It wasn’t until after Lucie had tucked the younger children into their beds that she returned to Adrienne’s room. The two women sat in the window seat, illuminated by the light of a crescent moon in the eastern sky and the candle on Adrienne’s bedstand behind them.
“You’ve had another vision, haven’t you?” Lucie whispered.
Adrienne nodded. She poured it all out, the relief so overwhelming it brought tears to her eyes. She described seeing Marie, surrounded by the dark water of the ocean. She described following her down a corridor, knowing that Marie had something she was hiding in that valise, watching her turn and seeing the blood on her dress, her hands.
Lucie sat quietly, taking it all in.
“The worst part . . . the part I can’t stop thinking about . . . is that every time I’ve had this vision, three times now, it seems like Gerard has somehow been involved. That first night I met him at the opera, the first night they came to visit, when we played and sang. And now this, tonight, right after he left. It’s been weeks since the last time. Why now, just when—” Adrienne caught herself and looked up into Lucie’s dark eyes.
“Lucie, do you think it has something to do with him? Do you think that Marie might try to . . .” Adrienne found that she could not give voice to the thought. She did not want to speak the words, to put them out there in the air. She felt tears racing down her cheeks; she shook her head from side to side.
“Do you think that Marie might try to hurt him?”
Lucie straightened her back and stretched her arms over her head. She had been at her desk, hunched over her journal, for the past hour. It was late: one in the morning, and she was exhausted. She put her plume back in its stand, blew on the ink of the page she had just finished.
It had been a while since she had written in the journal. For so long, there had been nothing to record. But she’d started writing again a few weeks ago. She had not told Adrienne, but Lucie had known, since the night at the opera, that Adrienne’s visions were back. She had known the girl almost her entire life; she recognized the signs. She had not asked Adrienne about it. After the death of Madeline in childbirth, there was some part of Lucie that didn’t want to know what Adrienne saw.
Lucie had watched as Gerard Devereux moved into their lives. She observed the way he looked at Adrienne, the way his eyes followed her around the room. She had seen Adrienne brighten; she had noticed the lilt in her step, the smiles that sometimes crept into her face when she thought no one was watching. Lucie wanted desperately to believe that Gerard was the answer, the handsome prince who would rescue Adrienne from her loneliness and isolation. The handsome prince who would rescue the maid from the evil witch.
She would never tell Adrienne this, but she had scratched it onto the pages of her journal, shivering with fear as she did. When Adrienne had described her vision—Marie on the dark ocean, Marie covered in blood—Lucie’s whole body had frozen in apprehension. But it wasn’t Gerard she feared for. Gerard was off in Paris; he was safe from Marie’s clutches.
Adrienne was not. Lucie shivered again, looking at the words she had written on the page. Despite her own lack of clairvoyance, despite her inability to see or know the future, Lucie was certain about one thing. The blood on Marie’s dress was not Gerard’s.
She had to do something to protect Adrienne. She had to do something to get the girl out of here, away from Marie.
I would never let Adrienne know this, and I hope she is distracted enough by her current circumstances that she does not notice, but I plan to watch Marie as I never have before. That woman is hiding something, I feel certain of it. And I intend to find out what it is.
Lucie laid her pen on the desk and blew on the ink. She closed the journal and went to her closet, where she tucked it away in her tapestry valise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Adrienne let the book drop to her lap. She pulled her knees up inside her heavy wool dress, wrapped her arms around them, and leaned her cheek to rest on one knee. She stared out the window. It was so difficult to focus on a book these days. She would find herself at the bottom of the page with absolutely no idea of what she had just read.
The morning room was glazed in sunlight, still too winter-weak to provide much warmth. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Genevieve and Marie sat at their desks, attending to correspondence.
Adrienne stared out at the early March weather. The winds had been fierce the past few days, but there was movement in the air, a rustling and stirring. Like a whisper, it held the promise of spring. Adrienne could see the leaves of the crocus, poking through the soil in the garden, surrounded by the icy white of last evening’s snow. The trees were thickening, like a woman in the early stages of pregnancy. Everything seemed ripe with the coming warmth and light and color.
Adrienne had been watching the plants, the trees, the garden, for as long as she could remember. But never, in all this time, had she allowed the promise of spring to seep into her bloodstream, to affect her heart or make her mind race. Since Grand-père’s death, she had felt frozen inside, as if her heart and mind and emotions were locked in eternal winter. There was no reason to hope, no reason to look forward to anything. Every day was like the one before. Her life, until recently, had been just as solitary, just as barren and hard and cold, as the winter landscape.
Gerard Devereux had changed all that. He gave her a reason to believe, a reason to imagine a life different from the one she had always known. She found herself waking up with a smile on her face. She could see them, living together in an apartment in Paris. She couldn’t help but smile when she imagined holding his child, their child, in her arms. She reached into the pocket of her dress, slipped a sideways glance at Marie, and pulled out his latest letter.
Dearest,
I can hardly wait for your father’s return from the north. It seems as if he is taking forever on this trip. I wish I had been able to speak with him right away, after leaving, but I suppose I shall have to be patient.
I told Grand-père, after we left you, that you had consented to marry me. I can’t tell you how pleased he was. He likes you a great deal, Adrienne. That tells me that I have made a good choice, that he, too, can see our compatibility, our connection.
As soon as your father returns, I will speak with him. In the meantime, I remain,
Yours forever,
Gerard
Adrienne brushed her fingers over the thick paper, folded it tenderly, and tucked it back into the pocket of her dress. She sighed, and laid her cheek against her knee again. She smiled at her reflection in the window glass. It was just like a fairy tale—the tall, handsome prince, the rescue from the wicked witch who sat at her desk in the corner. She took her hand from the letter in her pocket and made the sign of the cross once again, as she had every time she had thought of the vision of Marie. She’d been praying every morning, every night, trying to create a web of protection around Gerard.
Stefan entered the room with the morning’s mail on a silver tray. Adrienne looked up, her eyes glued on his every move. He stopped first at Genevieve, with a nod of his head. “Madame.” He turned and walked toward Marie, his heels clicking on the marble floor. “Madame.” He bowed lower for Marie. Adrienne watched as he turned the tray on its side, tucked it under his arm. His eyes sought Adrienne’s, briefly, as if he knew she expected mail. His eyes seemed to speak the words that he would not dare to say aloud: “I’m sorry, mademoiselle. Nothing today.” He dipped his head toward her and left the room.
Adrienne sighed and turned back to the window. She stared at the snow on the ground, at the wind blowing in the treetops. She watched as the world outside her window faded and disappeared, and she was drawn into a scene half a world away.
It was night. A half moon hung in the sky, hazy with cloud cover. Her gaze dropped from the brilliance of the moon to a cobblestone street, curving up a hill. An enormous stone castle dominated the bend of the street. Four stories high, wood and granite and glass, and every window blazed with light. Carriages crowded the pavement; horses clip-clopped on the stones. She could hear the horses whinny and snort. She could hear laughter, voices rising and falling in the excitement of the evening.
One by one, the carriages stopped at the front door. Ladies and gentlemen spilled out, dressed in the costumes of a century before—the time of the American Revolution. The women wore wide skirts, the same skirts seen in the time of Louis XVI in France. Their hair was powdered and poofed and pompadoured. The men wore powdered wigs and ruffled shirts, short white pants tucked into tight leggings, just below their knees. Ruffles cascaded over their hands as they reached to help the women down from the carriages. Music spilled from the doorways and windows and flowed down the street.
Around the castle, out of the way of the rich carriages and their ostentatious contents, sat the plain wagons and buggies of the townspeople. They had each paid a small fee to sit on the street, in the cold, and observe the participants in this costume ball in honor of George Washington’s birthday. Everyone had heard about the huge castle, built by the French priest, completed just a few weeks before. And they had all ventured out, on this cold February evening, blankets wrapped around them, trying to catch a glimpse of the splendor inside, of the opulence and wealth of elite society in Manitou Springs, Colorado Springs, and Denver.
Unlike the frigid observers, Adrienne’s vision took her through the doors of the castle, into the low-ceilinged entry, and up the steps. The parlor was to the left. People crowded the rooms, talking and laughing, sipping champagne. Against one wall stood a huge stone fireplace, the fire blazing high, light shimmering on the jeweled silks of the women’s skirts. Beyond the parlor were glass doors, luxuriant green plants filling the conservatory behind. Julien stood at the top of the steps, greeting his guests.
“I understand you designed this yourself.” A young woman smiled.
“Yes. Yes, I did. All my life, I’ve wanted to build a home like this, something like what I grew up with. I wanted to combine the styles and features that I’ve seen in all my travels. My father was a diplomat; we lived in some of the most beautiful places in Europe when I was young. I wanted to take the best of Europe, and still somehow manage to find something suitable for the mountains of Colorado.” He beamed with pride. “And I was afraid, mixing so many different architectural styles, that it would only confuse an architect. It just seemed easier to handle the design myself.”
Adrienne’s vision led her out of the parlor, up another staircase, to the picture gallery, a long, narrow room brimming with costumed ball-goers. Members of the orchestra filled the far end of the room; the discordant sounds of tuning up filled the air. They lifted their instruments, and at a nod from the conductor, broke into “Hail, Columbia!”
The ball-goers marched through the hall, down the stairs to the parlor below. Adrienne heard the voice of a costumed servant introducing “General and Mrs. Washington,” “Mr. and Mrs. John Quincy Adams” as couples entered the parlor. Costumes of the American Revolution filled every available space.
Adrienne let her eyes sweep over the decorations. Potted plants and hothouse flowers bloomed in every corner; plants twisted through the railings. She stared at the two huge flags, draped over a balcony railing: one French, one American.
Adrienne watched as the guests sipped from crystal punch cups, nibbled on tiny sandwiches and cakes. She could hear the voices, the snippets of conversation. “It was so generous of the father to volunteer his castle for the ball. So glamorous. Such a perfect setting.”
“Yes, I agree. And to think—every penny he raises tonight will go toward the new library.”
“We are so fortunate to have the father here. And I understand that Manitou has been much better for his health than that . . . Santa . . . oh . . . Santa something-or-other. Another one of those dreary little mud towns in New Mexico Territory.”
“Thick with Indians, is what I heard. Thank goodness he was transferred. I can’t imagine someone like the father trapped in a place like that.”
Adrienne drifted away from Manitou Springs and found herself once again sitting in the window seat in Beaulieu, staring at her own reflection in the glass.
Marie’s voice filled the room, reading the letter from Julien, describing the George Washington ball that he had recently hosted at the castle. He had written about it all, just as Adrienne had seen it in her mind a few moments before. Adrienne turned and watched her aunt finish the letter. She watched as Marie folded it, tucked it back in the envelope, and placed it in a drawer of her desk.
Adrienne turned and stared out at the day. This was the first vision she had had for several weeks now. The castle was finished; Julien was living there; Marie would be joining him before too much longer. Marie had begun to have furnishings packed for shipping to the New World.
Adrienne let her hand drop to the letter in her pocket. She was tired of visions. Tired of trying to figure out what they meant. She was perfectly willing to let Marie go live in Manitou. She could take half of the chateau with her, for all that Adrienne cared. Before long, she would be married, living in Paris. Before long, she would have Gerard and his grandfather as her companions, and she could let all these vague, uneasy feelings go, nothing but dust in the wind.