The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(18)

His curiosity had, of course, boiled over. While she and Madame went to finish pruning the old vines Monsieur Gardin had planted, he had tried the door to her room. He’d found it locked, as usual, and for a moment considered breaking the door down. He gave it a hard shove with his shoulder, testing, but the solid oak door might as well have been a tree still rooted in the ground.

He swore the house hummed with her energy. Even now, as she sat at the dining room table with Madame, a pile of charts and maps spread out under the light of a work lamp, a wave of static electricity skittered along the hairs on his arm. He never quite knew what to make of the phenomenon. Or of her. She completely disarmed him, and yet not in the way a woman normally did. Despite Madame Gardin’s chiding, he had courted a few women from the village. He wasn’t shy around a woman if he was touched by desire. He would charm her with witty compliments, smile and take her to dinner, and more often than not accept an invitation to her bed. But this was something different. Despite the awkward revelation that he found Elena oddly attractive—and not because some woman who baked sweets for a living claimed to know his taste in lovers—he’d fought the impulse to act. He likened it to obeying the same instinct that warned one not to pick up a scorpion by the tail. Her allure held hints of danger, which, if he were honest with himself, was part of the attraction, but the reasonable side of his brain knew better from experience. And for the better part of four months now, he’d resisted the temptation.

“Is there something you wanted?” Elena asked, looking up at him with her feline eyes. “You’ve been staring for five minutes.”

“Was I?” Knowing he had, he took a step toward the table. “I was just curious about the calculations. Is that an astrolabe?”

She paused before responding. “I’m helping Grand-Mère work out the cycles of the moon and planets so we can know the best days for planting and harvesting in the growing season.”

“You mean like an almanac? Don’t be ridiculous. I can send away for one easily enough.”

The older woman exchanged a look with the younger one. “Yes, those farmer’s almanacs are handy to consult for some things,” Madame said. “But this one will be a little more detailed. I would have made one for you years ago, but without Elena’s help I could never sort out all the intricacies with my failed . . . um, eyesight.”

Odd. He’d never heard Madame complain about her eyes before. He leaned in closer to examine their notes. His brows tightened as he read a few of the entries:

- New vines are best planted when the moon, Jupiter, and Venus are in conjunction at 45 degrees.

- Mix sheep’s bone and charred beetles into soil two weeks after the last frost on the twenty-second day of April.

- Pinch back leaves when first lacewings appear on the last day of May.

Jean-Paul scratched at the static electricity sparking against the back of his neck, wondering why anyone would believe the stars dictated the daily business of humans on earth. He was disappointed to see them cling to their superstitious beliefs, especially two such intelligent, talented women. Country folk were often stubbornly behind the times, he knew, but one day in the near future he was going to drag the vineyard into the new century. Perhaps even invest in a hydraulic-powered winepress. But for now, he sat in his favorite chair and buried his face in Le Temps.

He’d just begun reading an article about demonstrators in the city decrying the number of public executions when a gust of wind slammed against the house, whistling through the cracks in the doors and shimmying the windows. The women’s heads lifted in alarm when their papers rustled on the table. “A north wind at the south door,” Elena said to the old woman with a note of concern.

Madame, showing the same worry, got up to peek out the window. The rattle of metal and hissing steam clamoring down the road followed. She craned her neck to get a better view, then backed away in alarm. “It’s Bastien in that confounded contraption of his. And he’s got her with him. What will you do?”

“It’s too soon,” Elena said in a panic. “I’m not ready.”

Jean-Paul didn’t miss the unspoken communication that also boomeranged between the women. Then Madame did that strange thing she does when she gets nervous, rubbing her thumb and fingers together as if tasting the air with her touch, while Elena mumbled a few foreign-sounding words and doused the work lamp. A trail of smoke snaked over the table, concentrating in the place where she’d just been sitting. It appeared to make a perfect outline of the shape of her body before dissipating.

Jean-Paul stood and folded his newspaper. “Du Monde? What would bring him here unannounced?”

Elena collected her charts and pens and, with arms full, reminded him about their agreement. “I’m not here, remember?” He gave a distracted nod on his way to the door, recalling her outrage when she’d heard Du Monde had once tried to buy the vineyard. He nodded more firmly, and she escaped up the stairs at the back of the house.

Moments later, a black automobile, its front end sloped like the nose of a goose, chugged into the courtyard. White smoke billowed from the engine as the automobile rattled to a stop in front of the door. Madame “hmphed” from behind the window as Du Monde stepped out, waving his hat at a cloud of angry steam. His passenger smoothed a strand of blonde hair back in place under her fur-trimmed black hat as she waited expectantly for her door to be opened. After a troubled glance at the engine, Du Monde did just that, walking around to the other side of the vehicle to take his wife’s hand. She stepped out of the automobile and shook out her black damask coat with the matching fur trim. Of all the women in the village, she was the only one who might shrug off the rural life at a moment’s notice and slip into a fashionable city salon. As if expecting an audience, she strode up to the house, an obsidian-and-silver walking stick held in her grip like a scepter. Jean-Paul wiped his palms against his trousers and opened the door to greet the couple.