5. Chiara #3
“I’m not blaming anyone.” My clutch knocks against my wrist. I close my hand around it so these people won’t see how badly they have shaken me. “I’m explaining how the work was divided. The botanical presentation was my responsibility. The wine itself was not.”
“Signora.” Rosalia gets between me and the gathering guests, offering her arm as though she has come to fetch me for another duty. “Come away. Let the staff handle the guests.”
But I can’t move. The whispers are everywhere now, and I need to answer them, need to make people understand that I didn’t do this, couldn’t have done this, that whatever destroyed Cesare’s wine came from somewhere else entirely.
Movement near the cellar doorway catches my eye. Livia emerges at last, her face arranged in perfect devastation. Tears glisten on her cheeks as she surveys the ruined pour, the confused guests, the chaos spreading through the courtyard.
“What happened?” Her voice carries, pitched to reach the nearest cluster of guests. “I was in the cellars… I heard shouting…”
She moves through the crowd toward the pouring station, accepting sympathetic murmurs along the way. A staff member touches her arm in comfort. A guest shakes her head in shared dismay.
“I tried to tell her.” Livia’s voice is soft, meant for the people immediately around her, but I’m close enough to hear every word. “During the preparations, I raised concerns. Said maybe we should keep things traditional, not add so many new elements. But she was certain her approach was right.”
“The herbs had nothing to do with the wine.” I move past Rosalia before Livia can take her performance to the next group. This time she can answer me in front of the people she wants to convince.
Livia turns to face me, her expression shifting to something that looks almost like pity. “Of course not, signora. I’m sure you didn’t mean for anything to go wrong. You just… you don’t have the experience with these wines that some of us do. You couldn’t have known.”
The sympathy in her voice is worse than an accusation.
She’s not saying I sabotaged the wine. She’s making a different accusation, one she can pretend she never meant: that I was incompetent, that I pushed changes I didn’t understand, that my ignorance created the conditions for disaster.
“The presentation was approved by Don Lorenzo.” I will not let her rewrite tonight’s history. “The sommelier agreed to the timeline. The wine preparation remained entirely under your supervision.”
“Under my supervision, yes.” Livia dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief. “But with so many changes happening around us, so much pressure to accommodate new ideas… mistakes can happen. Oversights. I should have pushed back harder. I should have insisted on the traditional approach.”
She lifts her head and meets my eyes over the handkerchief. With the people beside her turning toward Lorenzo, her mouth curves into a quick, private smile.
It is gone almost before I understand what I saw. There are still tears on her cheeks, but she looks pleased. With the evening ruined and my name passing through the crowd, she looks pleased.
Then the mask returns, and Livia is weeping again, accepting comfort from the people who should have been celebrating my success.
***
The house is quiet by the time I find Lorenzo in his study.
The guests have been sent home with apologies and promises of communication about next steps. The press have their story, and it isn’t the one I hoped to give them. The staff have guided everyone out while the sommelier quarantines the remaining bottles for examination.
Lorenzo sits behind his desk, a lamp casting warm light across his face. He looks like he’s aged ten years in the past two hours, and he doesn’t look up when I enter.
“It was sabotage.” I close the door behind me and lean against it, exhausted beyond anything I’ve ever felt. “Someone contaminated that wine deliberately.”
“I know.” He still doesn’t look at me. His voice is hollow, scraped clean of everything.
I cross to stand in front of his desk. The evidence has been preserved, the ruined bottles and glasses set aside for whatever investigation will follow. But the damage is done. The reputation is destroyed. Cesare’s legacy, the wine Lorenzo has been protecting for three years, publicly ruined.
“I need to know what you’re thinking.” I grip the edge of his desk. “I need to know where I stand with you.”
Finally, he raises his eyes to mine. I recognize the grief I saw through the cottage window, but tonight I am standing in front of him with no idea whether he wants me there.
“I’m thinking about three years of work.” He has the guest list open on his desk, but he isn’t reading it. His hand covers the printed name of the wine. “My father started this. I was supposed to finish it for him. Now everyone who came here will remember those glasses.”
“I know.” I want to reach for him, to offer comfort, but I’m not sure it would be welcome. “I know what this meant to you.”
“Do you?” His hand tightens on the paper beneath it, creasing the edge. “Do you know what it’s like to watch your father’s legacy destroyed while three hundred people whisper about whose fault it is?”
“I know what it’s like to be blamed for something I didn’t do.” My voice hardens despite my best efforts. “I stood in that courtyard defending myself while Livia played the grieving steward and let everyone assume I was responsible.”
“Livia is devastated.” He answers her name before anything else I have said. I should have expected it, but after tonight I thought he might at least let me finish. “She’s worked in those cellars her entire life.”
“Livia was conveniently absent during the pour and appeared just in time to perform her devastation for an audience.” I lean forward, forcing him to look at me. “She told anyone who would listen that she tried to warn me, that my changes created the conditions for this disaster.”
“Your changes didn’t contaminate the wine.” He presses his palms flat on the desk, holding himself there instead of coming closer.
“Then why aren’t you saying that to anyone but me?” The words burst out before I can stop them. “Why did you let the whispers spread without once, not once, telling those people that the herbs were separate, that I wasn’t responsible for preparing the wine?”
“I was trying to contain a crisis.” He indicates the notes beside the guest list, names and instructions written in a hurried hand. “There were three hundred people in that courtyard. We had to stop the service and make sure nothing was thrown away. I couldn’t leave that to sort itself out.”