Betrayed
Page 22
“How lovely,” says Eleanor. “I won’t say no.”
“Now, to find that tea . . .” I say.
“Tea comes from England,” Phoebe announces. “It’s their thing.”
“Well, brewed in England,” amends Eleanor. “Appreciated in England.”
“There’s only one thing to do, then,” I say. “Let’s head back to the Arnaud Manor!” I wait, grinning. “Are you not enthused, then? You’re wanting to stay where the gold and shiny things are?”
We look over together at the queen in the meadow, now adjusting the brim of her daughter’s straw sunbonnet. Mustn’t get the sun in one’s eyes. The least of their troubles, and they’ll wish they’d stayed there in that meadow and stared at that bright orb until they went blind.
We can’t control our fate, none of us.
Nor even predict it. Even Athénaïs’s magic glass balked at showing her everything.
It’s out of our hands.
The Arnaud Manor. I can’t say I’m fond of its dark stone walls and fortresslike attitude. It was built as a bit of a mimic of Versailles, but somehow the lightness and imperialness of the original palace didn’t carry over.
The Sangreçu in me is gone, and I waft through walls like any time-honored ghost, but there is some vestige of its influence that lets me feel how different the estate is now. I’m tuned into the ancientness of the site in a way I wasn’t before. It all feels so old.
“Do you notice the manor feels different now?” I ask Phoebe.
“Yeah,” she says, her face marveling. We’re standing in the courtyard just outside the doors to the modern part of the home, watching while Phoebe’s family unpacks the car. “It’s like there’s another shadow layer I can sense now. Something that was underneath the way it felt before.”
“It doesn’t feel different to me,” says Eleanor. “It must be the Sangreçu in you.”
I close my eyes so I can focus on that buzz or hum or whatever it is. It’s not unlike the sound the vials made in the Picpus chapel.
Ancient souls and their music, I conclude.
“You with us, Phoebe?” her stepdad asks the air, pausing with a suitcase in each hand.
“Right here,” she says, but he doesn’t hear.
“I’m here, too!” I call out. “Sheesh, he really just doesn’t care about me, does he?”
“No one’s asking after me, either,” Eleanor huffs.
“Seriously, though, you did tell him about us, right?” I ask.
“Of course! That was a very key detail, friend.”
“Thank you, Phoebe.”
We troop inside with the family as they turn the heat on and start a fire in the fireplace. “Hard to believe it’s only October in such a drafty place as this,” says Phoebe’s mum.
“It’s just because we were gone so long and the air got cold,” says Steven. “It’ll be nice again soon.”
“It’s not California,” she says.
“Nothing will ever be California again.” He gives her a long look. As if hearing an audible reminder, they busy themselves with all their living tasks and we wander around looking at stuff, tickling Tabby as practice to see if she can feel it.
It almost feels normal. It’s like I’m just hanging out at Phoebe’s after school and after a while I’ll go home.
If only.
After a few hours, the family settles down to dinner, napkins in their laps and Tabby clicked into her high chair. They’ve taken only a few bites of their chicken Alfredo when the doorbell rings.
“Who on earth?” asks Phoebe’s mum. “No one’s rung that doorbell before.”
Steven goes to the door, and we ghosts go with him. A man in his sixties stands there, dressed in a gray wool suit. His hair is thin and unkempt.
“Hello?” says Phoebe’s stepdad.
“Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Reginald Boswick. I’ve been a Grenshire resident all my life.”
“Oh, how nice!” says Phoebe’s mum from behind us. She took the time to get Tabby out of her high chair, apparently too curious to sit waiting in the dining room. “Thank you for coming to welcome us!”
He seems taken aback by this. “We do . . . welcome you,” he stumbles. “I’m here on quite another matter, it seems. We’ve noted that you are preparing to make renovations here at the manor house. We hear of carpenters and gardeners being lined up?”
“Yes!” Steven beams. “We want to bring some life to this old shack.”
The man winces.
“No reason we can’t spend a little money and bring her back to some of her former glory.”
“Well, we in the village . . . I’m not going to mince words. We don’t welcome attention paid to the manor. You notice you weren’t able to hire labor in the village and had to go farther out?”
Steven pauses, then says, “Everyone said they were too busy.”
“ ‘Busy,’ ” repeats the man with a nasty smile.
“Well, it’s fine,” says Steven brightly. “I found who I needed.”
“Please let them go,” says the man. “I have here a good bit we’ve put together to ask you to halt the renovations.” He holds out a thick envelope. No one takes it.
“Who is the ‘we’?” Phoebe’s mum asks icily.
“All of us,” he says simply.
“You’re telling me the whole village has put up money so we won’t fix the manor,” says Steven.
“A good bit. Count it,” says Reginald, still holding out the envelope.
“Why? I can only think this would be a wonderful thing for Grenshire,” says Phoebe’s mum. “Bringing money into the economy, providing jobs for laborers . . .”
“We hear you’ve been talking with the National Trust for Historic Preservation,” he says.
“Yes, they’re very interested in our plans!”
“We don’t want outsiders coming in. The intrusion will be severe. This is a small village and we like it that way. I insist you look at the contents of the envelope.”
“You can put that envelope away,” says Steven. “We’re not interested.”
“Did ye not see the wall that was built across the drive? Puttin’ that up was a long-ago message to stay out! I don’t even know how ye managed to buy the house; the estate agents are quite put to worryin’, too—” In his vim, he’s lapsing into country language, dropping his g’s and saying “ye.”
“I didn’t buy it,” interrupts Steven flatly. “I own it. I’m an Arnaud. This is my family’s home.”
The man literally takes a step back. His gaze moves from Steven to Phoebe’s mum and finally to Tabby. “A young one,” he says softly. He must not have noticed her before. “You really shouldn’t be living here.”
There’s this silence that just grows and grows, and I know Phoebe’s family is considering everything she told them last night in the hotel room in France.
“Madame Arnaud doesn’t drink children’s blood anymore, thank you very much,” says Steven crisply.
The man gasps and drops the envelope.
“She’s been taken care of,” adds Phoebe’s mum. “So tell everyone not to worry! We’re bringing sunshine to the manor!”
He kneels and picks up the envelope, putting it into his interior coat pocket without taking his eyes off Steven.
“Perhaps I took the wrong tack at first,” he says in a softer voice. “It’s of course your home to do with as you wish. But there’s more to this property than just old wives’ tales. You really should not be bringing the world in on a tourist bus. We need to keep the property undisturbed.”
“Describe ‘undisturbed,’ ” says Phoebe’s mum. “The fact is, I’ve lost my elder daughter. A project like this is exactly what I need to pour my energies and my hopefulness into. I’m disturbed.”
He looks surprised. “I do offer you every condolence for your loss,” he says gruffly. “I beg you to leave this as it is. The status quo where we all can relax at night.”
“We’ll never respond to
bribes,” says Steven.
“I beg your pardon for that,” says Reginald. “But I do wish I could impress upon you the deep sincerity of our wish that the property be undisturbed.” He’s wincing. He’s turning to go in defeat, but he doesn’t want to leave. His feet are facing a different direction when he turns back to Steve and Phoebe’s mum as if struck with inspiration. “I’d like to leave you with my business card so you may reach me at any time.”
He pulls out his wallet. He gives a separate business card to each of them, as if he thinks he may divide and conquer.
They take their cards without comment.
“I know I did start out wrong,” he says. “But there’s no call to be fixing up this old manor house. It’s been fine here all this time being lonely. Wouldn’t you prefer to be in town yourselves? We’ve some very fine homes closer to the village center where I think you’d be far less drafty and gloomy. We could set you up quite nicely and with a mind-spinning discount to boot!”
“Thank you for your input and we’ll consider it,” says Steven in a clipped tone.
Reginald concedes defeat. As he turns to go, he gives one last glance to Tabby. “There was another born before her, the one that passed on?” he asks.
“Yes,” says Steven.
I look over at Phoebe. Reginald knows the firstborn is the important one.
“My sympathies again,” says Reginald, and he begins to walk to his car, parked in the courtyard.
“What was that all about?” asks Phoebe’s mum before the door even shuts.
“It must have to do with what Phoebe was telling us. There are pagan roots to this land, old stories we have to figure out,” says Steven.
“I feel like I’m on an episode of Scooby-Doo, with the old man telling us to stay off his property.”
“Which usually means there’s a treasure buried somewhere,” he replies.
“Okay, I’m going to start looking for that hoard tomorrow,” says Phoebe’s mum. “In the meantime, I’m looking forward to dinner and our first night back at what I think is starting to qualify as ‘home.’ ”
“Sounds great,” says Steven. He throws Reginald’s business card onto the table in the entry, and they head back to the dining room. I linger to talk to Phoebe and Eleanor about the man’s weird insistence that the family not let in outsiders.
Eleanor makes a sharp whistle when she inhales.
“What?” I ask.
She’s pointing to the card on the table. I come closer to look.
Along with the typical printed information about Reginald, his office, and how to contact him, it shows the dragon design from Picpus.
“This emblem,” says Eleanor. “It was carved onto the door at Austin’s house.”
“Oh my God!” says Phoebe. “It was also carved onto the stone that hid the vial!”
I look once more at that helpless, enraged dragon, his wings spread almost to their utmost, but not quite. On Reginald’s card, the design is in color, and the markings on the dragon’s forehead are embossed in gold leaf.
We all three look at one another with exhilaration. The lines are connecting up. Austin’s family studied pagan lore, and Reginald has something to do with it. We’ll get answers someday. We’ll graduate somehow.
But in the meantime, the renovations are going to be a lot of fun.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Spoiler Alert! Read only after you’ve finished the book.
As a history buff, I’ve enjoyed threading into this narrative many historical facts. The inhabitants of Versailles and Paris were fascinating people, and the Revolution a horrific event.
Many of the historical references in this novel are true, such as descriptions of Paris, Versailles, the Hameau, and the places where the guillotine administered its grisly, misguided justice. There is indeed a secret passageway next to Marie-Antoinette’s bed. Picpus, with Lafayette’s grave and the two mass pit graves, can be visited. However, I did alter history a bit on two occasions that I’ll discuss below.
The chapel on the Picpus grounds dates only to 1814 and thus Athénaïs would not have been able to visit and leave something in the crypt. There was an active convent at Picpus predating the Revolution, but unfortunately for my fictional purposes, it no longer exists. So I made the choice to transform the Picpus chapel into a far older structure.
Second, Yolande and Etienne could have never trysted in the grotto, because it was built 1778–82 for Marie-Antoinette, long after Yolande left for England.
Athénaïs, Madame de Montespan, was an actual historical figure who played an important role in the story of Versailles. For over a decade, she was mistress to Louis XIV (Miles guessed wrong!). After the poison affair very lightly referenced here, coinciding with his tiring of her and choosing another mistress, she withdrew to a convent in Paris. She reportedly died in 1707 while taking the waters—but that was simply her plan to go underground and reinvent herself. After Louis XIV died, she secretly returned to Versailles during the seven years the palace was deserted and resumed her connection with the Arnaud family.
Avenged, Book 3 of the Arnaud Legacy, will let you know what happened after that . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a debt of gratitude to Alison McMahan, who suggested that with a triad of characters enacting within a trilogy, perhaps it might make sense to let each of them narrate their own volume. I also heartily thank her for pointing out that letting the characters time-slip would permit me to more efficiently deliver the ponderous backstory. Thank you for receiving panicked phone calls and for judicious advice.
Jordan Rosenfeld, you continue to be an amazing reader and I value your input.
Thanks also to Ariana Rosado-Fernández, Heather Johnson, and Jenny D. Williams. For naming rights, I’m deeply grateful to Richard Spees and the Gellerman family for supporting Chabot Space & Science Center and Lake Forest.
For wonderful blurbs that adorned Book 1, warm gratitude goes to two writers I adore: Danielle Paige and Michelle Gagnon. For help with Britishisms, I thank Essie Fox, who read the manuscript overnight and whose writing is so deliciously eerie. Christian Labau very nicely went over the French phrases for me.
Many thanks to the fantastic team that supports me and makes all this possible: Michaela Hamilton, Morgan Elwell, Lauren Jernigan, Randie Lipkin, Arthur Maisel, Marly Rusoff, and Michael Radulescu.
Don’t miss the next novel in the Arnaud Legacy series by
Lynn Carthage
Avenged
Coming from Kensington in 2017!
Photo by Belle Photography
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LYNN CARTHAGE is the pseudonym of an acclaimed fiction writer who has been a Yaddo fellow and a Bram Stoker Award finalist. She lives in California and teaches novel writing. Her website is www.lynncarthage.com.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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Copyright © 2016 Erika Mailman
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ISBN: 978-1-6177-3627-8
First Trade Paperback Printing: March 2016
First electronic edition: March 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1-61773-630-8
ISBN-10: 1-61773-630-9
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