He looked at me as if I were a stranger instead of his twin. A moment passed, and then he grudgingly murmured that he was sorry.
If I had the opportunity to save him, I would. My love for him was unconditional, but I was tired of being indebted to him. With startling clarity, I realized that I wasn’t a little blind girl anymore who needed him to guide me out of the rough water.
Chapter 25
The weather changed, and the sun disappeared behind heavy storm clouds that chased us the last half of the way to our destination. The Aveyron region was lush, and the green fields and grassland were even more vibrant against the gray skies. In the distance, the mountains created a majestic backdrop.
My father and I hadn’t visited Millau, but I’d read about it. Like Cannes, it had been inhabited since the Gallo-Roman era, and its history was as rich as its soil. We drove past architectural ruins that made me want to ask Sebastian to stop so I could explore, but I knew we were expected at the chateau at a certain time.
We reached an intersection where the ancient Roman road from Languedoc to the north crossed the Tarn river and joined the Dourbie. In a scene that Monet or Cezanne would have loved to paint, remains of a truncated medieval bridge jutted out into the water.
I saw a man strolling out toward the very edge where the stone stopped. He was too far away for me to see his features or even his hair color, but something about him reminded me of Mathieu. Standing at the precipice, he looked down. As we drove past, I turned around to watch. I was afraid for him. His desolation showed in the way he held his head, in how his shoulders sloped, and in the color of the air around him. This man had a wide swath of green-blue coming off him in waves.
“We need to go back,” I said.
“What’s wrong? Where?”
“To that bridge. There’s a man on it who is going to jump.”
“There was no one there. And we’re expected at the chateau, and we’re already running late.”
“There was a man standing there in trouble, and you’re concerned with upsetting our hostess?”
He shook his head and turned the car around. There had been many instances like this in his life, and he’d learned that common reason was no match for a Duplessi woman and her hunches.
Sebastian maneuvered the car as close to the jetty as he could get.
“Delphine, there’s no one here.”
I pointed. “He was right there.”
Sebastian shook his head. “It had to be one of your visions. No one is there.”
I knew Sebastian could be right; the man might be a leftover apparition, someone who had once stood there and left such a strong impression that I could see it still. But I had to be sure it wasn’t a trick of light that revealed him to me but made him invisible to my twin.
I climbed out of the car and ran out onto the truncated bridge. Sebastian was right. There was no one there. What had I seen? A lost fragment of time? My mother had taught us not to refer to the people we saw in visions as ghosts. Such a term had too many implications. For one, that the people we were seeing were dead, when they often weren’t. Sometimes what we were witnessing was a spectral projection that wasn’t occurring in the present time or at least in that moment.
The way my mother had explained it, there were moments in people’s lives so powerful that they remained behind, even after the people had moved on, and sometimes when the light fell a certain way, we could witness those moments.
Could it have been a vision of Mathieu? Had he once visited this place? Stood on this very bridge? Looked at the sea and thought about me as I was thinking about him?
“Are you all right, Mademoiselle?”
The voice came from my right. I looked. There was a man there. But a wholly different one from Mathieu. And he was climbing up over the rocks, back onto the jetty.
He had silver hair brushed back from his forehead that contrasted with a youthful-looking face only faintly lined. If not for his hair, I would have assumed he was about my age. His clothes suggested that he worked outside; his boots had mud on them.
“Whatever it is, it can’t be that terrible. Why don’t you just step back a bit?” His voice was so gentle I was caught by surprise.
He thought I was going to throw myself over the edge? His earnestness and concern were evident.
“No, no. I’m not. I wasn’t . . . I thought I saw . . . It was you. It looked like you had jumped.”
He laughed, and the sound made me smile. “Actually, it was Pepin here.” The man had climbed all the way up now. I saw that inside his jacket was a little brown-and-white spaniel with lively black eyes. Seeing me, the dog squirmed.
“We were walking when Pepin decided to explore the rocks down there. But he’s still a pup and got stuck. I had to climb down to get him.”
I put out my hand, and Pepin licked it.
The man smiled, and I noticed how fast the expression reached his eyes and how they crinkled at the corners.
“Delphine?” Sebastian put his hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, darling?”
“I am. Turns out what I saw was a dog rescue.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” Sebastian said. “Now we really need to move on.”
I turned to the man. “I’m glad you and your puppy are all right.”
He smiled at me again, with eyes of an unusual golden brown color, as if rays of the sun were captured within their depths. And for a moment, I even thought I felt the warmth of the sun break through the cloudy day.
Back in the car, Sebastian tried to make sense of the incident.
“You must have seen him just before he started climbing down. He probably was standing there and calling to the dog. What you thought was despair was just frustration.”
“I suppose so.” I no longer knew what I’d seen. I reached into my pocketbook and ran my fingers over the soft leather cover of my Book of Hours.
The clouds darkened even more as we drove through the valley, and by the time we reached our destination, rain had descended.
My first look at the Chateau de Cabrières was through a downpour, with lightning streaking the sky and thunder echoing in the valley. Although modest in size, with its moat and drawbridge and tall ramparts, the castle looked imposing and impervious. Whatever secrets it held, it would not give them up easily.
Sebastian parked. “We’ll have to make a run for it,” he said.
“No, look.” I pointed.
A butler was coming out to meet us with two big umbrellas. Reaching my door first, he opened it and held the umbrella over me, shielding me from the storm.
Sebastian had come around and joined me.
“Welcome to the chateau,” the butler said. “I’ll send someone out for your bags. Please, follow me.”
As we approached the castle, even over the sound of the rain, I heard the most extraordinarily beautiful voice singing.