what had happened, she couldn’t help laughing at the innocence of a child’s play, and the ease with which she immersed herself in the moment. Sara scrubbed her down with the expensive-smelling soap and washed her hair with the expensive-smelling shampoo, then towel dried her and swaddled the little girl in one of her own cotton nightshirts. It dragged the floor when she walked, and Sara showed her how to hold it up in front like a court gown so that she wouldn’t trip, with a train trailing behind.

  She wished she had not already shipped home the toys she had bought for the boys, and she searched around for something to keep a five-year-old entertained. All she could find was a book of photographs of the Loire Valley that she had bought for Dixie, and she settled Alyssa atop the big bed with the picture book.

  “Now you stay right here,” she told her, “and look at the pretty pictures. I’ve got to go try to find a way to call your . . .” What had she called him? Something papa. “Your papa. He’ll be worried about you.”

  Alyssa regarded her solemnly. “I
have no papa. Je suis un bâtard.”

  Sara stared at her. She did not have to understand French to know that word. Bastard.

  “Ma maman,” she went on matter-of-factly, “she is morte. There is a cat at l’école. Now he is mort.” She turned a picture in the book, and her face lit up. “Voilà!” she exclaimed, pointing to a photograph of a château with round turrets and a drawbridge. “I am here! She is my maison!”

  Sara hesitated, then sat down on the bed beside her, looking at the picture. “Yes,” she agreed. “It looks very much like your house. But it’s not. Your house is called Château Rondelais.” She settled back against the pillows and pulled Alyssa close. “Let’s see if there’s a picture of it in this book, okay?”

  She turned the pages of the book, reading the captions and pointing to the photographs, until she could see the little girl’s eyelids begin to droop. She closed the book and tucked Alyssa under the covers, kissing her forehead lightly.

  “Close your eyes now, sweetie. Time for sleep.”

  Alyssa gazed drowsily at the gold and blue canopy overhead, the satiny curtains surrounding her. “C’est très belle,” she murmured.

  Sara smiled. “Fit for a princess.”

  She started to get up, hoping against hope that Ash had left something in his room, or elsewhere in the castle—a business card, a list of emergency numbers—something, anything, that would tell her what to do now. She didn’t even speak enough French to contact the local authorities, or to try to find the housekeeper who had come in so reliably every day . . . but who would not be here tomorrow because, of course, she thought the château was empty.

  She slid off the bed, but before she could take a step toward the door a small, fierce hand gripped her sleeve. Sara looked back at Alyssa. She was practically lost in the giant bed, a tiny doll with big, frightened, shimmering eyes. As Sara watched, a tear spilled from one of those eyes and splashed fatly on the starched white pillowcase. She said nothing. She did not have to. The dread in her eyes spoke it all.