Siri Mitchell - Chateau of Echoes

“Colonel? You liked the colonel?” He bent his head to whisper in my ear. “Maybe there’s hope then for an older man.” I could have sworn he kissed my ear.

“Color? No, wait. Let me guess: blue.”

Yes.

“And a good choice with the color of your eyes. Food?”

“Chocolate.”

“A woman after my own heart.”

He babbled something else, but I don’t remember what it was. I started getting cold again, and this time I couldn’t keep myself from shuddering. It came from deep within me.

It seems to me that Cranwell shook me, yelled at me, and threatened me. I think at one point he even swore he loved me, but I had no strength left to respond. I watched in a stupor as lights flashed blue against the windshield.

And then I was being lifted into a different car. A police car. We streaked through the silent, frigid night, screeching to a halt in front of a hospital. I was bundled inside to a room, was told to undress while hot water was being prepared.

“What are you doing?”

It took a full minute for my lips to thaw enough to answer Cranwell’s question. “They told me to undress.”

“Why?”

“Hot water.”

“Of all the medieval-!” He tugged my coat back on and then lifted me into his arms. “We’re leaving. Nobody in their right mind asks a hypothermia patient in your condition to undress themselves and then hop into a bath.” He stalked down the hallways muttering about the ineptitude of the staff, then talked the receptionist on duty into calling a cab for us by barking ‘Taxi!’ at her. I must have fallen asleep on the way to the hotel.

When I woke, I was on a bed in a room ablaze with light. Cranwell was working to pull my boots off. I moaned as he pulled them from my frost-swollen feet.

He unbuttoned his coat, which I was still wearing, and deftly worked it from my arms. And he unwound the scarf from my head and pushed my hair away from my eyes. His face loomed in front of mine, and he searched my eyes. “Freddie, stay with me.”

My sweater was being pulled over my head before I could protest. Then he stood me up. Leaning my body against his and holding me around the waist, he worked my pants down to my ankles. I was reduced to my bra and panties, and all I could do was watch him.

He pulled a corner of the duvet and the sheets from the bed, and then he placed me there and covered me with them.

My shivering was uncontrollable.

After a moment, he climbed into bed behind me, and pulled me toward him. “Heaven help me.” It sounded like a prayer the way he breathed it into my hair.

Cranwell folded my arms across my chest and then crossed them with his own, fitting his hands over mine. He molded his legs to mine and somehow managed to clamp my feet between his own. Against my icy body, he felt like a furnace.

My last thought before succumbing to sleep was, “Thank goodness I didn’t wear my holey underwear.”

When I first stirred, light was streaming through a window directly onto my face. I wrinkled my nose at it, and I did what I always do in the morning. I stretched. At least I tried to, but my arms were bound to my chest and my feet were being held in captivity. I tried to turn my head, but even my hair had been pulled taut.

While I was making exploratory movements, something moved behind me.

Fighting against panic, I smothered a scream.

“Freddie?”

“Cranwell?”

“Thank you, God.” He rolled up on an elbow, releasing my hair, and leaned over me. His other hand he fit around my neck, leaving his thumb free to caress my cheek. “How are you doing?”

Blinking, I suddenly remembered the previous night. I felt tears well up. “You saved my life, didn’t you?”

Those magnificent brown eyes clouded for a moment, and then a corner of his mouth turned up. “Just call me your knight in shining armor.”

Turning toward him, I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him. “Thank you, Cranwell.”

His hand around my neck pressed my head toward his, and he planted a kiss on my forehead.

I realized then what I wasn’t wearing. But before I had a chance to feel awkward, he had reached around and unclasped my arms. And then he pulled up the duvet and tucked it under my chin. “Don’t move. I’ll have breakfast sent up.” He gathered my hair with his hand and smoothed it over my pillow before turning away from me to pick up a telephone from the nightstand.

As he ordered, I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the warmth of the sun and the duvet. I fell back asleep.

The valet’s knock woke me. As I stretched beneath the sheets, Cranwell answered it and then brought the tray to the bed. He was fully clothed in the rust-colored turtleneck and moleskin jeans he’d worn the day before, and he smelled as if he’d just taken a shower. He set the tray between us and then punched his pillow down between his back and the wall. “ Bon appétit .”

As I began to sit up, I remembered that I was only wearing a bra. I caught up the duvet just in time.

Cranwell jumped up and went into the bathroom. He returned with a hotel bathrobe, handing it to me before turning his back so I could put it on.

After, he offered me a cup of tea, but I was in the process of trying to push up the sleeves of the robe. They kept falling. He set the tea down in order to help me turn up the sleeves.

“They didn’t have coffee?”

“Last night, the doctor told me tea.”

“What doctor?”

“The one I called in L.A.”

“L.A.?”

“The one I interviewed when I had to research hypothermia for a book I was writing. That’s when I found out that too much movement or too rapid reheating could kill a victim of hypothermia.”

He hadn’t been kidding when he’d called himself a knight in shining armor. “But I don’t like tea.”

“It doesn’t matter if you like it. Think of it as medicine.”

I took the cup from his hand and plunked four cubes of sugar into it. At least he let me have the pains au chocolat . I was ravenous. And since he refused to let me have coffee, I drained the pot of tea.

As I finished it off, he perched his glasses on his nose and took up the newspaper the hotel had sent up with the tray. He passed it toward me. “Section?”

Declining, I shook my head. “I think I’ll take a shower.” I threw back the duvet and walked toward the bathroom.

“Take a bath.”

So now it was okay to bathe? “But I don’t like baths. By the time the tub fills up and you can actually enjoy it, the water starts to get cold.”

He looked at me sternly over the top of his glasses. “The doctor said bath.”

“How about I promise to stand underneath the shower for at least twenty minutes?”

“Bath.”

So, for the sake of Cranwell’s conscience, I took a bath. For a good long hour. Every time the water started to cool, I turned the faucet on and warmed it up.

And then I did the one thing I’d never done before in a bath: I closed my eyes.

It’s a good thing Cranwell knocked on the door, because I had started to doze.

Startling awake, I sunk into the water up to my chin.

He cracked open the door. “Freddie?”

“Yes?”

“I had some things brought for you. I’ll put them right by the door.” He slit the door open, set a stack of boxes on the floor, and pulled it shut.

It wasn’t until after he had gone that I realized I had been holding my breath.

Grabbing a towel, I pulled the plug on the tub and dried myself off. I approached the boxes with suspicion and delight. I didn’t know what Cranwell was up to, but the French wrapped purchases so elegantly that the stack of boxes looked just like Christmas.

The smallest, at the top, was pink and tied with a black ribbon, and I knew immediately what was in it. I slid the ribbon off the box and opened it to find some of the most luxurious lingerie in France: Aubade. The next three boxes were marked with the name of a designer so prestigious I’d only heard rumors of him. The first contained a pair of medium-blue leather pants. The second a gloriously soft and thick cashmere sweater to match. The last, a pair of blue leather wool-lined boots with stiletto heels, along with cashmere tights.