PRESENT DAY
LES TROIS-MOUTIERS
LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE
“Trespassers—especially the enchanted American kind—are fair game for the police. Best to be keepin’ that front of mind while we’re here.”
Best-case scenario, they’d spend the night in jail.
It’s what Quinn warned her, among other things. To stay still. And quiet. To keep their voices low as they traversed the wide moat to the castle ruins and certainly avoid making any hasty movements in the patched wooden dory, or the two of them could end up in the water.
He said he could sneak her in, sight unseen. But sink the boat in a great splash and there’d be little he could do to ensure their undertaking remained a secret. He’d agreed to the midnight excursion reluctantly, and with repeated deep sighs, only when Ellie reminded him they’d accepted her payment for a tour in advance and promised her full agreement to follow orders once they were on the water.
Quinn sat behind her, steady and silent, rowing them headlong into the night.
“So this is Fox Grove?” she breathed out, her words fogging to a slight cloud in the night air. “It’s bigger than it looks from the outside.”
The boat creaked as Quinn stretched back and rowed again, the oars cutting a lilting refrain of wood to water. “That it is.”
“And how do you say it?”
“Bosquet du Renard,” he whispered back, his Dubliner upbringing somehow managing to cling to his words even then.
“You’ve seen this before? You know, the view of the grove from the inside?”
She turned, having expected Quinn’s reply, but caught only his quarter-profile, etched in silence as he rowed on. He’d pulled his hair back, tucking it behind the ears, and still hadn’t shaved. Probably because he was at war with the expectations of his grandfather’s world, and it was a show of defiance to cut his own path in something.
He cleared his throat but didn’t answer—just kept rowing.
A muffled laugh, perhaps? Maybe he’d seen an American tourist’s reaction too many times before. It must all seem cliché to him. Countless boat rides across the moat and somewhere along the line, even a fairy-tale castle can manage to lose its luster.
“Something to add, Mr. Foley?”
Quinn paused, long enough that she stole a full glance over her shoulder to see if her instincts had been correct. He didn’t appear to be laughing then, but he was waiting this time, like he knew she’d turn back. He met her with the oars resting in his lap and the green pools of his eyes staring back. His typical buttoned-up nature might have kept him glued to short answers, but he could punctuate the words with a single look.
“Just that I’ve seen it. Once.”
“You mean to tell me you live here, have tourists stopping by the vineyard every single day, and yet you’ve only been out here once?”
He shrugged it off. “That’s right.”
“How is that even possible, that you can know this place exists, see it staring back every time you look out your window, and not want to come here every day? I think I’d live here if I had the chance.”
“We live where we live. Isn’t that what you said? But you forget, I’m not in the habit of trespassin’ upon private property. I don’t take this trip lightly.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“You’re still darin’ though, yeah? The letter of the law doesn’t stop Ellie Carver.”
“Has it stopped you?” She pitched an eyebrow at him, firing his question back. “And if you’ve only seen it once, then why choose now to see it again?”
“Let’s just say that your persuasiveness won out, mainly so I wouldn’t have to hear you ask for the hundredth time. But I warn you that others have come and gone, lookin’ for the same thing you are. The ruins won’t be disturbed. You’ll find yourself disappointed if you set your heart on rescuing this place.”
“Rescuing?” Ellie waved him off with a flick of her wrist. “Don’t be ridiculous. I just want to see it.”
Quinn stopped, bracing the oars on his knees again, but leaned in far this time, as if she’d struck a chord somewhere inside. He sent her a knowing look and tapped a fingertip to his temple. “Tourists always want to see it. And whether they say it aloud, it’s always what they’re thinking. Admit it—it’s what you were thinkin’. See the ruins first, then spearhead an international social-media campaign to garner support and return an important historical landmark to its former glory. If you sell mountains of tourist tickets afterward, that’s a craicin’ outcome for the cause.”
“Craicing?”
“Yeah. Since you can’t look that one up in your Irish dictionary at the moment, it means a good time, to you Americans.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s found a good time in doing something positive.”
“And here I thought you wanted more than a good time. That plan may have worked for other castles in the Loire Valley, but I told you the property owner wants nothin’ of it. And he’s persistent enough to employ security staff who are passionate in ferretin’ out intruders on the grounds. So no, I don’t come here. I live on the other side of the estate, let the castle be, and I’m quite content with that.”
“I’m sure you are. And I’m not a lawbreaker either, come to think of it. Just the opposite. We homebodies don’t pick up and go that often—certainly not as far as France. But I’d still come back here. To this place,” she confessed, enchantment pulling her back to the landscape ahead of them. “I’d have to.”
Ellie turned around for a breath, somehow unafraid to show her excitement this time, even if he would mark it as vulnerability. Or cliché. Or whatever might make a Loire Valley vineyard owner find humor in a tourist’s dumbstruck moment. It was enough that they were here, dancing around the edges of uncovering the castle’s secrets.
Whatever response he chose, Quinn couldn’t make her sorry for it. Not now.
“I wanted to know what might have been in this place—what story was here in the valley of castles and kings. I never even knew The Sleeping Beauty existed until a couple of weeks ago. And now that I’m here . . . she’s all I see.”
Ellie pictured her Grandma Vi, the proper English lady, leaning forward in the dory with the same excitement she felt then, like a child at a thousand Christmases. This was a fairy tale come to life. It was generations past. The foundation of another time, another place, daring to reach out and ripple the cadence of their present.
“It’s better than I ever could have imagined.”
Quinn leaned in slow, the boat creaking with the shifting weight. “Look over there.” He pointed into the trees to their left. She turned with him, peering through the mingling darkness. “Buried off in the woods behind. See it?”
Gangly trees tried to hide it. Ivy delighted in blanketing its sides, just like on its larger sister. A tiny cross and spire rose out of the overgrowth, and Ellie followed it down with her gaze until it connected to stone walls and a pitched roof lined in haunting portals of rainbow-stained glass. The windows were narrow, aged and unkempt, with a noticeable break dominating the corner of one. Fractured glass stole no beauty from the forgotten place; it meant life had happened there.
Her heartbeat quickened. “There’s a chapel . . .”
“The castle burned—was gutted from the inside centuries ago. It’s been rebuilt o’er the generations, and abandoned after a fire in the 1930s. But the original chapel survived. Through World War II and the fightin’ that took place all around it. It’s had a new roof or two, but who would’ve believed it’s still there after all this time? Just peekin’ through the trees.”
Exhilaration rolled under her skin like ice water pulsing in her veins.
“Please tell me we can go inside.” The statement fell from Ellie’s lips like a question, her tone rising at the end. She turned back from the chapel to look him in the eye, hope taking precedent.
Quinn braced his arms to keep the oars stilled against his knees. “Sorry. Couldn’t take the chance it’d fall in on us.”
“And . . . if a tourist is fully aware and willing to take said risk, without suing you should she receive even a scratch from a rogue thornbush?”
“The no is with full knowledge that you’d always take the risk for somethin’ you truly want, Ellie. That much I am certain about.”
It wouldn’t have been the right time for Ellie to remind him she wasn’t one to accept defeat. She’d traveled thousands of miles and put her whole life on hold in the process to avoid doing just that. The no wasn’t a no at all. In her view, it was simply a “not yet” with the ever-present possibility of negotiation.
She clicked away at mental snapshots: the layout of the trees leading to the chapel . . . the windows facing the water—especially the broken one, nudged up to a tall shadow on one end . . . probably a door—an entrance into the heart of the hidden place. She’d remember it all for when she returned. And return she would. Once they were back on dry land, all bets were off. Now that Ellie had seen it, she couldn’t possibly stay away.
And then . . . Ellie stared at a sight she’d seen before.
The rock wall. The rounded arch and the opening for a gate that was now missing. Arbor rows spread out behind, a vineyard rich with the harvest to come. Though time weathered and now buried under thicket and thorn, this place was familiar, already etched in her mind.
A forgotten photo had been taken there in summer 1944. The very place her grandmother had once sat.
The scene where her own story had begun.
Forget the wobbly dory. Quinn’s warnings about trespassing. Even the plan to return and investigate the romantic little chapel on another day. In a blink the moment shifted, like lightning had just split her in two.
Overcome, Ellie shot to her feet, her heart dancing wild in the confines of her chest. “What is that?”
“Ellie! Have ya gone mad?” Quinn reached for her hand, no doubt to keep her from pitching over the side. “It’s taking everythin’ I’ve got to keep this rig from overturnin’ us when you aren’t movin’ about.”
“What is that stone wall? See? Far off behind the chapel. There. Through the trees.”
“I don’t know—some leftover structure of the castle gardens?”
The boat wobbled to start, then pitched violently to one side. He eased forward, balancing with care, and wrapped his forearm around her waist from behind, trying to stabilize them both.
The rush of Quinn’s arm enveloping her couldn’t hold her back. In truth, she wasn’t sure anything could. If the castle had whispered to her before, the chapel, and now the view from the photo, were crying out, drawing her in. She was too close to turn back, too aware of what finding the stone wall could mean.
He whispered, breath warm against the back of her ear: “Ellie, if ya don’t calm down this instant, you’re going to send us both over—”
With one wrong, eager step forward, she was close enough to see clearly, and then . . . only water. She’d been at once above and then submerged in the depths of it.
The shock of cold stunned her senses, dulling the bearings to determine right side up. At least it wasn’t like being in the ocean, where waves battled against the swimmer’s kick. This was calm. Cool and dark. Velvet water that pulled her in and then allowed her to float back to the surface again without having to put up much of a fight.
Ellie poked her head up out of the water and sucked in precious air, a deep onslaught of fresh oxygen to fill her lungs. She looked around as she breathed, treading water with an enchanted castle and overturned dory looking on.
Hair trekked down over her eye, sticking to her face. She slapped it back, coughing at the mouthful of water she’d swallowed on the way down.
“Quinn?”
Her jacket ballooned up against the surface, and she freed herself from it, slipping her arms out. Her body took to shivering as she kicked through the water, her skin prickling under just a tee and jeans, and her heart a little too frantic to find him.
“Quinn!”
Relief flooded her when she saw him—for a moment anyway.
Quinn was fine. More than irritated, but fine, by the looks of him. He’d been pitched to the opposite side and was treading with one arm waving under water, the other fused to his grandfather’s overturned dory.
It was feeble, but she tried to offer a faint smile. “Sorry?”
If looks could boil water, they’d have fallen into a Jacuzzi for the way his green eyes pierced through her.
“While I’m delighted to know you weren’t lyin’ about your ability to swim, I’d have preferred to avoid this. Even though I had a feelin’ that with you, it was sure to happen.”
“I had no intention to try it out, honestly.” Ellie breathed, adrenaline pumping and limbs tiring in the water, trying to sort her thoughts into words that would make sense to him. She grabbed onto the side of the boat, patch-side up to the sky. “But I have this photo, taken during the war . . . I should have told you. I didn’t know if you’d believe me . . . and even if you had . . . But it’s that.”
She tried pointing out of the water but got lost in treading again. “Right there. The stone wall and the arch, the vineyard behind—everything. In a photo taken of my grandmother from June 5, 1944. She was there! Sitting on that rock wall. I know it now. Her story is buried here somewhere, at this castle. At your vineyard. Now that I know it’s here, I have to find it. I can’t give up now. Not when we’re so close.”
“So close to what, Ellie, that would send you all this way? Because it’s got to be more than just diggin’ up the past.”
Don’t say it out loud . . .
Don’t say it out loud because that will make it true . . .
“She’s dying.”
Ellie clamped her eyes shut when she said it. Just let the weight of the words fall as she kept treading water. Arms tiring and heart stinging in her chest.
“I have nothing left but her. My parents were on their way home to me. That’s why it happened—I had a youth soccer game, of all the stupid things. They were rushing so they wouldn’t miss it and took a company plane. And I never saw them again.”
Quinn shifted his glance from her to the stone wall and arbor rows as she spoke. He waited a moment, then simply shook his head, his chin, still defiant and unshaved, tipping just under the surface of the water. His brow creased, something evident. Sorrow? Pity? Please, God, don’t let it be pity.
“It’s not your fault, Ellie.”
She shook her head, water stirring around her chin.
“Look at me.” He paused until she dared to lock eyes with his. “Did you need to hear that? That it’s not your fault?”
“I know—or, my head does. But my heart is telling me that if I lose Grandma Vi, I lose them all over again. And then I’m alone. So it’s not just a story, not a castle or a rock wall that I need. It’s her. All of her. And I know if I look past the weathered stone, she’s here. Waiting for me. That somehow, this story will have a happy ending because I know that’s what’s coming. An ending. And I’m not ready for it.”
He ran a hand over his brow, slicking the hair off his forehead.
“Well, that changes things a bit, doesn’t it?”
“I know it does. And I should have . . .” She stopped. Redirected her thoughts to what they could control at the moment. “Do you think we can see it?” No—that was weak. She wouldn’t ask. “We need to see it. Please. The boat’s already overturned. And we’re soaking wet. What does it matter if we swim to shore and take a look around now? We’ll have to walk back anyway. At least the trip won’t have been wasted.”
Leveling her chin in confidence wasn’t the easiest thing when she was trying to stay above water, but she did it, straightening her spine all the way up.
“I think you’ll find your plan difficult, Ellie.”
“Why? You think I can’t do it?”
Quinn did laugh then. A light chuckle he didn’t try to hide in the least. “I’d be a fool to doubt you. You’re quite clever enough to find your own way. But I know you can’t do it—at least not tonight, because . . . On nous arête.”
If Ellie’s heart could have sunk to the bottom of the moat, it would have. Her French was worse than rudimentary, but it still didn’t take much to pick out the meaning of the final word.
“Quinn . . .”
Flood lamps clicked on, engulfing them in light.
A small fishing boat appeared off behind them, the engine cut and three uniformed officers standing in its belly. They directed their searchlights in a beam along the side of the overturned dory, illuminating their faces.
Ellie pulled her palm up to block the piercing light from her eyes.
“Salut, Michel,” Quinn called out over her, a hand raised in a lackluster wave to one of the men in the boat. The man nodded back, a rather sorry-looking simper fused to his lips.
“Do you know them?” Ellie whispered, keeping her death grip on the dory. She looked from Quinn over to the men, noting that their faces seemed to reflect similar amusement.
“Chaps from Loudun.”
“And these chaps are . . . ?”
“Police. And they’ve arrested dozens of tourists just like you. Can spot a trespassin’ American with an eagle eye, I’m afraid, even in the dead of night and with careful steps to subvert a few security cameras.” Quinn held his hand out to her so he could ease her over to the side of the security boat and help her climb in.
He leaned in close, whispering, “So your castle will just have to keep her secrets hidden a little longer, yeah?”
Ellie placed her trembling hand in his as he led her over to the side of the boat, then she climbed up. Quinn followed, easing onto the bench beside her. She turned back as the motor started and they began to drift away, her heart sinking like a stone under the water.
Even as an officer handed her a life vest, Ellie slipped it over her head, refusing to look away. With one final ardent glance at her castle, she whispered her promise.
A promise to come back.