"The saddest thing, I think," Nora muttered as they strolled from one gorgeous chamber to another, holding hands, "is that the Count John Francis Pállfy, the great great grandfather of the current owner, who started the Neo-Gothic reconstruction which was carried out according to the models of French castles on the river Loire and lasted twenty-two years, did not see its completion. Goodness, if I ever wished ghosts existed, it would be for his sake. I always wished that he didn't have to leave this place, and could see how it looked when it was finished... But at the same time, I wish that he couldn't see what his heirs did with his precious collections... Can you imagine being an avid collector, travelling the world in search of ancient things to embellish your beloved castle, to take care of them and put them on display for anyone who might want to see them, only to have them sold again the moment you're gone from this world? That's about the most disrespectful thing I've ever seen."
"But we got most of the things back by now," Martin said. "And those that we could not buy back, or those that got lost or destroyed, we replaced. Like these beds," he explained, making her realise that they entered one of the bedrooms.
"Nothing of the original furniture of this room was preserved," Nora said, remembering what she had read about the chamber as she looked around, her eyes pausing on the two large, golden beds which almost filled the room entirely. "These awful, gilded monsters are replicas of the original beds," she said, smiling. She always found the two separate, huge, golden beds ugly.
"You are right," Martin agreed, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, "and that's why I can do this without you accusing me of damaging ancient furniture of your beloved castle," he added, lifting her up and carrying her to the bed closer to them so fast that she had no time to protest or even squeal with surprise, before he deposited her on the surprisingly dust-free, yellow coverlet embroidered with a golden thread.
Nora giggled in an attempt to banish her nervousness as he lay down next to her, his face hovering centimeters about hers, the moment feeling so much more intimate than any they had shared before. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, revelling in his closeness as he kissed her, in the feeling of his fingers in her hair, on her face, her arms...
He rested his forehead against hers for a long moment after the kiss was over, and Nora noticed how his hands trembled with emotions he was trying to hide when he stood up and offered her his hand to pull her to her feet, before he let his fingers stroll to her head in an attempt to restore some order to her hair.
"I promised I'd be professional," he muttered almost apologetically, making her giggle.
"I... don't mind you being unprofessional," she admitted, kissing him on the cheek. "But let us adjust the bed cover. It's not fair for someone else to have to do it tomorrow, before the first tour."
He smiled and nodded, and they only left the bedroom once Nora was happy with the way the golden coverlet was displayed.
"You know, when I was a child, I believed that the Count kept a wife hidden behind each of the locked doors," she said as they walked from room to room through corridors lined with many locked doors, "like Blubeard in that fairytale."
Martin chuckled, then his smile faded as she added, "And later, as a teenage girl, I couldn't understand that a man like him had never married, and I was tempted to think that he kept a Bertha Mason locked in the attic of one of the many towers, like Mr Rochester."
Nora couldn't see Martin's expression as he stood in front of her, his face turned towards the door he was unlocking, but she was almost certain that his shoulders tensed... unless it was just a trick of the flickering, candle-like electric lights. She followed him into the Golden Room, all her previous thoughts scattering at seeing its magnificent beauty.
"This is the most popular room of the castle, nowadays used for weddings. I always hoped I'd get married here," she said, then blushed. Why on Earth did she have to say that?
She caught his smile from the opposite end of the large chamber before she let her eyes stroll to the very famous ceiling. It was carved out of pinewood, with one hundred eighty-three gold-plated angel faces looking down, each with a different expression.
"The medallion in the centre of the ceiling depicts Count Pállfy's crest, a deer, and a broken wheel. Legend has it that one of his ancestors was miraculously saved from a certain death by hurtling off a precipice, when a deer who jumped in front of his carriage caused one of its wheels to break, and forced the horses, scared by thunder and out of the coachman's control, to change direction and stop running. The Latin inscription on the ribbon around the medallion, 'Omnia Cum Tempore', the Count's motto, translates as 'All in good time'".
Everything in its time... Nora mused, thinking the words over for the umpteenth time. She had kind of adopted the motto as her own a long time ago, and believed it. There was no reason to rush, or get stressed about life, if things were supposed to happen, they would when the right time came...
She leaned into Martin when he approached her, his arm wrapped around her waist from behind pulling her into him. Maybe this was her time, time to let herself go and follow her heart without trying to think too far ahead and run away before any of the possible consequences of her decision could reach her.
"That was wonderful," Martin whispered, his breath tickling her earlobe and making her shiver, his touch and closeness taking her breath away. "You sound as if you've been doing this your entire life. Come," he added, taking her by her hand, leading her to another door.
Nora followed him into the cold darkness of one of the many courtyards, towards an ill-lit archway which hid the castle's oldest flight of steps, cut directly into the travertine hill on which the castle stood, centuries before the last reconstruction, leading to another courtyard. If she expected to meet the Black Lady, the castle's famous resident ghost, this would be the most likely place... She shivered at the thought and refused to look over her shoulder when she heard a sudden rush of wind so close to her ear that it could be a cold whisper leaving ghostly lips, drawing a step closer to Martin as she followed him up the cold, arched stone passage, step after slippery step.
Even though she wasn't immediately sure where she was when they finally reached the top of the stairway, Nora recognised the courtyard the moment her eyes found the well standing in its middle. She rushed towards its ancient iron grid just as when she was a little girl, curious to see the water deep down, happy to find the underground lake that filled the crater of an old thermal spring illuminated. A cold draft carrying scents of old stone, moss and mildew from the deep pit caressed her face, and she closed her eyes momentarily as elation she could not explain threatened to overwhelm her.
"It's twenty-six metres deep, it's quite unbelievable, isn't it?" she asked, voice shaking, meeting Martin's eyes. He stood close at her side and she smiled at him before raising her eyes towards the dark, wintry sky, squinting against the falling snowflakes as she found what she she was looking for.
"And there's the Thorn Crown," she said, admiring the gilded, spiky circle placed on top of one of the towers. "The symbol of one of the owner's unrequited love," Nora muttered, "the love of an old man for a much younger girl, for whom he repaired an old castle, and yet she refused to marry him."
"Would you fall in love with such a count?"
"Such a count?" Nora repeated, looking at him again, finding him observing her.
"A man almost ten years older than you, someone whom you believed to be another Blackbeard, a man who might have something in common with your Mr Rochester, a father... A count... with strings attached?"
He let his voice trail off, and Nora could feel he was in difficulty of how to continue.
"Would anyone fall in love with a woman who has been old enough to become a wife and a mother for years, and yet achieved nothing in her life, not even a career to be proud of? A woman who tries to erase the last ten years of her life and start all over again? A woman who owns nothing apart from an inherited cottage and an old car?"
She shook her head, letting her eyes drop to the surface of the water rippling at the bottom of the deep pit as she continued, "Reaching a certain age, we all have strings attached... But are we really defined by what we did and do? If yes, what does it say about me, a thirty years old woman looking after another's child for a living? Would anyone fall in love with a woman like that?"
A sigh escaped him, making Nora turn her face to him again, and as she saw him open his mouth, she wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled him down, silencing the words he was about to utter before they would leave his lips. She wasn't ready for a confession her words might have tempted him to make, and he wasn't either. Even if he liked her as much as she liked him, it was too early. They had only just met, and there were many things lying between them they needed to talk about before taking another step forward.
Nora may have decided to let herself go and stop overthinking the future, but she didn't want to rush. If she and Martin were meant to be together, they would have the rest of their lives to figure everything out.