Chateau of Echoes

“Do you have a cup? I’ll give her some water.”

After handing him a heavily leaded crystal tumbler, I watched in amazement as he tipped it for Lucy and as she daintily lapped it up.

“If I give her water in a bowl, she slops it all over the place.” He put the glass in the sink and resumed his place.

Lucy walked slowly to the stairs, sighed, and then walked her paws out in front of her until her belly touched the floor; she lifted her head regally. Then she rolled out her hip, stuck out her back legs, and crossed them, as delicately as any lady, at her ankles.

We both smiled as we watched her.

“I call her Queen Lucy. You know: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

No, I didn’t know, but it irritated me that he had read my thoughts. The plates had absorbed the heat of the oven, so I used oven mitts to place them on the marble.

Cranwell pulled at the tips after I’d finished and drew them from my hands. Then he stacked them together and laid them on the counter.

Half an hour before, I had opened the wine, a Chinon, to allow it to breathe, so I poured two glasses and handed one to him. We clinked our glasses together. “To Alix,” he ventured.

“To Alix.”

Wondering just how much he knew about wine, I watched him take the first sip. I was impressed.

He took a small sip, and opened a crack in his lips, to draw in air. I saw his lips purse as he exhaled through his nose, knowing that the berry notes would be filling his sinuses, as they were filling mine.

“’90?”

“’95.”

“Cassis, cherries, violet.”

Okay, so I wouldn’t be serving him macaroni and cheese while he was at the chateau.

“Bread?” I held a baguette in one hand and a bread knife in the other.

“Please.”

I sawed off a generous slice for him and another for myself. And then it was time to eat.

“Is Frederique a family name?”

“In a sense. I have my father, Frederick, my mother, and my grandmother to thank. Mother was so sure I was a boy that she’d decided that I was going to be Frederick Jr. She never even picked another name. When I came out as a girl, my grandmother, who is French, suggested Frederique.”

“So did your friends call you Ricki when you were growing up?”

“No.”

He ate several minutes in silence, and then lifted a piece of bruschetta. “This is excellent.”

It was excellent. The olive oil-based vinaigrette had sweetened the eggplant, and I’d broiled it to perfection. I thanked him for the compliment. It had been so long since I’d been in a social situation that I had no idea what to say to him. I talked to Severine every day, but it was a vocabulary limited to the inn. I felt like a person coming into a warm house from the frigid cold: My cheeks were stiff; my mouth wouldn’t work right. I tried to make words; I tried to say phrases, but they came out haltingly, as if I hadn’t spoken in years.

Cranwell, bless him, ignored my false starts and stutters, orchestrating the conversation.

“And how did you come to be here?”

“I bought the chateau in 1999, spent a year renovating it, and opened up the inn. I had some good publicity-”

“I saw. In a La Mode magazine.”

“Yes. That was good for business.”

“I can imagine. But how did you come to France?”

And there it was. Would he pity me? “With my husband, Peter. He worked at the Embassy.”

“In Paris? State Department?”

I nodded; it was just easier than explaining. Although diplomatic work is the purview of the State Department, there are many other federal agencies with staff at embassies-some of them with a higher profile than others. “It was a three-year assignment. He was asked to go to Tanzania the month before we were to leave.”

“Tanzania. I’ve been there on safari. The Serengeti is like nothing I’d ever seen.”

“It was August of ’98.”

He was quick. It took only a moment for him to realize the significance. He absorbed the information faster than I had. At the time of Peter’s death, the bombings at U.S. embassies in East Africa had seemed like a disturbing dream. Disturbing and disconnected from anything real. It took weeks for me to connect the rubble of those ruins to my own grieving heart.

Cranwell glanced down at my hand. His gaze lingered on my wedding band; then he lifted his head and looked at me. “And you decided not to return to the U.S.?”

A wave of relief buoyed me. There would be no pity. No awkwardness. Just a simple acceptance that, as I had fought to claim, life moved on. “No. I mean, yes. I couldn’t go back. Too many things had changed. I wasn’t the same person, and I didn’t want the same things I’d wanted before.”

“Did you cook before you came to France?”

I shook my head. “Peter was so busy at the Embassy that I needed to find something for myself. I decided on Cordon Bleu.”

“Sounds glamorous.”

“It wasn’t. I spent two weeks just learning how to use a knife. When it came to actual cooking, I made recipes over and over, memorizing them. Sometimes we ate the same thing for a week and a half.”

“If it tasted anything like this, I can’t imagine he would have complained.”

“He didn’t. Ever.”

At that point, I got up and removed the plates from the table. Then I quickly sauteed three chicken breasts, adding melon jam at the last moment. I took a breast from the pan, arranged it on a plate and reached for the next. Cranwell had anticipated this and was already at my side, offering the plate. He did it easily, smoothly, fitting himself into my rhythm of work but not invading my space.

I heard a familiar shuffle on the stairs and arranged a tray of food for Severine.

Lucy growled and moved from her position by the stairs to take refuge underneath the island.

“Excuse me. I do not mean to interrupt.” Severine stopped at the foot of the stairs when she saw Cranwell; then she came forward to collect her tray.

Cranwell did what every man does when they see Severine: He got to his feet, saying, “Please. No. That’s quite alright.” And then he managed somehow to touch her. Sometimes men touch her arm, sometimes her shoulder. Sometimes they even clasp her hand and pull her closer. The magic of Severine is as old as Eve. And it never fails.

“I see you later, Frederique.”

Nodding, I confirmed, “At eight.” She would serve dinner to my guests.

Cranwell followed her with his eyes as she left the room, and with his ears long after she had disappeared from sight.

Waiting until he was done goggling, I tried to restart the conversation. “And how did you hear about Alix?”

“A lecture in L.A. ‘Feminism in Medieval France.’”

I bent to pick up a scrap that had fallen on the floor. I eyed Lucy and then decided against tossing it to her; she was definitely too high-class for scraps. “How enlightened of you.”

As I set a plate in front of him, he looked into my eyes. “A prospective girlfriend.”

“It didn’t work out?”

“She wasn’t any fun. But the lifestyle of medieval women was fascinating.”

How typically male. “Maybe for you, but I’m sure it wasn’t for them.”

He had been cutting his chicken but waved a hand as if to brush away my remarks. “I asked for a list of references and did some research. I came across an article by-”

“Let me guess: a Ms. Dupont?”

“You know her?!”

“You do too.” The thing that is most irritating about Severine is how smart she is. It really is not fair.