Page 26 of Liaison with the Champagne Count
‘I have questions. I didn’t want to wait until morning.’
‘So, you’ve come for a bedtime story.’ Julien’s eyes were like glacier shards as he watched her progress. She took the empty chair, feeling the coldness of his gaze.
She cut right to it. ‘Were you stealing from my husband?’
‘Why would you think that?’ His fingers played with the stem of the brandy snifter on the table beside him.
‘Because there is no record of your salary in those books.’
‘And that makes me a thief?’ He was unbearably aloof. He was making her do all the conversational work here. But what had she expected? That he would be in tears, begging her forgiveness, on his knees declaring undying devotion for her? There she went again, conflating business with pleasure, assuming that he cared for her and that caring would spill over to how he treated her as a business partner. She had to stay resolute.
‘It makes you dishonest. We can start with that and go from there.’
It hurt to look at her, to see the stony shards her eyes had become, a gaze that had so recently looked on him as if he were the focal point of her world. He wantedthatEmma back. He wanted to be on a picnic blanket with her, touching her, smelling her, talking to her, listening to her spin impossible dreams. He wanted to feel alive, the way he felt when he was with her, as if he could conquer the world, as if the world had not beaten him down but instead had marched him towards this moment.
Julien reached for his glass and took a swallow to give himself something to do besides watch her. He’d known she’d come. She was a woman who didn’t like to wait. That she’d waited this long to make her discoveries was something of a miracle. He’d had plenty of time to come up with explanations and he had nothing except the truth to offer her. He did not think the truth would go over well. But if she was going to hate him, it would be for the truth, not a lie.
‘The truth might not suit you. Are you sure you want it?’ He poured some brandy into the spare glass and pushed it her way. ‘You’ll need this.’ He let her take a swallow before he started. ‘I am not stealing from you and I never stole from Sir Garrett. I do not draw a salary because I do not take a monetary wage from the estate, although your husband did offer me one.’
He gave her a moment to digest that, her sharp brain working. ‘The grapes,’ she breathed. ‘There is a certain quantity of grapes missing each year.’ She paused. ‘You took your pay in grapes?’
‘And in investment in wine futures—the predicted sale of upcoming vintages,’ he supplied.
‘Is that why the estate doesn’t appear to be making money on the wines? Because the profit is paid to you after Garrett breaks even and gets his money back?’
‘Yes. Of course, I roll quite a bit of my profit back into the estate. You could say I’m something of a shareholder. Garrett and I treated the estate like a joint venture. He put up the money, I put up the time and effort. It’s been an experiment, we started small. Like you, he wanted to study the industry before he fully committed.’
She nodded. ‘This year was important to him. That seven-year vintage was to be a turning point for him.’ A turning point for them all. He’d hoped to increase his level of investment in the estate and then in a couple years make an offer for it with his profits from the estate and his other venture with Oncle Etienne. ‘And the grapes?’
Julien to a deep breath. ‘My OncleEtienne and I blend the grapes with the grapes on his property to make acouteau champenois, but we need thepinot noirgrapes from here. We don’t have enough of our own currently.’ Because hisonclehad not been able to acquire thepinot noirvineyards yet.
She seemed to give that some thought. ‘That works for now, but what happens when the chateau is up to full bottle production and needs its grapes for itself?’ He’d hoped to own the chateau by then. ‘The wine must be very good then for you to live off the proceeds.’ He could see her running the numbers in her head.
‘Thecouteau champenoisis good, more importantly it is becoming somewhat rare. People aren’t in want of the “red champagne” like they used to be. It’s for an exclusive club of wine drinkers.’ Who paid large sums for the bottles, an example of how important it was to control supply and demand.
She was silent, gathering her thoughts. ‘Those are not damning things, Julien. I do believe they’re true, as far as they go. But they don’t go far enough. They make me wonder why a land steward would eschew an income and choose to invest in the estate he works for.’ She took a thoughtful swallow of her brandy and stared into the fire. ‘These are not the actions of a land steward, are they, Julien?’
‘I am very entrepreneurial.’
She gave a hard laugh. ‘My husband may have believed that but I don’t. Nothing about you has added up since the first day. You were nothing like what I expected.’
‘You wereexactlyhow I imagined you.’ Julien poured a half glass.
‘You were part farmer but only part because your manners were too fine. That made you a gentleman.’ She was getting close now and Julien tensed with the knowledge of it. Any moment now she’d make the more difficult of the two connections and then the other would follow.
‘Gentlemen don’t earn money, it’s what sets them apart.’ She reprised the discussion from the picnic before spearing him with a look and a verdict. ‘Julien Archambeau, are you a gentleman? Is that why you wouldn’t take a wage from my husband?’
‘A man has his pride, Emma.’ It was untrue. He and hisonclemade enough money from thecouteau champenoisto keep themselves afloat, and hisonclehad the funds from their small shipping company, although much of that was kept in savings for the day when they could buy the rest of the vineyard. Still, he wasn’t about to take coin for work. The Archambeaux had not sunk so low as to take wages for working their own land. It was all right for hisoncleto have the shipping money—he was a second son. He’d always been expected to make his way in the world. But Julien’s father had been the Comte. The title might mean nothing now, but there was pride.
She was studying him again. ‘You would do all this work—walking the land, pruning, harvesting, all to attain some grapes?’ She was prodding, prompting, and prying. Her instincts were telling her it didn’t make sense, didn’t quite add up. He could see her mind working. ‘There’s only one reason a person would make such a commitment to a place and that is attachment, love.’ She fixed him with her stare and he met his fate bravely. ‘Julien, tell me the truth. Did this chateau once belong to you?’
Chapter Seventeen
She sat frozen in place by her own revelation, disbelief and shock rolling through her even as her mind acknowledged that it made sense. The manners, the haughtiness of him, his willingness to challenge her, unlike any servant she’d ever encountered. The next question naturally asserted itself. ‘Who are you, Julien?’
‘The Archambeaux were gifted this land by the king in 1455.’ Julien’s voice was quiet in the dimness as he calmly delivered hiscoup.
‘Then there must be a title that goes with it.’ She would not let him sneak any detail past her, although her stomach was starting to tighten.
