“But he is a Kreuder,” Anton said. “So I suppose he must have inherited something of the family flair. Maybe I’ve sat on him too hard in the past and not allowed him enough scope for initiative. It’s often said that the quickest way to learn to swim is to dive in at the deep end.”
“Anyway, you can be sure of one thing,” I laughed. “Raimund won’t drown.”
We had come to Crete for our honeymoon. Lazing the sunny days away we had grown rapturously close. We talked, not just about ourselves and our future, but about the past, too. The black shadow between us had melted away, but the shadow of the shadow still hovered and sometimes we drew back from delving too deeply, understanding that the passing of time would heal the wounds, not words.
Today we were going home, and I was brushed with feathers of apprehension. Would memories I’d held at a distance till now come crowding in too closely at the Schloss Rietswil?
Beside me Anton stirred and the bedcovers slipped, baring the sun-tanned skin of his shoulders and chest. I leaned forward and laid my lips against the warm curve of his throat. He opened his eyes, and in those first waking moments he looked at me without his usual smile.
“You seem sad, darling. You mustn’t be.”
“I’m not, not really.”
Anton reached for me and my apprehensions were forgotten. But they returned to me later when we breakfasted on the sundrenched terrace. We made conversation and it somehow wasn’t real.
The plane bore us over mountain ranges back to Switzerland. At Kloten airport Anton’s car was waiting for us, left there by Karl. The sun still lingered as we took the lakeside road, and trees I had last seen in the summer were beginning to display the golds and flaming reds of autumn.
Through Rietswil, instead of taking the left turn to the Schloss, he swung right towards the chalet, driving up between the bushes that were hung now with crimson berries.
I turned my head sharply. “Why here, Anton?”
“Because, my darling, I think we need to banish your ghosts.”
The chalet was exactly as I had last seen it. Our footfalls had disturbed the fine film of dust, and tiny flecks whirled in the sunlight that slanted through a window. I walked slowly across to my father’s easel, touched it, picked up the palette, and stood with it in my hand, remembering....
Watching me, Anton said, “When I was a boy I used to spend a lot of time up here. I furnished it after a fashion, and I liked to think it was a place of my very own.”
“Willi loved it, too,” I said.
Anton gathered me in his arms. “Perhaps our children will come here one day. I think they’d like to know that this was where their grandfather painted all his pictures.”
I smiled at him gratefully. The past was past, unchangeable, but I need fear no ghosts to haunt me.
Arms entwined, we stood in the doorway looking down at the silver castle, our silver castle, its stone walls half hidden now by leafy trees. Beyond it stretched the lake, serene and beautiful.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Anton hung back a moment. “Are you sure you’re ready, Liebes?”
“More than ready. I can hardly wait.”
Copyright © 1978 by Erica Quest/Nancy Buckingham
Originally published by Doubleday/Crime Club
Electronically published in 2013 by Belgrave House
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228
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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.
The Silver Castle Page 21