Free Chateau of Secrets: A Novel by Melanie Dobson Page A

Her stomach coiled again at the thought of marrying him. “Not until I find Papa.”
    Then her heart began to beat faster. What if her father was trying to call her right now? “I must get off the line.”
    He pressed through her retort. “The Germans aren’t marching toward the south of France,” he said, and she wondered how well those who listened to their conversation understood French. “You will be safe here.”
    “Papa and I will come soon.”
    “Gisèle—”
    “I must go,” she said. “In case he’s trying to call.”
    After she hung up the receiver, she waited by the phone. How could Philippe talk of marriage when her father was missing? He didn’t seem to care . . .
    Lisette wandered back into the room and sat down across from her. “Was that Philippe?”
    She nodded her head, stroking Shadow’s fur.
    “Michel doesn’t like him,” Lisette said.
    She managed a weak smile. “He and Michel used to fight as children.”
    “Michel said his cousin will do anything to get ownership of this château.”
    It was ludicrous to consider Philippe obtaining their property. Papa wasn’t even fifty yet, and even when he was gone, Michel would inherit the place, and Lisette would be the new vicomtesse. Decades and decades from now.
    And she would come regularly from Paris to visit them and their children, long after the Germans were gone.

— CHAPTER 12 —
    L ight dappled the ripples in the murky lake water, twinkling like a thousand fireflies at twilight. I dipped my paddle into the sea of lights and pushed the kayak smoothly through it, the steady motion soothing my nerves. For the first time in weeks, I was free—liberated from responsibilities and obligations and all that was required of me.
    A small catamaran sailed across the lake from me, its red-and-blue-striped sail fluttering in the wind. The city had been sweltering today, but the breeze drifting over Lake Kendall felt blissfully cool.
    Perhaps I should have felt guilty for my desire to escape, but I beat away the guilt with every stroke of my paddle. For this rare hour, I wasn’t the fiancée of Austin Vale or the daughter of the Sauvers or even a third-grade teacher at Washington Elementary. For this hour, I could simply be.
    When we met, Austin had captured me with his vision of the future—our future—butsomewhere along the line, I’d forgotten exactly who I was, silhouetted by those with greater dreams than my own.
    Chaos—in the best sense of the word—had been the backbone of my family life growing up. My dad was raised by parents who loved him but struggled to survive in the United States. Hehad always been fascinated with numbers. When he was twenty-five, he started his first business—a coin-operated Laundromat that quickly turned a profit. He used the flood of revenue to purchase a second Laundromat a few months later, and then for the next decade, he bought another business each year. When he turned forty, he sold everything and launched a company to invest in other people’s businesses.
    My parents met when Dad was forty-three. And a multimillionaire.
    Growing up, it seemed as if my father was as old as some of my friends’ grandfathers. He spoiled me as a child, but thankfully my mother, as she liked to say, kept me from going rotten.
    When my parents married, they both were already business owners. Even though their ventures were polar opposites, the world of self-employment required them to work nights and weekends, when they were eating, and practically when they were sleeping. The results of their enslavement were ridiculously successful careers. And a life with few memories outside their work.
    Instead of a hectic life like my parents, I’d craved a more simple one, time to enjoy the water and my family and my students. For as long as I could remember, I’d wanted to teach children, discovering ways to make learning stick for a lifetime. Teaching invigorated me, the opportunity to help provide a foundation of