Miramont's Ghost (11 page)

Marie entered the parlor like visiting royalty, and the children dipped their heads toward her. Even Antoine had grown quiet. She examined the boy. “Antoine, tuck in that shirt. You look like a street urchin.” Marie moved toward the chair by the fire, pulling her gloves off, one finger at a time. The scent of lavender followed her like a shadow.

Antoine did as he was told. He moved more slowly than a few moments before, quiet and sedate now, and kept his eyes on the rug.

Genevieve trailed in a moment later. “Marie! How good it is to have you home again.”

Adrienne rolled her eyes at the tone in her mother’s voice.

“Are you home long?” Genevieve asked, slipping into the chair opposite Marie’s. Everyone in the room held their breath, waiting to hear the words from Marie’s mouth—like criminals, waiting to hear the sentence from the judge.

Marie smiled and held her hands toward the fire. “A few months, perhaps. Until Julien finishes building his castle in Manitou Springs. What with all the construction, it isn’t a very restful place to be right now. But, oh! When it is finished.” She sighed and smiled. “At last he is in a place that is much more fitting for who he is. A place where he is appreciated.”

Marie continued, obviously lost in her story. “Manitou Springs is
so
beautiful—a lot like here, in fact. Mountains, pine trees, beautiful vistas. And the people.” She moved her head from side to side. “Finally, he has been assigned to a place that is civilized. He is once again among Europeans, thank God. I thought we would never get away from all those wild heathens in New Mexico Territory.”

Dinner dragged on and on, as if every moment were stretched into ten. Adrienne kept her eyes on her plate, watching the interactions between Marie and Genevieve from under her lashes. She studied her coq au vin, and did her best not to look directly at Marie. She pushed her food around the plate. From her sideways glances, she saw that Emelie did the same.

“You should see what Julien is building,” Marie continued, and leaned back in her chair. She sipped from her wine, sparkling deep garnet in the candlelight. “The initial plan calls for forty-six rooms. And he’s designed the whole thing himself, borrowing from all the different types of architecture that he saw in the cities where we lived before his father died. Everything glorious in European design will be incorporated into that home.”

She leaned forward again and took a bite of chicken. “And all of it, nestled in the mountains, at the foot of Pikes Peak. Have you heard of Pikes Peak, Genevieve?”

Genevieve shook her head. Adrienne noticed that she, too, was not eating much.

“You, children? Have any of you heard of it?”

Emelie and Antoine shook their heads. Adrienne stayed still and kept her eyes on her plate.

“Hmmph!” Marie turned her chin up, slanted to the right. “Perhaps you need to expand their geography lessons, Lucie.”

“Oui, madame,”
Lucie mumbled.

“It is breathtaking,” Marie continued, her eyes locked on some spot above their heads. “A beacon to travelers. Riding across the plains, in wagons or on the train, you can see that mountain for miles.” Marie’s shoulders rose, and she let out a long sigh. “Almost as beautiful as our own Puy-de-Dôme.

“Manitou Springs is a refreshing change. And Colorado Springs is just a few miles away. Filled with Europeans. They call it Little London.” Marie beamed. It didn’t matter if anyone responded. She had a captive audience, sitting at the head of the table, expounding on her worldliness. Now, in Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, she could be among her own class, among people with whom she felt comfortable. Many of them spoke French, and she was relieved of the need to try to decipher the horrid squawks of the English language.

“Manitou is much smaller, of course, and is built in the foothills. The town boasts several mineral springs—just like Vichy. People travel from all over the world just to sample the dry, cool air and the healing waters.”

Adrienne glanced up between her lashes. Marie held her wineglass between both hands. A smile played at the corners of her mouth.

“It is becoming a haven for tuberculosis patients. And you know Julien’s great concern for the sick. He has a special understanding of illness, I think, especially after all he’s been through himself.” Marie’s eyes shone. “He intends to give the Sisters of Mercy the home he’s living in right now, just as soon as the castle is finished. To use as a sanatorium. The number of patients going to the area is growing faster than they can possibly accommodate in their current quarters.”

“How generous of him,” Genevieve muttered. She reached for her wine and held the glass before her.

The children did not speak. Marie’s words were punctuated by the clink of silverware on the china, the occasional sip of water. Antoine burped, muttered,
“Pardonnez-moi.”
He smiled triumphantly, as if he’d just managed a perfect score on his math, and then tried to hide it. Genevieve shot him a look.

Marie frowned at him, and Antoine dropped his smile to his lap. “This is just so much more to Julien’s taste . . . so much more suited to his unique gifts,” Marie continued. “The people are much more like us. It finally feels as if he has found his place in the world—his place in the work of the church.”

She attacked the coq au vin with her knife and shook her head. “The people in Santa Cruz never understood Julien. Never appreciated him. But I feel certain that he will go far, now that he is in Colorado. Thank God the church finally recognized his worth. They were wasting his talents in New Mexico Territory.”

Adrienne felt her jaw go tight. She reached for her wineglass, and suddenly she was in New Mexico Territory. She could see them, the people of Santa Cruz. Shuffling on the dirt roads, their eyes down whenever Julien was near. He wouldn’t eat their food, refused it whenever he went to someone’s home. It was the worst of insults, in those poor homes—to refuse the food they so generously offered. She watched as he refused a wooden carving of the Virgin, made by one of the village men, telling the man that his work was too “primitive” for Julien’s taste. They hated him; they hated his arrogance; they hated his callous disregard for their own long traditions. She could feel their hatred thick like smoke in the clear blue air of her vision.

Adrienne stared at her wine goblet, her hand resting on its base, but did not lift the glass or take a drink. The vision swirled, like smoke, and changed. She could see the town of Manitou Springs, just as Marie described it. She could see the town clock on Manitou Avenue; she could smell the pine trees. She could see Miramont Castle, being constructed before her eyes, hugging the hillside. She watched as builders set the heavy stones of the back of the castle right into the hill.

It hit her like a bolt of lightning, a charge of electricity that made the hair on her arms stand up. Something—or
someone
—was buried in that hillside. She didn’t actually see a body, and Adrienne’s mind raced to make sense of what she saw, what she felt. She couldn’t say exactly what it was. But the stones of the castle were covering it up. Something that neither Julien nor Marie wanted anyone to know about. She came back to the present and found herself staring at her glass, her mouth half open in shock.

The room was completely silent; there were no sounds of forks or knives scraping against the plates, no sounds of eating and drinking and swallowing. Marie was staring. Antoine and Emelie were looking at her, and so was Genevieve. Adrienne looked back at them, covered her mouth, and pretended to cough. She lifted the wineglass to her lips and took two small swallows. She replaced her glass, picked up her knife, made an effort to eat dinner. The room slowly returned to normal. The children turned their attention back to their own plates.

Adrienne’s mind raced. At certain intervals, she surreptitiously let her gaze wander to Marie’s face. What was going on over there in Manitou Springs? And was the secret Julien’s alone, or did it belong to Marie as well? It was as if her vision had been only a small burst of sight—only a fragment of the whole story. Before now, she had seen snippets of stories, little vignettes that were easy to interpret. Easy to understand. This was not the same.

Adrienne shivered, as if she’d been touched by a ghost.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A
drienne bolted upright in her bed, holding the covers up to her chest. She gasped. Moonlight spilled through the picture window to her right,
bathing everything in a blue glow. She scanned the room. There was her wardrobe in the left corner. Directly across from the foot of the bed was the fireplace, cold and gray in the early hours. To her left was the dresser, the mirror reflecting the image of the door directly across the room. It was closed. The light caught a cut-glass perfume bottle, a tiny frosted dove, wings outspread, floating on the lid. Her father had given it to her last Christmas.

Her eyes moved to the picture window. The white curtains looked pale blue-gray in the moonlight, shimmering and dancing like spirits above the window seat.

Adrienne sighed and lay back against the pillows.

In the dream, the room was very small. There were no mahogany furnishings, their tops covered in creamy white marble. There was no wardrobe, no fireplace. In the dream, the room was cramped; it held only one narrow bed, one tiny table. A small window looked down to the street, far below. The moonlight caught the leaves of the tree, not tall enough to reach its arms as high as the small, dark room. In the dream, Adrienne had tried the door. She rattled it in the frame, but it wouldn’t open.

She sat down on the bed. The room was cold. Dark. She heard the drip-drip-drip as tiny beads of moisture plopped on the floor. The smell was overpowering: a dense, metallic odor. She dipped the tips of her fingers in the pool at her feet. They came away dark, covered in something slick and thick, like oil. She brought her fingers to her nose and sniffed. The tangy smell of blood flooded her senses.

Adrienne’s breath quickened; her heart began to race as the images of the dream came back to her. Fear tightened her throat. She sat up, threw the covers off, and stepped over to the window.

She’d had this dream before, long ago. She’d been very young. But she knew she had seen that little room before, had noticed the stones, the tiny drops of darkness that seeped, and grew bigger, and plopped to the floor. What wasn’t clear was whether it was Adrienne herself in that room, or someone else. Some other woman that Adrienne sensed through the woman’s own eyes, her own hands?

Adrienne shook off the images, and threw open the window. She leaned out into the cool fall air, forcing herself to take long, slow breaths. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, breathing in the night. It smelled of snow. She remembered standing in this very window as a young child, breathing in the scents of spring. She remembered a time when her visions made her smile, as if they were stories and secrets designed for her amusement, like fairy tales. Now they left her with questions, with a deep sense of something dark and foreboding. An owl hooted, somewhere in the trees to the left. In the village, she heard a dog bark. A street away, another dog added his voice to the chorus.

Adrienne leaned back into the window seat, resting her back against the sidewall. She pulled her knees up underneath her nightgown, wrapped her arms around her legs, and laid her head on her knee. She stared at the sky.

Everything had become so much more complicated. When she was little, the visions were clear and easy. She thought of the times that her visions had shown her the truth. She had known about Emelie and her yellow hair. She had seen the death of the maid, Madeline, in childbirth. But there was so much that she didn’t know—and could never know for sure. She had seen Julien, poisoned at the chalice, but was that what had really happened? Or was it true, the story she’d heard, that he had been on a secret mission for the French government?

This was different. Not just what she had seen and felt at dinner a week ago, but this dream tonight. And she knew that she had dreamt the same thing years before. This required skills of interpretation that she did not have. Was it the past, or the future? Was it happening to her, or to someone else?

She stared out into the dark. She thought of the story in the Bible of Joseph being sold into Egypt and interpreting dreams for the pharaoh. Seven fat cows, seven skinny cows. How do you interpret things like that? How do you understand what it means for stones to bleed?

In the near distance, she could see the west wing of the château. Built of white limestone over three hundred years before, the château had been in her family for many generations. The moonlight turned the stones into a soft, glowing pink, and Adrienne stared, watching as the shadows of trees and leaves danced across the walls.

She sat up with a jolt, her back straight, her eyes fixed on the walls of the other wing of the castle. Maybe it wasn’t a secret in Manitou Springs, in the new castle that Julien was building. Maybe the secret was here. Maybe her dreaming mind had jumbled it all up. Because just now, in the dim light of the moon, she could swear that it looked as if the stones were bleeding.