The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2) (6 page)

The next room was a library, with bookshelves running along all the walls. Among the books, Isabelle noticed immediately, were a large number of specialist volumes about viticulture and champagne manufacture. There were books about chemistry and other technical topics, but also a lot of novels, biographies, and ancient tomes clad in leather, with text on the covers that Isabelle could not decipher—she assumed that they were valuable antique treasures. Most of the books were in French but a number were in German. Isabelle could not help thinking of how much she had been starved for books in Grimmzeit. Her own library—she would certainly never get bored here.

The third room was a study, in the center of which stood a very large escritoire. As in the previous room, a lovely tiled stove stood along one wall. With so many stoves, they would never have to be cold. As soon as Leon came in, she would ask him to light a fire; she wanted their first evening in their new home to be cozy.

Every room radiated so much airiness and joy that Isabelle’s own heart grew lighter, too. Clearly the man who had lived there had enjoyed having beautiful things around him. Was this the French
savoir vivre
that so much had been written about? Enjoying life with all one’s senses—was that how Leon’s uncle Jacques had lived? With every room she entered, she had the feeling that she was discovering more facets of the man’s personality—such a pity that she had never met him herself.

She hurried up the stairs to find the bedrooms. To the right were several smaller rooms, no doubt the accommodations of the domestic staff. To the left were three bedrooms that could be used either as guest rooms or for children. The last room at the end of the corridor was the biggest and grandest of all. It was furnished with white-lacquered furniture, which did not fit in very well with the rest of the house but was beautiful in itself and seemed very stylish. That evening, she would sink into Leon’s arms in there, and they would inaugurate the bedroom in their own way. Isabelle sighed with longing.

Then a gold-framed picture hanging over the bed caught her eye. A portrait in oil. It was . . . Leon . . . body and soul! The artist had even captured the small furrows on each side of his mouth. And his brown hair—so much detail that Isabelle could only stand and wonder. But why would Leon’s uncle hang a painting of his nephew in his bedroom? The next moment, it was as if the scales fell from her eyes. The man in the picture was not Leon. It was Jacques himself! And the remarkable resemblance could only mean . . .

Isabelle stared in bewilderment at the picture, then a smile spread across her face. Was this the reason that Anni’s eyes lit up whenever Jacques’s name was mentioned? Was this why Oskar Feininger always reacted with such hostility if someone so much as mentioned his brother? If Leon really was Jacques’s son and not Oskar’s, it would certainly explain the generous inheritance.

Chapter Six

“There’s no help in the house? What do you mean?” Isabelle laughed in confusion. “Who do all those heavy boots and clothes in the workroom belong to if not the farmhand and the maid?” Aghast, Isabelle looked across the table at her husband.

Because no maid had appeared, she had carried the bread and other victuals into the living room herself. From one of the many silver trays, she had taken two colorful wine glasses and a carafe, which she filled with ice-cold water from the well. She had not yet ventured into the cellar, so there was neither wine nor champagne on the table.

When he had come in, Leon had sat down at the table and, without a word of praise for her industriousness, immediately began to tell her all about what he had found out on his rounds with the overseer. Now he bit hungrily into his second chunk of bread—which she’d discovered Claude had left for them—and, with his mouth full, he said, “Claude’s wife, Louise, passed away last year. Jacques didn’t take on anyone else after she died. He got the laundry done somewhere else, but Jacques and Claude divided up the rest of the work between themselves. The system seemed to work, too; from what I’ve seen, the place is in great shape.”

“You don’t seriously think I’m going to stand over a stove or sling a rag around like some maid! And who’s supposed to look after the animals you told me about? And there’s that huge vegetable garden!” Isabelle was almost shouting.

There were two horses and a coach, and two wagons, Leon had reported enthusiastically. Add in a few chickens, a herd of sheep, and even two peacocks.
It’s a farm
, Isabelle thought with horror when she heard Leon’s description. Had she ended up in a French Grimmzeit after all?

“Calm down, my dear!” Laughing, he took Isabelle’s hand in his and gave it a kiss. “You’re acting like you’ve just been threatened with ten years in a dungeon! We’ll find a solution for everything, I’m sure. Claude can look after the animals. If I understood him right, that was already one of the things he took care of. I’ll ensure that the work in the vineyards is done properly, and making the champagne is the cellar master’s job. His name is Gustave Grosse, by the way, and he’ll be here tomorrow around midday to show us how everything works. I can hardly wait! There’s nothing to do in the vegetable garden yet, so all you’ve got is the bit of work around the house. And I’m sure you’ll cope with that.”

Isabelle looked speechlessly at her husband. The two champagne glasses that she had set at the end of the table caught her eye. She’d actually been thinking that on their first night in their new home, Leon would open a bottle of champagne for them. But here he was, telling her unpleasant stories instead.

“Just think about how good you’ve got things now,” Leon went on in his most persuasive tone. “At my parents’ home, it always annoyed you that my mother had the final word. But here, you’re the mistress of the house.
You
make the rules!”

“The rules . . . I will most definitely do that,” Isabelle replied vehemently. “First thing tomorrow, I’m going to ask around among our neighbors to see if they can recommend a young woman who can clean and do the washing for us. And I’ll be keeping a lookout for a good cook, too. I’m sure it won’t be too hard to find the people we need. If you think I’m going to waste my time with that kind of thing, think again! I’ll have enough to do just being the face of the estate and keeping the house organized.” Satisfied with her own resolution, she sliced off a sliver of ham and put it on her bread.

“It isn’t that easy, Isabelle.”

“Oh, really?” she said archly. “I see no difficulty at all.”

“I don’t know how to say this . . . I mean, we’ve never talked about money. While my uncle left me this estate, he did
not
leave me any money with it.”

Isabelle found the sight of him helplessly scratching his head, messing up his hair, so moving that she softened right away. There they were, sitting together on the first evening in Hautvillers, and they were fighting over nothing at all.

“Don’t worry. I’m not planning to buy anything big. The house can stay as it is for now,” she said gently. “I’ll make sure that the staff is as frugal as can be. Of course, we will have to have some kind of here-we-are party for our neighbors, but we don’t have to break the bank with it. A small dinner, three courses, four at the most—”

“Isabelle, my darling, there you go getting carried away again! You’ll just have to be patient for a little while with the invitations. And we simply don’t have any money to pay a maid or laundress. The little bit that my mother gave me we spent in Reims. And so far we haven’t had any support from your father, either. For now, things are tight.”

Thunderstruck, Isabelle could only sit there while she tried to understand what he was saying. Her husband was penniless? He thought that money would come from
her
side?

Until that moment, she had always assumed that Leon had a certain income at his disposal. After all, he was one of Europe’s best racing cyclists! And in the big races, the prize money was certainly considerable. Besides, what kind of man proposed to a young woman knowing full well that he would not be able to support her? It was unimaginable. For that reason, Isabelle had never thought about money, not once! And when they had lived in Grimmzeit, she hadn’t needed any, because she had simply lived in Leon’s parents’ household. Mentally, she quickly calculated how much she had left in her purse. After what she had bought in Reims, it wasn’t much.

“Now don’t go looking so horrified,” said Leon. “It’s really just a temporary hole in the wallet. I’ll win another big race, and things will look different again.”

“Cycle racing! I don’t want to hear about that anymore,” Isabelle replied harshly. “We are champagne makers now, in case you forgot. Somewhere down there”—she pointed in the direction of the cellar—“there must be many, many bottles of champagne. What we need to do is sell them off as quickly as possible.
Then
we won’t have to worry about money. I really cannot comprehend how you can even
think
about a race now. We should go straight into Jacques’s office and look for the addresses of his customers. Then you can visit them tomorrow and sell them as many cases of champagne as possible,” she said, feeling both impassioned and relieved at the same time. Everything was just a matter of a few days. With her mind made up, she stood and began to move toward the office to look for the papers.

But Leon took her firmly by the arm. “Don’t you dare think about work now. This is our first night in our new home!” He pulled her to him and kissed her passionately.

Isabelle felt the old, familiar tingling deep in her body. Maybe the champagne business could wait until tomorrow after all.

The next morning, the sun was already beaming from the sky at eight o’clock, enticing Isabelle to open a kitchen window. She was wearing one of her best dresses: deep-red velvet with a black border. She wanted to look as pretty as possible to take on her new home. In the sunlight, the color of the dress reminded Isabelle of the Dutch tulips that bloomed in the same deep red in the garden at her parents’ house.

The twittering of birds came in from the bare vines outside, increasing the feeling of springtime, but the kitchen grew noticeably chilly in just a few minutes. Isabelle shivered and closed the window again. She pulled her wool shawl a little closer around her shoulders, then turned around and looked at the remains of her breakfast. To make things easier, she had eaten in the kitchen instead of carrying everything to the living room. The coffee had been a little bitter and the bread hard, and she had to chew it for ages to choke it down. The evening before, she had forgotten to put it in the large clay pot intended for just that—a mistake, as it turned out. But these were just trifles, weren’t they? In their night of lovemaking, her hunger had been satisfied in other ways.

She was in the process of heating some water to wash the dishes when Leon appeared with two thick files under his arm.

“You have to see this.” He pushed the plates and cutlery aside to make room for the files.

Isabelle was about to protest, but when she saw the furrows on his forehead, she stopped herself.

Leon tapped on a page he had opened to, and said, “It looks as if Jacques only had customers in America. Look here, a Carlisle Restaurant in Springfield, Missouri, the Hotel Bristol in Knoxville, a Grand Hotel in a place called Dayton—”

“Those cities are certainly not on the East Coast, or we’d have heard the names before,” said Isabelle, as she tried to comprehend what it all meant.

“The Park Hotel and the Sweet Joey in Springfield. Lots of overseas customers, but in places we’ve never heard of, and no sign of Boston or New York.” He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple jumped. “Now what? Does this mean I have to go to America, like Adrian Neumann?”

For a moment, they stood in silence.

Adrian Neumann was the husband of Isabelle’s friend Josephine, in Berlin. He imported bicycles from America, and he and Josephine sold them in Germany. Josephine had always had a good head for business, and Isabelle had silently envied her for that.

Forget Jo!
Your
time has come
, her inner voice whispered.
Now you can prove yourself!

“You uncle must have customers around here, too. Or . . . somewhere else in Europe. In Germany, for example. That would at least be close. Have you looked through everything?” she asked doubtfully. She knew how slapdash Leon could be, after all.

“If you don’t believe me, go through it all yourself,” he said, and stomped out of the kitchen.

Shaking her head, Isabelle sat down at the kitchen table and began to leaf through the files. Orders, bills, a little general correspondence, all neatly organized by year. When Leon returned to the kitchen, she said, “Everything points to your uncle traveling to America once a year to sell champagne. Here’s his invoice for the passage last year.”

“It’s like I said,” Leon replied. He pulled on his jacket. “Let’s talk about this topic another time. I have to go.”

“Go where?” asked Isabelle, irritated. “You can’t seriously go off cycling now!”

Leon grinned. “Can’t I? I have to check the lay of the land when it comes to selling champagne around here, don’t I? Before we talk about sailing off to America, I want to see if I can pull in a few local customers.”

Isabelle watched as Leon rode off. Her mind was swirling with thoughts. Did he really want to see the situation for himself? Or was he really just going for a training ride? And if that was the case, wouldn’t she be better off handling matters herself?

A short time later, Isabelle marched off with a notepad and pencil. She had to get an overview of the estate and what it took to run the place before she could even begin to make any plans.

The house was built on an embankment in such a way that beneath the ground floor there were several lower floors, cellars, and exits. The garden, too, was laid out over several levels connected by stone steps. For a long moment, Isabelle stood and gazed out over it all. The view of the gently curving hill was so beautiful that it almost brought her to tears. How magnificent the vineyards would look when the first new leaves sprouted! But when did that actually happen? She decided to read some of Jacques’s books that very evening to learn about the rhythm of the vines over the course of a year.

She walked on and came first to a narrow vegetable garden, then to an extended fruit orchard, where two peacocks strutted as if they owned not only the field but the entire world. The sight of them brought a smile back to Isabelle’s face. But then one of the large birds began to stalk toward her, and she hurriedly moved away.

Farther down, at the same level as the lowest cellar, there was a small field where some bushes were growing. Currants, perhaps? Or raspberries? Isabelle thought of the many jars of preserved fruit in the pantry. She hoped they would be able to employ a cook before harvest time.

She crouched down and placed her hand on the cold earth. The vegetable garden and berry bushes were still hibernating, but the fertile earth would soon wake to new life. The grass would come up and the bushes would bloom. It already smelled so good! She breathed in the earthy air as deeply as she could, filling her lungs.

All of this was theirs, now and into the future, and it was not a dream? The extensive garden, the animals, and the vineyards? She headed toward the chicken pen, walking over narrow planks laid on the ground beside the field. At least she could walk here without getting her shoes wet. In Grimmzeit, the mud had often been ankle deep! Isabelle counted twenty chickens and two roosters, all scratching for food. She opened the door of the coop and a sour smell escaped from inside, but she ignored it. Carefully, she felt around in the straw nests. An egg! And another! And there, a third. She gathered twelve eggs in all and placed them carefully in a bowl that she discovered beside the door. At least she knew what they would be eating for lunch.

Motivated by her success, Isabelle moved on. The next shack she inspected was a stall that, she assumed, was meant for the sheep. But it was empty, and the floor was covered with trampled, filthy straw. Several planks were missing from the wall and others were dangling loosely.
Overseer to repair
, Isabelle noted on her list. But then she thought again, crossed out the first two words, and wrote
hammer and nails
instead. She could do this sort of thing herself! She would get Claude Bertrand to show her how to use such tools as soon as possible. If her friend Josephine could fix bicycles in Berlin, then Isabelle could certainly hammer a few nails into wood, couldn’t she? She didn’t want to bother Leon with it; he had to put all his energy into selling the champagne.
If this place is ever going to amount to anything, and as long as we have no staff, I’ll have to do as much of the day-to-day work as I can
, she thought as she moved on toward the next shack. That, it turned out, was the stable for the horses. The top half of the Dutch door was open, and two pretty horses, both brown, were looking out curiously. When Isabelle reached out toward one of them, it kicked the door hard with its forefoot. Isabelle jumped. The horse kicked the wooden door again.