The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(23)

“I don’t know what to make of you,” he said, finding the will for a fight after all. “You turn up on my doorstep dressed in rags after being gone for years, yet claim the chateau is the only home you know. You ask me to keep your presence here a secret, presumably from the man you just ran away and hid from, and yet you storm down the stairs to confront him the moment he shows up on the doorstep.” He took a step toward her. “Do you play me for a fool?”

Elena narrowed her eyes at him. “I realize you’re limited in what you can see and understand—”

“Oh, yes, by all means insult me too.”

“But I am as much a part of this vineyard as the vines themselves. I do have a say.”

He picked up his glass of wine. “Do you know why a man like Du Monde wants to buy Chateau Renard? For the terroir. To own grapes grown in soil capable of creating something this divine. It’s also why I bought the vineyard. Here, taste it. See what a real vigneron is capable of creating with this plot of soil.”

“I don’t need to taste it.”

He swallowed the wine after she refused, savoring the sensuous aftertaste, until the inevitable feeling of defeat followed. “But the grapes won’t yield,” he said. “Not for me. I don’t know how to re-create this. I don’t know if anyone can. So, yes, there are days I’m tempted to sell and admit I’m no winemaker. Maybe that time has come, but it’s for me to decide, not you.”

“I can do it.”

He looked her up and down full of doubt as she stood wrapped in an old tablecloth with a candle wax stain on it. “Yes, you’re supposed to know all the old master’s secrets. I’m sorry, Elena, but your bold promises are beginning to wear thin.”

“Your problem isn’t a lack of knowledge. Or bad luck. Or even bad weather.” She picked up the fireplace tongs and sorted through the ash in the fire. “It’s a lack of vision,” she said and fished out a perfectly round piece of melted glass. A lens, really.

Madame spoke up from her chair. “Elena, are you sure you want to do this?”

“He needs to know the truth.”

“What truth?”

She blew on the glass, then dropped the lens from the tongs into her hand. It should have burned her skin, but she didn’t even flinch. “If you are serious about wanting to make wine this good again,” she said, flipping the piece of glass in her palm, “follow me and I’ll show you.”

There was a new assurance about her, as if she’d been hiding before and only now stepped into her true skin. Her confidence lured him outside as he followed her to the vine rows south of the house.

She shrugged the tablecloth tighter around her shoulders and nudged her chin toward the field. “Look out there and tell me what you see.”

Dew saturated the evening air, settling as glossy droplets on the budding vines. He sighed as he pulled his collar up against the mist. “I see vines starting to leaf out. Acres of work yet to be done. And potential. Always potential for the next harvest.”

Her eyes relaxed, though she kept the rest of her face controlled. “Yes,” she said. “And yet there is so much more. Hold this to your eye and take my hand.”

He checked over his shoulder to see if Madame was watching them. “Is this really necessary?”

“It’s the only way I know how to show you.”

“Show me what?”

“Everything,” she answered and extended her hand.

Reluctantly he locked his fingers with hers. Her cold skin repelled him at first, but she held on tight, as if she would not let this moment out of her grasp. With her other hand she gripped the ancient vine in front of her, then mumbled a few words of nonsense while pretending to go into a trance. He knew then he’d been a fool. He should never have followed her outside. Should never have come to the country to work with these backward, superstitious people in the first place. Maybe Du Monde was right. Maybe he did belong in the city with his books and ledgers and blessed logic. The admission sobered him. He held the woman’s hand, opting to appease her long enough to avoid further confrontation, but then he was going inside to get drunk and give serious consideration to an asking price for the vineyard.

God, she really was beautiful, though. It was almost as if her skin shimmered in the mist.

Her eyes opened. “Don’t watch me. Use the lens to look at the field.”

He hadn’t realized he’d been staring. “What is it I’m supposed to see exactly?” But as he held the glass to his eye, the change became evident.

An iridescent fog hovered over the vineyard, glimmering to rival the northern lights. On the hillside, moisture clung in a crisscross pattern like a giant net suspended above the vines, while blue sparks skittered along the ground. “What is this, some kind of trick?” He lowered the lens to examine it, wondering how she’d made a kaleidoscope out of a melted shard of glass.

“The spectral cloud hanging over the acreage nearest the chateau is some sort of sun-blocking spell meant to promote mildew. I imagine you lost some grapes last fall to fungus, yes?”

“We had to hand sort the entire acre to salvage what we could.”

“I’m working on a counterspell, but a reverse curse is complicating things. Unfortunately it’s had years to morph without interference. I’m still tracing its origin.”