“I’m sorry about your grandmother,” he said. “Jacques and Margot told me that she died. I never knew her, but they are always saying how wonderful she was. Even though they never actually met her, they talked on the phone. The truth is, Jacques is so old now that for the last few years, I’ve been the one doing all the heavy lifting at your place. But don’t tell him that you know, because he still considers it his baby. They’ve spent the last two days, from dawn to dusk, getting the cottage clean and ready for you.”
Chelsea was quite surprised to learn that Brandon had been helping to maintain her cottage. What a sweet gesture, she thought.
“I didn’t know about your contributions to the cause,” she said. “Can I pay you something for all of your trouble, plus your medical services?”
Brandon made a throwaway gesture with his free hand. “Nah,” he said. “Just invite me over to dinner one night, and we’ll call it even.”
“You’ve got a deal,” she answered.
Then her thoughts turned again to her cottage and the mysterious tin box that had induced her to come here.
“So you’ve been inside my place, I gather?” she asked.
“Sure. Not the boathouse, though. For some reason, Jacques has always been pretty secretive about it.”
“So what’s the inside of the cottage like?” she asked eagerly.
“Well,” Brandon said, “it’s—”
Just then they heard a horn blow, and they turned to see an old Ford pickup arrive at Chelsea’s place.
“That’s them,” Brandon said. “I’ll come along, because whether Jacques wants to admit it or not, he’ll need my help getting things done. But first, I’ll let the dogs out.”
“Won’t they just fight again?” Chelsea asked.
“Maybe, but they’ve got to declare a truce eventually,” Brandon answered. “Might as well be now.”
He strode back down the hall, let Dolly out, and told Chelsea to take her by the collar. Then he opened another door and took hold of Jeeves’s collar. After a time, he slowly led Jeeves nearer to Dolly.
At first, Chelsea feared another snarling row as the dogs glared menacingly at each other. But after some hugely inappropriate sniffing, tails finally wagged, so Brandon and Chelsea let the dogs go. In mere moments they were eagerly standing side by side before the porch door, begging to be let outside.
“Ah . . . ,” Brandon said. “And so it begins.”
“I’m impressed!” Chelsea answered. “But I can’t let Dolly run loose! She’ll get lost!”
“Not when she’s off with Jeeves,” Brandon said. “He always comes home.”
“Does Jeeves always return because he loves you so much?” Chelsea asked.
Brandon laughed again. “A nice thought,” he said. “But mostly, I think it’s because this is where he gets fed.”
At first, Chelsea was hesitant about letting Dolly loose. But so far, Brandon had been right about the dogs, so she decided to trust his judgment.
“Okay,” she said. “You can let Dolly go, too.” As Brandon made for the screen door, Chelsea asked, “Why did you name your setter ‘Jeeves’?”
Brandon stopped and turned around. “That’s simple,” he answered with another smile. “He’s an English breed, and he does what he’s told.”
When Brandon opened the screen door, the dogs charged from the cottage and began happily bounding down the sandy shoreline, as if they had been best pals for years. Brandon turned back toward Chelsea, and he smiled.
“Dolly ’n’ Jeeves,” he said. “Has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”
Despite her worry about Dolly getting lost, Chelsea was forced to grin, too.
“Yes,” she answered. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
As Chelsea accompanied Brandon toward her cottage, she again surreptitiously touched the key hidden beneath her shirt, wondering . . .
Chapter 6
With the arrival of her caretakers, Chelsea became even more consumed with the thrill of the unknown. Like one’s first walk toward a new lover’s bedroom, approaching her cottage offered both excitement and promise.
What will be inside the tin box? she wondered. And will knowing make me happy or sad?
While Chelsea reclaimed her sneakers, Jacques and Margot Fabienne got out of their battered pickup. Jacques, a great Gallic bull of a man whose strong, fleshy facial features bore a respectful expression, wore a dog-eared carpenter’s bib over an old blue shirt, and work shoes that had also seen better days. An honest-to-goodness black French beret sat atop his head. His face bore a series of craggy lines and wrinkles that seemed a road map of the many places he had been and the things he had experienced. As Chelsea approached, he respectfully removed the beret from his shiny, bald head.
Margot was tall and whippet slim, with short, haphazard white hair that looked like she cut it herself. Her eyes were deep green and when she smiled, the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes gathered pleasantly. She was simply dressed in a black shirt, a pair of women’s tan trousers with a wide leather belt, and sensible shoes. In her hands she held a ceramic Dutch oven. The slight aromas escaping from around its lid were homing signals to Dolly and Jeeves, causing the dogs to gather wishfully at Margot’s feet and hopefully thump their tails. While smiling down at them, Margot whispered something in French.
With a smile on his face, Brandon went to Jacques. When he gave Jacques a hug, he couldn’t get his arms around the great Frenchman.
“How are you, Jacques?” Brandon asked in French.
His use of a foreign language surprised Chelsea a bit, causing her to raise an eyebrow.
Jacques smiled before answering. “I am good for someone so old!” he replied in his native tongue. He then gave Chelsea another glance before looking back at Brandon. “The new owner is beautiful, is she not?”
Brandon smiled back at him. “Indeed!” he answered. “But I suddenly find myself hoping that she doesn’t speak French!”
While Brandon and Jacques laughed, Margot cleared her throat and shot both men a sharp look of reproach.
“We will speak only English before the new owner, you two,” she said sternly. “We agreed, remember?”
“But you just spoke French yourself, non?” Jacques protested.
Margot gave Chelsea a wink. “That was different,” she said. “I was talking to the dogs.”
Chelsea liked Margot at once, and she smiled at how this slight, aged woman had so quickly put Brandon and Jacques on notice. But Chelsea also realized that for virtually anyone else, doing so would be a nearly impossible task. Brandon and Jacques seemed to be stalwart, independent souls, men who didn’t imagine themselves subject to much and, for better or worse, seemed largely unconstrained by many of society’s rules. Chelsea wasn’t used to being around such men, but she was finding that she enjoyed it. And although she hadn’t understood a word of what Jacques and Brandon had said, like many women, she liked hearing it in French, nonetheless.
Chelsea gave Brandon a questioning look. “So you speak French too, I see,” she said.
Brandon nodded. “Yeah, but I still mangle it pretty badly,” he answered. “Over the years, Jacques and Margot have been kind enough to teach me. Many have been the nights when we shared a bottle or two of wine while they immersed me in the subtleties of their native language. But sometimes, all I really got immersed in was the wine. Then they’d laugh themselves silly, while I slurred my words and said ridiculous things like, ‘That bathtub looks good on you!’ Anyway, I still don’t read or write it much, but I can speak it pretty well, and that comes in handy up here.”
Still holding his beret before him, Jacques approached Chelsea. Although his fingers were the size of sausages, his handshake was gentle.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, mademoiselle,” he said. Then his expression sobered. “We were so dismayed to hear of your grandmother’s death . . . Madame Brooke was a true lady, and she will be missed. We will do our best to serve you like we served her.”
> At the mention of Gram, Chelsea felt another wave of grief rush through her. But this time her pain was tempered with a strong sense of gratitude for the Fabiennes and everything that they had done for Brooke.
“Thank you both,” she answered quietly. “We buried her yesterday . . .” She again glanced at the container Margot held. “And what have you there, may I ask?”
Margot smiled. “Coq au vin,” she answered proudly. “It’s my own recipe. We also brought some crusty bread and red wine to go with it. They will come in handy on your first night, no?”
“Thank you very much,” Chelsea said. “As it happens, I love coq au vin.”
Brandon laughed at her rather mangled pronunciation. “Given the way that Margot makes it, coq au vin is two things,” he said. “First of all, it’s chicken stewed in wine sauce.”
Chelsea smiled again. “I already know that,” she chided him. “But what’s the second thing?”
“French heaven on earth,” Brandon answered.
Jacques produced a key ring from one of his pockets and walked to the cottage. After opening the screen door, he turned back toward Chelsea.
“The moment has finally come,” he said. “After so many years, a member of Madame Brooke’s family will at last go inside.”
Before unlocking the door, he thought for a moment. Then he walked back to Chelsea and contritely handed her the keys.
“Perhaps mademoiselle should do the honors?” he asked. “After all, it is your place now, n’est-ce pas? Please forgive my presumptuousness, for old habits die hard.”
Chelsea nodded and took the key from him. Her hand trembling slightly, she inserted the key in the lock and turned it over. As she pushed open the door, its old hinges squeaked pleasantly.
Until this moment, she hadn’t known what to expect. Before coming here she had asked Lucy if there were any pictures of the cottage, but Lucy didn’t know. For lack of any better information, Chelsea had envisioned some primitive shack that was barely livable. But after seeing the cottage’s well-maintained exterior, she had become hopeful.
At last she went inside, followed by Margot. While Jacques and Brandon busily removed the outside window boards, the afternoon sunlight came streaming in. Almost as if she were viewing a slide show, Chelsea watched the various rooms present themselves one by one.
She was standing in the kitchen, where everything, both old and new, positively glistened with cleanliness. The walls were of knotty, polished pine. An old potbellied stove sat in one corner, its narrow black chimney ascending through a high ceiling made of rough-hewn timbers. Allistaire had been right about the appliances, Chelsea realized. Each had indeed been replaced; even the stainless steel sink and faucets looked new. Although the black and white checkerboard floor appeared original, it too was spotless. The old wooden cabinets and countertops were slightly warped from age but seemed serviceable enough. While Margot set the new oven on “warm” and placed the coq au vin inside it, Chelsea walked on into the living room.
Where the kitchen had been an odd mishmash of generations, here only the past prevailed. Both the floor and walls were built from pine, lending the room an unexpected lightness. The living room was rectangular, with one of its longer sides facing the lake. The peaked ceiling was high, and like that of the kitchen, it too had been quaintly fashioned from old beams and rafters. A chandelier made from artfully entangled deer antlers hung from the ceiling’s center beam, and an old dining table with six captain-style chairs was positioned along the left-hand wall. To Chelsea’s right lay the bathroom door, and just beyond that was the door to the mysterious guest bedroom to which Brooke had alluded in her letter.
On the left side of the living room stood a beautiful fireplace that had been fashioned entirely of rose quartz rocks. Chelsea had never seen its like, and the effect was striking. On the slate mantel stood an unfinished portrait of Brooke that had presumably been started sometime before her tragic car crash. A massive leather sofa, its surfaces elegantly cracked here and there with age, sat before the fireplace. A huge vintage radio stood against the wall on the fireplace’s right-hand side, and on the other side there stood an old rolltop secretary and a matching chair. Just left of the desk was the door leading to the front porch.
The far end of the living room held double doors that invited entrance into the master bedroom. Taking the bait, Chelsea walked in and looked around. Here, too, everything was vintage. A large picture window looked out upon the sandy shoreline, the boathouse, and the shimmering lake beyond. A mahogany, king-sized sleigh bed faced the window, as did the matching dresser. A paned skylight in the ceiling let in the afternoon light while also revealing some evergreen branches above it, swaying gently in the breeze.
Still trying to hide her excitement, Chelsea walked back through the living room and at last entered the guest room. It was a small space with a single latticed window, a shiny brass bed, and a lone maple dresser with matching mirror. As Chelsea tried to discreetly peer under the bed, she realized that without actually going down on her knees, she would never identify the three special floorboards that Brooke had mentioned in her letter. The longer she stood looking, the more she wanted to go after them right there and then.
While she remained lost in thought, Brandon approached. Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned against the doorjamb and grinned at her.
“So, what do you think?” he asked.
A bit startled, Chelsea turned to face him. Doing her best to forget about the box, for a few awkward moments she found herself at a loss for words.
“I honestly don’t know what to say,” she finally answered. “In its own special way, this is one of the loveliest places I’ve ever seen.”
“Have you visited the porch yet?” Brandon asked. “It’s great.”
She followed Brandon across the living room and out onto the porch. It was deep and long, its right-hand side ending at the joint where the living room’s front wall met the master bedroom. The inward-slanting screened windows provided a marvelous view of the lake. Some old rocking chairs and cocktail tables sat there, and candled hurricane globes hung at regular intervals on the back wall. From here one could hear the sound of the waves and feel the refreshing breeze as it winnowed its way through the screens.
She then shook her head unbelievingly, much the same way she had done in Allistaire Reynolds’s office only four days prior. On first learning that the cottage had become hers, she had been quite willing to sell it sight unseen. But now that idea seemed remote. She was falling in love with the place, and she knew it.
“I’m simply amazed,” she said to Brandon. “I never guessed that it could be so wonderful.”
Without answering, Brandon quietly walked to one of the screened windows, where he stood looking out at the lake.
“It is, isn’t it?” he at last replied softly, as if he were speaking only to himself. “And it’s even better when you have someone to share it with . . .”
When he didn’t turn around, Chelsea went to him and gazed quizzically into his eyes. After a few moments, he at last returned from his personal reverie.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “For a moment or two, it was like you had gone off alone somewhere.”
He smiled apologetically. “Sorry,” he answered. “I was just thinking about someone I used to know. It happens, sometimes . . .”
Just as Chelsea was about to respond, Jacques and Margot joined them. Jacques smiled broadly and placed his meaty fists akimbo.
“So, mademoiselle,” he asked. “Does your vacation home meet with your approval?”
Chelsea laughed a bit. “Are you serious?” she asked. “What could be better than this? I have so much to thank you and Margot for! Without you two, by now this place would be in ruins.”
She almost thanked Brandon too, before remembering his warning from before. She would do so later, she decided, after the Fabiennes had left.
Jacques shot a wink at Margot, who smiled back knowingly. “But there is more,�
�� he said to Chelsea. “You still haven’t seen the boathouse.”
Chelsea smiled. “True,” she said. “But no boathouse in the world could be as lovely as this cottage.”
“No, boathouses are seldom lovely,” Jacques answered. “But yours holds a special surprise that I think will please you very much.”
Chelsea raised her eyebrows. “What is it?” she asked.
“To answer that,” Jacques said, “mademoiselle must accompany me there.”
Ever more curious, Chelsea looked at Brandon. “Do you know what he’s talking about?” she asked.
“Haven’t got a clue,” Brandon answered. “Like I said before, Jacques has always been secretive about it.”
“True, mon ami,” Jacques said to Brandon. “But now it is at last time for that secret to come out. So follow me, you two, and you shall see.”
Jacques and Margot led them off the front porch, then across the sand and toward the boathouse. As she neared, Chelsea realized that it was larger than she had first thought, causing her to wonder why one would need an accompanying building so spacious.
After unlocking the door, Jacques turned back toward Chelsea and Brandon, and he smiled. Saying nothing this time, he unceremoniously opened the door and walked in. Because he and Brandon had already removed the window boards, there was no need to turn on the lights.
The boathouse was cluttered with all manner of appropriate things. An old aluminum rowboat lay upside down atop two sawhorses. A workbench lined one side of the room, and hand tools of nearly every description hung on the wall above it. Nests of tangled fishing line, old lures, antique rods and reels, and a couple of still-deteriorating fishing baskets also clung to the walls. The air smelled of grease, motor oil, and the distant past.
Although the room was cluttered, Chelsea remained at a loss about the special surprise Jacques had mentioned. Hoping for an answer, she cast another quizzical glance at Brandon, but he only shrugged his shoulders.
And then she saw it. There was a solid wooden door in the far wall, allowing entry into what she knew must be the other half of the boathouse. With only a smile, Jacques handed her a silver key chain. After walking across the room, Chelsea unlocked the other door and crossed the threshold. Brandon followed her, as did the Fabiennes. Once inside, Jacques switched on the lights.
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