by Chloé Duval
“Gabrielle…,” he murmured.
She felt her heart expand in her chest and almost feared it might burst.
All of a sudden, there was a knock on the door, and the bubble burst.
Again.
Gabrielle closed her eyes.
“What?” Thomas barked, jerking back as an uncertain Agnès slid her head through the door.
“M–Mr. Choiseul says he needs to see you, sir,” she stammered.
“Not now,” Thomas snapped, while Gabrielle rolled her eyes, grimacing.
Even when he wasn’t there, the auctioneer managed to ruin her day.
She rose and moved to the window, hoping to calm her wild heartbeat. Everything was calm outside. The wind was barely a breeze. The sun shone. The pure white snow seemed to beckon.
An insane idea flitted through her mind.
“Tell him I’ve seen enough of him for today,” she heard Thomas say.
“He’s insisting, sir.”
“I said not now!” Thomas was almost shouting.
Gabrielle’s eyes went wide, and she spun around. She had never heard Thomas speak in such a manner to anyone.
“Very well, sir,” Agnès said, staring at the ground and visibly ill at ease.
Thomas sighed and shook his head. “I apologize, Agnès. I shouldn’t have shouted. Tell Mr. Choiseul I am busy and I will see him tomorrow at the earliest hour if it really is important.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry for disturbing you. Mademoiselle,” she added, nodding toward Gabrielle.
She left, closing the door gently behind her. Thomas turned to Gabrielle and tried to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said to her.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I…maybe...maybe I should leave you alone.”
“No, I don’t want you to leave!”
I want to show you that you deserve to have a life. That you deserve to have someone make you happy.
He seemed hesitant to draw nearer.
“Do you trust me, Thomas?” she asked quietly.
He nodded.
She smiled at him. “Then come with me. I promise you won’t regret it.”
Chapter 19
Alexandra
Angers
Present day
“You didn’t answer my question,” Éric said once we had ordered.
“How did your meeting go?” I asked at the exact same moment.
Éric’s shiny new good mood vanished instantly.
“Not well,” he replied unhappily.
“Sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
Yet he seemed to change his mind almost immediately. He toyed with the knife in front of him and, without looking at me, began: “An acquaintance of an acquaintance helped me get a last-minute meeting with someone who might have been able to help me finance the castle’s restoration, or at the very least give me a breather so I could find a more permanent solution…but it didn’t work out.”
“What exactly didn’t work out?”
He shrugged in a thoroughly disillusioned manner.
“It’s always about the money. Investing in a castle isn’t interesting enough. The return on investment is neither quick nor big enough for him. He’d rather pay for a casino on the coast.”
“What?” I protested. “He said that? What about the preservation of history, of heritage? Doesn’t he care about that either? Doesn’t anybody care?”
Éric sneered. “You really think anybody is still interested in that? Money is the only thing that matters. History doesn’t bring in cash. Only the poor and the intellectual care about heritage.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
“We’ll find something,” I assured him. “There must be a way to save the castle.”
Éric blew out a long, slow breath.
“There isn’t, princess. I’ve run out of options. That man was my last hope.”
I could feel the bitterness and despair he did not manage to hide as he gulped his wine down, and my heart clenched. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, and he drove on, speaking to himself as much as to me.
“I’ve banged on every door. I’ve set my pride aside to beg the banks and sponsors and heritage organizations. Nobody wants to take the financial risk to restore the castle. And those who are willing to take it don’t have the money.”
He paused, looked up at me as though to weigh his next words. “I have to sell it.”
“You can’t do that!” I cried.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice. There has to be! You can’t sell! You have to fight! Don’t give up!”
“I’ve told you. I tried everything. This is the end, princess. I don’t have the means to keep the castle anymore. The inheritance tax swallowed what little money was left from my father. I don’t even know if I will be able to finish restoring the loft. I’m penniless. I have to accept it. I failed, and everything my father fought for over the years is going to disappear.”
The sadness and guilt in his eyes twisted something deep inside me. I wanted to hold him close and comfort him. Barely aware of what I was doing, I reached out and laid a hand on his.
“Don’t say that,” I reprimanded him gently. “We’ll find a solution. I haven’t finished reading Gabrielle’s diary. Give me a week before you decide to do something you might regret. One week.”
He stared at my hand on his. When he spoke, his voice was bitter. “You really think that diary holds the key to saving the castle? I wouldn’t put too much faith in it.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything inside that can help, but I’ll look. And I’ll find something. Trust me. Didn’t you say that I was the most stubborn person you’d ever seen and that I never give up?” I tried to make my smile reassuring.
I didn’t really know why saving the castle had suddenly become my top priority. Maybe it was because I had spent the entire day immersed in Gabrielle’s tale, picturing it in my mind. Maybe it was because it was important to her and Thomas, and therefore to me.
Or maybe because Éric looked so lost that I wanted to help him save his father’s dream.
One thing was for sure—I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I would find a way. I had to.
My determination must have been written all over my face. A glimpse of hope came back into Éric’s eyes, and he nodded. “All right. One week.”
“One week,” I repeated. “Thank you.”
As though he could tell this was a good moment, the waiter came up with our plates. I realized my hand was still resting over Éric’s and pulled it back, blushing under the waiter’s knowing gaze. I thanked him as he laid my plate in front of me.
We ate in silence for a few minutes, cutlery clinking. The atmosphere had become heavy, and I cast about for an idea to lighten it. Something came to me, and I smiled.
“My name is Alexandra Dawson.”
Across the table, Éric paused, fork in the air, icy-blue gaze questioning. Before he could interrupt I went on.
“I’m an only child of two parents who love each other very much, or at least who probably once loved each other very much but don’t show it too often. I’m a commercial assistant for a large wine company from the Napa Valley trying to implant itself in France, and I shamelessly took advantage of a business trip to go on holiday here and do my genealogical research—I never could have afforded it on my own.”
I thought of what else I could tell him that would lighten the mood.
“I have two cats, Milady and D’Artagnan—don’t laugh,” I ordered, seeing the amused glint in his eyes. “I like the colors pink and black, eggs Benedict, french fries, tea and dessert. All kinds of dessert. Hmmm. What else? I’m a great romantic, but you know that alrea
dy. I love reading and I’ve grown to love genealogy, but my number one hobby is drawing. It has brought me a few reprimands, but also some small amount of fame.”
Memories came back to me, and I smiled.
“In middle school, I was often alone, so I drew between classes and during recess. I would sketch anything in front of me. Teachers, students, the staff. I’d do caricatures, manga-style—tiny body, big head, huge eyes.”
He nodded to indicate he knew what I meant, and I continued.
“One day, a classmate saw one of my drawings. I don’t remember what it was, maybe a teacher. He thought it was funny and talked about it. It snowballed and all of a sudden, I was a popular kid. I loved it. My drawings grew more and more provocative. The other kids loved it and encouraged me. It all blew up in my face in the end. A teacher caught me caricaturing him in class and confiscated my notebook. He didn’t like the contents. I was summoned to go see the principal. He called my parents, and I received detention for the rest of the year. And I was also grounded at home, because my parents believe in enforcing a sentence. It was kind of an eye-opener.”
“But you didn’t stop drawing, did you?”
“No, I couldn’t. Drawing is second nature to me.”
“I would have been surprised if you’d said you had. You don’t seem like someone who allows themselves to be stopped so easily.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I fight harder for the things that are really worth it.”
Maybe one day I would think about what that sentence meant exactly.
One day.
Not now.
“So there it is. You wanted to know me, well, you know just about everything there is to me. Your turn.”
“Where did you learn to speak French?”
“You’re cheating! It’s your turn now!”
“There’s not a lot to say.”
“There’s always something to say,” I retorted. “Come on, you’re being unfair; one question each. I’ve already told you a lot, now you need to tell me who you are.”
“All right, but this will be over pretty quick. I work for Doctors Without Borders, I’m an orphan and penniless. The ideal catch for a young woman of good standing, in short.”
He was joking, but I could tell that he really believed he wasn’t worth any more.
“Don’t say that! You’re a good person. Any woman would be happy to be by your side.”
His eyebrows rose as though he doubted me.
“They would, believe me!”
“So I’m no longer rude and a killjoy?” he alluded.
“Of course you are. But a lovable killjoy,” I teased.
He smiled, and his sincerity had a strange effect on my stomach.
“Why did you choose Doctors Without Borders?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
His eyes went distant.
“In the late eighties, there was this earthquake in Armenia. I was six or seven, and I was in my father’s class—he was a schoolteacher, did Marine tell you that?”
I shook my head and propped my chin on my hand, motioning for him to continue.
“It was in all the newspapers, and the next day my father spoke about it in class to answer a question from a student. And one of the other students, Pierre, said that his father was with Doctors Without Borders and he was leaving for Armenia a few days later. Of course, my father then had to explain what that was. I remember being fascinated. I wasn’t very chatty at the time and even less so after my mother’s death, but I listened a lot. That evening I asked dozens of questions. My father replied to each one.” He paused. “I think that’s when I began to consider it. Hearing my father talk of these people with so much respect and admiration, seeing that what they did was both generous and indispensable, impressed me. I used to want to be a firefighter and emergency responder, because I was convinced that if they had arrived earlier my mother would still be alive. But I changed that day. I had found my calling. It never changed. I studied medicine, specialized in pediatrics, and as soon as I was qualified I enrolled. I went on missions, came back to see my father in between, and after a few days or weeks I would leave again.”
“Wow. What a beautiful story!”
“I don’t know. It seems kind of ordinary.”
“Believe me, it’s not.”
“How did you choose your profession?”
“Hmmmmm…”
For a second I wanted to lie and invent a story. But I decided against it. I wanted to tell him who I really was. “My parents chose for me.”
“How so?”
“Well, I wanted to be an artist.”
“Yeah, I can picture you as a trendy comic artist, writing stories about women and female empowerment.”
I gaped. How…? “Well…I wanted to do that. But after the whole caricature thing, my parents and I had several long conversations. They told me I couldn’t make a living that way. That it was too risky. Anyhow, I still hadn’t gotten over the lecture from my teachers, my parents and the principal, so I just went with it. I didn’t know what to do with my life, so any opinion was worth as much as another.… I took some commercial assistant classes, I studied in Montréal to improve my French, and when I came home my father helped me get a job at the wine company. That’s it.”
Éric stared at me dubiously for a long while.
“Are you disappointed?” I finally asked him.
“No. I just can’t really imagine you as the person you describe, that’s all.”
“That’s because you don’t really know me.”
“Maybe. But I can’t help but feel I’ve met the real you. Not the one who just gives in to others.”
I looked down, more troubled than I wished to admit by what he had just said, and sipped my wine to regain my composure.
“What was the country you preferred?”
He kept gazing at me for a little longer, and I thought he was going to accuse me of changing the subject so I wouldn’t have to answer.
Which was absolutely what I was doing.
But he didn’t mention it, reaching for his glass instead. “Kenya.”
“Why?”
“It’s a beautiful country, with incredible animals. I had extraordinary colleagues there, who were both interesting and passionate about what they did.”
“Did you stay long?”
“Several months. My turn. Do you like your job?”
“It might surprise you, but I do. I learned to love it. My chief is nice even though she drives me hard. We often have wine tastings, and we see a lot of people; it’s fun. And I have enough time to do what I want in the evenings.”
“And what do you do?”
“What do you think? I draw!” I beamed at him. “I read, I watch television. And these days, I search for my ancestors.”
“I see.”
I waited for him to continue, to tell me that my life was empty of meaning, that all of these hobbies only hid the absence. That I had no purpose.
I was all too aware of it, especially now that I knew his own life. As if knowing that the man across from me had truly earned his place in paradise made me feel even more acutely how little I had accomplished. How much I meant nothing.
But I didn’t want to think of it. Not then, not that evening. So I tried to change subjects.
“Are you going to leave again?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what happens with the castle. If we can find a way to save it, I’ll stay. Otherwise…”
Otherwise he would leave.
It was silly really, but the mere idea made my stomach feel hollow.
It was ridiculous. We barely knew each other. We didn’t even like each other.
“I understand. But if we find a way to save it, can you practice medicine in France?”<
br />
“I could. I have a university friend who would let me work with him in Angers.”
“But you don’t want to.”
It wasn’t a question. I could see it in his eyes.
“No. I feel like I’m stagnating here. I’m not useful, and there are so many places that need me far more than Chandeniers, Saumur or Angers do. There are more than enough doctors here. I feel more useful overseas. At least the people there really need me. And I like to travel. If I had to stay I would miss it. And yet…the castle is the last thing I have left from my father. It might be troublesome, but it was his dream and my mother’s, so I want to achieve it. But if not for the castle, I don’t have any reason to stay.”
“What about your cousin? Your niece? Aren’t they reason enough?”
“Of course they are. But…I can always see them when I come back.”
“Oh. I get it.”
I could understand his desire to leave, to exist for somebody. Not to be just a face in the crowd, but to make a difference. To do good.
I read somewhere that it’s addictive.
I thought of his situation and his dilemma. If we managed to save the castle, his father’s legacy, and he chose to stay, he would slowly wither away. I didn’t know him very well yet, but I could tell he took his responsibilities very seriously and that he would feel obliged to stay in France permanently. And supervising the castle restoration while he practiced medicine wouldn’t be enough for him. He wouldn’t be saving lives. He wouldn’t be making a difference in his own eyes.
But if he left, he would be abandoning everything he had left from his father to greedy entrepreneurs. If he failed, he would lose his father all over again.
Whatever his decision, he would have to forsake something precious to him. It was sad, in a way.
I sighed, then tried to lighten the mood.
“You know, the ideal solution would be to save the castle and find someone trustworthy you could charge with supervising the restoration. You save your father’s legacy, and you can swan off to Africa or wherever your heart takes you.”
