Chateau of Secrets: A Novel by Melanie Dobson Read Free Book Online

full bloom, the white petals like flakes of snow icing the thorns. Bees buzzed among the fragrant blossoms, and they seemed as unafraid of her as she was of them. As long as the sweetness of the flowers quenched their thirst, she didn’t have to worry about the bees’ sting.
    Birds hid among the hawthorn branches, protected by the thorns, the melodies of their songs the only clue to their presence.
    She wondered what it was they sang about. Perhaps it was their hunger or their fright or even their love. Whatever it was, they seemed oblivious to the dangers above them and on the ground. If only she could be oblivious alongside them. Still, the serenity of their song calmed the rhythm in her heart, the hours passing slowly as she waited.
    The steady cadence of their song reminded her of her two years in the convent boarding school near Coutances, the familiar prayers flowing from their lips with the music. She hadn’t appreciated the music as a child. Sometimes she and her friend Odette were downright awful.
    The nuns in their boarding school had known French and Latin and a little English, but not a word of German. Odette had learned German from her grandfather and taught the basics to Gisèle so they could share their secrets without fear of a nun discovering their plans. They had been perfectly naughty during their middle-grade years—salting the porridge of the mothersuperior, hiding the prayer books of their classmates. When the others sang their morning hymns, she and Odette replaced the words with the lyrics from “Parlez-Moi d’Amour,” giggling about treasures and kisses, bitterness and love.
    The nuns may have suspected that she and Odette were the instigators of trouble, but they weren’t caught until one windy afternoon in March when they were both fourteen. After they borrowed two horses from the stable—and got themselves lost in the forest—the mother superior whipped them both with a switch and sent them home for a week of reflection.
    Papa spared her another round with the rod, but he insisted that Gisèle spend a miserable week in isolation and reflection. There had been no riding for her in the hills near their house, no wading in the lake below the château. Even Michel—the boy who’d never let rules stop him—was disappointed in her.
    In hindsight, Papa was probably more afraid of her getting injured than disappointed in her for taking the horses. After a week of eating alone in her bedroom, she decided to tolerate the rules at school until summer break. The next year her father sent her to another boarding school, one where she rode horses every day.
    During the summers, she’d ridden her horse up into the trees on the other side of the river. When she was fifteen, she’d been fond of a boy who lived in the woods—a boy named Jean-Marc Rausch. He and his parents used to come to the Mass at the chapelle long ago, but after she left for the university, she never saw him again.
    Had he and his parents moved before the war? And what had become of him and her other classmates and of Odette in Paris?
    The birds’ song faded as darkness fell. Gisèle crept out of her hiding place and followed the river until she reached the steep bike path up to the château. In the moonlight, she could see the graywalls of the château, but there were no lights on inside. The other servants, she assumed, had fled like Émilie. Were Papa and Philippe waiting for her in the darkness?
    She scanned the empty courtyard and driveway in front of the château. Perhaps Philippe had hidden his coupé in the carriage house or—she shuddered—perhaps he and Papa had gone on to Lyon without her.
    Two towers soared over the stone castle, and she eyed the one on the far side of the house. Thorns from the rosebushes pecked at her arms as she snuck through the formal garden and around the old masonry oven that hadn’t been used in a century or two. At the base of the tower, she clambered around the hedges and jimmied the top