MAËLLE
When I woke at two in the morning, Dagger’s side of the bed was empty and cold. There wasn’t a light on in the bathroom, and his boots were still by the chair, so he hadn’t gone far. I got up and went downstairs to look for him.
I found him in the solarium, seated at the desk my mother used for correspondence. His laptop was open, and he had a pen and notepad next to it.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I stepped closer to him.
“Sorry if I woke you,” he said rather than answer.
I peered over his shoulder, and on the screen were treatment protocols for the type of lymphoma my mother had been diagnosed with. On the notepad, he’d written the side effects and how best to manage them.
When my breath caught and my eyes filled with tears, he moved his chair from the desk, took my hand, and gathered me on his lap.
“We’ll get through this, Maelle,” he whispered as he stroked my hair.
He’d said we. A man who’d known my mother for less than two weeks was awake in the middle of the night, doing research so he could help both her and me navigate what was coming, while the man who’d been married to my mother for three decades told her it would pass.
I buried my face in his neck and cried harder.
He soothed me more but for the wrong reasons.
My tears now were because I could no longer deny my love for Killian Curran, and when this op was over and we both returned to the States, I had no doubt he’d move on from us.
From me. My heart broke, knowing it would happen.
When it actually did, the pain would be so much worse.
“Let’s go back to bed,” he eventually said, shifting me off his lap, then taking my hand as we made our way upstairs.
At the turn of the staircase, the window looked out over the courtyard. A light burned in the winery office at the far end.
“That’s the third time I’ve seen that,” Dagger said.
“He said the co-op wants the year closed before January.”
“At two in the morning?”
I agreed it seemed odd, but when Dagger coaxed me into bed and held me in his arms, sleep came easier than I thought it would.
Shouting in the courtyard started a few hours later, jarring both of us from our slumber. It was Marthe, telling two vineyard workers that they were carrying a table through the caveau doors incorrectly. I lay still, listened, and smiled. I’d woken to the same scolding throughout my childhood.
Dagger was already dressed when I came out of the bathroom. “I have an errand in Dijon,” he said. “I’ll return by noon.”
“What kind of errand?”
“The kind you’re not permitted to ask about until tomorrow.”
I had a bottle for him hidden in the wardrobe, so I could hardly demand answers about his secrets.
With Dagger in Dijon and everyone else busy with the party, I used the log-in from Hornet to do more research. I’d been through the sales ledgers already, and they only showed the money coming in. This time, I opened the purchases.
The first oddity was the shipping. Several of the container shipments made no sense.
They’d been billed too close together, but never at the same time interval.
The weights weren’t identical either, but like the dates, they were too similar.
That in itself wouldn’t have been suspicious, but when I found the same pattern with corks, barrels, bottles, yeasts, and fining agents, even sulfur dioxide and other treatment products, I couldn’t explain or ignore what was right in front of me.
I made notes on all of it and took screenshots in case I was unable to find it again. Every padded invoice matched ones I’d already copied from the vendor files.
This, coupled with the inflated prices Maison Fontenay was paying, made the theory that Domaine Valais was laundering money all the more plausible.
After logging off, re-encrypting my hard drive, and locking my screen, I took caution one step further and hid my laptop in a place only Marthe and I knew about.
As I made my way downstairs, I could hear her commandeering the kitchen staff, who, when I stuck my head in the doorway, were positioned at various stations around the room.
They’d been cooking for a week, and the smell of roasting meat and warm pastry had reached every corner of the chateau.
When I offered to help, she pointed at the door with a wooden spoon and said Rémy needed me more than she did.
She was right. He stood in the middle of the area off the main tasting room, where we held larger events, looking perplexed. His sleeves were rolled up, and he was directing the placement of several long tables. He handed me a box of white tapers before saying good morning.
“Do you remember how this works?” he asked.
“Of course I do.”
We spent the next hour covering every surface with linens and setting out the decorations I’d grown up with—pine boughs cut from the property, ribbons, and candles. My mother inspected our work as we finished a section, adjusting anything that wasn’t placed the way she liked it.
When Dagger returned and asked how he could help, Rémy told him to find the storage areas off the vaults and to start bringing chairs up. It was a job that involved a lot of heavy lifting, something Dagger was built to handle.
The families began arriving at three. Within an hour, the caveau was louder than I’d ever heard it. Workers and their wives and husbands took their places at the tables, children ran the length of the room, and Marthe’s food disappeared as fast as her staff could carry it out.
Rémy was everywhere at once. He greeted every family at the doors, and he knew all of them—which vineyard parcel the men or women worked in, which of their kids had started at the lycée—the school—in September.
He carried a toddler on one arm and hugged those arriving as though he did it every day.
No one responded to him like their boss.
It was more that he was one of their neighbors.
He caught me watching and crossed to me with the toddler still on his arm. “You remember Berthe’s grandson?” The boy hid his face in Rémy’s collar, and my cousin grinned and walked away before I could remind him how long it had been since I’d visited Valais.
Dagger didn’t speak ten words of French, but it made no difference. When I found him, he was crouched in front of a row of children, making a coin disappear and pulling it from behind their ears. They shrieked and demanded he do it again and again.
How many rooms had I watched this man charm? Dozens. This was different. He wasn’t performing for anyone. He was playing with kids and enjoying it as much as they were.
I went to refill my mother’s wineglass and noticed a woman who looked vaguely familiar, but who I couldn’t place.
Her long dark hair cascaded over her shoulders, a perfect contrast to the tight-fitting red silk dress she wore.
When she glanced in my direction, I sensed she recognized me too, but she turned away without acknowledging me.
No, her sights were on someone else entirely, and as soon as she found Dagger, she headed straight over to him.
She put her hand on his forearm and leaned in when she spoke.
Her interest in him required no translation.
He straightened, lifted her hand off his arm, said something brief, then returned to entertaining the children.
She walked away as though the exchange had never happened, again avoiding my gaze.
But that wasn’t the part that mattered. It was Dagger’s reaction.
I’d watched him often enough to know his tells, and while the woman was very beautiful, he hadn’t seemed to notice or care.
“Maelle, it’s so good to see you. It’s been so long.” I turned around at the sound of a voice I recognized. Jean-Pierre Lavigne had worked for Valais since before I was born.
“Monsieur Lavigne. It’s good to see you too. The years have treated you well.” We cheek-kissed.
He glanced around the room. “This event gets bigger every Christmas.”
“How many years have you attended?” I asked.
“This will be the thirty-second. It will also be the last.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Why?”
“Thanks to your father’s generosity, I’ve been able to put aside enough money to retire. Every year, the bonuses are twice what they were the year before.”
They doubled every Christmas?
“I’m happy Valais has been able to be increasingly generous.”
“The staff is too. And it isn’t only Valais. The region has been boasting record sales for several years in a row.”
“The entire region?”
He nodded. “Even the smaller domaines. Business is booming in Burgundy. Again, thanks to your father.”
“Why thanks to him specifically?”
“He’s the one who negotiated the deal for the Compagnie de Burgondie.”
The group he referred to was the area’s cooperative union.
We chatted a few minutes more about his family, cheek-kissed again, and he walked away.
On such a happy day, I hated to think what his words meant. I hadn’t shared the suspicious invoices I’d found with Dagger yet, but I would soon. I would also share what Monsieur Lavigne had told me.
By five, the sun had set, and Rémy turned the strings of lights on. Murmurs of excitement spread throughout the room. When the main entrance doors opened, the children gasped at the sight of Père Noel coming in with a sack over his shoulder.
My father had worn that suit every Christmas Eve since before I was born.
He had it cleaned in November and believed nobody knew it was him.
Kids of all sizes raced over to him as he took a seat in a large chair that had been placed by a decorated tree.
I’d sat on his knee in this same building when I was small and asked for a pony, and the following year, there was a fat gray one in the stable with a ribbon around her neck.
I watched him lean down so a girl of four or five could whisper in his ear. He nodded at whatever she said as though it were a matter of great importance, then reached into the sack and handed her a wrapped package.