Page 14 of Liaison with the Champagne Count
Not without some heavy oversight and guidance.
That was temptation whispering now, trying to carve out a middle ground between what she wanted and what he needed.
Don’t be a fool. What he ought to want was for her to remain a nuisance, a disruption to be dismissed and managed. But Emma Luce countered him at every turn. When he attempted to overwhelm her, she became inquisitive. When he attempted to bore her, she became interested. When he attempted to impress her, to awe her, she merely took it in stride as a matter of course.
It was he who had been impressed—impressed by the fortitude of a woman who’d not let herself be beaten down by the pressure of her peers. She’d been relentless today, drawing him out, asking for his stories. When he wanted to give her less, she asked for more,andhe’d complied, talking about his family, recounting his family history, and she had hung on every word as if they were the most interesting things she’d ever heard.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and the space widened out into a large cavern. ‘Stay here while I light a few more lanterns.’ He moved around the cave, letting the woodsy smell of oak barrels bring him balance, perspective. Now was not the time to be swayed by a pretty face and an attractive mind. He needed to stay focused on what mattered: his land and family. Whatever feelings or reactions Emma Luce was stirring in him wouldn’t last. She was novel, something new in a life that was small and narrow.
‘It’s enormous!’ Her voice, so near, startled him.
He turned to find her standing behind him, her eyes alight with wonder as she took in the cavern. ‘I thought I told you to stay put until the lights were lit.’ In his shock, his words came out more sternly than intended. ‘Do you want to trip and fall? These flagstones are centuries old; I can’t account for how even they are.’
‘I can see just fine.’ She laughed off his concern, her eyes still roving about the space, taking in the shelves loaded with casks and the freestanding triangular stands holding individual bottles. ‘It just keeps going and going.’
‘The place isn’t even full.’ Julien couldn’t help but show off a bit. ‘It could hold eighteen hundred barrels and two hundred thousand bottles if we were at full tilt on production.’
A wide smile took her face and she spun in a slow circle. ‘I will see to it that we are. I know my husband didn’t focus his complete attention on the chateau, but I mean to change that. I mean to make this place into something grand. Everyone will be wanting wines from Les Deux Coeurs when I’m done with things.’
Behind her grey eyes, Julien could see her dreams were already running miles ahead of reality and it awoke an echoing thrill in him—wasn’t that what he also wanted for the chateau? But those dreams also chilled him in their naïveté. It wasn’t as simple as she thought. Her dreams had consequences for them both. He could not let those dreams supersede his own. More than that, he could not let her claim them.
‘You’ve only seen the main room.’ Julien gestured to an arched doorway. ‘This leads down to another subterranean cellar, where thevin mousseuxis stored.’ This cavern was smaller, the three walls lined with casks.
‘This place is more isolated, or isinsulatedthe word I’m looking for?’
‘It’s just smaller.’ Julien hung the lantern on a peg. ‘Both this room and the grand cavern are devoid of an echo because they’re so far underground.’
‘How far underground?’ She began a slow perambulation of the room, stopping to read the labels on the casks.
‘Forty feet, not nearly as deep as Taittinger’s, but deep enough,’ Julien said, citing one of the other champagne houses in the area.
She stopped and faced him for a moment. ‘So, everyone has wine caves?’
‘Yes.’ He leaned against the tall worktable set in the middle of the room, watching her continue her stroll, noting the trail of her fingertips over the oak casks, her touch slow and deliberate, a reflection of her thoughts. He’d give a small fortune to know those thoughts, to know what he was up against. ‘Wine caves are a rather serendipitous occurrence.’
He was showing off now, perhaps trying to win back her attention, to see her hang on his every word as she had on the picnic blanket. ‘The Romans originally dug these caves as chalk and salt mines around 80 BC. Turns out, they’re perfect for storing wine.’
‘Are you saying everyone stores their wine like this?’ she queried, throwing him a glance over her shoulder.
‘Yes. Even Reims town houses have such cellars in their basements. Those who don’t naturally have access to such storage build them. Chateaux like this one, though, have been using the Roman cellars for a few centuries now.’
She paused. ‘So, you’re telling me that people who don’t have homes built over old Roman ruins actually replicate them?’
‘Yes, and why not? At these depths, the temperatures are cool enough to properly store wine while it ages. Also, at these depths, we can protect against humidity and invasive sunlight. There is no chance ofgout de lumièrewrecking these bottles.’ When she furrowed her brow he translated. ‘We call it the “taste of light” or the “light strike”,’ he explained. ‘Any exposure to light can cause it.’
She laughed and he paused, unsure what was so humorous. ‘What is it? Is light strike funny?’
‘No, it’s you, or mainly me. I was wrong about you this morning when I said you either wanted to overwhelm me or bore me.’
‘Or impress you,’ he reminded her.
‘Yes, that too. But it’s none of those. You simply can’t help it, can you? This pouring out of knowledge. Is there anything you don’t know about wine?’
‘There’s probably very little.’
‘And humble, too.’ She laughed at his arrogance and he laughed, too, and for a moment they were at ease again, as they had been on the picnic blanket.
‘Is my husband’s special vintage in here?’ She bent down to peer at casks stored on a lower shelf. ‘This was the year he was going to reveal it.’
