11The morning after the gala, promptly at ten o’clock, Molly rode her scooter up the winding drive to Château Marainte to meet with the baroness. She passed the empty gatehouse and the cottage where Georgina and Angelo lived, the scooter struggling a bit on the steep incline. Once at the top of the hill, the drive flattened out and she went through the allée of plane trees, trying not to run off the road from looking at the incredible view, the green patchwork of farmland and villages of the Dordogne.
When she reached the parking area outside the walls of the château, Molly stopped and looked up. It was a forbidding sort of place, clearly built for defense and not for beauty, the stones not the warm and inviting golden limestone typical of the area but a dark gray granite. She wondered wh
