Coco du Ciel

by Elise Noble

  Chanté shuddered, but Rhys struggled to keep the grin off his face. At last, somebody was talking to him about the castle. Who knew splattered cream cakes and terrible French could be such a great conversation starter?

  “So who rebuilt the place? Surely that must have cost a fortune if it was a ruin before?”

  Chanté’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We don’t talk about him.”

  “Why not? Is he a criminal or something?”

  “A criminal? No, not at all. But Monsieur Klein is very private, and he gives a lot of money to the town. There is a…I suppose an unspoken rule that if we don’t ask questions, he will donate more. And he hates visitors.”

  “Ah, a reclusive billionaire?”

  “Oui. Like the ’ero out of a romance novel, except his love, she died.” Chanté clapped a hand over her mouth. “Probably I shouldn’t tell you that.”

  “I couldn’t imagine spending my life locked away in a castle. Does he come out often?”

  “I’ve never seen him. My father has once or twice, but not for years. Mostly he comes and goes by helicopter.”

  Rhys’s heart sank. If Klein rarely left the castle grounds, how would he talk to the man?

  “Maybe he’s a ghost?”

  “Non, I don’t think so,” Chanté answered in all seriousness. “He likes flowers, and I don’t think ghosts ’ave a sense of smell.”

  “Flowers? How do you know that?”

  “My friend Adele, she runs the florist.” Chanté waved her hand to the right, so Rhys assumed it was somewhere nearby. “Every Friday, she delivers six bouquets to the gatehouse. Always roses, in every colour.”

  Interesting, but short of hiding himself inside a bunch of flowers, Rhys couldn’t see how that snippet of information helped him. He was trying to think of another question when the bell over the door tinkled and Chanté’s face lit up in a smile.

  “Another customer! Excusez-moi.”

  Would she come back to carry on the conversation? Rhys hoped so, but Chanté dragged a chair up to the newcomer’s table and began chatting. They obviously knew each other. With no further progress to be made, at least today, he tucked into his lunch. He’d come here again for sure, even if it did nothing for his waistline. The diet would start as soon as he got back to England. But for now, he left enough cash on the table to cover his meal, all the cakes he’d ruined, plus a tip, and headed out to the streets.

  ***

  “At least she spoke to you,” Coco said that evening when Rhys recounted his visit to the café. He might have omitted to mention the part about sitting in cakes. “Maybe you could go back for lunch tomorrow?”

  “I’m planning to, but I’m not sure it’ll help much. Klein hardly ever leaves the castle.”

  “Then you need to get in.”

  Sometimes, Coco could be the tiniest bit exasperating. Still beautiful, even on a low-res video call when she was obviously tired, but exasperating nonetheless.

  “What do you expect me to do? Swim across the moat? Scale the walls? It’s a castle—it was designed to withstand an invading army.”

  “How about hiding in a delivery truck?”

  “Deliveries go to the gatehouse. There are guards.”

  They probably had guns. Were guns legal to carry in France? Rhys considered looking it up, but then he decided he’d rather not know.

  “What about tradesmen? Plumbers? Electricians?”

  “You want me to get a job as a tradesman’s apprentice in a country where I barely even speak the language?”

  “A gardener? What if you got a job as a gardener?”

  “It would be easier to parachute in.”

  Coco totally missed the sarcasm. “Do you think? How much do parachuting lessons cost?”

  “Too much, and did I mention I hate heights? We need a better idea.”

  Coco fell silent for a long moment, and then she snapped her fingers. “Okay, I have a better idea.”

  Now what? Did she want him to snorkel through the moat with a grappling gun?

  “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  She explained her plan, and Rhys had to concede that it wasn’t actually that bad. Maybe, just maybe, it even had a chance of working…

  CHAPTER 19

  AS SOON AS Rhys walked into the florist, he began sneezing. Damn lilies. He scanned the shop until he saw the culprits, a dozen white blooms in a metal vase complete with their stamens of doom. He’d been allergic to lily pollen since he was a kid, which was a shame because they’d been his mum’s favourite flower.

  “À vos souhaits.”

  “Huh? I mean, pardon.”

  The girl behind the counter giggled. Adele, Chanté’s friend, according to her name tag.

  “It is what we say when you sneeze.”

  “Ah. Right.” Thank goodness she spoke English. “I’d like to order a bunch of flowers.”

  “We have plenty of those. What kind?”

  “A dozen white roses. And could you put some of those palm fronds with them?”

  “Palm fronds? With roses?”

  Her expression said they definitely didn’t go together, but Rhys nodded. Just another British guy with dubious taste.

  “Yeah, I think they’d look nice. Can you deliver them tomorrow?”

  “In Villance?”

  “Do you know the castle on the outskirts? Uh, to the…” Rhys pictured the map in his head. “To the west.”

  Until that point, Adele had been smiling, but now her lips pursed. “You want to have flowers sent to Le Château de Villance?”

  “If that’s what it’s called.” He’d rehearsed the story with Coco last night, and he kept his fingers crossed that he wouldn’t trip over his big fat lying tongue. “I was cycling past the place yesterday when my bike got a puncture. I didn’t have a spare tyre, but somebody pulled out of the driveway and stopped to help.”

  Adele folded her arms, grim-faced. “The people from there, normally they are not helpful.”

  “Then I guess I got lucky. The lady works there as a maid. Perhaps you know her—she said her name was Coco?”

  “I don’t know anyone who works there.”

  Thank goodness. “Well, she saved me from a long walk. When I couldn’t repair the puncture, she was kind enough to drop me and the bike off at my hotel.”

  Adele still looked sceptical, so Rhys tried a smile, clasping his hands behind his back so she wouldn’t see them shaking.

  “We talked all the way. She said she wanted to practise her English, and my French needs work. Apparently, I’ve been telling women they have nice arses instead of thanking them very much.”

  Finally, Adele’s smile came back.

  “I’m sure she’ll be very happy to receive flowers. I deliver to the château every Friday, so I can take your gift along too. Do you want to write a card?”

  Most definitely he did. That was the whole point of the exercise. Sure, he could have tried the postal service, but there was a greater risk that the message would get filed in the bin by an overzealous secretary. If Remi Klein—or his female companion—was fond of flowers, there was a better chance of them seeing the note if it was attached to a bouquet.

  Rhys selected a card from the rack by the register, a print of a seemingly innocuous tree silhouetted against a blue sky. Adele lent him a pen, and he scribbled out the words Coco had suggested last night. Go big or go home, right?

  I know your secret.

  He signed the note from Coco du Ciel and included his phone number, and before Adele could get curious and read it, he shoved it into an envelope and sealed the flap. On the front, he addressed it to Ms. C Karaza. Was the mystery woman still living with Klein? Why else would he hide away like a hermit, sealed off from the world? Rhys only hoped that the thought of his secret getting out would elicit a response from the mysterious billionaire.

  But as he handed over cash to pay for the flowers, doubt crept into his mind. What if he and Coco were wrong? What if this whole trip was a wild goose chas
e and they never found out her origins?

  He didn’t even want to think about that possibility.

  ***

  Rhys spent most of Friday pacing his tiny hotel room. Twice he cracked his shin against the bed’s wooden frame when he got distracted by his thoughts, and twice he let out a string of curses that would make a hip-hop artist blush.

  He stared at the phone in his hand, willing it to ring. Had the flowers been delivered yet? And if they had been, had anyone read the card? What if it had been thrown away unopened? Or fallen off in transit?

  A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. This stress… He wasn’t cut out for it. Even his final exams had been a walk in the park compared to the agony of waiting for Remi Klein to act. Should he call Coco? Rhys longed to, but the last thing he wanted to do was stress her out as well. Every time he saw her, she looked a little more ragged around the edges.

  And while Rhys fidgeted in a one-star hotel in France, his heart was in England with the girl who’d stolen it. Despite the difficulties of the last few months, he’d never regret meeting Coco.

  Daylight turned into darkness, and the phone remained stubbornly silent. Should he go out for dinner? The hotel didn’t have a restaurant, and he’d eaten nothing since the cheese-and-ham baguette he’d picked up from Chanté at lunchtime.

  “Ring, dammit.”

  The phone rang, and Rhys looked at it in shock. Blocked number calling. Shit, shit, shit! He’d been running through what to say since dawn, but now his mind had gone blank.

  “Hello?”

  If this was someone asking about an accident, trip, or fall, they were going to get an earful.

  “Coco du Ciel?” The speaker was male, his accent French.

  “This is her, uh, representative. She can’t come to the phone right now.”

  “When will she be available?”

  “She’s in a different country. There were some, uh, problems with her passport.”

  “I bet there were,” the voice said dryly.

  “Is this Remi Klein?”

  “Let’s just say it’s his representative.”

  Rhys’s thoughts were a jumble. In truth, he hadn’t quite believed that anybody would call. “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “How about you lay out whatever crazy theory it is you have, and I’ll laugh in the appropriate places.”

  “I-I-I won’t speak to anybody but Mr. Klein. This isn’t a story I’d feel comfortable telling anyone else.”

  Rhys feared the caller would simply hang up, but instead, he heard a long sigh.

  “Be at the gates of Le Château de Villance at ten o’clock sharp tomorrow. You get fifteen minutes.”

  The line went dead, and Rhys stared at the screen for a second. Then he pumped a fist in the air. It had worked.

  Their crazy, crackpot, wing-and-a-prayer plan had worked. Holy fuck.

  Now he had to call Coco.

  CHAPTER 20

  AT A QUARTER to ten the next day, Rhys drew to a halt outside the huge metal gates of Klein’s castle. Imposing. And that was just the outer perimeter. Through the bars, he saw the moat glistening in the sunshine, and behind that, a stone wall that had to be twenty feet high. The château itself was visible on a small rise in the distance, beyond an archway with an honest-to-goodness portcullis raised to let the lucky few inside. Or possibly keep them there. He shuddered at the thought.

  A guard emerged from the gatehouse and peered through the driver’s window.

  “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” What do you want?

  The man’s stance was designed to be intimidating, and an equally hulking clone stood behind him, arms folded. Nothing like being welcoming, eh?

  “I-I-I’m here to meet Mr. Klein. He said to come at ten o’clock.”

  The guard gave a curt nod. “Garer là-bas.”

  What did that mean? The guard waved at what appeared to be a parking space beside the gatehouse. He wanted Rhys to leave his car? That was good, right? At least if he disappeared, there’d be evidence on show for the police to find. If Coco didn’t hear from him in the next twenty-four hours, she knew to contact the authorities.

  The guard motioned him through a small pedestrian gate and into the back seat of a golf cart, and a moment later, they trundled up the driveway to a fate unknown. The castle rose imposingly in front of them, its weathered stone walls casting ominous shadows. Dark. Jagged. Somehow cold despite the September sunshine. The place had a malevolent feel, almost as if the gloomy forests were pressing in from either side. Perhaps Chanté had been right and the place was haunted?

  Rhys jumped as his escort hammered on the château’s huge wooden door. The crack of metal on metal was loud enough to wake the dead, and somebody must have watched their arrival because Rhys barely had time to inhale before the door swung open on silent hinges. The man on the other side might have dressed as a butler, but his muscles and bearing screamed ex-military.

  “Suivez-moi,” he commanded.

  Rhys followed as ordered, trotting along like an obedient child as he was led into the bowels of the castle. When they reached a wood-panelled library, the man pointed at an uncomfortable-looking leather chair.

  “Maintenant, vous attendez.”

  Wait? How long for? The hands on the grandfather clock in front of him ticked around to five past ten, a clock that looked remarkably similar to Uncle Albert’s. Would Remi Klein deduct that wasted time from Rhys’s allotted quarter-hour?

  Finally, footsteps sounded outside the door, the click of heels on the bare stone floor. Rhys half hoped they’d carry on past. Then he wouldn’t have to face a bona fide genius ruthless enough to become a billionaire by the time he hit thirty. Klein probably had his own dungeon as well as staff who’d throw Rhys into it at a snap of their boss’s fingers.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Brilliant.

  Rhys scrambled to his feet as Remi Klein walked towards him. The man was easily recognisable from the pictures Rhys had seen, but he’d aged, and not only that, he had a weariness about him that an expensive suit couldn’t hide. Plus he needed to visit a barber. Unless, of course, shaggy hair was the fashion in France, which was a distinct possibility judging by some of the chaps Rhys had come across in Villance.

  “Uh, bonjour?”

  Klein didn’t return the greeting, nor did he proffer a hand. Instead, he studied Rhys the way a person might peer at a pesky beetle before they crushed it with their shoe. Rhys did his best not to wither. What on earth had made him think coming here was a good idea? He was no match for a biotech magnate.

  “Your name?”

  “Rhys. Rhys Evans.”

  “So, Rhys… You think you know my secret?”

  “Well, uh…” Gee, that was a good start. “Uh…”

  Klein held Rhys’s gaze, unblinking. A lion sizing up its prey.

  “So you see, the thing is… You went to Wales, didn’t you? A few years ago? And on your last night there, you left my uncle’s greenhouse with a woman.”

  Did that even make sense? Maybe not, but Rhys was sure he saw Klein give an involuntary start when he mentioned the word “greenhouse.”

  “And who is your uncle?”

  “Albert Evans.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Really? That ring on the chain around your neck says otherwise.” And so did Klein’s eyes. That fleeting flicker of fear gave him away. “My uncle remembers you wearing it. The inscription says ‘Remi and Cambria,’ right?”

  “Let’s say I was in Wales. Leaving a greenhouse with a woman is hardly a crime.”

  “Perhaps it is if she just fell out of a tree.” Okay, so the North Wales police hadn’t seemed too concerned about Coco’s origins, and also Rhys sounded like a lunatic, but what else was he meant to say? “How does the coco du ciel thing work, anyway? Do you chant in the moonlight or something?”

  Rhys waited for the explosion, for the sputter of incredulity, but it never came. Instead, Klein stepped back an
d let out a thin breath.

  “You have no proof of anything.” So it was true? “If you’re trying to blackmail me, it won’t work. I don’t give in to criminals.”

  “Blackmail you? I’m not trying to blackmail you. No way.” Rhys didn’t want to end up shackled in the dungeon. “But that thing with the trees… I think it might have happened again. There’s another girl.”

  Klein’s eyes widened. “What’s your uncle trying to do? Turn this into a commercial venture?”

  “Of course not! He wasn’t even there when she appeared. I was house-sitting, and when I went out to water the plants one morning, there she was.”

  “Coco? That was the name you used on the note.”

  A lump forced its way into Rhys’s throat as he nodded. “Yes, Coco. And she doesn’t know who she is or where she came from. I promised I’d help her find out, and that led me here.”

  Klein walked over to the window and stared at the grounds. “And how do you think I’d be able to help?”

  “By telling us what you know. Right now, we have no idea whether it’s a simple case of a missing person or…something more.”

  “And if I gave you information, then what?”

  “Then…nothing. We’d walk right out of your life. We don’t want anything else from you, but you’ve got all this…” Rhys waved a hand at the castle. “And Coco’s got nothing. I want to help her to rebuild, not just her life but her soul, and this is eating away at her. She tries to stay positive, but how can you get on with day-to-day living when you don’t even know your own name?”

  “Merde.” Klein tugged a hand through his hair as he cursed under his breath. “Your Coco… Does she have any issues sleeping?”

  “Nightmares. She has terrible nightmares.” A chill ran through Rhys’s veins. “But how do you know about that?”

  “Celine, she has them too.”

  “Celine?”

  “You may know her as Cambria.”

  Holy fuck. Was Klein saying what Rhys thought he was saying? This whole time, he’d secretly thought there must be a rational explanation for Coco’s existence, that he just needed to dig deeper and find it. But if Cambria was alive… Or reanimated… What did you even call it when a person was resurrected from the dead?