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A MOMENT LATER PASCALINE delivered a plate of cold sliced ham. I helped her solve the dilemma of where to set the platter then gently detained the cook with my hand.
"Do you know who our guest is, Pascaline?" I asked.
Her lips parted in readiness for the guess she could not supply.
"This is Samantha Wrexham Carlisle–Hugh Marsford's granddaughter.”
The cook looked at Samantha as if for the first time, then back at me. I nodded to reaffirm my statement, and Pascaline showed signs of acceptance.
Yet something struggled behind the smile, behind the "Welcome, my lady," and the little curtsy. Was it Samantha's questionable morals, disfavor inherited from her rebellious mother? Or was it one more person to interfere in the search for wealth going on behind the scenes?
"I will fix a room," Pascaline half offered, half announced.
"No, thank you, Pascaline," I said. "Samantha is staying with me."
With an unconcealed glance at my bandages, evident even under my knit shirt, the cook nodded, then turned to leave.
"I'm sure Samantha would be honored to have one of your lovely dinners in the dining hall tonight. Can you manage that?" I pressed.
Finally, the cook's eyes crinkled into half moons. "I manage very much," she said.
"Thank you, Richard," Samantha told me after Pascaline had gone. "It feels better having her know I belong, even if she frowns on our housing arrangements."
"She saw my injuries. I don't think she's worried about your virtue."
"She already knows I don't have any, remember? Maybe she's concerned about yours."
We laughed that off, then settled side by side on the cushioned lounge to nibble at the food. But of course you always desire the forbidden fruit. I longed for another night of intimacy, but it wasn’t going to happen so soon after my injuries.
"It's all right, Richard," Samantha consoled me. "We have more important things to do tonight, remember? Cousin George is still in town."
"Easy for you to say," I responded. But she was right. I had not broken out of the hospital for my own pleasure.
"It would help if you put on your beach top,” I told her. “It won’t help much, but it would help."
She kissed my forehead and put on the top. Then she relocated to her towel on the stone bench.
"Seriously. How are we going to stop George?” she wondered, pensively swirling her tea.
"Find the treasure first," I announced.
Sam’s back straightened and her arms tensed. "Can we do that?" she asked.
"I'm working on it."
She drew her knees along the stone bench up to her chin and watched me for several moments. I knew she was pretending to be patient, and I was trying to let her get away with it. The spoiler was that I knew she wasn’t really there to nurse a needy artist through a punctured lung. The word 'treasure' sent too much adrenaline pumping through her Marsford veins.
Pascaline outdid herself for our dinner. There was a new soup containing every fresh vegetable available, a garlic salad and crusty rolls, lamb chops and baby peas, pan fried potatoes, apple flan, and, of course, wine which I could not afford to touch. Samantha imbibed just enough to soften the mercenary glint in her eyes and tint her high cheekbones with a flattering blush. She wore a long silk dress in a turquoise and white bamboo print and little else, which I complained of as highly unfair. The smile she used for an apology was kind, but not especially sympathetic. I would have to handle my own libido.
About the middle of my second lamb chop I got her onto the subject of her family.
"My grandfather, dear old Hugh, was very unfair to his children. He'd tell them no they couldn't have this or that, but he never denied himself anything."
"Perhaps he was trying notto spoil them," I suggested.
Samantha flashed eyes at me full of her mother's resentment. "It wasn't anything like that. He was mean, that's all. Nothing his children ever did was good enough. Both my mother and uncle Silas hated how he treated them. That’s partly why Mom married an American, to move far away from France. Also, she didn’t get along with granddad's second wife."
Sam forked another potato, glanced toward the portrait, then back at me.
"If possible, my uncle Silas took grandfather's disapproval even harder than Mom did. He’d expected to live in this chateau and never work a day of his life.” She shrugged. “And why not? Hugh lived like that! He fiddled with his art work and his father paid for everything. But good old Hugh didn't see the irony. He and Silas had a huge fight over money and Gramps kicked Silas out.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Wales, to live on my great-grandfather's land. Started calling himself Wrexham after Hugh's father. Did you know Granddad had already rejected his father's name?"
I admitted I had not known.
"Yep. Late in life he changed his name from Wrexham to Marsford. We all knew it was a protest of some sort, or else an attempt to forget his father had been a bastard–the unknown-father kind of bastard. That’s why he used the name of the town where he was born. I always thought it seemed a little odd Hugh picked ‘Marsford,’ because that was where his father lived before he started his store in Wrexham."
"Maybe it was where he was born," I suggested.
"Yeah, maybe," Samantha agreed.
"The Wrexham in your name–was that a protest, too?"
"Could be. I never thought about it."
We had lingered over coffee too long, and Pascaline was waiting in the doorway. Samantha finally folded her napkin, so I rose to pull out her chair. When she stayed seated, I followed her gaze back to the woman in the portrait with Hugh Marsford, the grandmother she so resembled. Sam seemed to be drawing strength from her, or maybe acceptance or encouragement. Whatever it was, it straightened her back and lifted her chin. When she finally walked over to kiss Pascaline on the cheek, she moved with the grace of a queen.
The possessiveness I’d felt toward the chateau evaporated; I was a visitor again, nothing more. Yet before I shut the door on the dining hall, something about Hugh Marsford's expression in the portrait caught my eye. This time I imagined I saw a hint of a greater worry than that exhibited in the photograph with Claudine. Yes, the man taunted his heirs with mind games, but in the end he did provide for them in his own eccentric way–if they were clever enough to earn it. Yet somehow it had all gone wrong. His son and daughter abandoned him and now at least one was dead set on stealing what he believed he deserved from the other. Any way you looked at it, Lily had died because of their greed, and I almost had, too.
If no one found a way to prevent another tragedy, both of Hugh’s legacies–his art and his family– would be ruined. Of course, I was projecting, but I chose to take the look in Hugh’s eyes personally. “Don’t worry,” I told his portrait telepathically. “I like to finish what I start.”
Before going to bed I made my security rounds with Samantha's company. Nothing evidenced any signs of tampering, but I hadn’t really expected any. I switched on the burglar alarms and numerous lights, plus a radio I found in the sitting room for that occupied effect.
My strength was growing with each hour, but what I used depleted the supply quickly. By the time we returned to the den I was so done in Samantha had to help me off with my shirt.
"What's all this for?" she asked, referring to the tight straps protecting my damaged ribs. "Richard, you're hurt much worse than you let me know. Here. Lie down. Why did you let me joke about it?"
"Because it is a joke. On me. And I needed to get back here. If you had known, would you have helped me?"
"Never.”
“I rest my case.”
"You'll rest your bloody ass,” she said, yanking off my last shoe.
"That's my girl.”
She softened then and snuggled beside me. I fantasized that we were innocent young lovers brought together by a sudden rain, dry and safe and content just to be touching. And once again I felt an unfamiliar closeness, unlike any of my previous sexual encounters. Maybe it was time I expected more.
Samantha wriggled in the crook of my arm. "Richard... when you got hurt–what was it like?” she asked.
I said it hurt to move.
“Bad?”
"Yes, very bad. But if I didn't move, I was pretty sure I would die.”
"It must have been torture."
"Yes,” I agreed at first, then I remembered Brad Sykes and said, "No."
Yet when I thought more about it, I had to admit my recent, very real, pain eclipsed all the horror movies I’d seen in my head.
Sam had drifted off to sleep, but I lay there a very long time, grateful just to have the warmth of her body.
The night passed. No burglar alarms set off a dangerous chase. When I awoke, my clock said 9:30. Samantha was not in bed, but I sensed she was near.
I stood and stretched, wandered over to admire the view of the sea. The nighttime cloud of humidity had begun its spiral up toward the morning sun. Seagulls bickered over a piece of fish. The pleasure dock down below bustled with vacationers eager to make the most of the day.
I felt wonderful. It was the third day after my fall, but that couldn’t account for my magnificent sense of relief. Instead it was as if Brad Sykes had personally come down from heaven and placed a get-out-of-jail-free card in my hand.
I spent the night with a woman without a nightmare. I had forgiven myself.
I thought about thanking Samantha for nudging my reasoning along, but when I went into the garden, she was staring out to sea, preoccupied by some private thought of her own.
She wore a white shorts outfit and sneakers, and the full cup of coffee she held looked cold.
"I have to go out for a while,” she said. “Do you mind?”
"No. I'll be fine. Tennis date or something?"
"Yes, that's it," she agreed readily. "I don't know exactly when I'll be back, but don't worry about me. Okay?"
I told her it was okay.
She set down the cup, kissed me lightly on the mouth as if she were late, grabbed a sweater, and left.