Chapter 5
“So, you have finally weaseled your way in to see my father,” Sabine whispered as she laid an air kiss next to Natalie’s cheek.
“Pardon?” She pulled back and stepped away from the taxi.
“You knew he would be easier to convince than my mother. She is much more smart than he is,” Sabine said lightly, as if discussing the weather. “But he is old, and you are passable to look at, so easier, no?”
Fixing the woman with what she hoped was a formidable glare, Natalie curled a lip and replied, “No.”
Sabine hummed, turning her smile on Ian, who was just joining them after paying the driver. “Ian, you agree. Natalie is not painful to look at, correct?”
“Uh, sorry, what’s going on here?” Ian’s face turned red.
“Oh, nothing,” Sabine said. “Just, how it is called in the movies—girl talk. Now, come with me.” She turned on her heel with the precision Natalie would expect from a ballet dancer—or an assassin—and led them around the side of the house where they had not yet been.
The gardens on this side were more homely; they grew vegetables and flowers, yet they weren’t meticulously arranged in lines or set to a grid.
Natalie half-expected to see a member of the household staff in period clothing wandering around.
The ghosts of the past seemed very real in this place, which felt as if it had stood still in time for at least two hundred years.
Finally, they came to an old wooden door.
“Here,” Sabine said. “The archive. There is a lot in there—mostly diaries, logbooks, and also dust. I will not join you. The electricity is a little delicate in this part of the house, so you will not find any outlet for your phones. You are not to remove anything from the archive, even for an hour. Take the key. My mother would prefer the insult of you coming and going here to the insult of having to unlock the door for you every day like we are your staff. Leave it on the hook inside the kitchen alcove when you go. The outer door will be unlocked in the morning, so you can take it.”
She pointed first to the wooden door behind her, which revealed a small, enclosed space with coats hanging on the wall and what appeared to be a large metal sink. Then, maintaining the sweet smile she always wore around Ian, Sabine gestured to the door like a tour guide or magician’s assistant.
An utterly unhinged tour guide or magician’s assistant.
“Thank you, Sabine,” Ian said, looking pained. “Can we start?”
“Oui,” she said. “Do not ask for lunch. I do not think it would go well for you.”
Natalie’s phone chimed as they watched Sabine walk away. Glancing down, she sighed as she read Maddy’s text.
From Maddy: So it costs about 20% more to hire agency waitstaff, but it also takes half the time of dealing with hiring and resignations.
No more of those, though. The core group are still here and happy, but we haven’t taken on any new ones since you left and while it’s costing more, it’s looking good on balance.
From Nat: Thanks Maddy, it’s not ideal, but it’s not like we have a lot of options.
Sorry if this is weird, but do you think Gran would talk to you about her great-grandfather, when he came over here to buy the rootstock for Section Nine?
Ian thinks I’m wrong, but the Dubois family seems to genuinely hate me and I don’t think it’s just because I’m American.
Do you think it could be that a wealthy man in that era came to a foreign country to benefit his business?
It wouldn’t exactly shock me if he did something that would upset his descendants. Am I being crazy?
She hit send and pocketed the phone, looking up in time to see Ian unlocking the door and stepping back to let her go in first.
“Maybe keep the phone out,” Ian said. “It’s pretty dark in there.”
The phone flashlight was bright, but he was right—the archive was pitch black inside.
She slowly made her way past the door, scanning the walls on either side of the doorframe for a switch and finding nothing.
Her heart began to pound as she stepped into the complete darkness, the sun outside barely casting a sliver of light on the floor near the door.
“That’s creepy,” she said, gesturing with the phone.
Following the gesture, Ian scoffed. “It’s just the position of the building.
The sun is mostly blocked by the house, and the rest is dappled by the trees.
In fact, the brightest light in that part of the courtyard is already what houseplants prefer—that bright indirect light that no one seems to fully understand.
It’s hardly surprising that it doesn’t have much impact here. ”
The only benefit to this darkness was that she didn’t have to control herself and not roll her eyes at him.
“Right…anyway,” she said, spotting an old-fashioned round switch mounted on what seemed to be a pillar. The light flickered several times before illuminating completely. “Is that it?” She glanced around at the dimly lit bookcases and a dusty desk by a window covered with thick curtains.
Ian held up a finger. “I think it’s getting brighter. Minimally. The bulb is warming up.”
He was still talking, but Natalie had stopped listening. She began to read the spines of the books on the shelves. Most were in French, some in German and Italian, with only one or two in English.
With wide eyes and a heavy, beating heart, she scanned the shelves. L’art de la Vinification and La Vinification Fran?aise à son Meilleur—titles she had never seen before but in beautiful condition perched next to a trio of identical bindings.
“Look at this,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “A Storia del Vino in Italia, L’Histoire du Vin en France, Die Geschichte des Weines in Deutschland. It’s three histories, each in their own language by different authors.” Then, she gasped. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Ian asked, stepping closer.
“This…” She reached out to brush the spine with her fingertips.
“The Wine Press and the Cellar—A Manual for the Wine-Maker and the Cellar-Man. It’s the very first vineyard guide to come out of California.
Rixford, the author, was crazy about French winemaking methods.
Early editions of this book go for literally thousands of dollars. ”
“Wow. Do you think they know?” Ian asked. “It might be a little awkward to bring up, but they should be told if they have something valuable.”
Natalie suppressed a snort. If they didn’t already know, she felt it most unlikely they would take her seriously. “They’d probably accuse me of trying to steal it or otherwise con them.”
“I don’t think they would,” Ian replied. “They’re definitely, um…hostile, but I don’t think they’d accuse you of stealing.”
“Ha.” She looked up from the book, suddenly realizing how close he was standing to read the pages she was flipping through. “Sabine already accused me of flirting with her father to get us in here. I don’t think they’d be too quick to believe the best of me.”
“She what? When?” Ian asked.
“When we arrived,” Natalie shook her head, placing the book back on the shelf.
She paused when she noticed another one in English.
“Facts about Sherry, Gleaned in the Vineyards and Bodegas of the Jerez, Seville, Moguer, and Montilla Districts During the Autumn of 1875. What I wouldn’t give to have been a fancy, rich wine snob cavorting around Europe, writing books about amazing wine in the eighteen hundreds. ”
She’d intended it as a lighthearted subject change, but as she said it, the words cut a little deeper than she would’ve liked.
“Is that really so different from what we’re doing now?” Ian asked offhandedly as he gently pulled the book from its place on the shelf.
“What do you mean?”
His brows knitted together as he concentrated on whatever was on the page, and Natalie found herself smiling at the sight.
There was something about the way he looked when he focused or worked through something that compelled her to watch him.
The intensity bubbling beneath the surface of his eyes created an electric thrill in her stomach.
“Well, it’s not a book, but you have documented our travels since we landed.
We go to different places, try various things, share our thoughts about them, and naturally, you’ve focused a lot on the wines we have tried.
So, how is what we are doing here any different?
You could expand on everything you’ve posted and call it Reflections on Food and Wine, Gleaned in the Cafés, Vineyards, and Bistros of Paris and Southern France on My Summer Research Trip.
” He looked up at her and smiled, clearly pleased with his joke.
Natalie couldn’t deny his logic, but there was something deeply disconcerting about the immense effort she had to put into concentrating on his words rather than his glittering eyes. “Uh, well, I mean—”
A loud snap of electricity sounded, and suddenly, the room was illuminated threefold as a number of other lights burst to life, and they both yelped in surprise.
“So, the lighting does get better,” he said, laughing. “It just takes a while and is mildly horrifying.”