Restoring the Castle Ch. 02

Upstairs, in what was now open air, had been three rooms and a bath across the front façade of the castle. Miranda's study had been in the western corner, which included the second story of the conical-roofed tower; then her bedroom, over the entrance hall, which opened off the landing at the top of the grand staircase; the bathroom; and in the eastern corner, Ally's bedroom. All of these rooms were huge and it would have been impossible to heat them in the winter. The women slept on studio couches in their kitchen when it was cold. Ally hadn't known till she went to college that this wasn't the way many Americans lived.

All of these rooms were seven years gone, gone up in the smoke from one of Miranda's forgotten cigarettes.

After walking through the downstairs areas she had known and seeing that the walls were still there, but no ceiling or roof, Ally went to the other side of the grand foyer, on the east side, where there had once been a drawing room, now in no better or worse condition than the rooms she had once lived in. Beyond that had been a library and billiards room and then the entry into what originally was the servants' wing.

The servants' wing was where Ally found her mother had been living since the second fire. There was the servants' kitchen and dining room combined, which was large enough for Ally's mother to have made into a cozy living area. This, miraculously, was in good condition still. Beyond that were a series of smaller rooms, originally servants' rooms on both the first and second floor. One of them, immediately off the kitchen-living area, was the base of a circular tower, a faithful replica of one of the original, and crudely made towers in the oldest section of the original castle. This tower had risen four stories, but her mother's latest fire had burned out all of the wood flooring up to the stone ceiling, above which was an open-air battlement. The tower area had made for a rather large bedroom for Miranda, and she'd made a bathroom out of a servant's room off that. This was the room that had sustained most of the damage in the most recent fire. Standing in the center of it next to a charred bedstead, Ally was able to look straight up four stories to an opening to the sky that had been the top of the original staircase.

It was a mess, but the more she looked around the more she decided that this would be the easiest place to start with a restoration. She also could see that the first impressions were the worst—that most of the walls were sound and that even some of the roofing was still in place. Most of the fire damage in her mother's quarters had been in the tower. The kitchen-living area was essentially livable if she could get electricity and water hooked back up there, and, with a couple of weeks of work—and a subcontractor in to put the flooring above the tower bedroom again, Ally could see herself living here while she worked to get the rest of the castle restored.

She was seeing this as a project to more than occupy her time and attention—to dominate it and push out all the thoughts and grief that were plaguing her about her lost life with Chad—and perhaps her Foreign Service career too. It wasn't clear yet whether her injuries would ever be healed enough for her to pass an overseas physical. She could always take a stateside job with the Department or go on medical disability with a very comfortable annuity—since she had been injured on the job—added to a sizable nest egg her mother had built for her from the inheritances they had unexpectedly received from Ally's grandfather. But she couldn't see herself trapped in a limiting job in Washington, D.C., or just living totally off an annuity, plus the sizable family inheritance her mother had barely touched, and doing nothing.

She would restore the castle. It may take millions, but it was just money, and Ally, like her mother had always lived frugally. She had a year to work on this before she had to take a physical or make any commitment one way or the other to the State Department. She would restore the castle, not having any idea what to do with it afterward—she was sure she didn't want to live here—but she would undertake it as a project to keep her sane and productive. The physical demands also would help her heal and keep in shape.

Ally returned to her mother's latest kitchen-living area and moved her eyes around, picking out cherished bits and pieces of her shared life with her mother. If there had been vandals here, they hadn't found this section of the house yet. There was a lock on the door she had come in by, although the door hadn't been locked. She'd have to find the key to that. It should be somewhere in this room. She'd lock the room off to discourage the vandals from finding it before she could return.

Running her hand along the mantle of the fireplace in the sitting area Ally didn't find the key, but she found so much else that she remembered. There were photographs of her, with her mother, in various stages of her life. Photographs of her mother with both the symphony conductor who had originally hired her, August Donáti, and the one she'd worked for the longest, Misha Recevich. Photographs of her mother with her best friend, a symphony cellist, Angela Harris. And then various mementos of Miranda's own early life in Manhattan and the European tours they had both taken.

At the far end of the mantel was the old engraved silver cup Miranda had taken everywhere, but didn't seem to like—the one with the initials "A.D." on one side and the words "Forgotten Never" on the other—bestowed, Ally had always assumed by a grateful employer, the National Symphony conductor, Donáti. Ally remembered having asked about it and seeing her mother get angry and taking it from her, returning it to its place, and telling her that good little girls didn't ask impertinent questions. As a curious little girl, though, Ally had only become more interested in that silver cup.

She would have thought more about that at this point, but the cup rattled when she picked it up—and that's where she found the key to the door. After looking around a bit more and almost coming to tears at the memories flooding up at her from what her mother had saved to decorate the space, Ally departed the room and locked the door behind her. She felt exhausted, and she still had that first meeting with her mother ahead of her. The sheriff had said she'd probably find her mother at Lois's farm. That had been what Ally had assumed too—that her mother would either be there or at Angela Harris's house in Little Washington She decided she'd try Lois' first.

When she came back out of the front door, she immediately saw the red truck, pulled up in the entry circle. Leaning against the fender, looking self-confident, handsome, and rugged, was a man of about forty-five with a tanned, weather-beaten face, laughing blue eyes, and a toothy smile. He was wearing weathered jeans, a plaid lumberjack's shirt, and scruffed cowboy boots. If he'd been chewing on a corn stalk and swinging a lasso and had introduced himself as Will Rogers, Ally wouldn't have been surprised. Although his clothes looked well worn, they didn't look cheap or dirty. And he looked completely at home.

"Howdy," he said. "I'll bet you're the daughter."

"The daughter?" Ally said. "You mean Miranda Templeton's daughter? Yes, I am, but I don't know how you would know that, Mr. . . ."

"I'm Jake Monroe. Of Monroe Construction. I know you because your mother must have had five photographs of you on her mantelpiece. And very proud of you, she was. She mentioned you constantly."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Monroe. I'm afraid I'm at a disadvantage." The man had no idea how great her disadvantage was, Ally thought. Who was he to have been in her mother's hidden suite in the castle and in contact with her mother? Her mother was an inveterate man hater. And this man exuded confidence and sensuality. She felt his eyes undressing her even as they stood there. He was both frightening and compelling. And she had no idea why. Had her mother succumbed to the charms of a man so late in life? Some sort of reaction to Ally going off to college and not returning perhaps? Or in revenge for those few men Ally had told her about seeing before she realized that such discussion with her mother was unwelcome?

"I was a contractor for your mother. Or my company was. Me and my brother, Craig. Well, my half brother. We got your mother set up in the first floor there, west side back, after her fire upstairs a few years back. I thought we did a good job, but she didn't like it and had us redo rooms over in the back east wing. And damned if she didn't sack us half through because we didn't agree on something and bring someone else in to finish redoing those rooms. A stubborn woman that. You wouldn't take after her on that, would you?"

Ally laughed. "I guess you did know my mother then. And, as a matter of fact, I am planning to restore the place. Not just a few rooms like mother always did. I want to redo the whole castle, bring it back to what it was in the beginning."

"That's quite a job. I wouldn't mind bidding on that," Jake said.

"I don't need a contractor. But I'll need subcontractors. I'll do the contracting myself. And I'll need construction workers. I only have a year to get it completed."

Monroe gave a little whistle. "A year to get this restored. That's biting off quite a bit. An architect are you?"

"No. A set designer." When he gave her a quizzical look, she clarified. "A stage set designer. The principles are pretty much the same, though. And I know my way around construction. And—"

"And, yup, I can see that you're your mother's daughter."

They both laughed at that. Ally felt the tension going out of her body. She decided that she liked this easygoing guy. And although he was several years older than she was, she found him easy on the eyes too. She surprised herself. This was the first time since Chad that she'd looked at any man with that sort of interest. But she was finding it easy to show interest in this Jake Monroe. He seemed so authentic. The sheriff had seemed stereotypical—and much the chauvinist. Ally thought that Jake was probably just as chauvinistic and controlling, but in a much more enticing way.

Or maybe it was just that she was tired. Tired of being tired and on edge. And of grieving all of the time.

"Well, I'd like the chance to bid on subcontracting jobs then, if it's OK with you. I've grown quite fond of this pile of rocks."

Ally smiled. The sheriff had wanted her to knock it down. Here stood Jake Monroe, voicing his willingness—and interest—in standing it up again. He couldn't have come at a better time or said anything that she more wanted to hear.

"I'd be happy to take your bids when I figure out what I want done, and in what order."

"Well then, here's my card. Call me as soon as you are ready with plans and need bids." He pulled himself off the fender of the car in a graceful move and moved to her, hand extended with a business card. Ally involuntarily sucked her breath in as he came close. He smelled pine-scent clean, and she felt a tingling sensation at the nearness of him, half expecting him to envelop her in his arms. Half wanting him too.

But he didn't. He just smiled, tipped his hat, and moved to the driver's door of his truck.

"I saw you drive your truck up into the woods when I was driving up," she blurted out. It was a cross between a statement and an accusation, not a question. And it surprised the hell out of her that she'd posed it. If it had either surprised or irritated Jake, though, he didn't show it.

He just turned back to her, gave her a mischievous look, and said, "I saw your car approaching, but, more important, I saw the sheriff coming up the drive as well. Now, I didn't have any concern about your car, but I like to keep a county between me and that sheriff. We aren't exactly bosom buddies."

Giving her a close look as if daring her to pursue the question, his face went all smiley when she didn't. He tipped his hat again, climbed in the truck, and slowly pulled out of the circle, crossing the downed yellow tape and inching past her rental car.

Ally stood there, watching him go and chastising herself for falling under his charm. But charm he had aplenty. And he appeared not to like the sheriff any more than she, on first contact, had done. Not just a smooth, handsome devil, but perhaps a naughty boy as well. Ally knew she should be ashamed of herself for being attracted. But her first thought had been that her mother would be livid and go into one of her rants about the evil of men—and especially of men like Jake Monroe. Somehow, that didn't attract Ally to Jake Monroe any less.