The Chateau by the River

by Chloé Duval

  Hammer in hand, he glared daggers at me.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, you don’t have to be that hostile, I haven’t done anything to you!” I glared back.

  “What do you want now?”

  Straight to the point, as ever. All right, I could work with that.

  “I spoke with Marine yesterday. Your cousin.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “She told me your father had put together some files about the castle and my ancestor was in them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So when I told you about him yesterday, you knew Thomas was the son of Victor de Saint-Armand?”

  For a second my question seemed to put him on the spot. He raised a nervous hand to the back of his neck.

  “I did,” he said unwillingly. “I recognized the name.”

  He turned back to his work as if nothing had happened and resumed banging on his nail with renewed energy, pointedly ignoring me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I raised my voice to cover the sound of the hammer.

  Had he been afraid I would take the castle from him? There was no need for that. I had no intention to claim the Ferté-Chandeniers estate as my rightful inheritance. I didn’t have the means to anyway.

  But I would never be able to convince him if he wouldn’t listen.

  No matter, I was far from done.

  I deliberately set my handbag in front of him on the wooden plank he was banging on as though his life depended upon it.

  “Are you crazy? That’s dangerous!” he roared as he stopped immediately.

  Maybe, but at least I had his attention.

  Furious, Éric Lagnel drew himself up to his full height and gave me a dirty look.

  “What is your problem?”

  Both feet planted firmly on the ground, determined to defend my position, I looked him straight in the eye.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you that recognized my ancestor’s name and that your father had information on him?”

  It wasn’t easy keeping a confident posture when I had to crane my neck to look him in the face, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

  “Oh, sorry, princess, I didn’t know I had to answer to you,” he mocked.

  “I’d like to know more.”

  “You’re six months late. My father’s dead,” he replied bitterly.

  I watched him silently for a few seconds.

  “Marine told me. I’m very sorry,” I murmured gently.

  My words seem to unsettle him.

  “It’s just the way it is. I told you. Life isn’t a fairy tale.”

  “Would you let me look through your father’s files? Please? It’s very important to me.”

  His blue eyes skewered me. “Are you going to try and take the castle from me, claiming it’s your inheritance?” he asked.

  At least he didn’t beat around the bush.

  “No. I have no intention to. I can’t even afford a house, let alone a castle.”

  “Then why are you doing this? Why do you insist so much?”

  I could have tried to beat him at his own game by telling him it was none of his business. But it would have been petty, and I didn’t want to start another verbal spar.

  After what Marine had told me about his parents’ deaths, I was starting to understand why he defended his property so aggressively; it had been his parents’. It was an unwieldly and unusual inheritance, but it was his. Maybe it was the only thing he had left of them. And given the pressure he probably had to withstand from investors, I had to admit that if I were in his shoes I too would probably have shot on sight anybody coming too close to my property.

  I decided to be honest. Completely honest. I’d show him I had nothing to hide. I took a deep breath and plunged ahead.

  “I wasn’t lying yesterday,” I began. “I just want to know where I come from. Who my ancestors were. I need to… To know who I am.”

  Éric Lagnel’s inscrutable gaze stayed glued to me for one long moment, and I stared right back, even as I suddenly felt extremely vulnerable.

  I had told no one else what I had just admitted to him. Not even Bea or Spencer.

  I had realized it gradually. As I dug into my past, the hunt for Gabrielle had become a more and more important part of my life until I understood that as I searched for my ancestor, it was really myself I was looking for.

  The truth was that, somewhere along the road, I felt like I had lost my way. And I didn’t know where. I felt I was living a life empty of meaning, empty of everything. I spent all my time waiting for someone or something. For Spencer. Everybody around me seemed to be living life to the fullest, racing about between two flights or two parties, but I spent my evenings and weekends sketching and watching TV. I sat on my couch and dreamed of adventures I would never have, imagined feelings and emotions I would never experience. I lived inside my mind more than I did in the real world.

  And the longer this went on, the less I could bear it. I couldn’t take it. I was suffocating. The picture had arrived at just the right time, the perfect distraction. At first it had only been a way to fulfill my curiosity, to fill in the emptiness inside. But it had come to have a symbolic importance to me—once I would finish tracing back my family tree, once I would have gone as far back as I could, I would know who I was. I was sure of it.

  “Please,” I begged.

  Éric Lagnel stared at me a while longer, and I thought I saw something flicker in his eyes. For a moment I thought he would say yes, that he had realized I wasn’t the castle thief he thought I was, even though I was an American. But the silence stretched on and still he did not reply. With a heavy heart, I finally threw in the towel.

  I shook my head and sighed bitterly.

  “Forget about it. I should have known you wouldn’t want to. I shouldn’t have come. Goodbye and good luck with your castle. I hope you find a way to save it.”

  I was already trudging away when his voice rose behind my back.

  “Hold on. You can have a look.”

  Surprised, I turned around and firmly held back the hope rising in my chest.

  “You mean you’ll let me look through your father’s files?”

  “Yes.”

  YES!

  “Follow me,” he added, putting his hammer down on the table and striding off toward the building behind us. “And watch where you’re going with those sandals. There could be nails lying around and I don’t want to have to take you to the hospital with a hole in your foot.”

  “Thank you for your concern,” I retorted as I followed suit, “but I mastered the fine art of walking a few years back. I think I’ll manage, no need to worry about me.”

  “You are infuriating.”

  “Thank you, I get that pretty often.”

  Even though I was several paces behind him, I could hear him sigh in frustration.

  I didn’t even try to hide my smile.

  I followed him into the former stables and looked discreetly around. It was surprisingly modern for such an old building: naked stone, an open floor plan, bright and airy, a bedroom mezzanine, renovated secondhand furniture that looked suspiciously like the ones at the inn—I was ready to bet Marine had had a hand in that. At the far end of the room, frosted glass walls closed a space off—probably the bathroom—while letting the light through.

  An American counter separated the state-of-the-art kitchen, fully equipped, from the rest of the room. He led me there.

  “Wait for me here.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” I saluted.

  The look he gave me could have peeled paint off the walls. I gave him my sunniest smile in reply. He shook his head and went up to the mezzanine.

  “What are you doing in here exactly? Everything seems pretty much perfect,” I asked, curious.

  “Nothing really visible.�
�� I could hear him pulling a drawer open and extracting documents from it. “Improving the insulation. Cutting in new windows, adding a wood-burner, some solar panels on the roof. I want to save on energy.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  He came back down the stairs, a thick folder in his hands, and joined me.

  “My…my father wanted to make this place into a private chalet,” he confided unexpectedly. “A kind of extension to Marine’s inn.”

  I knew it! I could tell this place had Marine’s touch to it.

  “What a great idea. But wasn’t he afraid people would go up to the castle? You said yesterday it was dangerous.”

  “It is. But my father was an optimist. He was convinced that in the long term, he’d be able to get the castle classified and restored. He hoped he could make it into a luxury hotel, to host seminars and conferences, auctions and weddings. Or maybe a museum, or a writing retreat. In fact, it didn’t matter to him—he just wanted to breathe life back into it, in any way he could. But he needed money for that, so he had the idea of making the stables into a luxury chalet, hoping he’d get enough income that way to start restoring the castle. He was almost done with the work when he passed away.”

  Which explained the top-notch, modern setup.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a viable project. Despite the lengthy research I had done last night, I knew very little about castle restoration, but I didn’t think a chalet would generate enough money to fund such a vast project.

  I kept my doubts to myself. It wasn’t any of my business, after all.

  “My father was a dreamer,” Éric Lagnel added, probably reading my thoughts. “He didn’t always have his feet on the ground. Here’s the file.” He set it down on the counter in front of me. “This is all I have.”

  One thing was for sure, I thought as I eyed the thickness of the folder, Marc Lagnel had either been luckier or more efficient than I had. His file was four or five times larger than mine. Then again, not everything it contained was about my ancestors, but I was certainly going to find something that would help me uncover more information about the Saint-Armand family.

  A smile stretched my lips as I mentally rubbed my hands. I could tell I was going to enjoy paging through the contents. Without further ado, I pulled my own research and my notebook from my handbag.

  “I’ll be outside if you want any questions answered,” Éric Lagnel told me.

  “Yes, thank you,” I replied distractedly. I opened the folder and took out the first document, a photocopy of a newspaper article detailing the causes of the fire in February 1900. “I’ll call if I need you.”

  I vaguely felt his perplexed look on me as I started reading the article. Then I heard him sigh, mutter something I didn’t catch and, from the corner of my eye, I saw him shake his head as he exited the room.

  I was alone with the history of the castle of Ferté-Chandeniers.

  * * * *

  Marine had not been exaggerating when she said her uncle had done a historian’s job. There were all types of documents, sorted in a very organized manner: several copies of articles from the local newspaper; bibliographies; notes scrawled in an untidy, illegible hand; timelines, including one detailing the construction, destruction, reconstruction and re-destruction of the castle; building plans, some from the original construction, some more recent from the reconstruction in 1812, after the French Revolution. There was also a map of the region on which the estate was clearly marked out. I found a handful of old postcards as well as a sheaf of loose papers with lists of names and phone numbers, and pre-filled-in official forms—bank files, a registration form for the Historical Monuments with a few lines highlighted.

  And in the midst of these dozens—no, hundreds—of pages, I found what I was looking for. Birth certificates. On the very top of the pile was one Thomas Victor Andrew Leroy de Saint-Armand. Also known as Thomas D’Arcy. My Thomas D’Arcy.

  Marc Lagnel had just saved me an entire afternoon in the Chandeniers register of births.

  Only barely keeping myself from jumping about in excitement, I examined it. The section pertaining to his mother was fairly straightforward—one Adaline D’Arcy Leroy de Saint-Armand, born in Plymouth, England, in 1850 and died in Chandeniers in 1880. The father’s, however, was a challenge to any genealogist. The name of Victor Edgar François Leroy de Saint-Armand, born in Chandeniers in 1845 and died there in 1899, had been crossed through three times and replaced by Andrew D’Arcy, born in Plymouth, England, in 1845 and died in Amiens, France, in 1916. Just like Thomas’s full name had been scratched out and replaced with D’Arcy.

  I sighed over what I had just discovered, puzzled. What did that mean? Why had Thomas’s name changed? The most logical explanation would be that Thomas had been adopted by this Andrew D’Arcy, but if that was indeed the case, when did the adoption take place? After his father’s death…or before? Did Victor abjure his son, one way or another? Is it even possible for a father to renounce his paternity? And if that wasn’t the case, if Thomas was adopted after Victor’s death and thus well into his adulthood…why? And who was this Andrew, actually? An uncle? Or someone else? He probably came from his mother’s side of the family, that much I could guess from his name and his date and place of birth…but that was pretty much the only question I could answer from the many ones this record gave rise to.

  I skimmed the other birth certificates, but they didn’t bring any clarity, as none of them pertained to the D’Arcy branch. I went through the rest of the folder in vain, until I found a loose leaf, stuck between two photocopies. At first sight it only held a handwritten note, just as illegible as the other, and I probably would have put it down again without a thought if I hadn’t been able to make out one name.

  Villeneuve.

  I immediately dropped everything in favor of this new development. I managed to decipher a few words—it seemed to mention a bookstore, whose owner was a Maurice Villeneuve. It was apparently called Les livres d’Héloïse. But other than that, I could make neither heads nor tails of Marc Lagnel’s handwriting. Impulsively, I rose to find his son.

  I found him focused on sanding a wooden plank.

  “Could you help me with something?”

  He looked up, slightly startled, as though he had forgotten I was there.

  “What?”

  “I can’t read this,” I explained, handing over the paper.

  Wordlessly, he held it up and examined it.

  “From what I can make out, the Maurice Villeneuve it mentions owned a bookstore in Angers.”

  I nodded to show I had understood as much, and he went on:

  “Apparently, my father got in touch with a Xavier Bourgeois, the current owner of the bookstore, because he thought he might have some interesting documents.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “He wrote ‘Journal G.’ here in the margins.”

  G.? As in Gabrielle?

  “‘Journal’? What kind of journal?” I immediately wanted to know. “Are we talking newspaper journal, or diary journal?”

  And there I was, getting carried away again. Could there be a diary that had belonged to my ancestor? Oh God! If there was, I just had to find it.

  “He doesn’t say, but I suppose it must be a diary; otherwise, I don’t see why he’d mention it,” Éric Lagnel remarked, ever the pragmatist.

  “You’re right. Oh my God! Your father found Gabrielle’s diary!”

  “You can’t be certain. He put a question mark beside it.”

  “Wow, you are such a killjoy!”

  “It’s pronounced ‘realist,’ princess.”

  “Please don’t call me princess. My name is Alexandra.”

  He blinked.

  “You know, I didn’t even know your name until now.”

  “What do you mean? It can’t be!”

  “It most
certainly can. You never introduced yourself.”

  “No, I… Oh, that’s right, you didn’t leave me any time. You just attacked me right away.”

  I held out a hand.

  “Hello, I’m Alexandra Dawson.”

  An amused smirk flickered on his lips, disappearing so fast I wondered if I had imagined it. His gaze on mine, he grasped my hand and shook it. His palm was rough and calloused, his grip strong and warm. A shiver ran over me.

  “Éric Lagnel,” he said, his eyes never leaving me.

  He released my hand, and for an instant I felt…strange. I jammed my hand into my pocket to give myself something to do with it, and I looked back at the paper.

  “So, uh, did your father say anything else? On the paper?” I mumbled.

  His gaze lingered a little longer over me before it went back to the notes.

  “Nothing much. There’s a phone number; I imagine it’s the bookstore’s.”

  “Hmm. Okay. I’ll call, then. Just to be sure.”

  I plunged back inside, my heart beating slightly faster than usual.

  * * * *

  “So?” Éric Lagnel asked me when I hung up a few minutes later.

  Surprised, I glanced up. Nonchalantly leaning against the doorjamb, he looked at me blandly.

  “I hadn’t realized you were there.”

  “I was curious. So?”

  “So, I spoke to an employee, not to Mr. Bourgeois. He couldn’t tell me much. He said the bookstore was opened in 1876 by Maurice Villeneuve. Probably either Gabrielle’s father or an uncle. I won’t know until I find her birth certificate. And he confirmed that Xavier Bourgeois does have several historical documents dating back to the bookstore’s foundation, but he didn’t know anything more. ‘I’m new, you see, and Mr. Bourgeois isn’t here today!’” I repeated, mimicking the young man’s nasal voice.

  Éric Lagnel chuckled, and so did I.

  “In any case, I asked when I could speak to M. Bourgeois, after telling him who I was, so he wouldn’t think I was a trespasser or a busybody and summarily throw me out.…”

  I gave Éric Lagnel a pointed look. He raised an eyebrow, but I didn’t give him time to interrupt.