Chapter Thirty-two
As soon as we leave the stables, a pair of shaggy black beasts come bounding up to us, tongues lolling, tails wagging. Xavier whistles once sharply and the pair sit, tongues still lolling, tails still wagging.
Xavier drops our suitcases and ruffles their furry heads, first one, and then the other. He glances up at me.
“Do you like dogs, ma bichette?”
“I am frightened of dogs.”
“You have nothing to fear with Jacques and Jules. They are the sweetest souls you will ever meet—despite their mangy appearance.” He takes my hand and pulls me down beside him. “Jacques is named after Jacques Cartier, the famous Breton sailor who discovered Canada, because he likes to wander, and Jules is named after Jules Verne, because he likes to—”
“—write novels?”
He laughs. “Jules likes to curl up beside the fire in the library. The lazy bag of bones would stay there all day, if he didn’t have Jacques chasing him around.” He takes my hand, turns it over, and urges me to hold it out toward the dogs. “They are Breton water dogs.”
Jules briefly presses his nose to the back of my hand, like a gentleman kissing a lady’s hand in greeting. His long, droopy whiskers tickle my skin and I laugh. Jacques follows Jules’s lead and presses his leathery nose to my hand.
“Most people teach their dogs to use their paws to shake visitors’ hands, but you taught yours to kiss hands?”
“They only kiss ladies’ hands.”
“Charmer.”
“We try, don’t we, garçons.” Xavier laughs.
Jacques, clearly the more energetic of the pair, leaps up at the sound of his master’s laughter, barking and spinning in circles.
“Alors, vas-y,” Xavier says, standing. Okay, let’s go.
Jacques races off. Jules remains at my feet, soulful chocolate eyes fixed on my face, tail sweeping back and forth across the gravel. He is awfully charming.
“Would you like to pet him?”
“Would it be alright?”
“Of course, ma bichette,” he says, helping me stand. “Jacques and Jules belong to you, too, now. They will expect you to let them accompany you when you walk on the beach, and Jules will probably want to sleep with you when I am out of town. He’s a naughty boy that way.”
I carefully reach out and touch the wavy black fur on Jules’s head and he moves closer, nuzzling my leg.
“That’s it,” Xavier murmurs encouragingly, resting his hand on the small of my back. “He has a tickle spot just below his ear.”
I bond with Jules until Xavier retrieves our suitcases and urges me to follow him. We walk across a cobbled courtyard to a set of tall, narrow, gilded wooden doors. Xavier tucks my suitcase under his arm and is reaching for the brass knob when the door opens, the hinges screaming like a banshee.
A tall, painfully thin elderly woman appears in the doorway, her face so gaunt her cheekbones appear as sharp as knives, her grizzled hair worn in a thick braid at the base of her neck. She is clutching her weathered hands at her waist. Her cloudy black eyes fix on me immediately and don’t leave my face, even as she greets Xavier in thick French.
I smile nervously and press my hand to my throat as the skin begins to tighten and itch while Xavier speaks to his housekeeper.
“Manderley, mon amour,” he says, placing his hand on the small of my back again. “This is Madame Deniau.”
“Bonsoir, Madame Deniau,” I say. “C’est un plaisir de rencontrer vous.”
Her thick gray eyebrows knit together and she finally shifts her gaze off of my face. She looks at Xavier and says something in French. Xavier replies.
Madame Deniau looks at me and huffs, “Vous!”
She lifts one of the suitcases and disappears down a hallway, her footsteps strangely silent despite the polished stone floor. Xavier waits until he is sure she is out of hearing before laughing.
“I told you she could be rather . . . odd.”
“Vous?”
“You inverted your pronoun when you told her you were happy to meet her. You said, C’est un plaisir de rencontrer vous. You should have said, C’est un plaisir de vous rencontrer.”
I scratch my neck. “She was correcting my French?”
“Oui,” he says, grabbing my hand so I don’t scratch myself raw. “She is a stickler about grammar. You will find she is a stickler about a good many things. Bérenger is much easier to deal with and he speaks a bit of English.”
“Bérenger?”
“He is our caretaker. He manages the estate and the army of workers we employ part-time to keep it from turning to rubble and tumbling into the sea. He is off on his annual holiday this week and next, but you will meet him when I am in Dubai.” He takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. “Now, shall I give you a tour of your new home?”
“Yes, please.”
“This is really just a service corridor. Originally, it was part of the dungeon. Two hundred years ago, this was where riders would have returned after a day spent hunting.” He gestures to a room with dark wood paneling where rows of leather riding boots with boot-stays sticking out are lined up along the wall. “This was where they would have removed their boots and left them to be polished by underbutlers. Today, you will find rain boots and slickers. Be sure to wear them when you take Jacques and Jules for a run along the beach or you will return covered in sand and seawater after they dash into the sea and then return to shake off their wet coats all over you.”
Xavier shows me the old kitchen, with an iron stove and gleaming copper pots hanging from the ceiling, but tells me there is a smaller, more manageable kitchen on the first floor in our apartments. We continue down the corridor and climb up a circular staircase, the same kind of narrow, dank staircase my aunt Patricia has in her home in Ireland. Xavier pushes a scarred wooden door open and we are in a cavernous room with a wooden ceiling, tapestries covering the walls, and a massive fireplace.
“We are now in the oldest part of the château,” Xavier says. “This was the great hall, where banquets would have been held. Today, we rent the space out for weddings.”
Xavier leads me back to the circular stairway and we climb up the stairs to the gallery, a long room with parquet floors and a coffered ceiling. Mullion glass windows on one side offer a view of the inner courtyard and the sea beyond. We visit the chapel before heading back to the private apartments.
“You wouldn’t have a map of the château, would you?”
He chuckles. “I will ask Bérenger to make you a copy. In the meantime, just remember the château originally formed a box with four towers, one in each corner. The west wing is no longer standing, so the château is now a U. The east wing is the great hall. The south wing is the chapel. The north wing is the private apartments. All of the towers have ground level doors that open to the courtyard. Does that help?”
“Yes.”
Xavier stops in front of a mirror framed in gilt. He pushes on the glass and the mirror swings in, revealing a hidden door. We step through the door into a hallway and Xavier closes the door behind us. This part of the château has been tastefully renovated and updated. The wood paneling has been painted white, the ceiling beams and wood floor stained dark gray. On one side of the hallway, tall windows look out on the courtyard.
Xavier opens a door and steps back so I can enter. It’s a masculine living room, with dark gray walls, a black leather sofa that looks like it came from the cover of a Restoration Hardware catalog, tall leather wingback chairs beside a fireplace, and a scarred, salvaged wood coffee table with stacks of sailing and car magazines. One wall is covered with framed antique nautical charts.
“What a lovely room.”
“I just had several of the rooms on this wing redecorated, but I understand if you want to add your touch.”
“No,” I say. “It’s beautiful just the way it is.”
A miniature poodle asleep on a tweed blanket on the sofa suddenly wakes up, barks, and then leaps down and runs over to me, hopping up on its back legs.
“Hello,” I say, holding my hand flat the way Xavier taught me. “What’s your name?”
“That’s Coco.”
“As in Coconut?”
“No, as in Coco Chanel.”
I laugh. “You named your dog after a designer?”
“I did not name Coco,” he says, his face tight. “She was . . . abandoned by her previous owner.”
“How sad. She’s so tiny.”
My fear of dogs disappears as I look down at the tiny poodle with the heart-shaped nose. I squat down and Coco jumps onto my lap.
“Who would abandon such a sweet little dog?”
“Someone who is selfish and heartless,” he says, his tone cold.
I stand, cradling Coco in my arms. “It was good of you to give her a home.”
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he walks over to an armoire and opens the doors to reveal a well-stocked liquor cabinet. He splashes a generous portion of scotch into a heavy cut-crystal glass, raises it to his lips, and drains it in one swallow.
He deposits the empty glass in the armoire and turns back to me, his expression more relaxed.
“It’s getting late. Are you hungry?”
“A little. Are you?”
“Oui.” He takes Coco from my arms and deposits her on her blanket on the couch. “I’ll ask Madame Deniau to prepare something.”
“No!” My protest bursts out of me. “It is getting late and I wouldn’t want to impose. Madame Deniau is probably getting ready for bed. I can make something for us if you show me how to get to the kitchen.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“The kitchen is the last door at the end of the hall,” he says, rubbing his neck. “I am sore from the drive. Would you mind if I took a shower first?”
“Go on,” I say, standing on my tiptoes and pressing a kiss to his lips. “I’ll manage fine.”
When he leaves, I stand in the living room, glancing around at the strange belongings that will one day be as familiar to me as my own, and feeling like a tourist who slipped away from the group and is trespassing in the lord’s private apartments. It’s surreal. The eighteenth-century paneling on the walls. The incense-like scent lingering from hundreds of years of fireplace smoke permeating the floors, ceilings, walls. On the table in the corner, the framed photographs of a family I don’t know. The little white dog on the couch staring at me with her shiny black-button eyes.
I feel as if I am a character in an old Bette Davis movie, a woman with amnesia who finds herself in a strange home, an interloper pretending to be someone she is not. I wonder if Marine felt this way on her first night at Château de Maloret.
A bolt of lightning splits the sky outside the window, bright white light flashes like a strobe in the room. Coco leaps up, stares at the window as if she suddenly sees a ghost, and barks, a shrill yap that raises the hair on the back of my neck.