The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2) (7 page)

“What is it? Do you want to come out? Or are you hungry?” She looked around, but the grass around the stable was still too short for her to be able to tear out a handful. In the barn beside the stall, she discovered a few bales of hay. She plucked an armful of hay from one of them and took it back to the horses. They whinnied gratefully, but then Isabelle watched them bicker over the feed, their ears lying flat. Hadn’t the overseer fed them yet? It was already after nine.

Claude Bertrand lived in a house at the end of the property, Leon had reminded her the evening before. Isabelle could see the house from where she stood. It was small and looked solid, though a little run-down—just like the rest of the estate. There wasn’t much she could really put her finger on, but when she looked closely, she spotted a small hole in the fence around the chicken run here, a loose plank there, and over there was a broken step . . . It seemed clear to her that, since Jacques’s death, no one had really maintained the place as they should have. But that would change.

Isabelle was pulled out of her thoughts abruptly when a shadow appeared beside her.

“Our stock feed is running low, I’m afraid, like so many other things.” Claude Bertrand opened the door to the stable and threw a few carrots into their food trough. “I drove the sheep out to the meadows last week, though it’s really much too early in the year. But if I move them every couple of days, they’ll get enough to survive. I need the hay for the horses. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to buy more, even if hay is expensive at this time of year.” He leaned down and stroked his dog’s head; like the day before, the faithful mutt was at his side.

“A herd of sheep, horses, peacocks—why haven’t the animals been sold yet?” She watched sympathetically as the horses crunched hungrily at the carrots.

Claude Bertrand shrugged. “I’d been advising Monsieur Jacques for years to do that! In the past, most of the producers in the region kept sheep; they’d sell the wool to balance out a bad grape year. These days, almost every vigneron has given up on sheep. All of them are concentrating on their main business. But Monsieur Jacques wanted to stick to the old tradition. And Monsieur Leon also told me yesterday that he wanted to hold on to the sheep, like his uncle.”

Well, we haven’t had our last discussion on that topic,
she thought. She kept the thought to herself and said instead, “Monsieur Bertrand, could you show me the wine cellar? I’d like to get a first impression of our stock.”

He looked at her in bewilderment. “But, madame, that is not my area. I don’t even have a key to the wine cellar. Gustave Grosse would knock my head off if I set foot in his shrine!”

Gustave Grosse. Isabelle pressed her lips together. Where was the cellar master? Shouldn’t he have been there the day before to greet them?

“But you can at least tell me which vineyards belong to us, can’t you?” There was a lot more she would have liked to say, but she didn’t want to get into an argument with the overseer, who struck her as a very friendly man.

“What you can see. The one ahead, that joins the orchard—see it? And the two blocks beside that?” The overseer pointed forward with one hand, and his dog instantly leaped in that direction as if its master had thrown a stick for it to fetch. “All three parcels belong to the Feininger cellars. A very good situation, though one of them is lying fallow right now. There are many other vineyards all around the village, too. Gustave Grosse can show you all of them. Why don’t you stroll around for a bit? It’s good to see the sun again after the long winter.”

Isabelle walked off feeling like a schoolgirl who had asked her teacher too many tiresome questions and had been sent away as a result. She would put up with it for that day, she decided. But in the future, Claude Bertrand would have to get used to her questions.

Chapter Seven

As he did every Wednesday morning, Daniel Lambert set off to inspect the Trubert vineyards. After the long winter months, the plants in the Champagne region were slowly starting to return to life. For him—a cellar master with more than thirty vineyards to look after and the one to decide when and where the work had to start—it was an important time. Daniel had an unerring eye for the changes nature brought with it as the year turned. And what he couldn’t see, he could feel. In most areas, the winter dormancy of the vines was over. But, as usual, the northern slopes of the Trubert estate were a few weeks behind. The vines had not been cut back, so they were growing wild and unkempt beyond the trellises.

Merde!
Daniel felt a cold fury rising inside him. Why had he failed the previous fall, yet again, to convince Henriette Trubert of the importance of pruning her vines even more rigorously? Fewer grapes per vine meant higher quality—that was the argument he had tried to convince her with.

But she was unmoved and had simply replied, “Trubert champagne
is
good. After all, we have the best cellar master for miles around, and that is always one of the best buying arguments for our customers.”

“But, madame, please understand. With better grapes, I would be able to achieve an even better result!” he had pleaded with her.

“If it makes you happy, then for God’s sake cut the vines. But I don’t want to hear a word about cutting them back to just
one
cordon! I insist on a good harvest,” she had said. And that had been the end of the discussion.

Daniel had decided not to raise the subject with Alphonse. Henriette’s husband had a thousand things to think of—but his business, unfortunately, was not one of them. He left that entirely in the hands of madame.

While he sat on one of the boundary stones, Daniel thought again about looking for a new position. He was always getting offers, but so far none of them had really attracted him.

Although he had more than enough work waiting for him back in the wine cellar, Daniel sat for a while on the stone, eating a little bread and cheese and enjoying a moment in the sun, which was strong enough to give a little warmth. Early bees were already exploring, and their soft buzzing was the only sound in that landscape of vines.

Would a new boss really mean more freedom?
he wondered. Delivering pretty speeches—all the vignerons could do that! But in the end, how much of a free hand they gave their cellar master . . . well, that was a different matter. He’d assumed that his previous employer trusted him and his judgment. But when it came down to it, Jacques Feininger stuck his nose in everywhere, making Daniel’s disappointment all the more bitter. At the start, Daniel had smiled and swallowed his pride and tried to change things by making good points. In vain. By the second year, they had fought so fiercely with one another that he’d finally packed up and gone to the Truberts.
From bad to worse
, he thought.

He swung his gaze to the right, and a bare slope of the Feininger vineyards caught his eye. The pang that he felt in his heart was short-lived, but it hurt. It had once been Lambert land. One of the best locations in Champagne. He sniffed contemptuously. Pearls before swine: Jacques Feininger was simply no good as a vigneron. He had not even come close to getting the best out of that fertile land.

As if he needed any more proof to back up his conviction, Daniel looked farther out, to a more distant vineyard. At the edge of the property lay a pile of old uprooted vines that had been replaced by newer, younger plants. Practically babies, the new plants, and they had barely survived their first winter. Lunacy, no less! It was one of the best-situated blocks, far and wide. And the vines they’d pulled out were not even twenty-five years old and still had a good ten or twenty years ahead of them. Mature plants that produced mature grapes with a lot of color, not just immature, young fruit!

“Everyone is always going on about the importance of the
terroir
for the wine. But the
terroir
is God-given, and a vintner has no power over that. But what a vintner can do, my dear son, is to know every vine like he knows his best friend.”
Daniel suddenly heard his father words in his ear, as he so often did when he was working out in the vineyards by himself.
“Vintners are good at overlooking the fact that every plant has its own characteristics and preferences and weaknesses, and all of it is tied up with where it’s growing in the vineyard and many other factors. Every single plant has to be pampered like a child, because all of them together give a wine its own peculiar identity.”

What would his father say if he knew that many of today’s producers didn’t care at all about the “identity” of a champagne and were far more interested in making as much as they possibly could? Champagne was the drink of the rich, and all over the world, people paid a lot of money for the pleasure it brought. The
Champenois
rushed to meet the increasing demand, and quantity often mattered more than quality. Frederick Lambert would turn in his grave if he knew that his own son, Daniel, had become part of that game. Though his father was the last one who had any right to go casting aspersions.

“Damn it,” he murmured, and tried in vain to replace his gloomy thoughts with something more pleasant. Perhaps he should forget about work for the day and spend the time drinking Ghislaine’s house wine instead. Nothing special about it, nothing to tantalize one’s palate, but simply a wine with which he could drink himself into oblivion. But then, in his sister’s tavern, he’d be sure to run into Alphonse Trubert, and he had no desire to do that. He would never understand what Ghislaine saw in the man.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a person climbing to the top of the hill—at this time of year, that was not something he would have expected. It was an unfamiliar woman, one dressed so elegantly that she looked more prepared for a ballroom than for a vineyard. Her hair glowed amber red in the sun.
What must it feel like to wrap a strand of red hair around your finger?
he thought. The thought came unheralded. She paused every few steps, and while it seemed as if she was enjoying the view, at the same time her chest rose and fell like that of someone who has been running for her life. Daniel grinned mockingly. Typical city woman. Madame was out of breath, and on a slope as gentle as that one.

But the next moment, his grin froze as he realized who it had to be:
l’Allemande
and none other! She and her husband had arrived in Hautvillers the day before; he’d heard as much from Ghislaine, because they had driven right past her tavern. Her husband was probably creeping around here somewhere, too. That was all he needed! Quickly, he packed up the rest of his food.

He was about to leave when the stranger caught his eye again. She was darting frantically from one vine to the next, looking around in a panic. Daniel watched her drop to her knees and scratch at the ground, or maybe she was pulling something out. The next moment, she seemed to be sobbing and rocked back and forth like a woman in mourning. Daniel felt like he was witnessing something he shouldn’t. What had shaken the woman like that? He was a little scared, but was he misreading the situation? Had she lost something and was just looking for it?

Although he had already made up his mind that he wanted nothing to do with Jacques Feininger’s heirs, he walked toward the woman. When he was a few steps away, he cleared his throat.

“Can I help you, madame?”

She jumped back and pressed both hands to her breast, but quickly pulled herself together. She had, truly, been crying, and she wiped her teary face with the sleeve of her dress. A beautiful woman, he realized. And much younger than he had thought she was from a distance.

“What are you doing here? Are you one of the workers?” she asked in surprisingly good French.

“Not really,” he said, smiling a little feebly. “But perhaps I can still help you?”

There was doubt in her eyes as she looked at the rows of vines. “I don’t know much about these things, but . . . there!” She pointed at the ground between them. “Those must be weeds from last year, right? And plants like that have no place in a vineyard, do they?” She bent down and pulled out a handful of dried-up chickweed, then held it up in front of him reproachfully, as if he’d personally planted it there. He was about to point out that he was not responsible for the unkempt condition of this particular vineyard, when she went on. “And if that isn’t bad enough”—she pointed at the young vines, from which sap was weeping copiously—“there, those vines! They’re dying, aren’t they? All of them. Can’t you see that? I thought this would be our great opportunity, and now this.” Her last words transformed into sobbing, and she turned away in embarrassment. “Forgive me, but seeing all of this destroyed, I would never have believed it.”

Confused, Daniel looked first at the distraught stranger, then at the tiny pools of sap that had formed along the vines.
Les pleurs
 . . .

Then he laughed. “Madame—” He wanted to explain to her that what she saw was completely harmless, but she cut him off.

“What do you have there?” She pointed at the secateur that always dangled from his belt. The pruning shears were one of the few things that he had inherited from his father.

“Did you . . .
cut
these vines with those?” The red-haired woman looked at him so angrily that Daniel was afraid she might attack him. “You saboteur!”

Daniel could not believe what he was hearing. “You don’t think that I . . .” He twisted his mouth in disgust, and without another word, he turned and walked away.

He had not yet reached the bottom of the vineyard when he saw another woman coming toward him. But instead of wearing a fiery-red dress, this woman was attired in businesslike dark blue.
Merde, not her, too,
he thought.

“Madame,” he said politely when they were face to face. He would have preferred to simply go his own way, but because Henriette Trubert stopped, he had to stop as well.

The vintner shielded her eyes with her right hand against the bright sun. Her gaze was following the red-haired woman, who was running and stumbling in the direction of the Feininger winery.

“So what they say is true—the Germans are here. Now I’ve seen it with my own eyes. So the Lambert estate really has fallen into the wrong hands.”

Daniel clenched his teeth together so hard that it hurt. “The
Lambert
estate hasn’t existed for a very long time,” he said, making an effort to keep his voice calm. “The Feiningers are the rightful heirs of Jacques, and they can do whatever they want, even if they don’t know the first thing about this kind of work.”

“My dear Daniel, as indifferent as you might act, you can’t put anything over on me!” Henriette laughed derisively, and countless wrinkles appeared around her mouth. Her lip rouge filled the tiny furrows.

At one time, Henriette Trubert had been the most beautiful woman in the entire Champagne region. But her exposure to the frosts of winter and the summer winds during her constant inspections of the extensive land belonging to her estate had aged her prematurely. Fine lines also had formed around her eyes, and the skin of her cheeks and chin sagged. As attractive as she still looked in the muted candlelight of her living room, under the cold sun of March, each of her fifty-five years was visible.

“It must hurt, mustn’t it? Knowing that it isn’t
you
working these vineyards but strangers from God-knows-where who probably don’t know a grape from an olive.”

Daniel swallowed. He could not have described his mood any better, especially given that ridiculous scene with the German woman. But he’d be damned if he was going to give his employer the satisfaction of agreeing with her.

“Things can’t always be the way you’d like them to be,” he said airily.

“That humble tone isn’t like you at all. You’re normally much more pugnacious,” said Henriette wryly. She laid one hand on his right arm, and it took some self-control on Daniel’s part not to pull away. Her eyes were imploring, and every scrap of sarcasm disappeared from her voice when she said, “If you think I’m going to stand by and watch the Feininger estate get ahead, you’re mistaken. I’m going to do everything in my power to get my hands on that land. Picture yourself as cellar master there; you could decide what happens to all of this.” She swept her free hand across the vista in front of them, including the vineyards around them. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll even manage it before this year’s harvest. If we play our cards right . . .”

“
We?
” Daniel’s throat was dry; the word sounded more like he was clearing his throat. But whether he wanted it or not, his spirit had opened itself to Henriette Trubert’s vision of the future. Like a donkey trotting behind a carrot, he was both angry with himself and unable to shut out the visions in his mind’s eye. If he were in charge . . .

“Of course,
we
!” Henriette chided him. “Your reputation is impeccable, and your word counts for a great deal around here. People tell you things they would never reveal to me. I expect you to tell me anything that has to do with the Feiningers. With the right information, the rest should be child’s play for me.”

“And why would I do that, madame?” he asked stiffly. As much as he hated the idea that the Germans were here, every part of him resisted betraying the trust of others just to help Henriette.

The woman smiled. “How would you like to see a champagne edition with Trubert-Lambert on the label?”