Keys to the Castle (9 page)

Ash did nothing but lift a glance toward a shadow somewhere beyond her shoulder, and a waiter appeared to refill her glass. This time she sipped more slowly.

“My father walked out on us when I was six,” she said. “My mother—wasn't the kind of person who could recover from something like that. She was broken, I think, from the inside out. She started to drink, couldn't hold a job . . . I kind of took over for her, fixed the meals, made sure my little sister got to school on time and that we had clean clothes to wear . . . I lied about my age so I could get an after-school job at fourteen, and I kept telling myself if I worked really, really hard, I could get Dixie and myself out of there. And eventually I did. I got a scholarship, a degree, and a great job. It was all I wanted, all I'd ever wanted. Of course . . .”

She shrugged, and sipped her sherry. “All those years I threw myself into my work like that I really was still just a little girl trying to get out of that trailer park, but by the time I realized that, half my life had gone by. And when Daniel showed up—the most impossible, exotic, romantic fantasy any woman could ever imagine—I tried to make up for every dream I'd never let myself have all at once. I was ready to be swept away. I wanted the insanity. I'd lived the buttoned-down life for almost twenty years and I was ready to throw caution to the wind. It's not that I didn't know better. It's that I
wanted
to believe in the fairy-tale ending. My sister had it all, why couldn't I?” A small smile. “And of course, who could resist Daniel? I sometimes wonder whether he wasn't as caught up in my fantasy as I was.”

As she spoke, twilight was deepening, bathing the terrace in rich blue shadows that seemed to encourage intimacy. In the background, silent figures moved, dropping a white linen cloth over the stone table, bringing out trays, lighting candles. With a gentle
whoosh
, a torchiere flared to light a half dozen feet away, smelling of butane and citrus, and in soft sequence—
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh
—more of them followed, encircling the terrace with a golden glow and casting dancing shadows across the stone. Ash watched her silently, and listened.

Sara took another sip of her drink. “I knew it wasn't real,” she said. “I knew it couldn't last. I just didn't care. I guess, if I thought about it at all, I expected to just wake up one morning to find him gone, like my dad . . . but no, I didn't think about it. I just wanted to live the dream for as long as I could, because I had gone so many years without any dreams at all. I didn't expect him to
die
. I didn't expect him to die without telling me who his next of kin was or where his insurance papers were or if he even had a will . . .” Her voice tightened here, and she stared into her almost empty glass. “When the coroner released his body they wanted to know how I wished to dispose of the remains, and
I didn't know
. I was so angry at Daniel for that, for dying, for all the things he didn't tell me and all the things he left me to take care of. But mostly for just making it all so
real
, and messy and ugly.”

She looked at Ash. “But eventually I got over that. I got over the anger, I got over the disappointment, I was even starting to get over the pain. Now I find out my handsome prince has left me a four-hundred-year-old castle to remember him by, and how am I supposed to deal with that? What am I supposed to do now?”

Ash put his drink aside and stood, extending his hand to her. “Come to dinner,” he said. Sara hesitated, then put her hand in his and allowed him to draw her to her feet. He placed his hand lightly on the back of her arm as they crossed toward the table, guiding her across the uneven flagstones. She said tiredly, by way of apology, “Too much information, huh?”

“Daniel,” he said, “had an uncanny knack for complicating the lives of those who cared for him. Still, it's rather interesting, don't you think, that of all the things he could have left to a woman who never before had dreams of her own, a castle is the most fitting?”

She glanced at him, and smiled a little, though it was fleeting. “That was a nice thing to say,” she said. “And I apologize for making you listen to all that. Are you married, Mr. Lindeman?”

He pulled out her chair and waited until she was seated to respond. “I was, briefly.” He went around the table and took the chair opposite her. “To Daniel's cousin, actually. She is a viper.” He compressed his lips in a brief gesture of distaste as he shook out his napkin. “I make it a point never to speak of her during meals.”

Sara's tone was both surprised and dismayed. “I didn't know Daniel had any living relatives.”

“The relationship is distant, to say the least,” Ash assured her. “There was a breach between the two family branches in the 1800s, and they've barely been civil to each other since.”

The table was beautifully set with fresh yellow flowers and candles flickering in a silver candelabra. She could smell the aroma of something cooked in wine and garlic, and warm fresh bread. A waiter poured wine, and Ash told her it was from a vineyard only a few kilometers away that was known for its aromatic wild clover hues and chocolate bottom notes, and she tried to look interested as she tasted it. It was good, but she did not taste any chocolate.

“I don't know much about wine,” she admitted.

“You will, if your visit lasts more than a few days,” he assured her. “You should try to get down to the village on market day. Many of the local wineries bring samples, and in November there's a delightful Beaujolais Neauvoux festival.”

Sara said she might like to ship a case of wine home to her sister, and he said that would be easy to arrange, and they talked like that for a time, about unimportant things. Sara knew that he was doing what he did best—directing the conversation, putting her at ease, carefully choreographing the flow of the evening away from such disturbing topics as widowhood, legacies, and castles.

He reminded her of a certain type of CEO she had occasionally come into contact with in the course of her job . . . the ones who knew, from the day of their birth, that they would always be in the ninetieth percentile and who had followed a predictable path to that point. They had finishing school manners that were so impeccable they seemed genuine. They never told crude jokes or smoked cigars at board meetings. They were attentive and concerned hosts. When they entertained you on board their yachts they did not spend the day ogling your ass. Sometimes those men would ask Sara out, and sometimes she would accept. When they made love their hands were always cool.

The waiter served something delicious with leeks and crisp cabbage in a sweet red sauce, and a warm evening breeze made the torchlights sway and the candles sputter. The first course was replaced with a creamy soup. Sara caught the reflection of torchlight on dark water at the far end of the terrace, and she inquired, “What is that lake?”

Ash followed her gaze. “That's not a lake,” he said. “It's the moat.”

And there it was, the elephant in the room. The point of their meeting.

Sara put down her spoon, and sipped her wine. “Of course. We're in a castle, after all.”

“It's an affectation, really,” Ash said. “Châteaux of this era weren't built for defense.”

“What were they built for?”

“Ostentation. Or, occasionally, summer homes for the court.”

Sara said, “Ah.”

The waiter poured white wine, and whisked away her empty glass of red. The soup was replaced with fish. Sara stared at it, her hands in her lap.

Ash lifted his fork and smiled at her. “The trick,” he said, “is to take only a taste or two of each dish. There are four more courses on the way.”

She said, “What are my options?”

Ash touched his napkin to his lips, sipped his wine, and leaned back in his chair. “The first, and perhaps simplest, would be to do nothing. Over time we could arrange for you to buy out my shares at a reasonable profit and you would take sole ownership. Once that's done you could proceed with the restoration, lease the land as a vineyard, open the place to tourists, whatever you like. A good many Americans have had excellent luck with similar projects.”

“Do you mean . . . live here?”

“Not necessarily. You could hire a management firm.”

“It sounds expensive. And complicated.”

“It can be. But there are many variations on a theme. Winkle has prepared a very detailed report for you on several different scenarios. I suggest we review that together in the morning.” He picked up his fork again.

“I'd rather you just tell me. Now.”

He tasted the fish, chewed thoughtfully, and took his time reaching for his wineglass. “The other option, of course,” he said, “would be for you to sell outright. You hold the controlling interest; you're within your rights to do so. You would buy out my investment with your profit, and walk away with a tidy sum.”

Sara sank back in her chair, relieved. “Yes,” she said. “I like that one. That's the one I think I'll do. How much—how much do you think it's worth?”

Ash's eyes were masked by the deep shadows, and a spark of candlelight glinted off his uplifted glass as he replied mildly, “Between six and ten million, appraised. Of course that doesn't necessarily determine what it would fetch.”

He spoke the numbers easily, as though they were in his everyday vocabulary, which of course they were. The only time Sara had ever used the word
million
was in reference to someone else's money; never her own. She actually felt dizzy for a moment.

She took a drink of her wine without tasting it. The waiter came to remove the fish and gave her a disapproving look. She managed, “Would that be euros or dollars?”

“Euros. Of course, there is a lien against the property of something over a million.”

“To you?”

“Correct. And any buyer would have to be advised that the cost of restoring the property would run something close to fifteen hundred euros per square meter.”

She was still trying to convert euros to dollars in her head. “Is that a lot?”

“Only if you have three thousand square meters to restore.”

She gave up on the math. “Bottom line?”

“It would cost very nearly as much to restore as it's worth. Private buyers with that kind of capital are few and far between. It could be on the market for quite some time. Meanwhile, you've still the exorbitant expense of maintenance.”

Sara was beginning to wish the waiter had stopped refilling her wineglass after the first one. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said carefully, “that I own a property worth millions of dollars, but could conceivably end up in debt?”

“I'm afraid so.” His tone was sympathetic. “That's why so many of these old places pass out of the families that have owned them for centuries. They're simply impractical to maintain.”

Sara thought about that for a time. Then she said, “I don't suppose you'd like to buy me out?”

He chuckled in the dark. “I'm afraid my holdings portfolio is already quite plump with châteaux in the Loire.”

“Couldn't I just sell my share to someone else?”

He sipped his wine, his eyes still shadowed. “Inadvisable. There is, however, another alternative. We could form a partnership, you and I, and lease out the rights to the property on a long-term basis to a corporation—a hotelier for example—who planned to develop it over time. Or we could form an investment group and do the same ourselves. Either way, the venture would take the burden of maintenance off our shoulders and pay a very handsome annual return.”

The waiter placed a plate of sliced lamb, redolent of rosemary and garlic, before her, and poured yet another glass of wine. She shook her head slowly. “I was in the business world for a long time. Long enough to know that's not how I want to spend the rest of my life.”

“I would handle the entire matter for you,” he assured her smoothly. “All you'd need do is cash the checks.”

She picked up her wineglass, regarding him with barely disguised skepticism. “Said the spider to the fly.”

He laughed softly, leaning forward into the light. “I have references,” he assured her, “from only the most highly placed flies.”

She released a weary breath. “And I have a headache.”

“You see now why I wanted to wait until after dinner to discuss this. Do please at least taste the lamb, my dear, before I have an irate chef to deal with as well.” He lifted his glass to her. “And tell me what you think of the cabernet. It's a bit peppery for my taste but it's quite popular in the region.”

She sipped the wine. “Peppery,” she said without inflection, and returned her glass carefully to the snowy tablecloth. Her head was swimming with facts and figures, and the dizzying plunge from multimillionaire to practically impoverished. What she really wanted to do was forget the entire conversation, but there was one thing she had to know first. “What,” she asked, “did Daniel do with a million dollars? I mean, euros?”

Ash did not answer at once. It might have been because he didn't understand what the question referenced, or simply because he was swallowing the bite of lamb he had just taken. Sara knew his type well enough to suspect he was, in fact, trying to decide how to answer.

He placed his fork, tines down, on the edge of his plate, used his napkin, sipped his wine. His easy, forthright gaze, however, never left her. “Daniel, as you know, was somewhat improvident. The cash amount he received from my investment shares was considerably less than a million euros, but part of the contract was that I would continue to pay the taxes and other necessary expenses as they accrued. That has mounted up over the years. Of course we do what we can to offset the expenses by letting the place out now and again for special events—someone actually shot a film here last year, I believe it was—but the balance sheet is rarely even. The firm has kept a full accounting, naturally,” he added, “which you'll want to have your own experts review before any documents are signed.”