The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2) (38 page)

Isabelle’s nose was running, and she could hardly breathe. She wiped her nose with her sleeve. Drank another mouthful as the last of the daylight vanished.

Maybe everything wasn’t as bad as they said. And the doctors, those know-it-alls, had just put a fright into her.

Please, dear God . . .

The birth. Here, in this very room. Isabelle could still smell the blood and other fluids. And all the hours she had tried in vain to press the child out. Was that when Marguerite had been damaged? The doctor in Reims had said that wasn’t possible and had talked about it being hereditary.

Isabelle pressed her eyes closed so hard that it hurt. And what if it was really her fault? Why hadn’t she gone into the hospital in Épernay much earlier? Why had she taken such a risk? The midwife had calculated that Marguerite was only due on the fifth of January, and no one expected it all to happen on Christmas Eve.

So many mistakes. How could one woman make so many mistakes?
Please, dear God, if you exist, then punish me. But leave the child alone.

At some point, Isabelle fell asleep. It was a restless sleep, and after twelve hours she woke up feeling as if she’d been through a wringer. Her head hurt, her shoulders were tense, and her chest was tight. She still had not opened her eyes completely when the ghosts of the night before returned. She looked at the two empty bottles and the red rings they had left on the white marble of the nightstand.

She had wanted to get drunk, had hoped that by doing so she could flee the truth. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Act like everything is as it was before. Another one of her stupid ideas. If anything mattered now, it was to keep a clear head and not waste her strength. With little more than a trace of her former energy, she got out of bed.

Marguerite needed her.

Daniel looked with pride at the enormous tanks on the second level of the cellars. The tanks were all filled with a rosé-colored liquid. The air was filled with its delicate aroma.

He had done it. He’d created the perfect cuvée, a rosé champagne that was light and sparkly. Now he had to hope that the color did not change during the next steps in the manufacturing process. By his reckoning, they would be able to fill around twenty thousand bottles, which would bring in a healthy sum for Isabelle in the next two years, money that the estate urgently needed for investments in the years ahead.

This champagne would catapult the Feininger estate back into the first ranks, Daniel exulted. Back where it belonged. Back where it had once been in the days when his father had run the place and the Lambert name still graced the labels. Names—for Daniel, they meant little. What mattered much more was what was inside the bottles—and what the people who bought it experienced when they drank it.

His life had changed so much since coming to work at the Feininger estate. It was the place he had spent his childhood, the same farm that his father had lost in a game of cards to Jacques Feininger, and he knew every stone in the cellar walls. He knew every vineyard, every vine. The feeling that he had come home only grew stronger with all the hours he worked in the cellars.

And then there was Isabelle. Whenever he went out walking among the vineyards, whenever he crossed the yard, he kept an eye out in the hope of seeing her. When he saw her, his heart jumped.
You’re as besotted as a kid
, he mocked himself silently. But at the same time, he knew that his feelings for Isabelle Feininger went far deeper, that it was love.

He was about to climb the steps out of the cellar when he saw a light appear above. A moment later, Isabelle was standing in front of him, pale and bleary-eyed and with a hard look to her that he had not seen before.

His heart was spilling over with love, but he forced himself to give her no more than a noncommittal smile as he said, “I was about to come and get you. The
assemblage
is finished; tomorrow, I’ll start with the filling. Would you like to try a glass?” He swept one hand out grandly, taking in all the tanks.

“Maybe later. I have to talk to you. Can you come up?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Isabelle began slowly, when they were sitting together in the kitchen a little later. A strand of hair came loose from her carelessly woven braid and fell across her face. The redness of her hair against her almost translucent skin only served to highlight her pallor. Daniel could not remember seeing a more beautiful woman, despite Isabelle’s obvious distress.

“Why don’t you simply say what it is? You know you can always rely on me.”

“But you can’t rely on me!” she blurted. “Nothing in my life is simple. Every time I think things are starting to get better, fate comes along and slaps me in the face, and I’m back on the ground again.” Tears came to her eyes, and she wiped them away furiously. In a voice heavy with emotion, she said, “Marguerite is sick. Very sick. She . . .”

Daniel listened in silence as she described her visits to the doctors. Down syndrome—he had never heard of it before.

“From now on, I have to be there for Marguerite, and that’s all. Do you understand?” She looked pleadingly at him, her eyes wide. “I know it’s the last thing you want to hear from me, and I feel terrible about doing this to you. You gave up your job in Épernay to help me, and we wanted to whip this place into shape together, but the way things look now, it’s impossible. How can I think about going on a business trip through Europe with a sick child? How am I supposed to find the peace of mind I need to sit for hours—or days!—for a painter to paint my portrait for a new label for the bottles? It’s madness!” She threw her hands in the air in despair. “How am I supposed to think competently about anything that isn’t connected to Marguerite? From now on, my daughter needs all my attention. I have to look for a specialist who can help her, for a school where she can get the support she’ll need later, for . . . oh, I don’t know what else . . .” She slumped in her chair. “All I know is that, yet again, all my plans have come to nothing. The most important thing is that I have to be there for my child. I’ll do anything for her, anything!”

There was an unshakeable conviction in her eyes. Isabelle the brave.

The old kitchen clock above the sink caught her eye. “I have to go soon. Marguerite is at Ghislaine’s house. I won’t entrust her to a stranger ever again. I was just so terribly . . . exhausted, yesterday.”

“Ghislaine’s a stranger?” Daniel raised his eyebrows.

“That’s not what I meant,” Isabelle said hurriedly. “But I can’t ask someone else to look after Marguerite! What if something happened, some kind of emergency? No, I have to take care of her myself. Besides, Ghislaine will soon have more than enough to do with her own child.”

Isabelle looked like a desperate lioness—one that someone was trying to separate from her young.

“What is it? Why don’t you say anything?” she asked after a long moment of silence. “Don’t you think my plans make sense?”

Daniel looked across the table at her. A brave woman. A fighter. One who did not accept help easily. Her world had collapsed around her, and she created another one. And now she needed to do that again. He could understand her so well, and yet . . .

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment, then began to talk. “I was eight years old when my father died. Ghislaine was ten. Our father killed himself, but you knew that. And we had lost our mother a few years earlier. Becoming orphans in such a tragic way, well, the people in the village were overflowing with pity for us. Nobody dared to speak loudly or laugh when we were around, and no one even thought about making a silly joke! Everyone looked at us with such somber expressions, all the time. The poor little orphans—that’s who we were. Nobody invited us to other children’s birthday parties or asked us to go on any adventures. When the other kids went out stealing apples, they didn’t want us there, even though I had always been the one who climbed the tallest trees. But everybody seemed to think that everyday life wasn’t appropriate to our mourning. And so they tiptoed around us, all the time.”

Isabelle was listening intently to his words, but he could not read from her face what she thought about his story. When she said nothing, he continued. “You don’t know how many times I wished that someone would simply act normal around us! That someone would give me a clip on the ear if I answered back or that the aunt that we grew up with would send me to my room for all my impudence. But it didn’t matter how unruly I was; I got away with it. I was the poor orphan, after all. Then I began to play tricks on the people around me, and the tricks got worse and worse. It got so bad that I burned down one of the protective huts in a vineyard—burned it to the ground. Everybody knew who was behind it, but nobody took me to task.” He shook his head. “When I think about it today, the never-ending pity was, for me, almost worse than anything else.”

Isabelle’s expression was solemn. She sat there, listening, her head lowered.

Daniel reached across the table and lifted her chin a little so that their eyes met. With great tenderness in his voice, he went on. “Do you want to turn your daughter into a cripple with excessive care? Do you want her to feel every day that she isn’t normal?” He shook his head adamantly. “If you really want to help Marguerite, then treat her as normally as possible. Let her be herself. If she needs help, you will be there, and the rest of us, too. Isabelle, you are not alone!” he said forcefully. “Ghislaine, Claude, and Micheline—we will be there for Marguerite and you, always.”

“But—” Isabelle began.

“No buts,” Daniel interrupted. “Here on the estate, Marguerite has the best possible surroundings to grow into a happy person. If you let her.”

“But she is so helpless, I have to . . .”

He stood up, moved around the table, and crouched beside Isabelle. With infinite gentleness, he wrapped his arms around her, and she did not resist.

“Everything will work out. We simply take each day as it comes, all right? We make good champagnes, we laugh, and we cry. We live. We love.”

Chapter Forty

One suitcase and one travel bag—Isabelle wanted no more with her for her journey to Essoyes so she could manage her bags herself instead of hunting for a porter at every train station. She had stood in front of her wardrobe for a long time deciding on the perfect dress to wear for her portrait sitting with Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Something elegant, something extravagant? Or maybe something simple that would show her more as a person? Perhaps something light, more fitting for the warm sunshine of March? But something in a heavy velvet might be better—the champagne with the new label would be finding its way to customers’ tables in the coming fall and winter, after all. In the end, she settled on a sleeveless silk dress in an elegant aqua shade that was decorated with two silk roses on the generous neckline. Isabelle thought that the green shade showed her red hair to advantage; she hoped the painter would agree with her.

When she set off for Essoyes, it would not have been true to say that she was at peace with the world or herself, but she was able to keep from sobbing as she said good-bye to Marguerite, who slept peacefully in the arms of her new nanny, Lucille. The friendly young woman was the daughter of Daniel’s previous employer in Épernay and a trained nurse who couldn’t pursue her profession in the hospital, because she was fiercely allergic to the disinfectants. Daniel had described Lucille as absolutely trustworthy and had recommended wholeheartedly that Isabelle take her on. After a few trial days to start, Isabelle realized how fortunate they were to have Lucille. The young woman fell in love with Marguerite at first sight, treated her with the greatest tenderness, and called her
ma chouchoute
—my beloved. She had also found a wet nurse for her daughter for the time she would be away. Lucille had to visit the woman twice a day with Marguerite, and the infant would also have reconstituted powdered milk. Isabelle had not known that powdered milk existed, but according to Lucille it had been available for years and was a blessing to mothers who, for whatever reason, were not able to breast-feed their children. Lucille knew everything there was to know about caring for infants, and Isabelle felt sure there couldn’t be a better nanny for Marguerite.

Daniel and Micheline had come to the house to wish Isabelle bon voyage. Ghislaine had sent her best wishes for the journey as well; a few days earlier, she had given birth to a healthy baby boy, and she was still rather unsteady on her legs and preferred to stay home.

Her friends now stood beside Lucille and Marguerite like the pillars of a fortress. Isabelle started to tear up, so she was glad to hear Claude Bertrand noisily clear his throat.

“Madame . . .” He was going to drive her the short distance to Épernay, where she would take the mail coach south; a seat had already been reserved for her.

The journey took her via Mailly-le-Camp and Arcis-sur-Aube to Troyes, and from there to Essoyes. Isabelle had written the painter a letter explaining what she wanted. Renoir had immediately sent her a cordial invitation to visit him at his house in the country and had added that it would be an honor for him to paint a champagne widow.

I hope he finds me pretty enough for his canvas
, Isabelle thought as the coach rolled through the blooming countryside. In the meadows between the cultivated fields, wild daffodils competed with primroses, and crocuses and blue hyacinths were in full bloom. Sweet aromas drifted in through the half-open window of the coach, heralding the promise of the warm months ahead, and the annually recurring miracle of nature’s reawakening was the main topic among the other travelers in the mail coach.

Essoyes was a picture-book village. Whitewashed houses had small front gardens, lethargic cats lolled on sun-drenched windowsills, and washing lines had gleaming white sheets fluttering in the wind.
A place where the world is in order
, thought Isabelle, as she walked through the village with her bags, but then she immediately corrected herself. She had thought exactly the same on her arrival in Hautvillers.
What dramas are unfolding behind these flower boxes and windows?
she wondered, passing by one particularly pretty house. Or was it just normal life, with all its highs and lows? The thought consoled her.

To her surprise, the great artist did not live in a grand mansion, but in a completely normal house with a huge garden. Wherever Isabelle looked, she saw rose bushes and the canes and shoots of climbing roses, but they were only just beginning to bud.

“I regret not coming in June, now. The sight of all the roses in bloom must be extraordinary,” she said as she followed Renoir through the garden and into his studio.

The painter nodded. “It’s one reason I prefer to live in the country. I see the shifting seasons far more directly out here. They are as perishable as our own lives.”

Isabelle smiled thoughtfully. “On days like this, I feel like I’m in the summer of my life. So many aspirations, so much drive to
do
something, but I know the feeling can vanish again tomorrow. Then I’m left more with the sense that the autumn of my life is already here.”

“Autumn has its good sides, too, but you, my dear Madame Feininger, seem to me to be spring itself!” the painter said, and his smile deepened the lines of his face. He opened the door to his studio and ushered her inside.

It was almost as bright inside as out, a result of the high, uncurtained windows. Countless canvases were stacked against the walls, and Isabelle wondered what was on them all as she breathed in the smells of paint and turpentine.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir pointed to a wooden stool in the center of the room, a few feet from his easel.

“Please be seated, Madame Feininger, and we can start right away. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

Before she sat down, Isabelle reached into her travel bag for the champagne bottle she had brought with her and set it on a small table covered with tubes of paint. “My customers are supposed to celebrate the turn of the century with this champagne. If you like, I’d be glad to open this bottle for you so that you can get to know the taste of it.”

Renoir, however, turned down the offer with a shake of his head and instructed her again to sit on the stool. “A new label with your portrait, am I right?”

Isabelle nodded as she sat on the stool. “It should look more feminine than the old label, more elegant and modern. The aim is to make the bottles stand out from the masses.” The sunlight fell through the window directly onto her face and she squinted, but a moment later her eyes had adjusted to the brightness. Her face relaxed, and her shoulders sank. She breathed in deeply, enjoying the sun’s warmth.

“Tell me something about your estate and your plans,” Renoir said, and Isabelle told him about the new start she and Daniel were making with the place together. When she spoke about her turn-of-the-century wind, the painter applied the first brushstrokes on his canvas. When she had finished telling him about what she and Daniel were doing, he looked up and said, “You speak with so much fire and commitment! I can almost picture your estate in my mind. And your youthful esprit, your passion—if your champagne is only half as captivating as you are, Madame Feininger, then it will be a tremendous success. I can promise you one thing today: you will have the most beautiful label of all time—with you as my model in front of me, it will be child’s play.”

Renoir completed Isabelle’s portrait in just five days. It showed a young woman with a mature expression: her vibrant eyes shone with a mix of confidence and mischievousness, as if she were about to say, “Hello, life, what challenges do you have in store for me now?” After all that life had thrown in her way in the past year, it astonished Isabelle to see that she still possessed such radiance. The colors were both expressive and soft, caressing more than vexing the eye. Isabelle was so enchanted by her likeness that almost the moment she arrived home again, she invited her neighbors and friends to her place to present “her Renoir” to them.

Now, early on a Saturday afternoon, standing in the kitchen with Lucille and arranging cheese snacks and fruit on a silver platter, she could hardly wait to see how the others reacted to it.

“It’s just gorgeous!” Micheline cried, clapping her hands enthusiastically.

“A portrait by one of the most famous painters in the world.” Carla Chapron sighed longingly. “What wouldn’t I give for something like that.” She looked at her husband, standing beside her, as if challenging him, but the cooper pretended not to notice.

“Now, don’t go getting ideas; you’re not nearly as pretty as that,” said Ghislaine, good-naturedly mocking her friend. She was standing with the others in front of the small semicircular table on which Isabelle had set up the painting.

“Ghislaine!” hissed Carla immediately.

But Isabelle only laughed. “She’s not exactly wrong. Monsieur Renoir really painted me in the best possible light. But I don’t mind at all. For the champagne label, the portrait has to be as beautiful as possible. Isn’t that true, Monsieur Dupont?”

The champagne dealer nodded. “You look like a true champagne queen! If you will allow it, I’ll take it to my label maker first thing on Monday, then I can show you the first drafts of the design at the end of next week. Once you’ve decided on a label, we should get it to the printer immediately. We have no time to lose if we want to present Feininger champagne in its new brand-new guise on our sales tour.”

Isabelle nodded. “What do you think of it?” she asked, turning to Daniel, who had so far been silent. His champagne glass was still full, she noticed. Suddenly, it seemed incredibly important to her to get his approval, too.

Daniel shrugged and said, “If you think it’s worth going to all this trouble. I believe the quality of our new champagne speaks for itself.” His smile seemed forced. He put down his glass. “I have to get back to the vineyards. Work is waiting.”

“But it’s Saturday afternoon!” Ghislaine said, perplexed.

It took an effort for Isabelle to hide her disappointment. “I’ll come along in a few minutes,” she said quietly.

Raymond Dupont, who had stayed in the background during this exchange, stepped forward and said, “I thought we might go over the final details of our tour?”

“If you look at it realistically, the entire world champagne market is dominated by about ten or twelve companies. We’re talking about the big names—Pommery, Moët & Chandon, and Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. These companies invest enormous amounts of money in advertising and other publicity, and their agents are at work practically around the clock. The opera, the racecourses, casinos—you’ll find the champagne sellers wherever the rich play,” Raymond explained, once the others had left and they were sitting opposite one another in the living room.

“Considering that competition, how am I supposed to get my foot in the door?” Isabelle asked with concern. She dared not even think what would happen if the sales tour was not a success. It would be the end; she would be penniless. A large part of what she had earned from the Americans had already been spent. And almost every day, Daniel came along with new ideas about how the winery could be modernized and the vineyards replanted. And all of it cost a mountain of money.

She shifted Marguerite from her right arm to her left. She looked so cute when she slept!

Raymond opened to another page of his dark-brown leather-bound notebook.

“The year before last, more than twenty-four million bottles of champagne were sold—I think we’ll manage to sell yours as well.” He smiled encouragingly at Isabelle. “With the quality and the attractive exterior, and by that I don’t just mean the bottle . . .”

Isabelle felt her worries draining away again. “Oh, Raymond, what would I do without you?” Spontaneously, she leaned over and grasped his right hand.

“In this huge and extremely difficult market, the art is finding the right niche,” Raymond went on. “We can forget the Russian market. The agents from Moët, Roederer, and Ruinart are tripping over each other there. The English are great lovers of champagne, too, but a few of the big names have sewn up that market.” He waved his arm as if to say,
But who cares?

“The Americans, as they always have, prefer sweet champagnes, which puts it out of my reach, too,” Isabelle added. “That really only leaves Europe.”

Raymond laughed out loud. “The way you said that makes it sound like Europe is just a backwater. Wait until you meet my clientele—with a little luck, they will soon be customers of yours, too.”

It was late in the afternoon when Raymond left, and the sun was still high enough to bathe the countryside in its warmth. When Isabelle was finished feeding Marguerite, she laid her in her pram and pushed her outside. A little fresh air would do both of them good. In front of the house, Isabelle hesitated. Should she stroll into the village and pay Ghislaine and her new boy a visit? But following an instinct, she walked instead in the direction of the vineyards. As she pushed the pram over the bumpy grass path, she reviewed her conversation with Raymond. He had so many facts and figures at his fingertips—he really knew his field well. Unless things went completely wrong, their journey would indeed be a success. The thought should have made her happy, but deep inside, Isabelle felt a touch of unease that she couldn’t explain.

Her expression only brightened when she discovered who she had unconsciously been seeking. Daniel.

“So your admirers have already left?” he said, without looking up from his work.

“And you? Still not finished?” she replied, referring to the binding wire with which he was affixing an over-long vine shoot to a wooden frame.

Their eyes met, and they smiled.

While Daniel calmly went on tying other shoots in place, Isabelle lifted Marguerite out of the pram. Then she sat down on the soft, mossy earth and arranged her daughter on her lap, where she went on sleeping. Wistfully, Isabelle gazed out at the last thin rays of sunshine descending over the vineyards.

After a few minutes, without a word, Daniel sat beside her. Only then did she notice that he had a small backpack with him. Was he going into the village that evening, or maybe even to Épernay? Isabelle felt a pang in her heart.