Siri Mitchell: Chateau of Echoes

Kneeling on the stone floor beside him, I placed a hand on his arm. “Please. Let me. It’s not a problem.” Only two hundred dollars worth of antique ceramics . I cupped my hands and he emptied his shards into them. “If you’d like to have a seat in the reception hall,” I indicated the general direction with my chin, “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Sévérine walked into the entrance hall just then. She and Cranwell exchanged glances as she sailed past me and spiraled down the stairs. She always makes me feel as if I’m a klutzy teenager.

Taking a deep breath, I turned on my heel, leaving Cranwell to find the reception hall on his own. I trudged down the stairs shaking my head. At some point, I had to take on the persona of a professional hotel manager, preferably at some point before Sévérine left the following June. She was my face to the outside world, and I depended on her completely. I tossed the pieces of the bowl into the trash.

Sévérine hooked her foot around the leg of a stool and pulled it out for me as she filled another bowl with sugar cubes. “I will take this up, yes?”

“Please.” I buried my face in my hands as she ascended toward the dining hall. It wasn’t that I wanted to impress Robert Cranwell. I didn’t care a thing about him. In fact, he was already becoming a nuisance. It’s just that I didn’t want to have one more person assume that I was twenty-one years old. When I lived in Paris, I made a conscious effort to look my age. With my even features and round face, I’ll probably still look twenty-one when I’m fifty. As the proprietor of an inn, a well-renowned inn at that, I should have commanded more respect. I put a hand up to my hair and thought once more about cutting it, but then my hand glided down its length and I thought how much I’d miss it. It was probably my best feature. I sighed and threw my upper body across the marble-topped island, my arms flung out, my palms accepting the coolness of the stone. I turned my head so that my cheek rested on the tabletop. It felt like ice to my burning cheeks.

A small movement at the bottom of the staircase drew my attention, but I realized it had to be Sévérine. She knew her way around my kitchen well enough to be able to take the fruit from the cutting board and arrange it on a small platter. I closed my eyes and let my body melt into the marble.

A suspiciously male-sounding cough made my eyes fly open. “Cranwell?” His name leaped from my lips before I could stop it.

“Ms. Farmer?”

How dare he invade my space. Reluctantly, I scraped myself off the marble and turned on my stool to face him. “What can I do for you?”

He held a large Louis Vuitton suitcase out in front of him. “I was just wondering…”

“Your room. Follow me.”

I have to confess that I bypassed the formal stairs and led him up to the second floor straight from the kitchen. I might also have taken the coiled steps two at a time, leaving him gasping for breath and struggling to keep the rough stone walls from marring the leather of his suitcase. But then again, chateaux were not made for modern convenience.

The chateau has a tower at each corner. This gives both the dining hall and the Council Room a round area at both ends. On the three floors above the ground floor, there are four or five rooms on each floor, with central, tapestry-hung halls that provide access to the central staircase. On each floor, the towers have been converted into bathrooms, turning each of the guest rooms into suites. Seven of the rooms have been renovated for guests. One of the larger rooms, I turned into a library; another smaller room, next to my own bedroom on the fourth floor, I turned into a lounge. The remaining space on the fourth floor, I had renovated into an apartment for staff.

I had opened the door to Cranwell’s room and drawn the dark rust velvet curtains from the windows by the time he had joined me.

The olive brocade curtains enclosing the bed had been whisked back and secured to the posters, exposing the rich rust and olive tones of the duvet. I walked across the stone floor toward the tower end of the room. “Bathroom,” I announced, indicating a small door in the stone wall. “If you’d like a fire in the evenings, and if you’re responsible enough to tend it, I’ll have some wood delivered.”

“I’d like that.” He was making a tour of the room, touching a corner of the sixteenth-century tapestry that hung on one wall, fingering the key to the armoire that stood beside it. “This is very nice.”

“Thank you.” The room’s deep autumn tones fit him. I’d decorated specifically with those colors, thinking it would make a man feel at ease.

He half-bowed in an oddly endearing manner as if by way of compliment.

I found myself smiling before I could think not to.

When he straightened and saw me, he smiled too. He pulled a pair of glasses from his pocket. Raising them to the light, he frowned, polished them against his sweater, and then perched them on his nose. Then he bent to look more closely at a small painting that sat on an easel on a rectangular table.

“You’re welcome to move that if you’d like to do your writing there.”

He turned to look at me, his left eyebrow raised.

“I assumed you’d want to work on the table. There’s an outlet right beside it and a plug-in for a laptop.”

“Oh. Thank you. Yes.”

“Once you’ve settled, come downstairs, and I’ll make you coffee.”

“Espresso. Thanks.” He cleared his throat and looked at me over the top of his glasses. “I didn’t mention it in my letter, but I’ll be having someone stay with me.”

Someone else? Two people were a lot different than one person in the language of innkeeping. So now not only would I have to cater to a famous author, I’d also have to deal with his groupie.

“Lucy is…”

Holding up a hand, I put a stop to his explanation. “As long as you pay, you may do whatever you’d like with whomever you want. No explanation required.” I didn’t want to hear about it. One of the most pleasant things about living overseas was being disconnected from the Hollywood scene. Cranwell’s personal life was nothing I cared to investigate.

But I don’t like it when plans change.

When I left Cranwell’s room, I headed up the stairs instead of down. It was probably too late to change an impression, but I wanted Cranwell to see me in something besides my tank top and baggy pants. It was always possible I’d make him leave before the month was up, so establishing myself as a figure of authority was necessary. I spent two minutes in the shower to freshen up and then about fifteen minutes in front of the armoire trying to figure out what to wear. I finally settled on trim black Capri pants and a light blue sleeveless ballet-neck sweater. My arms get a workout from kneading bread dough and stirring pots of soups and sauces for myself or for my guests. They’ve become muscular, so I like to show them off when I can.

As I made my way back to the kitchen, I lectured myself. Cranwell was here because of the chateau. No matter his thoughts of me, he could hardly fail to be impressed by it.

I had decorated with furniture that spanned five hundred years of French history. Most family-owned chateaux are furnished in that fashion. Each new generation would make their mark on the structure by redecorating. I had tried to stay with a single period or theme in each room. The dining hall is Louis XIV: The chairs have crossed, curved supports connecting their legs. The backs are tall and broken by a horizontal rectangle of upholstered material, hung with a fringe. The colors are deep red and wheat gold. The table is more narrow than its modern counterpart, but is considerably longer. It is simply made with no ornamentation save along the legs.