Page 10 of Liaison with the Champagne Count
Speculation moved in his eyes and the evening lost a bit of its pleasure. She almost regretted bringing the subject up. The moment to make her request had seemed perfect with the lamplight and their bellies filled with the comfort of warm food and good wine. But now she wondered if she’d rushed it. What was he thinking behind those blue eyes?
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘You may have your first lesson tomorrow. I walk the vineyards at six in the morning rain or shine. Dress warmly.’ If that was a challenge, she was up for it.
Chapter Seven
She was waiting for him. That was a rarity in itself. Few people ever rose before him. But there she was, looking like a figure from a gothic novel, the dawn-grey vineyards a shadowy backdrop against her dark silhouette swathed in a black cloak, hood up to shield her hair from the morning mist. It leant her an air of intrigue, as if she needed any more of that. She already dominated too much of his thoughts as it was. She’d upended his world when she’d walked into the chateau.
He’d spent the last days trying to mitigate the effects of her presence on his carefully ordered plans only to come home and find her cooking corn chicken chowder and playing the housekeeper in her kerchief and serge. To a rather compelling effect, he admitted. Their meal together had been a striking departure from the tension-filled dinner. Last night’s meal had almost been friendly right up until the part where she mentioned her desire to see the vineyards. It had been a reminder that she was closing in, like a relentless tide that crept up on the shore hour by hour, its arrival inevitable.
‘Bon matin, Madame Luce,’ he greeted. ‘I am glad to see the early hour did not trouble you and that you’ve dressed accordingly.’ She’d taken his advice in that at least. Beneath her cloak peeped the skirt of the blue serge she’d worn yesterday and sturdy half-boots that would hold up to the dirt of the vineyards. ‘We will start here. This section closest to the chateau is where we grow thepinot meunoir.’ He gestured to the nearest row of grapes and ushered her down the aisle lined with bare vines. ‘There’s not much to see but soon, though, these vines will sport tight buds, they’ll flower in late April and May.’ He launched into a treatise on the pruning process as he walked her up and down the rows, then explained the life cycle of the grape. To her credit, she offered no complaint or interruption. Julien stopped at one vine and took out his penknife, making a small nick.
‘What are you looking for? Is everything all right?’ They were the first words she’d uttered since he’d begun his monologue. Perhaps hehadsucceeded in overwhelming her. Perhaps hisonclewas right—if she understood the enormity of the task she was undertaking she might rethink her goals. But even as he thought it, part of him rebelled at the idea—the part of him that didn’t want her overwhelmed, the part of him that was remembering what it had been like to talk with her across the kitchen worktable while they ate soup and traded stories. In those moments they’d not been enemies.
She leaned forward towards the vine, towards him, the hood of her cloak falling back far enough to reveal the sable sheen of her hair. He caught a brief trace of her scent, the jasmine sambac and orange blossom he’d smelled on her the first night.
He folded the penknife and put it back in his pocket. ‘I was looking for sap. It tells us when the grape will enter budburst.’
‘And thus, alerting growers the season begins.’ She flashed him a smile. ‘See, Iwaslistening. Toeveryword you said, and there were a lot of them.’ Her smile turned thoughtful. ‘Is it bad there’s no sap?’
Julien shook his head, wondering if he should be impressed or distressed by her attention. ‘The vines cannot be rushed.’ He looked up into the lightening sky. Perhaps there would be sun today. ‘If the buds come too early, tricked by a false spring, a frost can kill or stunt them. A grower wants the buds to come when the weather is safe. They have no protection from the frost or the cold.’
‘But they do from heat,’ she said. ‘The leaves offer shade in the summer.’
‘Very good,’ he complimented. What would Oncle Etienne make of that? Nothing good, he supposed. They wanted her uninterested, not lapping up everything he said. He’d have to try harder to bore her. A carriage pulled into view as they neared the end of the row. ‘We’ll drive the distance to the next section of vineyard where the chardonnay grapes are grown.’ He helped her up and took the seat across from her, stretching out his legs. ‘We grow three types of grapes here, thepinot meunoiryou just saw, the chardonnay, and thepinot noir. They are the three grapes that can be used for thevin mousseux.’ It was a perfect opportunity to launch into a dissertation on the quality of grapes.
She tossed him a smug smile and interrupted his train of thought. The sunhadcome out and she’d pushed her hood back, her face on full display to him, a sharp combination of beauty and intelligence. ‘I cannot decide, Monsieur Archambeau, if you are trying to overwhelm me, bore me, or impress me with your extraordinary array of knowledge about vineyards.’ Her smile turned smug. ‘If your intention is the first or second, it won’t work.’
‘Most women would have been bored an hour ago.’ Most women would not have got out of bed and dressed like a servant in order to tramp through the dirt to look at bare vines.
‘I’m not most women,monsieur,’ she said with all seriousness. Was that a warning? A reminder?
In hindsight, he should have seen it from the beginning. A traditional widow did not travel across the Channel mere weeks after the death of her spouse. A traditional widow did not attempt to take over a business she knew nothing about in a foreign country where her command of the language was no more than adequate. Neither did a woman of title and wealth dabble about in the kitchens making soup and eating at worktables. Yet she had done all these things. His usual attempts at warning off women by boring them to death would not work with her because she wasnotthe usual woman. He’d have to try harder. Oncle Etienne would not approve of lacklustre efforts.
Julien crossed his booted legs at the ankles and opted for a different tack. If one could not fight Madame Luce, one could always join her. ‘And the latter? How is that going? Impressed yet?’ Some part of him, the manly ego of him, wanted her to be impressed, wanted her to know what she was up against. He was good at what he did. He’d learned his craft well. In the Vallee de Marne, there was no one better when it came to growing and blending the wines.
‘Fishing for a compliment, are we, Monsieur Archambeau?’ She laughed and the carriage suddenly felt more like last night’s dinner table than the sharp edge that had pierced the morning. Perhaps that was their pattern, to start each interaction wary, cautiously relearning one another before relaxing. ‘At my peril, I will admit to being dazzled.’
‘At your peril? Whatever can be dangerous about that admission?’ He should not encourage this line of conversation. It was at his peril, too. An impressed Emma Luce would not be a disinterested party and that was the last thing he and hisoncleneeded.
‘All that knowledge piques my curiosity. About you.’
That wasnotwhere he’d thought the conversation was going. He’d expected her to ask a question about the grapes, to lead him into another dissertation on viniculture.Thathe could handle. He could talk for hours about grapes and wine. Hadn’t he proven that already? But he was not accustomed to talking about himself nor did he prefer it. Living alone had its perks in that regard. ‘What about me?’
‘A person does not come by such a vast compendium of knowledge without some effort. How is it that you know so much about winemaking and vine-growing?’ She cocked her head and gave him a studious look. ‘I cannot make the pieces fit on my own. Last night you told me you were schooled in England, a land not known for its vineyards, I might add.’
‘But I was born here, remember? I was raised in Cumières until I was ten. Mygrandpèrelived with us, or maybe it was us who lived with him.’ He offered a small smile at his joke. ‘Grandpère and my father took me everywhere with them. Even as a small child, I could not escape learning about the land, the vines. I rode on mygrandpère’s shoulders, listening to him talk to my father. The grapes, the growing cycles, they were as much a part of me as...’ He couldn’t quite summon an apt comparison. He couldn’t ever remembernotknowing about budburst, or the rhythm of the year.
‘As breathing?’ she put in quietly. Up front in the traces, the horse snuffled and whickered in the stillness that followed.
‘As breathing,’ Julien affirmed thoughtfully. It sounded...right. It also sounded as if she understood what that meant. ‘You say that as if you know what it means to be attached to something so deeply that it is part of you.’ If she was going to probe, he could probe, too. He told himself he was asking because it would help him understand her better, appeal to her better when the time came, that his question had nothing to do with him simply wanting to know, or because he felt drawn to her in a way that had nothing to do with her possession of his family’s land.
She thought for a moment, her gaze dropping to her hands, for once not piercing him, seeing through him, challenging him. Then she looked up. ‘Numbers. I understand them intrinsically the way I understand how to breathe, how to walk. They make sense. They are constant and yet a source of creativity. They can tell me things. Numbers don’t lie, they don’t hide. They are always themselves.’ He should have known then just how much danger he was in. She didn’t just understand numbers. Shelovedthem. Not unlike himself. He didn’t simply understand the land—even Oncle Etienne, who’d spent his adult life in a shipping office, could lay claim knowing the land. No son of Matthieu Archambeau could escape such knowledge. But Oncle Etienne did not love it. To know something and to have a passion for it were not synonymous things. He should have asked her more about her numbers and redirected the conversation but he was not fast enough.
‘The pieces still don’t fit. Your family has a shipping business. That doesn’t seem a place where one would come by agricultural knowledge.’
He needed to tread carefully here. He didn’t want her putting too many pieces together. Neither did he want to offer a lie. ‘I forget what short memories the English have,’ he chuckled. ‘During the Terror, my great-grandpère, Jean-Pierre, thought it best to protect the family interests. He sent his son’s family to London to get them out of harm’s way. His son, Matthieu, was an entrepreneurial sort.’
‘Yourgrandfather,’ she clarified, her grey eyes intent on him, giving the impression of hanging on his every word.
