A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress (10 page)

‘I’m not trying to.’ He opened the tower door and was halfway up the stairs before Shauna had dried her hands. She caught up with him, gripping the rope handrail in the darkness. She wasn’t ready for this.

Laurent let them into the top room and turned on the light, ushering her in ahead. The first thing she saw was the violet silk dress laid out on the bed like a surrendered female form. Hadn’t she hung it away? Maybe not, as she’d been in such a hurry to leave last time she was here.

‘Which window, Shauna?’

She gave him a blank look. ‘Sorry?’

‘Which window was the figure standing in front of?’

‘Oh.’ She made a slow turn, in no hurry to answer. She felt Laurent was waiting, like a magician about to pull an unpleasant rabbit from a hat. His appearance was different tonight. He was wearing a cotton sweater, the sort preferred by yachtsmen, and chino trousers. He’d come to supper once in a T-shirt and shorts, and Louette had sent him home to change and shave. Ever since, he’d made more of an effort. Tonight, his hair looked very black, his complexion unusually drained. And he was tense, his arms wrapped around his body.

‘I saw her there.’ She pointed to the picture of wading cattle. The window behind it faced west. Its glass would catch the setting sun.

‘You’re sure she was at that window?’ When Shauna affirmed it, he asked, ‘You saw her from the lawn?’

‘From the meadow, but I have good eyesight,’ she said, her irritation rising. It was hard enough to admit to being spooked, without an interrogation on top. ‘Girl or woman, I’m not sure, but she was staring out towards the woods.’

Laurent lifted the picture off its hook and Shauna saw the outline of a window frame. An outline only. Its centre was filled with stone blocks which, judging by the condition of the mortar, had been in place for many years.

She swung between bewilderment and mortification. Self-evidently, she couldn’t have seen a window. Yet she
had
, so what did that say about her mental state? She’d always been the cool logician, the girl with the sceptical, white-coated mind.
She had seen a figure
… Through blind stone. She was guilty of self-delusion and Laurent had brought her up here in full knowledge. ‘Thanks for the humiliation. You and Rachel are one of a kind.’

He raised his hands. ‘I needed to show you this, but believe me—’

‘Right from day one you’ve played games, the pair of you! “Let’s pick her up in a pony cart and give her sunburn!” “Let’s lock her in the tower, see if she gets the screaming jimjams!” You and Rachel had something going, didn’t you?’

He shrugged, resisting the direction of the conversation, but giving in as she continued to eyeball him. ‘Yes, we did, but it’s over, dead as roadkill and we have never discussed you. Never. Ah, no!’ He caught her as she tried to push past him. She struggled with him, elbowing him in the chest.

Laurent locked his arms around her. ‘Race down in the dark, you’ll go headfirst. Shauna, listen.’ He put his lips to her ear. ‘Come back to me.’

Like a kettle coming to the boil and clicking off, the pressure subsided in her head. She flopped against his chest, her lungs hurting as if she’d cried for a week. ‘Am I going mad?’

He gave a grim laugh. ‘No more so than any of us at Chemignac. Look, I’m going to turn off the light now but I won’t let go of you. Follow me down. Hold tight to the handrope.’ In the second before he extinguished the light, she looked back into the room. ‘I ought to hang up that dress.’

A click, and darkness.

His voice rasped, ‘Leave that hellish rag alone—’ He stopped, saying in his normal voice, ‘I meant, it’s fragile. It can’t take too much handling. We’d better go down and put away those dishes or Louette will accuse us of sloppy workmanship.’ He all but pulled her out of the room.

S
he wasn’t
sure if Laurent was avoiding her, but she was avoiding him, making sure she was out as much as possible. He stopped eating with the family, excusing himself on the grounds of a heavy workload. Not altogether untrue, as Raymond, the elder of his two vineyard workers, was on sick leave with a herniated disk in his spine. Laurent was also interviewing candidates to take over Rachel’s position. And though nothing specific was said, there was a feeling among the adults that Laurent was having to monitor Rachel’s work closely as with her departure only a few weeks away she was slacking.

Louette commented on it over dinner one evening. ‘August is supposed to be the month my cousin gets a little time off, but I’ve never seen Laurent so harried. I knew the first time I met her that Rachel was trouble. She has the coiled look of someone waiting to steal the best piece of meat off your plate. Laurent should hire a temporary manager.’

Albert answered morosely, ‘You never take time off in this business. Always watching the grapes, the weather…’

‘The weather does what it does,’ Isabelle put in. ‘No point watching it.’

‘
Véraison
is the most crucial time.’ Albert jabbed the table. As Isabelle had told Shauna, he could no longer be of much use in the vineyard because he suffered from arthritis and hip dysplasia. It didn’t stop him hobbling among the vines nearest the house though, expressing his opinion of Laurent’s methods. He was particularly put out by Laurent’s decision, some years back, to seed grass between the vines rather than plough the strips each season. Albert insisted that grass sapped the vines’ energy, but Laurent’s answer was simple. He didn’t want his vines to grow too vigorously. He wanted them to put down deep roots, to draw minerals from deep in the soil. It was why he added very little fertiliser. ‘Make them search for their own food,’ he’d said during his last appearance at the family dinner table, ‘and they will be healthier and reflect the
terroir
.’

Albert’s response had been scathing. ‘I grew up on hard work and proven methods. You young people rely too much on machines and science-lab toys.’

Shauna had listened, struck anew by the difference between the two men. Laurent had acknowledged his uncle’s opinion and answered his criticisms in a way that suggested a profound study of the subject. Albert rammed his fist down.
My way or no way
.

They’d bandied terms like
terroir
, which she gathered meant the unique character of the soil, its minerals and the hours of sunshine it received, all of which established the flavour and character of a wine. Tonight, she’d have liked to ask what
véraison
meant, but, as ever, Albert’s presence affected her like a wet sack over her head. She sometimes thought he only came to meals for the pleasure of making her uncomfortable.

When the cheese was brought out, Shauna asked Isabelle to excuse her. ‘I’ve got the fidgets. Do you mind if I go out for a walk? Leave the washing-up for me.’

‘Nonsense, the children can do it. Or Audrey will do it in the morning.’ Audrey Chaumier, who was Raymond’s wife, now came in every day to clean. She’d been Louette’s choice of daily help and her efficient, genial presence went some way to neutralise household tensions.

‘Are you heading towards the woods or…’ Isabelle’s eyes gleamed, though with mischief or pleasure Shauna couldn’t tell, ‘to the
chai
?’

Shauna wasn’t sure where she’d end up. If she happened to bump into Laurent, well,
c’est le destin.
‘I thought I might roam among the grapes.’

‘Then bless them as you pass,’ Isabelle chuckled. Her spirits had mended since her fall, though her damaged joints still pained her. ‘They need all the prayers they can get. Sunshine, plenty. Rain, a little. Pests, none.’

S
hauna found
Laurent on one of the southwest-facing
parcelles
, his white shirt jumping out of the topaz light. Walking towards him, uncertain what she would say, she let her mind fill with the sounds and scents of early evening. For once, birdsong trumped the buzz of insects. The air smelled of wild mint released by the heat of the day. A perfect temperature and she’d walked out in a dress with spaghetti straps, only a silk crochet shrug protecting her shoulders. A beautiful evening, a perfect scene. Vineyards reached away to a lost horizon but that no longer felt threatening because she now understood the confused patchwork. Each
parcelle
was cultivated to catch the sun, and must follow the slopes and valleys carved out after the last ice age. Extraordinary, to think that the movement of melting ice floes twenty thousand years ago should affect the acidity of a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in 2003. The vines’ colour palette had intensified from her first view a month ago. The grape clusters were bigger. The greens less sour-looking, more translucent.

‘Heuh!’ Laurent came towards her and she picked up pace, anxious to read his expression before it was too late to invent an excuse for being here. He wasn’t smiling, but at least his eyes were welcoming. ‘It’s too early to pick, you know.’

‘I do know,’ she answered. ‘I need to ask you something.’

‘Go ahead.’ A small pair of scissors was tucked into his belt and he carried a plastic beaker.

‘What does
véraison
mean?’

A weak reason for interrupting him, but Laurent seemed pleased by the question. ‘It’s the moment of ripening, the moment of truth, when you know you will have a harvest in six, seven, eight weeks.’

‘Has it come, your moment of truth?’

He made a non-committal sound. ‘The weather cooled off this week, as you noticed, but the forecast is for another heat wave. Give it a day or two and I will know. These are Muscadelle.’ He showed her the beaker, half full of gooseberry-green orbs. ‘For sweet wine. I won’t sample any of the others yet. No point questioning what cannot speak to you.’

She drew a breath and came to her real reason for coming to find him. ‘I’m sorry I was a bit hysterical the other night, in the tower. I’m not mad – well, ninety-five percent sure I’m not. I must have imagined the figure at the window. Course I did. And the window itself, too. The business with the cave and then Isabelle’s accident and finding that memorial and reading your grandfather’s name on it . . . It’s shaken me more than I realised.’

‘Walk the forest tracks in southern and western France, you will find many such stones. But I don’t think you an idiot, or mad, and I’m sorry if I seemed brutal. Perhaps we were both overwrought.’ He waved away a wasp zig-zagging close to Shauna’s hair, and then rested his hand against her neck. ‘Louette says you’re staying for the harvest. I’m glad.’

‘Isabelle won’t cope with the
fête de vendange
this year. Not without extra hands. Not sure mine will be much use, but if necessary, I can beat eggs into submission. My omelettes were famous when I shared a student house.’

‘Only stay if you want to. We can always hire in more help for Isabelle.’

‘I – I’ve said I will stay. I want to.’ Did she? Yes, because she’d learned in the space of ten breaths that she could never be happy away from this man. ‘And I’m sorry for being snide about you and Rachel. I believe you when you say your relationship is over—’

‘It isn’t.’

She gasped, the pain shockingly savage.

‘Because it was never a relationship.’ At last, he smiled. ‘I’m going to the
chai
. Want to help me?’

‘Of course. Help with what?’

‘Oh, something completely pointless but very interesting.’

B
eing
diligent – or was the word ‘pedantic’? – about learning new words, Shauna had established that the
chai
was traditionally the place where wine was stored. Laurent used the term more loosely. His
chai
was where his presses were located, his vats and oak barrels. He bottled his wine there. When the harvest kicked off next month, the new grapes would be brought in on the back of a trailer and pressed, the juice shared between the numerous vats. Fermentation and every other process happened in this barn-like building. Laurent had explained, ‘In every other business it would be called a factory, but that’s not a word wine-growers like.’ This evening, he led her past the main door and into a small side building, where he spread his arms wide and said, ‘Welcome to my laboratory.’

Like the
chai
, the lab was pristine, its stone walls blasted clean, chisel marks sharp as if they’d been made yesterday. The stone must have been sealed too, as there was no dust. Laurent pointed to a partition wall, telling her that the winery’s office lay the other side – it was where Louette went each day and where, at the moment, machinery was buzzing. ‘Sounds like a fax is arriving,’ Shauna said. These days, most people used email but she supposed that Chemignac was an electronic backwater. ‘Do you want to check it?’ Laurent listened until a series of beeps established that it was a short message. ‘I’ll give it a miss tonight. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork I have to deal with. I can’t walk across a room without filling out a form. So, now I’m going to show you my latest labour-saving device. Or “laboratory toy” as Albert would call it.’ Laurent set his beaker on a countertop, then reached into a base cupboard, bringing out a cardboard parcel that Shauna recognised.

‘You collected that at Garzenac station,’ she said, ‘the day I arrived.’

‘And I saw you, all hot and bothered. Had I realised who you were, I’d have taken you home with me.’

‘Instead you left me to Rachel’s tender care.’

‘I saw her before I left, harnessing the pony, and assumed she was picking up guests. Some of them like to arrive in old-fashioned style, though not usually in such searing heat. Rachel has a nasty side and it’s why we never had a deep or lasting relationship.’ From the package, Laurent took an object shaped like the neck of a clarinet.

She leaned in to look. ‘And this is?’

‘A refractometer. In the cupboard you’ll find a garlic press and more plastic containers. Would you mind?’

Armed with a very clean garlic press and a sterile beaker, she followed Laurent’s instruction, squeezing juice from a couple of Muscadelle grapes. Laurent flipped up one end of the refractometer and told Shauna to pour juice onto its exposed glass. ‘Just a drop.’ Moving to stand under a skylight, he tilted the instrument a couple of times, then invited her to look. ‘The liquid is caught between twin prisms, you see? You know how a prism works?’

‘It splits light into its component wavelengths. Pretty basic physics.’

‘So, the light passes through the juice and the angle of refraction tells you the concentration of sugars.’

‘Sugar content affects light refraction. I see.’

‘Read the gauge. It’s just above zero so we won’t bother marking it down, but in a few days, we will do this for real.’

‘And judge how fast the grapes are ripening?’

‘And so predict the vintage. Each day, I compare this year with last, and all the years since I’ve been running Clos de Chemignac.’

‘Neat. That’s really impressive.’

‘I’m impressed by you too.’ He wiped down surfaces they’d used with ethanol spray. He was deadly serious about his environment, she realised. Scientifically literate, focussed
and
sexy. No wonder she shallow-breathed when he was near. ‘You have a remarkable grasp of physics and chemistry,’ he told her.

‘I should do. I studied it for five years and have a BSc in biomedical science and a master’s in medicinal plant science.’

An odd look on his face, Laurent put the last items away and shut the cupboard door. He turned to her, a groove between his brows. ‘You’re not a canine reflexologist?’

‘A what? Good God, who said I was that?’

‘Rachel.’

‘Laurent, think about it… Reflexology on dogs’ paws? I don’t generally like Rachel’s humour, but that’s a gem. It’s only mildly less wacky than being an equine reflexologist.’

He made a face. Then laughed. ‘OK, I fell straight in, headfirst. Though I tell you what, somewhere in the First World, there will be a canine reflexologist.’

‘Bound to be, but not me. I’m a scientist. Does that worry you?’

‘No, and it answers a question. I was puzzling for days how you knew all this stuff. I wondered, had I left a wine science reference book at Isabelle’s?’

‘“All this stuff” was in my A-level chemistry curriculum. I lied about being good at pub quizzes.’

He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Welcome to Chemignac, Madame la Scientifique.’

‘It’s good to be here.’

‘And you
will
stay?’

‘For the harvest.’ Seeing the doubt in his eyes, she added, ‘I don’t break promises.’

He kissed her, bunching her short hair, his other hand pressing into her waist. She gave everything to the kiss, lifting herself on tiptoe, discovering how soft his hair was, how hard the wall of his stomach. When she reached inside his shirt, she discovered that his body hair thickened between his ribs then grew sparser over his breastbone. She’d once watched a news report of a violinist reunited with a stolen instrument. The girl had tucked her violin under her chin in stirring tenderness and Shauna now felt the same – reunited with a part of herself. Being in love, expressing physical intimacy, was Shauna’s art, her creative outlet. During the barren years, she’d piled her loving instincts into her studies. At last, she could fly… Longing swelled under the urgency of Laurent’s hands, his lips – which broke from her mouth to skim down her neck, to caress the curve of her shoulder. He spoke her name with such smoky intensity, she swayed. And then he stopped. ‘We need to speak about this.’

He pushed aside her shrug to reveal her thorn symbol. With a sob of frustration, she pulled the garment off and lobbed it, then angled her shoulder so he could see the tattoo plainly. ‘It’s the
straif
. It’s Irish. It’s coincidence, Laurent.’

‘It’s the de Chemignac badge. It’s ours.’

‘Well, you can’t have this one, it’s attached to me.’

He bent his right arm to exhibit his own tattoo. ‘I need to understand why we share this mark.’