Siri Mitchell - Chateau of Echoes

He reached for my hand and took it in his. “Please don’t be embarrassed about yesterday. I wish I had been the object of your affection. I’ve never met anyone like you, Freddie. And I don’t think I ever will again.”

The corner of my mouth turned up in the start of a smile. “Thank God.”

Cranwell began to smile too. “Thank God.”

He lifted his glass. “To us.”

I clinked it with mine. “To friendship.”

Something close to gratitude passed between us after that as we sat and ate. What we had said to each other would never be said again, but it had made that morning romp a squall passing through our relationship rather than a hurricane stalling over it. And after that, there were a million things to talk about.

In hindsight, I was glad I’d had the courage to say what I did. I would have missed the companionship had I sent him upstairs.

Several hours later, he left with Lucy to return to his room. He stopped on the first stair and turned around to face me. “Freddie-”

I held my breath.

“Thank you.”

Bringing the dishes to the sink, I washed them with shaking hands. Then I went up to my lounge and spent most of the night going over grant applications for the foundation.

“Let me help you.”

I peered between my legs.

Cranwell was standing on the garden path, so I stood up for a stretch. Planting gardens made for backbreaking work. I put my hand to my lower back and arched my spine, trying to pull the kinks from it.

“What can I do?”

He was standing there in his suede leather jacket, Italian leather loafers, and brown moleskin trousers. I tossed my braid behind my shoulder and pulled my hat farther over my ears. “Unless you want to ruin your shoes and permanently stain your pants, I’d just stay right where you are.”

He looked down toward his feet. “These? They only cost two hundred dollars.” He stepped carefully into the plot and made his way toward me.

Lucy, disdaining the dirt, found a comfortable flagstone and curled herself upon it.

Unbuttoning my brick-colored corduroy jacket, I tossed it to him, and then I pushed up the long sleeves of my thermal shirt. Looking down, I saw that my faded jeans were already stained with dirt, along the hems and the knees. They’d wash. I tried to think of something that Cranwell could do that would keep him from becoming too soiled. I finally decided he could follow behind me, sprinkling seeds into the holes I’d dug.

We worked for a good hour and a half before I declared that it was time to stop. I put my jacket back on, becoming cold after the sudden halt to our labor.

We returned the tools to the garage and walked together back to the kitchen where we perched ourselves on stools.

“Would you mind just giving my back a little push, right there?” I pointed to a place near my spine on my lower back where my muscles had spasmed.

“Where?”

Pulling up the back of my jacket, I pointed.

He put a hand on my shoulder and the other to my spine, grinding a knuckle into my muscle. “Too hard?”

“Not hard enough.”

Cranwell took his hand from my shoulder and reached it around my rib cage to support the pounding he was giving my back. “Better?”

“Yes.”

He moved up my spine slowly, pushing first with his fist, then with his knuckles and fingers. His hand at my rib cage splayed to keep me from being pushed over by his efforts.

He happened onto a knot.

I cringed.

“Does that hurt?”

“Like torture.”

Using a thumb, he tried to relax the spot. It refused to loosen. “Just a second.” He lifted the hem of my shirt and slid his hand up against my skin.

The effect was electric.

A tingle went from my scalp to my toes, leaving my senses heightened in its wake. His massage slowed.

The room was growing warm. My clothes were stifling. There was a buzzing in my ears. Without asking my permission, I felt my body lean into his.

His breathing fanned my hair. And then stopped.

Then, at an instant, as if a bomb had exploded between us, we hurled ourselves away from each other.

“Thanks, Cranwell. Perfect.” I bent at my waist to the right and left to demonstrate my newfound mobility. “Wonderful. Thanks a lot. That was nice of you.” I sprinted toward the stairs. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

As I zipped up the stairs and past the entry hall it occurred to me that this was the first time I had ever run away from my own kitchen. The kitchen was my refuge.

Slowing to a walk, I then stopped altogether. It wasn’t right that I should be run out of my own kitchen.

Reversing directions, I descended the stairs, determined to face the situation between us.

As I reached the bottom of the stairwell, I saw Cranwell was still there. He was seated at the island. He had stretched his upper body across the marble countertop, arms bent and his hands clasped over his head. It was a position of utter defeat or extreme pain.

Not wanting to startle him, I cleared my throat.

He scraped himself off the marble and turned on his stool to face me.

I’d never seen him look so haggard.

He pushed off the stool and walked with wooden legs toward the stairs, Lucy following behind.

“See you at dinner.”

“No.” He didn’t even turn to look at me. “Not tonight, Freddie. I just can’t do it.”

I sat on his abandoned stool and stayed there for a long while. When I got up, I revised the evening’s menu. The pork cutlets I had intended for dinner, I put in the fridge; they would keep for the next evening. Two of the île flottantes , I poured down the sink, using hot water to melt them; I set one aside for Sévérine. There was no point in saving the others; the meringue dessert wouldn’t last through the night. And at that moment, I wasn’t hungry for dessert. In fact, I was hardly hungry at all.

A humble dinner of a salad, a ham and gruyère crêpe , and a small bottle of cidre sufficed. I tried, while I was eating, to remember what I had done at dinner before Cranwell had shown up at my chateau.

I couldn’t remember.

nine days before Saint Simon

I am stupid. In the wonder of what has happened, I understand everything now. I know why Agnès has not liked Anne. I realize why Anne is by times so kind and then so cruel.

Awen and Anne are lovers.

I do not know what to do. Do J want a husband more than I need my friend? What should I do in this strange country without her? And how should I manage the chateau?

I must speak to Agnès. She is the only one I can trust.

My friend the most close is the lover of my husband and has been these three years.

I have spoken with Agnès.

Agnès demanded of me if I had become a wife.

I did not understand. Of course, yes. Three years since. And she had been at the noces.

She took me toward the window and then sat me down. She demanded of me to tell her exactly what happens at night when Awen comes. She warned me to speak to her the exact truth.

So I did.

She kept demanding of me if there was nothing else, but there is not.

What more could I reply to her than this: he speaks to me of stories until I fall asleep and then stays until the fire goes out. At least he did until more recently.

She told me then what a man does to a woman to make her his wife. That I had choices and I must make a decision. If I tell father what has happened. Agnès says me that I do not have to be married to Awen any longer and that I can go back to my country, Touraine. She says me that the church will annul the marriage.

She says me that I could continue here and leave things the way they always have been. She says me that it is not uncommon for a man to have a maîtresse and that this is not the worst of things.