Keys to the Castle (19 page)

The flight from London to Paris was just over an hour long, even when one had access to a chartered jet and a private helicopter to Heathrow. The drive from Paris to Rondelais, at top speed, was an hour and a half. There was a one-hour time difference between Paris and London. At 9:07, London time, Mrs. Harrison interrupted Ash's meeting with a rather grim look on her face and handed him a folded note. At 12:52, Paris time, Ash pulled his rented Peugot into the circular drive in front of the château and got out. Approximately thirty seconds later, when he heard the sound of childish laughter, his heart, which had been frozen in his chest since he had read the note, started beating again.

He followed the sound around the perimeter of the castle to the long walled garden that overlooked the moat. Daniel's grandparents had put a croquet court in the center of it, and Ash and Daniel had practiced soccer there on the weekends they came down. Around the perimeter there once had been flower beds and fountains and pergolas where elegantly clad guests would sip drinks and watch the croquet players and chat about nothing at all.

Little remained now but a few rusty benches and stone tables, empty fountain basins and cracked statues. But the grass had been recently mown, and the maze of boxwood shrubs that hid statues of frogs and pelicans and cherubs, the flat stone steps that led from one level to another, the stepping-stones and gazing balls, all made for an imaginative child's playground paradise. Alyssa, in her plaid school skirt and white blouse from yesterday, was holding Sara's hands as she jumped from one of the stepping-stones to another, both of them laughing when she teetered on the edge and clapping when she landed center. Sara's hair was pulled up high on her head in a ponytail, and she wore no makeup. In baggy shorts that reached to her knees and a mismatched T-shirt that barely skimmed the top of her shorts, she looked about twelve years old. Every time she lifted Alyssa high over the grass between the stepping-stones the T-shirt would ride up to expose several inches of her slender waist, and watching them, in those first few moments before they knew he was there, Ash felt something odd and sweet catch in his chest. He actually hesitated before opening the gate, just for a second, because he knew that once he stepped inside their world the laughter would stop.

Alyssa shrieked with delight when she saw him, and he scooped her up, hugging her hard, kissing her hair and her cheek.
“Chérie, chérie!”
he exclaimed, and made himself loosen his grip because he didn't want to alarm her. He spoke to her in French. “How pretty you look today! Have you had a lovely visit with Auntie Sara? Were you a very good girl? Of course you were!”

She settled herself in the crook of his arm and filled his ears with the details of her adventure, of swimming in the giant bathtub and sleeping in the princess bed, and making her own toast for
petit-déjeuner
and boiling eggs and learning to turn cartwheels in the grass. And all the while Sara stood a few yards away, her face expressionless, watching him.

At last Alyssa wriggled from his arms and exclaimed,
“Regarde-moi! Regarde!”
And he applauded her roundly for two clumsy cartwheels and called out to her in French, “Be careful!” And then there was nothing to do but walk over to Sara, and face her.

He began, “Sara, I am so desperately sorry.”

She replied, “If this had happened in North Carolina, you would be in jail by now.”

The cool contempt in her eyes stabbed at him almost more sharply than the truth of her words. He breathed out, “I know.” He pushed at his hair. “I specifically told Michele to take Alyssa back to school before the offices closed yesterday. Apparently, when it came time to go and she couldn't find her, she thought I had taken her myself.” He drew in another breath and gave one slow shake of his head. “I believe her. I don't think even Michele would do something like this deliberately . . . mostly because she's botched any chance she ever had of gaining custody.”

Sara looked at him with an awful mixture of amazement, outrage, and pity. It made his blood run cold.

She said distinctly, “You forgot her. You are her guardian, the only father figure she knows. She trusted you to take care of her and you
forgot
her because you were so damn busy taking care of your deals and schemes and
yourself
that you couldn't be bothered. Do you have any idea what could have happened to a five-year-old girl wandering around on her own in a place like this? Do you? Do you know how she felt when she got lost in the dark in a
castle
and no one came when she cried? Can you even imagine that, Ash,
can you
?”

Her breathing was rapid and her eyes were flaming and her hands were in fists. He wanted to reach for her but he couldn't. He couldn't even meet her eyes. He said, roughly, “For the love of God, Sara, nothing you can say will make me feel any more wretched than I do.”

Silence pulsed between them. And then, from a few yards away, Alyssa called excitedly, “Sara!
Regardez-vous! Un crapaud!
”

The fury on Sara's face faded like magic into affection as she turned toward the child. “Wonderful!” she exclaimed, and under her breath to Ash, “What is—”

“A toad,” he responded. And they both called at once, he in French and she in English, “Don't touch it!”

That made him smile a little, but her expression showed no such concession. He said, sobering, “You're going to miss your flight. I'll be happy to arrange . . .”

She said, “Don't worry about it. I've canceled the flight.”

Every sense in his body prickled to alertness, because he knew there was more. And nothing he could do would make her tell him before she was ready. She turned and started to stroll toward the croquet mall, keeping a careful eye on Alyssa. He fell into step beside her, his hands clasped behind his back.

She said, after a time, “I've had some time to think.”

He waited, keeping pace with her.

“The other day, at the picnic . . . you were right about me. I've been broken. I really couldn't trust my own judgment, as I think some of my actions have proven. But no one stays broken forever. You were right about that, too.”

She glanced at him. “Michele told me that you've been working on this deal with the hotel company for some time, and that you offered it to Daniel. And he refused.”

Ash felt heat at the back of his neck. He responded evenly, “That's right. As I may have mentioned before, Daniel was an exceedingly impractical fellow. I offered him a way to make money from his property without violating the terms of his inheritance. And he refused. He didn't want the château commercialized.”

Sara nodded, almost as though in approval . . . almost as though she were wondering whether he'd tell the truth. He scowled at that.

Ash said, “What else did Michele tell you?”

“She said you're very good in bed.”

He cast her a sidelong glance, but her face remained implacable. “I should send her a thank-you note.”

“And that she taught you everything you know.”

He muttered, “No jury in the world would convict me.”

Sara said, “As I understand the situation, Michele feels, for whatever reason, that the property should pass to her as the last Orsay heir—however distantly removed. And that she plans to do with it exactly what you do—to make as much money as she can, whatever it takes to do it.”

She seemed to be waiting for a reply, so Ash agreed cautiously, “More or less.”

“And that the only way she can do that is to file a claim on behalf of Alyssa that names herself as conservator, or whatever they're called in France.”

“She's no chance of that now. I will crush her in court.”

“You probably will,” agreed Sara amicably. “But that could take months, or years, and in the end she would only come back with something else. It seems to me the fastest way to discourage someone like that is to remove her motivation.”

He looked at her, interested and impressed. This was an entirely different side of Sara than he had known before, one that was completely incongruous with her bouncy ponytail and baggy shorts, but he was intrigued.

“To that end,” she went on, “I've decided to take possession of my inheritance, and execute my right to buy out your shares over twenty years at a rate of eight percent per annum. I've also made arrangements to put the entire château and its proceeds into a trust for Alyssa, with myself as sole conservator. Since Michele's only legal grounds for challenging the estate are the interests of Alyssa, and since I've already taken steps to make sure everything is in Alyssa's name, that should solve the problem, don't you think?”

Rarely was Ash caught off guard. But this he had not seen coming. It took him a moment to rearrange his thoughts, his plans, his world according to this new information. This new Sara. He actually faltered in his step, but quickly recovered. He murmured, watching her with new alertness, “It would appear I'm not the only one who knows how to use a mobile phone. You've been busy.”

She smiled without humor. “Busier than you know. There's a six-hour time difference between here and the U.S.”

He agreed, watching her. “So there is.”

“Which can be inconvenient when you're trying to transfer funds.”

He stopped walking, stepping in front of her to block her passage. “Sara, you can't be serious.”

She replied, without blinking, “Oh, but I am.”

His eyes went over her—hair, eyes, lips, hands, torso, legs, and feet—in a single, brief, reassessing glance, as though seeing her for the first time, or trying to find the person he thought he knew. He said carefully, “It sounds as though you've been receiving some very astute legal advice in the past few hours. Might I have the pleasure of knowing with whom I'll be negotiating in the future?”

She informed him easily, “Mr. Theodore Winkle, Esquire. After all, he's represented me quite well throughout this whole ordeal. I couldn't think of anyone better qualified to help me now.”

She was not joking. It took him a moment to realize that, which was a moment longer than it should have. “Excellent.” He laughed softly. “Brilliant, in fact. Using my own people against me.”

“Is there a problem?”

“None at all. Winkle is a good man; otherwise I should never have employed him. He may also, of course, be looking for a job tomorrow.”

She stepped around him impatiently. “Don't even try it. Alyssa! Don't eat the grass!”

He followed her gaze, and repeated the command in French. Alyssa, who had prepared a lovely serving of grass, leaves, and flower petals on the stone table, regarded them both with pouty lips for a moment. Then, distracted by a butterfly, she clambered down from the table to chase it.

Ash said, “You're being reactionary. You can't have thought this through. Why in the world didn't you talk to me about this first?”

She cast him a single incredulous look. “Why in the world should I have?”

He shook his head sharply, still hardly believing what she had done. “This is the road to financial ruin. You can't afford this château and you have no need for it. And Winkle, if he has any sense at all, will have advised you that placing the whole lot in Alyssa's name does not in any way free you from liability for its maintenance, taxes, or other expenses—in fact, it only makes the burden harsher. Furthermore”—he had to say it—“with no proof whatsoever that Alyssa is a legal heir, you have no grounds for a conservancy, and the French courts will never name you, an American, as trustee.”

Sara started walking again, her gaze on Alyssa and the butterfly. “Did you know Daniel had dual citizenship?”

His tone was impatient. “Of course I did.”

“Which means that Alyssa, as the child of a naturalized U.S. citizen born on foreign soil, is an American. And that means . . .” She swooped her hand down to casually pluck off the head of a tall stem of summer grass, scatterings its seeds to the wind. “I have a stronger claim to her guardianship than you do, or even Michele. I'm her stepmother.”

He was silent for a step. When he spoke again his voice had an edge. “Very clever. Well-done. Of course, with no proof that Daniel is Alyssa's father, you have nothing—no conservatorship, no claim as trustee.”

She said conversationally, “Please don't think you can use your legal tricks on me, Ash. Because you know how you were going to crush Michele in court? Those are the exact same strategies I'm going to use against you to gain custody of Alyssa if I have to.”

He stared at her. “Good God, I half think you're serious. What in the world would you do with a five-year-old French child you've known less than twenty-four hours?”

“A lot more than you have,” she shot back furiously. “You parked her in a boarding school for three years! You let her fellow students call her a bastard! How she's grown up as sweet and cheerful as she has is beyond me. And don't forget.” Her eyes narrowed coldly. “You abandoned her last night, the same as Michele did. And you were legally responsible.”

He stared her down for a long moment. “Very well,” he said at last, calmly. “I think you've made your position clear. But enough. This is madness. There are easier ways to manage this.”

“Let me explain something to you, Ash,” she said, and purposefully resumed her easy, pleasant tone. “You are not managing anything. Not anymore. I am, until proven otherwise, Daniel's only legal heir. I will do with his estate what I please.”

He said harshly, “You won't get away with this, Sara. I won't allow it.”