Her heartbeat quickened. “There’s a chapel . . .”
“The castle burned—was gutted from the inside centuries ago. It’s been rebuilt o’er the generations, and abandoned after a fire in the 1930s. But the original chapel survived. Through World War II and the fightin’ that took place all around it. It’s had a new roof or two, but who would’ve believed it’s still there after all this time? Just peekin’ through the trees.”
Exhilaration rolled under her skin like ice water pulsing in her veins.
“Please tell me we can go inside.” The statement fell from Ellie’s lips like a question, her tone rising at the end. She turned back from the chapel to look him in the eye, hope taking precedent.
Quinn braced his arms to keep the oars stilled against his knees. “Sorry. Couldn’t take the chance it’d fall in on us.”
“And . . . if a tourist is fully aware and willing to take said risk, without suing you should she receive even a scratch from a rogue thornbush?”
“The no is with full knowledge that you’d always take the risk for somethin’ you truly want, Ellie. That much I am certain about.”
It wouldn’t have been the right time for Ellie to remind him she wasn’t one to accept defeat. She’d traveled thousands of miles and put her whole life on hold in the process to avoid doing just that. The no wasn’t a no at all. In her view, it was simply a “not yet” with the ever-present possibility of negotiation.
She clicked away at mental snapshots: the layout of the trees leading to the chapel . . . the windows facing the water—especially the broken one, nudged up to a tall shadow on one end . . . probably a door—an entrance into the heart of the hidden place. She’d remember it all for when she returned. And return she would. Once they were back on dry land, all bets were off. Now that Ellie had seen it, she couldn’t possibly stay away.
And then . . . Ellie stared at a sight she’d seen before.
The rock wall. The rounded arch and the opening for a gate that was now missing. Arbor rows spread out behind, a vineyard rich with the harvest to come. Though time weathered and now buried under thicket and thorn, this place was familiar, already etched in her mind.
A forgotten photo had been taken there in summer 1944. The very place her grandmother had once sat.
The scene where her own story had begun.
Forget the wobbly dory. Quinn’s warnings about trespassing. Even the plan to return and investigate the romantic little chapel on another day. In a blink the moment shifted, like lightning had just split her in two.
Overcome, Ellie shot to her feet, her heart dancing wild in the confines of her chest. “What is that?”
“Ellie! Have ya gone mad?” Quinn reached for her hand, no doubt to keep her from pitching over the side. “It’s taking everythin’ I’ve got to keep this rig from overturnin’ us when you aren’t movin’ about.”
“What is that stone wall? See? Far off behind the chapel. There. Through the trees.”
“I don’t know—some leftover structure of the castle gardens?”
The boat wobbled to start, then pitched violently to one side. He eased forward, balancing with care, and wrapped his forearm around her waist from behind, trying to stabilize them both.
The rush of Quinn’s arm enveloping her couldn’t hold her back. In truth, she wasn’t sure anything could. If the castle had whispered to her before, the chapel, and now the view from the photo, were crying out, drawing her in. She was too close to turn back, too aware of what finding the stone wall could mean.
He whispered, breath warm against the back of her ear: “Ellie, if ya don’t calm down this instant, you’re going to send us both over—”
With one wrong, eager step forward, she was close enough to see clearly, and then . . . only water. She’d been at once above and then submerged in the depths of it.
The shock of cold stunned her senses, dulling the bearings to determine right side up. At least it wasn’t like being in the ocean, where waves battled against the swimmer’s kick. This was calm. Cool and dark. Velvet water that pulled her in and then allowed her to float back to the surface again without having to put up much of a fight.
Ellie poked her head up out of the water and sucked in precious air, a deep onslaught of fresh oxygen to fill her lungs. She looked around as she breathed, treading water with an enchanted castle and overturned dory looking on.
Hair trekked down over her eye, sticking to her face. She slapped it back, coughing at the mouthful of water she’d swallowed on the way down.
“Quinn?”
Her jacket ballooned up against the surface, and she freed herself from it, slipping her arms out. Her body took to shivering as she kicked through the water, her skin prickling under just a tee and jeans, and her heart a little too frantic to find him.
“Quinn!”
Relief flooded her when she saw him—for a moment anyway.
Quinn was fine. More than irritated, but fine, by the looks of him. He’d been pitched to the opposite side and was treading with one arm waving under water, the other fused to his grandfather’s overturned dory.
It was feeble, but she tried to offer a faint smile. “Sorry?”
If looks could boil water, they’d have fallen into a Jacuzzi for the way his green eyes pierced through her.
“While I’m delighted to know you weren’t lyin’ about your ability to swim, I’d have preferred to avoid this. Even though I had a feelin’ that with you, it was sure to happen.”
“I had no intention to try it out, honestly.” Ellie breathed, adrenaline pumping and limbs tiring in the water, trying to sort her thoughts into words that would make sense to him. She grabbed onto the side of the boat, patch-side up to the sky. “But I have this photo, taken during the war . . . I should have told you. I didn’t know if you’d believe me . . . and even if you had . . . But it’s that.”
She tried pointing out of the water but got lost in treading again. “Right there. The stone wall and the arch, the vineyard behind—everything. In a photo taken of my grandmother from June 5, 1944. She was there! Sitting on that rock wall. I know it now. Her story is buried here somewhere, at this castle. At your vineyard. Now that I know it’s here, I have to find it. I can’t give up now. Not when we’re so close.”
“So close to what, Ellie, that would send you all this way? Because it’s got to be more than just diggin’ up the past.”
Don’t say it out loud . . .
Don’t say it out loud because that will make it true . . .
“She’s dying.”
Ellie clamped her eyes shut when she said it. Just let the weight of the words fall as she kept treading water. Arms tiring and heart stinging in her chest.
“I have nothing left but her. My parents were on their way home to me. That’s why it happened—I had a youth soccer game, of all the stupid things. They were rushing so they wouldn’t miss it and took a company plane. And I never saw them again.”
Quinn shifted his glance from her to the stone wall and arbor rows as she spoke. He waited a moment, then simply shook his head, his chin, still defiant and unshaved, tipping just under the surface of the water. His brow creased, something evident. Sorrow? Pity? Please, God, don’t let it be pity.
“It’s not your fault, Ellie.”
She shook her head, water stirring around her chin.
“Look at me.” He paused until she dared to lock eyes with his. “Did you need to hear that? That it’s not your fault?”
“I know—or, my head does. But my heart is telling me that if I lose Grandma Vi, I lose them all over again. And then I’m alone. So it’s not just a story, not a castle or a rock wall that I need. It’s her. All of her. And I know if I look past the weathered stone, she’s here. Waiting for me. That somehow, this story will have a happy ending because I know that’s what’s coming. An ending. And I’m not ready for it.”
He ran a hand over his brow, slicking the hair off his forehead.
“Well, that changes things a b
it, doesn’t it?”
“I know it does. And I should have . . .” She stopped. Redirected her thoughts to what they could control at the moment. “Do you think we can see it?” No—that was weak. She wouldn’t ask. “We need to see it. Please. The boat’s already overturned. And we’re soaking wet. What does it matter if we swim to shore and take a look around now? We’ll have to walk back anyway. At least the trip won’t have been wasted.”
Leveling her chin in confidence wasn’t the easiest thing when she was trying to stay above water, but she did it, straightening her spine all the way up.
“I think you’ll find your plan difficult, Ellie.”
“Why? You think I can’t do it?”
Quinn did laugh then. A light chuckle he didn’t try to hide in the least. “I’d be a fool to doubt you. You’re quite clever enough to find your own way. But I know you can’t do it—at least not tonight, because . . . On nous arête.”
If Ellie’s heart could have sunk to the bottom of the moat, it would have. Her French was worse than rudimentary, but it still didn’t take much to pick out the meaning of the final word.
“Quinn . . .”
Flood lamps clicked on, engulfing them in light.
A small fishing boat appeared off behind them, the engine cut and three uniformed officers standing in its belly. They directed their searchlights in a beam along the side of the overturned dory, illuminating their faces.
Ellie pulled her palm up to block the piercing light from her eyes.
“Salut, Michel,” Quinn called out over her, a hand raised in a lackluster wave to one of the men in the boat. The man nodded back, a rather sorry-looking simper fused to his lips.
“Do you know them?” Ellie whispered, keeping her death grip on the dory. She looked from Quinn over to the men, noting that their faces seemed to reflect similar amusement.
“Chaps from Loudun.”
“And these chaps are . . . ?”
“Police. And they’ve arrested dozens of tourists just like you. Can spot a trespassin’ American with an eagle eye, I’m afraid, even in the dead of night and with careful steps to subvert a few security cameras.” Quinn held his hand out to her so he could ease her over to the side of the security boat and help her climb in.
He leaned in close, whispering, “So your castle will just have to keep her secrets hidden a little longer, yeah?”
Ellie placed her trembling hand in his as he led her over to the side of the boat, then she climbed up. Quinn followed, easing onto the bench beside her. She turned back as the motor started and they began to drift away, her heart sinking like a stone under the water.
Even as an officer handed her a life vest, Ellie slipped it over her head, refusing to look away. With one final ardent glance at her castle, she whispered her promise.
A promise to come back.
TWENTY-FOUR
APRIL 9, 1944
LA ROCHE-GUYON
GIVERNY, FRANCE
Heavy oak doors crashed in at the center, splintering wood across the basement floor.
Heavy bolts had locked the secretaries in the lowest level at Château de La Roche-Guyon, but the doors were shocked on their hinges as a horde of SS guards flooded into the warehouse-style room like a plague of wasps infecting the air.
“Aufstehen!”
Calls rang out, telling them to Get up! Get up!
Where there had only been the click-clack of typewriter keys, the room was flooded with heavy boot falls, shouts from guards with guns drawn, and frightened shrieks at the sudden intrusion. Women obeyed at once, front to back in the room, standing with their hands raised.
Vi had been sequestered in the wide basement room with the legion of other secretaries conscripted into the Nazi ranks. They were fed water and bread, and watery stews on occasion, and forced to work day and night, toiling over transmissions. They hadn’t a clue where the messages came from, nor where they were going. They simply changed French for German, or the other way around, and submitted bizarre missives that meant nothing to them at all.
And so she, too, had been absorbed in the yoke of terror since she’d been brought here months prior—most French women, but some German and probably another Brit or two hiding in the lot just like she was. To the SOE in London, she must have simply dropped off the face of the earth. For months, she’d not been able to send word of her whereabouts. But to the other forced laborers in the room, she was as alive as they—locked in an underground prison of work, with the prospects of survival darkening by the dreary second.
The sight of so many SS, tromping through the rows of desks and typewriters, grabbing women out of line with seemingly indiscriminate fervor, sent fresh waves of terror pinging through her body. With guns drawn and eyes cold as death, they chose their targets. Mercy would have no place among them, not when the wasps were ready to level stinging punishments for something. What had triggered the attack, they might never know—save for the outcome of it.
“Karine!” Clémence’s whisper was rough, immediate.
Vi turned around at the use of her false name to see she was being summoned by the friend behind her.
Clémence was a secretary too—older than Vi by some twenty years and downgraded from her former life as a mathematician at a Paris university to work in the doldrums of a château prison in northern France. She was wicked-clever, of course, or she wouldn’t have been counted among the women in the room. But instead of standing as the rest did, she’d ducked down at her desk, watching the activity over the top edge of her typewriter, all the while untying the string-thin laces on her heeled oxfords.
“Change shoes with me.”
Flitting her gaze between the woman furiously freeing her shoelaces and the advancing swarm of SS guards, Vi shook her head. How could she think of something so odd at a time like this?
The guards had done the same before. Women had been pulled from line weeks back, for no apparent reason then too, and never returned. Though they hadn’t seen the outside for months, the women all knew a walled courtyard couldn’t be far off. They’d heard the deafening pierce of gunshots fill the air outside, even from their basement hollow. It served as a warning that with their Nazi captors, there were not to be second chances.
“Clémence, what are you doing?” Vi whispered, keeping her head level to the activity in front of them. “They told us to—”
“We haven’t time to waste. Do it now, Karine. Give me your shoes before they reach our row.”
Clémence pulled the heels from her feet, passing them to Vi under the desk. She waited a second, watching the guards with an eagle eye. When Vi didn’t respond right away, she snapped her fingers. “Quickly, Karine!”
Vi responded, though flustered, and eased down to pull her T-strap heels free. She scrunched down under the desk to exchange them for Clémence’s—sturdy oxfords with a thick heel and rows of laces that locked the shoes up to the ankle. She’d have precious seconds to tug them on, but with fear manifesting itself in sweaty, shaky palms, doubted she’d be able to lace them.
“Listen to everything I say.” Clémence spoke through gritted teeth, keeping her eyes trained on the black boots that were but three rows in front of them. “Do not let those shoes out of your sight. No matter what happens, keep them on your feet. I pass this responsibility to you.”
“What? Why?” The SS drew near, scattering papers and files from desks, shouting at the women in their row to stand. “What’s happening?”
The swarm advanced, and Vi gave up on the laces or else be picked from line for remaining behind her desk. She stood behind the rest of the women and eased back from her desk with hands in the air.
Clémence leaned in behind Vi’s head, whispering in her ear. “There is a door at the end of the hall, marked Achtung—a sign warning danger of electrocution. Nod if you know which door I speak of.”
Vi knew it. All the women did. It was kept under guard by at least one SS guard at all times. They were marched by both morning and night,
past the door and a hall that led somewhere deeper into the depths of their château prison. They never questioned it, just passed by on their way to see to their duties.
But now, the mystery portal took on an entirely new meaning.
Vi nodded in as slight a manner as she could.
“There is a five-minute window when the guard shift changes. Five minutes only, at the midnight hour. Maybe less, but never more than that amount of time.”
“How do you know this?”
“Shh!” Clémence grasped Vi’s shoulder from behind, a gentle tug drawing her back against the wall. “Listen only. There is a muslin pouch in the floorboard under my bed. In it is a small, leather-bound journal and a package of soap shavings. You will fall ill tonight. Foam at the mouth and make it convincing enough that they will take you to the hospital wing. The doctor will not see you until morning, but by then, you must be gone. Tie the journal to your thigh so it’s not discovered, and memorize the halls from our room to the hospital—how many guards, which doors have wires running to them, and which do not. You must make it back to that door without tripping their notice in the dark.”
Vi shuddered as a woman was grabbed from the row in front, guards pressing the cold metal of a barrel against the back of her skull as they shouted accusations and marched her toward the doors.
“You will contact the Baker Street Irregulars and give them the contents of your left heel.”
The cold reality of their situation washed over her, and Vi lifted her left foot, instinct feeling whatever was hidden there had grown like a stone out of thin air.
“There is a secret undertaking. A massive ruse operation to fool the Nazis into thinking an invasion is certain. The Allies are coming. Soon. But not when or where these heartless beasts expect. Your chaps in London have done their job with falsified chatter over the wires, and managed to hide what’s really coming.”
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