The Chateau by the River

by Chloé Duval

  “Oh, okay.”

  “I’m lost, Marine,” I suddenly confessed. “I know I should pull away, move on, but—”

  “It’s harder than you thought it would be.”

  I nodded.

  “Flip a coin.”

  “I’m not going to just flip a coin for such an important decision!”

  “Do you know The Big Bang Theory?”

  “The show? Yeah. What does it have to do with this?”

  “Have you seen the episode where Sheldon goes into a game shop and doesn’t know whether he wants one console or another?”

  “I don’t remember it.”

  “Amy suggests he should flip a coin to know his true feelings.”

  I frowned, confused.

  “It’s simple,” Marine explained. “Whatever the result, you will either be happy or disappointed. If you’re disappointed…you’ll know what your decision should be.”

  I considered it. The logic was pretty sound.

  I was about to reply when Bruno’s voice called Marine onstage.

  “Duty calls. Think about it. And don’t forget to listen to your heart. That’s what matters most.”

  “Thank you, Marine.”

  She smiled and left me to my thoughts, joining Bruno and Éric on the stage, snagging Éric by the elbow so he’d stay a little longer. She winked at me.

  I grinned to myself. I might be the fairy tonight, but she had been my guardian angel ever since I had gotten here. I would miss her too.

  I listened as she outlined the program for the celebration with her usual wit and liveliness, explaining how the money raised would be used to fund an association for the castle.

  “Ladies, we have put together a little something just for you—the dance auction. In a few minutes, you will be able to bid for a dance with one of the men you elected to the prestigious position of “Four sexiest men in town.” Sorry, gentlemen, but the ladies have spoken: Benjamin, our classy, charming policeman; Maxime, as handsome as he is handy in a kitchen; our resident castle owner and adventurer Éric; and last but not least, our very own mayor. Gentlemen, if you would join us onstage so the ladies can admire you…”

  I laughed along with everyone else when Maxime and Benjamin jumped up onstage and began to strut up and down like models on a runway. They all played it perfectly, bowing and showing off their abs to seduce the ladies of the audience.

  Except for Éric, whose eyes stayed glued to mine, as though he were afraid I would run again.

  I grinned at him, and he smiled back.

  Marine was explaining how the auction would proceed when my cell buzzed. I rummaged around in my purse and fished it out.

  I froze when I saw the picture of the caller.

  Spencer.

  The grin slid right off my face, and my shoulders sagged. For a few moments, I stared at my fiancé’s face, the man I had chosen, searching my heart, my chest for the feelings I had for him.

  To no avail.

  I found nothing. Nothing at all.

  The phone stopped vibrating as the call went to voicemail.

  I kept staring at the screen, Spencer’s picture, the notification for the missed call, wondering why I hadn’t picked up. Why I hadn’t found the feelings I was searching for.

  A few seconds later, my phone buzzed again, the notification for a voicemail flashing across the screen. I didn’t listen to it.

  I didn’t want to.

  “You’re not happy with Spencer. You’re bored. You need someone who can follow you in your passions, who can fuel them and not stifle them like he does.”

  Bea’s words rang through my mind, again and again—until in a flash the pieces clicked together. I didn’t need to flip a coin to know my true feelings.

  I just needed to open my eyes.

  Bea was right.

  I hadn’t wanted to face the truth. I’d been afraid. Afraid to make the decisions that would come from knowing the truth. Afraid of the consequences. Of the unknown. But I had to stop burying my head in the sand and face it—I had gone past the point of no return a long time ago. I’d been silly and naïve to believe I could go back. That I could return to my old life as if nothing had happened. That I could just set aside everything that had happened here, everything I had done and felt and understood about myself, and resume my old routine with my job and books, my drawings and TV shows and Spencer…that dull, predictable life we had been sharing together.

  My eyes had been opened to who I was and what I wanted from life.

  And what I didn’t want.

  My heart sped up as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place inside my mind.

  I had no idea what my future was; I didn’t know if Éric was going to be a part of it, or if we would manage to save the castle. I didn’t know where my feelings for him would lead me, or if they would lead me anywhere, or last long enough for me to find out. But there was one thing I knew.

  Spencer wasn’t my future. And if I had to be perfectly honest, he hadn’t been in quite some time, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself. Yet all the signs had been there. We had grown apart without even noticing it. We had fallen into a routine that had spelled out the end of our story long before he asked me to marry him. I loved him; I probably always would, but I was now aware that it was more of a brotherly love. I loved him as my best friend or my brother, and no longer as a fiancé or a lover. I didn’t get the urge to suddenly kiss him so hard I forgot my own name. I didn’t long for his body, for his smile, for the sound of his voice when he wasn’t by my side. He wasn’t at the center of my thoughts night and day.

  All of that was for Éric now, and him alone.

  And I wanted to find out if we had a chance. If there could be an “us.”

  I looked up, instinctively seeking his gaze. His smile had vanished, worry written all over his face. He must have seen my expression change. I smiled and waved my phone, jerking my head to signify I was going to step away from the crowd for a few minutes.

  He nodded to show he understood. I pulled back until I was no longer on the dance floor but still close enough to admire the show. Marine was still talking, the guys were still strutting, and Éric was still looking at me.

  I typed a short message.

  I can’t speak right now. I’m at a cool costume party. Would you have time for me tomorrow? I really need to talk to you.

  My finger hovered over the Send key as I hesitated. My heart pounded in my chest. Was I sure about this? Was I making a mistake? Was I throwing away the last five years of my life for something that might not even exist? For a man who might not love me?

  I was going to hurt Spencer, I knew. I was also going to disappoint his parents and mine—and I loved and respected them both very much.

  I was going to have to live with my decision, and accept that I had hurt others to find myself again. After this, I couldn’t go back. Did I want that?

  The answer was simple—yes.

  Yes, I did want that. I wanted to find myself again. I didn’t want this life anymore. I wanted more. I wanted Éric, I wanted the castle, I wanted freedom, adventure. I wanted the exhilaration of the unknown.

  And I wanted it now.

  I clicked Send, putting an end to my hesitations, to the endless days of suffering and misgivings. I might not know where I was headed, but abruptly I felt—I don’t know. Free, I think. Ready to let it go, to accept anything life sent my way. Afraid, terrified—but relieved and optimistic.

  For the first time in a long while, I was certain fortune would smile upon me. Everything would be fine.

  I was happy. At last. I knew who I was. I knew what I wanted. Everything was clear now.

  Tonight, after the ball ended, Éric and I would talk. I would tell him everything. I would tell him about Bea and Spencer and my decision to shed my past and turn to the fut
ure, to the castle. To me. To him.

  He would understand. I knew he would.

  Our eyes reached for each other again, met, clung. I smiled at him. But this time, it was a confident smile. A smile full of promises. A smile that said I shared his feelings and I was ready to admit it and prepared to risk what it took for him.

  His face lit up, incandescent with happiness, as he smiled back.

  The world fell back around us, and I felt light and happy. Nothing could touch me. I had found my place. My happy ever after was near at hand.

  I knew it.

  I could see it in his eyes.

  As I moved to join the crowd, to bid and try to win a dance with the man my heart desired, I felt a presence behind me. Two hands covered my eyes, and a voice whispered into my ear:

  “The fairest of them all… May I kiss you, my fair lady?”

  My smile froze, and every muscle in my body tensed.

  That voice… How?

  And before I could react, hands grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. Spencer closed his arms around me and, under Éric’s stupefied gaze, kissed me passionately.

  Chapter 32

  Gabrielle

  Angers

  February 1900

  It had been exactly seven days, twenty-two hours and forty-five minutes since what Gabrielle now called “the incident” when the letter came.

  Seven painful days of grappling with the fear of coming across Étienne, which crept over her every time she went out.

  Seven endless days of a lingering unease that would not leave despite her best efforts.

  Seven harrowing nights plagued with nightmares as she pretended she was fine in the morning, concealing the shadows around her eyes under layers of white powder.

  Seven unbearable days of waiting for a reply to her last letter to Thomas, feverishly scrawled out yet carefully edited the night after the incident.

  And at last, when she had finally begun to feel better, when fear had given way to rage then anger and culminated in determination, when she thought she could almost see the sun peeking through the clouds, the letter had come.

  And Gabrielle had felt herself drown.

  * * * *

  There had been few patrons that day, discouraged by the wind and cold that had overtaken Angers for the past week. Across the city, in the streets and in the houses, the mood was as somber as the sky. Maurice sat at the counter with his accounts while Gabrielle dusted the shelves and reordered the books in silence. Ever since the…incident, heavy, foreboding silence seemed to have become a frequent guest at the bookstore.

  The mailman came in with a merry ring of the bell, greeting them with his usual cheerfulness, and, as always, headed for the back of the store to hand Maurice a small stack of letters. While her father sorted through them, Gabrielle suggested he warm up before going out again, offering him a biscuit from the batch she had baked the previous night, unable to sleep. She was halfheartedly carrying a conversation with him when out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father frown and move to his study with one of the letters.

  A feeling of unease twisted her stomach, but she tried to ignore it. It was probably nothing serious. It was only a letter. Bad news always came with a telegram. And she should not worry solely because they had not heard back from Thomas, Hélène or any of their friends at the castle for over a week.

  “What news today?” she asked the mailman, striving to put her fears out of her mind.

  “Nothing much, Mademoiselle Villeneuve,” he replied, his mouth full. “Your biscuits are delicious! Would you give me the recipe for my wife?”

  “Of course. But I cannot believe you have nothing to tell me. It does not sound like you!” she teased. They both knew he was the biggest gossip in town.

  “Let me see…oh yes! Have you heard about the fire at the castle some sixty kilometers away from here, a few days ago? The entire castle burned down. It was the biggest fire anyone had seen in decades!”

  Gabrielle’s smile froze, and her blood turned to ice.

  “A fire? In a castle?” she asked, swallowing the fear in her throat.

  “Yes,” the mailman confirmed, unaware of the effect of his words. “A patron told me last Friday. Her daughter lives close by the castle and was visiting. Apparently the fire was so devastating it took an entire day to put it out. The entire castle burned to the ground. A tragedy.”

  “What castle was that?” Gabrielle gasped, panic rising within her.

  She tried to calm herself as blood pounded in her temples. There were dozens of castles around here. It could be another.

  It had to be another.

  “Let me think…it was somewhere by Azay-le-Rideau.… Something beginning with an S… No, a C…”

  No.

  Gabrielle was petrified.

  It cannot be Chandeniers, she repeated to herself. It simply cannot be our castle. Impossible.

  Seconds ticked by as the mailman searched his memory for the name she did not want to hear.

  And then he found it. And the ground opened beneath her feet.

  It turned out that Maurice’s letter had been sent by Mr. Varens, the Chandeniers notary. It informed him in cold and clinical terms that due to the fire that had ravaged the entire western wing of the castle and destroyed everything it held, Mr. Varens was sorry to write there was no longer a library to sell. A sum of money would be paid to Maurice to reimburse him for the inconvenience and financial loss, as soon as the necessary formalities had been observed.

  Once Gabrielle finished reading the letter, she raised anxious eyes to her father.

  “Why is the notary the one to notify us? Why wasn’t it Hélène or Céleste? Or Thomas? Does he even know?”

  “I have no idea,” her father replied, obviously as anxious and as much at a loss as she was. More so, Gabrielle thought. At least she had the comfort of knowing Thomas was in England and could not have been hurt. Maurice had no such assurances concerning Hélène.

  Thirty minutes later, with mere minutes to spare, father and daughter boarded the next train eastward.

  Toward Chandeniers.

  * * * *

  The journey was long, unbearably long. Gabrielle and her father spoke little, each wracked with such dread words could not encompass it.

  After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the castle, and the sight broke Gabrielle’s heart clean in two. She had only worried about Céleste, Hélène and the others, and had not thought to prepare herself for what awaited her. Now they were here; it was real. The soot-blackened walls and the smoke still rising from the western wing were there to prove it. As was the snow, gray and dirty, littered with rubble: scorched papers, burnt books, objects so twisted and deformed by the heat they were unrecognizable.

  For an instant, Gabrielle was speechless in the face of the disaster, one hand over her chest as though to keep her heart from bursting out.

  There were no words for her pain.

  She moved toward a pile of rubble among which several books stood out, somehow partially unharmed. She reached out and lifted one. What remained was sodden and waterlogged. A sob wrenched free from her throat as she recognized one of the books she had read to Thomas one night in the library. It had been one of his mother’s favorites, he’d told her. Les Romans de la Table ronde, by Chrétien de Troyes.

  A piece of paper fluttered out, miraculously nearly intact.

  Gabrielle’s heart skipped a beat as she stared at it. It was the picture Arnaud had taken of her the day Thomas had told her he was leaving for England. The day he had kissed her for the first time.

  She had seen Thomas slip it into a satchel to bring with him to England.

  Terror rose within her.

  Did this mean Thomas had been here at the moment of the fire? Had he been hurt? Was that why they had received no news? Had they
all been hurt? Or worse?

  Please, anything but that, she thought, tears in her eyes.

  She rose and cast around for her father, only to startle at a familiar voice in the ringing silence.

  “Monsieur Maurice? Mademoiselle Gabrielle? What are you doing here?”

  Gabrielle spun around. Guillaume stood a few feet away with an empty wheelbarrow. Relief washed over her, and she ran toward him, throwing her arms around his neck, still holding the picture and book.

  “Guillaume! I am so glad to see you! Is—is everyone all right? What happened? Where is Thomas? Where are Hélène, Céleste, Agnès?”

  “We’re all fine,” he replied, pulling brusquely out of her embrace, his face dark. “Apart from the shock, we were unharmed. Agnès is with her parents for now, as the castle is uninhabitable. Hélène is staying at Céleste’s house.”

  Guillaume’s aloofness surprised Gabrielle, but she attributed it to shock.

  “Oh, thank God,” she sighed as Maurice came up. “What happened? Where is Thomas?”

  “The fire started in the electrical circuits, five days ago,” Guillaume said neutrally. “Before we could do anything the entire wing was ablaze. The moat had frozen, so we were unable to halt the fire before it ravaged almost all of the castle.”

  “Heavens!”

  Maurice was unspeakably tense at Gabrielle’s side.

  “Is Hélène all right?”

  Guillaume nodded.

  “She is. She suffered a slight burn pulling one of the puppies out of a cupboard. But she is fine now,” he added as Maurice paled. “She will recover. It was only a surface burn.”

  “I want to see her right away,” Maurice decided.

  Guillaume nodded again.

  “She is waiting for you. Céleste’s house is the third on the rue de l’Église. It has a blue door; you can’t miss it.”

  “Thank you, Guillaume.”

  He tilted his head in acknowledgment, but his face was still cold and distant.

  Something was wrong.

  “What about Thomas?” Gabrielle asked again. “Where is he?”

  “Mr. D’Arcy is fine.”