Two days later, box after box of books began arriving from an Internet bookseller. They kept coming for the remainder of the month and in small packages of one or two for several weeks thereafter.
“What did you do, order one of each?” I shivered, having come from the warmth of the kitchen in my tank and chef’s pants up to the cold vault of the entry. After signing for what seemed like the twentieth delivery, I had called Cranwell down from his room. I didn’t mind signing for him, but I didn’t have the strength to cart a box full of books up those spiral stairs.
Cranwell glanced up from the box. “Basically.” He paused to push up the sleeves of his black boat-neck sweater and then returned his attention to the books.
I looked over his shoulder.
At the least he would be widely read.
Cranwell hefted the box and started up the stairs with it.
Following him halfway up the first spiral, I made sure he didn’t stumble. I may also have been admiring the way his jeans fit and the sheen of his black venetian loafers. “What do you plan on doing with these when you’ve finished with them?”
“Donating them to you.” He flashed a smile over his shoulder at me as he disappeared around the bend.
During October, Cranwell was much more present inside the chateau than he had been in September, although he was never without a book in his hand. Severine and I would run into him in all manner of odd places.
One afternoon I found him sprawled on my bed, his back to the door.
I’d just come up from the garden and wanted to take a shower. Good thing I hadn’t started stripping off my mineral blue wool shirt or black flannel work pants; I was used to having my room to myself.
Walking up to him in my stocking feet, I tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, I hate to displace you or seem rude in any way, but would you please leave?”
“Hmm?” Cranwell rolled toward me, glancing up from his book over his reading glasses. “I’m sorry?”
“What are you doing in my room?”
He closed his finger in the book, played with the collar of his shirt, and looked around as if mystified. He turned the book over and read the title aloud. “
He looked at me. Looked at the book, flipped back through some of the pages. Looked at me again. “Studying fireplace and ceiling construction.” He rose from my bed, shoved something into the pocket of his cognac-colored plants, and sauntered out, reading all the while.
I bolted my door behind him. The man was a menace to polite society.
Except at dinner.
It was as if he worked from 8:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. and then flipped a switch and became the Cranwell I had known in August. An enjoyable, if flirtatious, companion.
“Where did you grow up, Freddie?”
“California.”
“Really? Me too.”
This I already knew from my Internet research.
“Where?”
“Near Hollywood.”
“Me too.”
I smiled. “On the other side from you. Toward the west.”
“You lived there all your life?”
“Until I was old enough to escape.”
“You didn’t like it.”
“Not particularly. Did you?”
“Loved it.”
That figured.
“Only child?”
I nodded.
“I have one sister.”
I knew that too. Her name is Laura. She is a dental hygienist.
“What did your family do?”
“My father was a senator.”
“Which one?”
“Howard.”
“Duke Howard? No kidding! I knew him well. I was sorry to hear of his death. Of your mother’s too. It was just, when?-’98?”
I nodded.
“That must have been a hard year for you.”
A renegade tear sprung to my eye. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never been that close to my parents, but being around someone who knew them opened the floodgate of my memories. It had been comforting to know that somewhere in the world, I had belonged to someone. And someone had belonged to me.
“They threw the best parties.”
Smiling was difficult with my chin beginning to tremble.
“I never knew they had children. How come I never met you?”
I shrugged. “I was never really a party girl.”
“But when they had a party, everyone would come.”
Pulling my hands inside my arctic blue sweater, I wrapped my arms around my waist. “I wasn’t presentable, Cranwell. I was pudgy, I was covered with zits. My hair was stringy, and I was introverted in the extreme. I wasn’t the kind of daughter Duke needed.” I didn’t compare favorably with my parents’ glamorous clique.
“It’s hard for me to imagine he ever would have thought that.”
My shoulders tipped up in a shrug.
He leaned between our stools and lifted my chin with a finger. “Freddie, you’re lovely.”
To avoid having to look at him, I closed my eyes, but I felt a tear trickle down my cheek. I had no power to stop it. I was reliving my childhood in front of one of those very same beautiful people. It was my fate to live my life in a purgatory of humiliation.
Cranwell let go of my chin and then reached an arm around my shoulders, hugging me to his side.
I turned my head into his chest. My fists clutched handfuls of his wool polo as my anguish found voice in my sobs. They were deep and ugly sounding. I was embarrassed; I was mortified, but the hurt of those years was so deep I could not control them.
Cranwell smoothed my hair while his arm offered firm support for my back.
Eventually, my sobs quieted, my hands slackened their grip, and my arms found their way around his waist. I attempted a deep, quivering breath.
Cranwell never stopped smoothing my hair.
I stayed there, with my cheek against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.
“Freddie, I wasn’t lying. You really are lovely.”
“Thanks, Cranwell.”
Gathering what strength was left in me, I made a move to turn away, trying to hide my face from his eyes. I knew how hideous I looked when I cried. My face swells up, and the ice blue color of my eyes only accentuates how bloodshot they are.
Cranwell stopped me.
He cupped my face with gentle hands and turned it toward himself. I thought for a moment that he was going to kiss me, but then he used his thumbs to press away the last traces of my tears.
He let me move away and then offered to help me do the dishes.
A man after my own heart.
I spent several hours that night tossing in my bed, remembering my childhood. My self-imposed exile from my parents’ life. Maybe Cranwell was right; maybe my feelings of inferiority originated in me rather than my
