Chateau of Echoes

It felt as if the entire weight of the book were resting on my shoulders. Guilt could always motivate me. “Let me look at my calendar.” I put my hand over the phone and sat for a minute, staring at my plate, debating with myself. I hated being chained to someone else’s schedule. If Cranwell wanted to come, then he’d have to adapt to mine. I could probably put up with him for a month. I looked at that second weekend in September and counted back four weeks. “If you can be here next Saturday, you can stay for a month.”

“Great! See you then.”

My disgust with my inability to say, “No,” was so great that I couldn’t finish the rest of my penne pasta with fines herbes. I got up and made an espresso instead.

After climbing into bed at 9:30, I picked up my International Herald-Tribune. I always read the paper at night. I like knowing the news I read has already been analyzed and reacted to by the time I see it, and that, in spite of everything, the world hasn’t come to an end. But I couldn’t concentrate that night, so I finally dropped the paper to the floor, punched my pillows into a more comfortable position, and tried to sleep.

And found I couldn’t.

So I gave myself permission to enjoy a nuit blanche. A white night. I decided that if I couldn’t sleep, I might as well enjoy it.

First, I plugged in my laptop computer. Then, I climbed into bed with it and searched the Internet on “Robert Cranwell.” I found listings for all the books he’d ever published: reviews, sales, collectors trading first editions. I was looking for an interview or some insight into his character, but it was like wading through gelee. There were 5.7 million sites that had the words Robert Cranwell hidden somewhere in their listing.

So I searched on the names of several Hollywood-gossip magazines and then searched those sites for Cranwell listings.

It took several hours to read through the snippets of “Cranwell sightings.” He’d casually dated many A-list actresses, had seriously dated several models, and was engaged briefly to a rock star. One article, dated three months earlier, trumpeted his supposed conversion to Christianity. After all the other articles I’d read about his life, that particular claim provoked an unladylike snort. The longer I read, the greater my unease became. It looked as if I’d have a giant ego on my hands for the next month.

My own dating life had consisted of just one person: Peter.

My father had made a career out of being a senator and my mother a career out of being his wife, but the high-profile, high-society friends they kept and the lifestyle they led just made a shy little girl grow more into herself. I had a small group of friends in high school-okay, one friend, and I managed never to have to talk to a boy, let alone go to a dance with one. This is not to say that I was a mouse. I had definite opinions. I was on the debate team and I never had trouble expressing myself in the classroom. It was the one-on-one I had a problem with.

The college I picked was as far away from home as possible. That’s where I met Peter. I was forced to speak with him because a professor paired us together for a group project. From the first time he made me laugh, it seemed as if he’d known me forever. When I was with him, he made me feel beautiful. I went from wearing baggy sweaters and jogging pants to clothes that actually followed the shape of my body. And I discovered along the way that I had a waist!

It never crossed my mind to question Peter’s confident assumption that he and I would spend our lives together. I never had to make that decision-he made it for me. We married the week after we graduated, moved to DC, and then, several years later, to Paris. With him to teach me, I finally became comfortable with myself. Even developed a sort of flair for fashion.

But my years in junior high and high school had marked me. Though I had not taken part in the social scene, I had watched. What I learned was this: The more popular and better-looking the male, the less trustworthy he was. This equation increased exponentially the moment a male realized he was good-looking.

So how had I ended up with Peter the Blond, the Fair, the Blue-eyed? He had disarmed me.

And then he’d died.

In that same calamitous year, my parents had also died. I did the smart thing and enlisted the aid of a counselor in Paris, spending a year working through my grief. I’m cured now. At least I think I am. The counseling was in French, so it’s hard to know for sure. I do know that at the end of the year, she waved good-bye and shoved me back into the world. I surfaced in Brittany, stripped of any rose-colored delusions about life or the role God plays in all of it.

Twisting Peter’s ring around my finger, I glanced back at the computer screen.

Robert Cranwell smiled confidently back at me, his dark eyes wrinkling at the corners, the precise sweep of his dark hair back from his forehead betraying a hundred-dollar haircut.

Giant ego might be an understatement.

After trying so hard to keep my life simple, it seemed as if I’d sabotaged myself by answering a single phone call. Gazing out past the glow of my computer screen, I appreciated the homegrown elements of the room: stone and wood. Life couldn’t get much simpler than that. Letting my mind drift back to the days when the chateau was first built, I imagined the servants who would have been relegated to this top floor. At some point during my reverie, after 3:00 a.m., I fell asleep.

I woke at 5:00 a.m. It’s rare that I ever sleep later.

By Thursday evening, I was in a testy mood. I hate it when I say yes to people when I should have said no.

Friday’s rain made my mood even worse. I had heard fistfuls spatter against my window as I slept. I woke to pouring streams of it. And Severine did nothing to help. She was in the clutches of one of her own dark moods.

“Frederique. This rain is not good.” She shot me a worried look as I placed a demitasse of espresso in front of her.

“No kidding.” I sat on the stool across from her, propping my chin up on a hand.

She muttered something in French and crossed herself.

“Pardon?”

“S’il pleut pour Sainte-Radegonde, misere abonde sur le monde.”

In spite of her years of education, Severine was extremely superstitious, but that knowledge did nothing to stop the chill that crept up my spine. “If it rains on Sainte-Radegonde, misery abounds in the world?”

She crossed herself again.

Needing to do something to shake off the chill, I got up from my stool and turned the halogen lamps up. The increased light did nothing to decrease my unease.

Sainte-Radegonde. Today, 13 August. Was the misery worse if it fell, like it did this year, on a Friday?

And just how long would the misery last?

3

On Friday evening my guests arrived from Paris. They splattered around the loop of my drive in a Bentley and parked it right in front of the door. Why not? They were my only guests for the weekend.

Except, I reminded myself, for Cranwell.

The driver, a gentleman, got out, popped up an umbrella, and opened the passenger door for a woman. He helped her climb out, kissing her before releasing her. Then he adjusted the sweater that was flung around his neck, she adjusted the scarf that was around hers, and hand in hand, they climbed the stairs.

As they approached, I pulled the door open wide in welcome.

The gentleman was well known in France; the woman, not known but very beautiful. I’d lived long enough in this country to realize that she was probably not his wife. I sternly lectured my puritan conscience to mind its own business as I led them toward the reception hall and then up the winding central stairs. Their second-floor room was already glowing from the fire I’d lit to counter the chill of the evening. She kicked off her brown Gucci loafers, unwound her blue and brown-colored Hermes scarf, and dropped it over the back of a chair before I closed the door behind me. They requested breakfast in the dining hall at 10:00 the next morning.