Chateau of Secrets: A Novel

by Melanie Dobson

  Event-hopping was exhausting at times, but I understood the importance of it. We were a team, working together to win this governorship. What bothered me most about the election process was when Austin and I talked about our wedding. Instead of a ceremony, sometimes it felt like he was helping me coordinate another meet-and-greet. With the bloated guest list, half of whom I didn’t even know, we would be meeting and greeting half of Richmond the same day we said our vows.

  The local media had been mesmerized by our story from almost our first date, a year ago. Austin Vale, the successful attorney and son of the Honorable Richard Vale, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. Chloe Sauver, granddaughter of a French war hero and daughter of a French nobleman who now owned the largest investment management company in the Common wealth of Virginia. My mom was an accomplished business owner in her own right, but the political powers that be ignored her successes with the popular Bliss Bakery.

  Austin and I had met by accident, when he literally bumped into me and my chai latte at a local coffee shop. When he asked me to dinner, I hadn’t known he was being courted as a candidate and he hadn’t known about my family. I’d fallen almost immediately for the charming attorney who brought me flowers on our first date and asked me a dozen questions, the man who stopped by every week for lunch at my school in those first few months of dating and called for no other reason than to inquire about my day.

  The morning after Austin announced our engagement, the national media became fascinated with the minutiae of our relationship. The morning shows were enchanted by our wedding plans, speculating on the cake, the flowers, even our choice of music for the reception. But when the tabloids came out each week, my heart sometimes felt like it would bleed, the doubts inside me fighting against the truth. The tabloids couldn’t have cared less about our wedding plans, speculating instead on our faithfulness, as if either Austin or I had the time or desire to be cheating on the other.

  Thankfully, there would be no media on our honeymoon. I didn’t know where we were going, but Austin had promised it would be a million miles away from cameras and campaigning. Secretly, I hoped he was taking me back to France.

  I pulled into the garage under my condo. Tonight I couldn’t get hung up on the details for the wedding or our honeymoon. Instead I had to focus on getting ready for this gala. A new dress was waiting for me in my closet, a cobalt-blue affair that Austin handpicked in Manhattan, along with some strappy black stilettos to go with it. I tossed my casual skirt and blouse into the laundry bin and began the transformation.

  Austin’s driver was on time, but I wasn’t. It took an extra fifteen minutes to finish my makeup and torture my long hair with the flatiron. The mirror displayed an elegant woman with eyes the color of her dress and blond hair tucked behind one ear, but I felt a bit like a broken gift hidden under pretty paper and a bow. Sometimes I felt . . . well, sometimes I wondered if I was the right woman for Austin Vale. And if he was the right man for me. He said he loved me, that he was confident in our relationship and our future. Why couldn’t I be confident as well?

  With our wedding a little over two months away, it was much too late to reconsider. Our months of dating had been a firestorm of sorts—a romantic inferno. He had literally swept me off my feet the night he proposed, wading across a reflecting pool at the Madison Inn to our dinner waiting on the other side. Dozens of candles reflected in the pool and rosebuds dangled along the patio’s trellis, sweetening the air. Before we ate, Austin got down on one knee, and my doubts faded in the lights.

  No one could ever guess at my fear of living in the spotlight for the rest of my life or my haunting doubts about Austin’s love.

  But tonight wasn’t the time for soul-searching. I’d have to do that later on the river, a paddle in my hands.

  As I slid out of the town car and into the lobby of the Jefferson Hotel, my cell phone began to play the first bars of “Do You Hear the People Sing?”—one of my favorite songs from Les Misérables. I glanced down at my mother’s picture on the screen and stuffed my phone into my beaded handbag. I’d have to call her back later tonight. Or first thing tomorrow.

  I rushed through the lobby, and by the time I entered the elegant ballroom, the orchestra had already started playing. Hopefully Austin wouldn’t notice I was late.

  Chapter 3

  Philippe tossed her two suitcases into the luggage compartment of his new cabriolet, and then he opened the passenger door, waving her inside. “Hurry, Gisèle.”

  Instead of moving toward the car, she turned toward her father. He stood dazed in the courtyard, like one of the winged statues displayed at the Louvre. He should have been flying away from the château with them, but he couldn’t seem to move at all.

  Her cousin waved toward the car again. “We have to get through town before the tanks arrive.”

  The stained glass on the chapelle glowed in the moonlight, not twenty meters from where she stood. Michel had sworn her to secrecy, but perhaps she should still tell Papa . . .

  Her father still hadn’t moved. She understood the fear that seemed to paralyze him—more than twenty years ago, he’d lost both of his brothers and a cousin to the Germans during the Great War. Then, less than a decade ago, he’d lost his wife. Now the Germans were threatening his home and the rest of his family.

  If Michel refused to leave, Papa wouldn’t leave either.

  Stepping away from the car, she pleaded. “I must visit the chapelle, Papa. One last time.”

  But it was Philippe, not Papa, who responded to her plea. “You can pray at a chapel in Lyon.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t wait.”

  Philippe brushed both hands over his short hair, frustrated with her delay. “Then pray in the car.”

  “He’s right, Gisèle,” Papa said, urging her forward.

  She eyed the chapelle one last time. She could sprint toward it, but Philippe would follow her and so would Papa. She doubted they would force her into the car, but they would never allow her to be alone in the sacristy.

  Papa finally stepped forward, kissed her cheeks. “I will see you before the week ends.”

  A bomb exploded to the east, the night sky sparking near the town.

  “Come with us now,” she begged her father one last time.

  But he pushed her into the seat and closed the door.

  “Soon,” he mouthed on the other side of her window.

  Over her shoulder, she watched him at the end of the drive, waving to her. She rolled down her window and waved back, her heart in shreds.

  She felt like a coward, running away when her brother—and her father—needed her.

  Philippe rode in silence beside her, under the long row of beech trees that lined the entrance to the château. His gloved fingers circled around the steering wheel, his eyes focused on the narrow road lit by the moon as he sped through Agneaux, turning left toward the city of Saint-Lô.

  She and Philippe were distant cousins and they both looked like their ancestors with hair the chalky tan color of the Norman beaches and eyes the same light blue of the English Channel. Her father and his mother—Corinne Duchant Borde—were technically second cousins, but she called his mother Tante Corinne.

  Philippe’s father had been killed during the Great War, but Tante Corinne and Gisèle’s mother had been dear friends. Today Gisèle, Michel, and Philippe were the last descendants of the Duchant bloodline.

  Philippe had asked her father twice to marry her, to reunite the Duchant family again through matrimony, but she didn’t love him the way a wife should love her husband. Whenever Philippe brought up the subject, Papa had stalled, saying she must finish at the university first.

  Now Gisèle had her diploma and her own desires for the future, desires that didn’t include wedding her cousin. The Germans had muddied her plans to lounge on the beaches in Brittany for the summer and perhaps, to her father’s dismay, obtain a position teaching literature in the fall. Papa couldn’t understand why she would want to work,
but the thought of living on her own, supporting herself even, thrilled her. And women did it these days. Her friend Odette had begun working in Paris last year and telephoned almost every week, begging Gisèle to join her.

  Had Odette left Paris before the Germans arrived?

  As lights flashed again in the distance, Gisèle retied the laces on her most sensible brogue shoes and clutched her sweater over her chest. They were two kilometers from Saint-Lô now, and on the other side of the city, the main road curled south toward Lyon. The Germans may have been bombing, but she prayed the tanks hadn’t arrived in the town yet.

  Philippe glanced over at her. “Your brother is the lucky one, hiding out in England with your mother’s family.”

  “Lucky for him,” she whispered.

  “Your father should have sent you to England a long time ago.”

  “There was no reason for me to leave.” She slowly unfolded her arms. Philippe didn’t need to know that her father hadn’t spoken to the Eckleys since her mother’s death. “None of us guessed that Paris would surrender.”

  They rode through the forest and then over the stone bridge, the Vire flowing underneath. They trailed the river as they drove into Saint-Lô. Ahead was the tall steeple above the cathedral, a proud symbol of their faith in God and in France. Their government may have failed them, but she prayed God would not.

  The main road was crammed with people. Dozens of cars and horse carts, bicyclists, and crowds of people fleeing on foot with their luggage in hand or strapped to their back. Her heart raced. How were they supposed to get out of town before the Germans arrived?

  Philippe honked his horn, and the pedestrians divided like the Red Sea. But a truck blocked the road.

  Philippe opened his window. “Get out of the way,” he shouted out, the gasoline fumes flooding into the coupé. The truck didn’t move.

  Another explosion ignited the sky, and Gisèle gasped. People fled from their automobiles into shops on both sides of the road.

  Smoke poured into Philippe’s window. Coughing, she waved her hands in front of her. “They’re going to kill us all.”

  He honked again. “Now would be the time to pray.”

  She clung to the cross on her rosary beads and closed her eyes, begging the Almighty for a way out.

  Something exploded on the left, and her window shattered. She froze on the seat, too shocked to even scream.

  Philippe leaned over, pushing her door open. “Get out.”

  “But—”

  “Please, Gisèle.”

  She stumbled onto the sidewalk, the smoke suffocating her. Villagers screamed around her, some colliding into each other as they fled. She didn’t know in which direction to run.

  “Philippe!” she screamed.

  In the clamor of the crowd, she heard Philippe call her name, his voice muffled. She tried to run around the car, but the crowd pressed up against her and she tripped over the handles of an abandoned bicycle.

  “Philippe,” she said again, this time a whisper. It didn’t matter how loud she screamed. He would never hear her.

  In the blackness, the smoke, she ran west. Back toward the safety of her home, toward her father and brother.

  Hundreds of people dashed back over the bridge alongside her, but on the other side of the river, she ducked into a narrow passage between the towering hedgerows. Her legs burned as she ran down another passage and then out into the forest of tangled hawthorns and apple trees.

  Branches slapped against her body, the thorns snagging her arms and clothes. She shielded her face, rushing past the dozens of wooden beehives among the trees. She didn’t stop until ahead of her, concealed in the forest, she saw a cottage. The home of her friends, André and Nadine Batier.

  An aeroplane dipped over the trees, and she shivered. The château was still a kilometer away.

  If the Batiers hadn’t run away, perhaps she could wait with them until first light. Then she would meet Philippe back at the château.

  — CHAPTER 4 —

  A crystal chandelier rained shards of light over the crowded ballroom. Columns of red, white, and blue balloons swayed at the front, on each side of the podium. There were two rows of chairs along the walls and in the middle of the room was an open space crowded with several hundred people. Under the archway at the back of the room, a buffet table teemed with hors d’oeuvres, but no one in the room seemed to be eating.

  I eyed the table of food from afar. No one on Austin’s staff wanted to insult me by explaining protocol, but on nights like this it would have been nice if Olivia Larson, Austin’s campaign manager, handed me a brief list of the dos and don’ts. The most pressing question being, was the candidate’s fiancée allowed to eat the stuffed mushrooms and crab wontons? Or was she simply to stand and smile?

  It seemed such a waste to leave all that food on the table, especially when I’d had no time for either lunch or dinner. My tight dress wouldn’t allow me to do anything except nibble, but it wouldn’t pay for me to pass out during the function either.

  Austin’s parents were at the front of the room, and as I inched toward the buffet, Mrs. Vale eyed me from afar. With her slow nod of greeting, I knew she was scrutinizing my appearance as well, from my heels up to my hair. Like I was a package for display.

  Perhaps I should have worn a bow.

  Austin stood near his mother, hemmed in by admirers. With his wavy black hair parted on the side, his tuxedo a perfect fit, he breathed confidence. I admired him for a moment, like the hordes of women who gawked whenever we went out. Then I stepped closer.

  His familiar laughter sounded genuine, his gaze focused on the man he spoke with, like his colleague was the only person who mattered in the world. The older constituents liked to compare his charisma and his appearance to JFK’s. The younger ones said he looked more like Patrick Dempsey. Personally I thought he was even more handsome than either man.

  When Austin’s gaze met mine, he greeted me with his smile, his gaze admiring my dress. After clapping the shoulder of his friend, he turned and kissed me on the cheek. “You look amazing.”

  I smiled back. “Thank you.”

  “I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry.” I reached for his hand, lacing my fingers through his. “Last day of school, you know.”

  “I thought your day ended at three.”

  “Tommy Dawson stayed after. He—”

  Austin’s attention wandered over my shoulder. Fifteen seconds into the conversation, and I’d already lost him. He let go of my hand, stepping around me to greet one of the trustees from the University of Richmond. Sighing, I inched back toward the banquet table. Sometimes it seemed as if I was the only person who couldn’t hold his attention.

  But it was only a season. After the wedding, we’d have a whole week together, not a constituent in sight. And then a lifetime of nights to ourselves.

  I reached for a plate on the table.

  “Chloe!” Olivia, the thirtysomething woman whom Austin had hired to be his campaign manager, was barreling down on me. Olivia was an organizational wizard, but unlike Austin, she had little concern for her appearance. Her glasses had crept an inch or two down her nose, and the hair she’d tied back was falling out in frizzy chunks. It was as if she singlehandedly severed every ounce of stress that might infect Austin before it festered.

  Olivia retrieved the plate from my hands and returned it to the stack. Then she reached for my wrist and tugged me toward the side of the room. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I was with Austin,” I said as if I’d been hanging out for an hour.

  “The program starts in twelve minutes,” she rattled on. “Dr. Everett is going to speak about the future of the party for ten minutes, and then he’ll introduce Austin. Austin will introduce you.”

  “I know.” I shook my arm to free it from her grasp. “You emailed me the schedule.”

  “When Austin says your name, I want you to smile and give an elegant wave to the cameras on your left.” O
livia attempted to demonstrate a wave that wasn’t the least bit elegant.

  “Like this.” I showed off my well-rehearsed smile and wave.

  “Exactly.” Olivia glanced down at her tablet. “Austin will speak for a half hour and then the orchestra will start playing. You’ll move up front for a dance with the candidate.”

  “Who is also my fiancé.”

  “Right.” She tapped her tablet.

  Of course I was right. Why did I feel like I had to convince Olivia—and Austin’s family, for that matter—that I was more than a campaign volunteer? Austin was the one who’d pursued me. He was the one who’d proposed.

  Olivia’s phone buzzed and when she twirled on her heel, I leaned back against the column. Perhaps my “pretty package” analogy was all wrong. On nights like tonight, I was simply a prop. The room quieted when Dr. Everett took the stage. He leaned toward the microphone to introduce Austin, but before he spoke, the music from Les Misérables echoed across the room. Swearing under my breath, I dove into my beaded bag, muted my cell.

  The doctor made a joke about the interruption, and my cheeks warmed as the people standing nearby chuckled. Hopefully Austin wouldn’t find out whose phone disrupted his event. He wouldn’t find it nearly as funny as my neighbors.

  The ringing stopped, but the phone continued to vibrate in my hand. I glanced down at a text from my mom.

  CALL ME! ASAP

  The capital letters screamed back at me, and my heart began to race. What if something had happened to my grandmother?

  With apologies to those around me, I ducked my head and carefully backed out of the crowd, grateful my new heels held steady as I exited through the arched doorway behind me. I would be back inside the ballroom in five minutes for my obligatory wave.

  In the hallway, I called my mom back. She answered on the first ring.

  “Is Mémé okay?” I demanded.

  “As far as I know, she’s fine.”