1. Chiara #3
They both turn. Lorenzo’s expression shifts through surprise and something else I cannot name. Livia’s face goes carefully neutral, the pleasant mask I have come to recognize.
“Chiara.” Lorenzo straightens, closing the ledger. “I didn’t expect you down here.”
“I wanted to talk about the launch.” I step into the chamber, refusing to hover in the doorway like a supplicant. “The presentation, specifically. We discussed it once. You said maybe I could help.”
Lorenzo and Livia exchange a glance. A small thing, barely a flicker, but I see it. They have a language I am not part of, a shorthand built over decades.
“That was months ago.” Lorenzo keeps his hand on the closed ledger. I cannot tell whether he wants to reopen it or put it between us. “The preparations are already well underway.”
“I know. Rosalia told me you’ve been working with Livia.” I make myself stay where I am instead of stepping back toward the door. “I’m not asking you to throw away the arrangements. I’m asking you to let me lead the launch. You know I have experience.”
“Signora, with respect, wine marketing is not the same as selling tea at French markets.” Livia sets the pencil across the ledger, keeping her hand on it. Apparently, my old work is familiar enough to dismiss even if it has never been worth asking about.
“No.” I look at the pencil in her hand, then meet her eyes. “But people can hear when you care about what you’re offering them. That doesn’t change because the price does.”
Something flickers in Lorenzo’s face. Interest, maybe. Or memory.
“You said you learned to make people care about what you sold.” Lorenzo releases the ledger, leaving it on the barrel between us. “At those markets in Lyon.”
“I did.” I keep my attention on him, refusing to let Livia turn this into an argument about whether my work counted. “And I can do the same thing for this vintage. Let me show you what I mean.”
Livia opens her mouth, but Lorenzo holds up a hand.
“What would you do differently?” He moves the ledger toward me, opening the page Livia has just marked. It is the first time anyone has shown me the plan.
I have been thinking about this for months, turning it over while I work in the garden and making notes when I return to my room. The answer comes easily.
“I’d give them a reason to remember this bottle.” I trace the list of tasting notes without touching Livia’s pencil. “They’ll hear about grape varieties and aging all evening. What will they know about your father when they leave?”
“What would you tell them?” Lorenzo stays on his side of the barrel, leaving me room to read instead of taking the book back.
“Something only you could tell them.” I look up from the list. “Why this wine mattered to him. What he made you taste again when you thought it was already good enough. I can help you find the way to tell it, but it has to come from you.”
The chamber is quiet. Livia’s face has gone tight around the eyes, the only sign of her reaction.
Lorenzo looks at me for a long moment, and I cannot tell what he is thinking. We have been married two years, and his face is still a foreign language I am learning to read.
“You’ve given this thought.” He leaves the ledger open in front of me. I had braced for another postponement; now I am afraid to move in case it comes anyway.
“I’ve had time.” The words come out more pointed than I intend, and I see them land. “Three months of time, actually, since you said maybe.”
He nods slowly, acknowledging the hit.
“Livia.” Lorenzo turns toward her, but his hand stays on the edge of the page he has given me. “Chiara will lead the launch. Let her have the arrangements you’ve made so far. You’ll coordinate the cellar requirements with her.”
Livia’s expression does something complicated. For just a moment, her mask slips, and I see something raw underneath. Hurt, maybe. Or anger. Then it’s gone, smoothed over into pleasant neutrality.
“Of course, Don Lorenzo.” Livia closes her fingers around the pencil until its point presses against her palm. “Whatever you think is best.”
She excuses herself with quiet efficiency, and then it is just Lorenzo and me in the vaulted chamber, surrounded by his father’s legacy.
“Thank you.” I rest my fingertips on the ledger, claiming it before I can talk myself out of the opportunity. The words feel too small for the relief.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He indicates the date at the top of the page. “The launch is in two weeks. That’s not much time.”
“I work fast.” I turn to the next page, already looking for what has been booked and what is still undecided. “You should see what a market stall looks like when the rain starts before you’ve put the canopy up.”
His mouth curves at the picture. “I’ll try to give you better working conditions.” He takes an unused notebook from the shelf behind him and puts it beside the ledger.
It is an ordinary notebook. I still have to stop myself from smiling at it.
“I should get started.” I gather the notebook and ledger, giving myself something useful to do with hands that suddenly feel unsteady. “There’s a lot to plan.”
“There is.” His fingers brush the notebook as I lift it, and for a moment I think he might have more to say about the months between my offer and today. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. About specifics.”
I leave the cellar with my heart beating fast and my mind already racing with ideas. Lorenzo gave me something this morning.
A chance. A maybe that finally became a yes.
I want to enjoy it. Instead I keep seeing Livia’s face in that unguarded moment, the flash of something wounded and sharp beneath her pleasant mask. I keep remembering the way she and Lorenzo communicated in glances, in shorthand, in years of shared history I will never be part of.
Still, the ledger is in my hands now.
Whatever Livia thinks of the arrangement, I have work to do, and I intend to do it well.
***
The lamp picks out the garden path a few steps ahead of my boots.
I come here most evenings after the household has gone to bed, carrying the small oil lamp I found in a storage room months ago. Worn trousers, an old wool sweater from Lyon, boots that no longer belong in polite company.
This is my secret. The neglected beds I have been quietly reclaiming.
When I first arrived at Baglio Marchetti, the herb spirals had collapsed into weeds, the rose arbors were bare and brittle, and invasive plants choked the kitchen garden. My fingers itched to intervene, but I assumed someone else was responsible.
Eventually, I tired of watching the plants struggle while I found reasons to stay out of the way.
I took out my tools and started working.
Seven months later, the lavender has fragrant, silver-green foliage again. The rosemary I coaxed back from near-death has new growth, and the thyme along the kitchen garden’s borders is slowly knitting together, crowding out the weeds.
I set my lamp on the stone wall and kneel beside the sage. Sand and gravel improved the drainage enough for the plants to establish themselves before the cold. I pinch off a leaf and crush it between my fingers, breathing in its sharp, medicinal scent.
My mother would laugh if she could see me.
Delphine never understood why I preferred dirt under my fingernails to dinner parties.
She supported the betrothal my father arranged because she believed our families belonged together.
She must have imagined an elegant mistress of a Sicilian estate, not a daughter sneaking out to tend its abandoned gardens.
But here, at least, I know what I’m doing.
I check the soil around the sage and look for frost damage. Winter is milder here than in Lyon, but these plants are my responsibility now, even if no one knows it.
Past the formal gardens, I bring the lamp close to my trial strip along one of the vineyard rows. Crimson clover, mostly, with some field peas. Enough to test whether living mulch might improve the neglected soil between the old vines without affecting production.
Lorenzo walks past these gardens without noticing my work. He has the vintage, the launch, his father’s legacy to worry about.
Still, there are evenings when I wish he would ask who saved the lavender.
Tonight I work longer than usual, replaying the conversation in the cellar. Lorenzo’s face when he said I could lead the launch. Livia’s mask slipping.
I finally have something I wanted, and I can’t stop wondering what it will cost.
My hands are numb by the time I gather my tools, brush the dirt from my trousers, and pick up the lamp.
The kitchen entrance is closest. Most nights I slip through the servants’ passage and wash the soil from my hands before anyone sees.
I round the stone wall and stop.
Someone is standing in the shadows by the door.
My lamp catches her face, and my stomach drops.
Livia.
She stands against the wall, her gaze moving over my dirty clothes, the tools in my hand, the lamp. How long has she been here?
“Did you need something?” I ask.
Her eyes return to mine. Then she smiles, slowly.
“No, signora. Good night.”
I watch her walk away, the lamp still held out in front of me.
Perhaps she was passing through. It is the kitchen entrance, after all. She has as much reason to use it as anyone.
I turn toward the door, trying to leave it at that. But I keep thinking about the way she looked over my clothes and tools before she answered. Then that slow smile.
She said good night. Nothing more.
So why do I feel less at ease now that she’s gone?