The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(37)
To test the idea and know if he needed to guard his thoughts, he’d decided one evening to let his natural mind wander as he sat across from Elena in the salon. He began at her ankles, then inched his thoughts up along her calves, her thighs, and the soft curve of her derrière, but the only person in the room to flinch from the improper entertainment was himself, left to adjust the crotch of his suddenly too-tight trousers. He thus faced the astonishing confirmation that he was under no spell and there’d been no unintended invitation to manipulate his thoughts. The mundane truth was that he was utterly, completely enchanted by this woman.
Attraction was its own powerful potion, able to conjure unsolicited desire out of thin air.
Elena kicked mud from her shoes and then entered the kitchen as he held the door open for her. He’d hardly followed her inside when Madame slumped to her knees and clutched her chest.
Elena ran to the old woman and put her arms around her. “Grand-Mère, what’s wrong?”
“Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
The old woman glanced up at the sky through the window. She swallowed hard. “Like last time, only worse.”
Jean-Paul shook his head in confusion. “Is she ill? Shall I fetch a doctor?”
“She has premonitions. She feels the warning in her chest when it’s strong enough.” Elena glanced at the gathering clouds. “Last time she suffered this badly we had a killing frost. We lost half of the vineyard that year.”
“Frost?” The threat sent a jolt through him. “Can’t you do something? Say a spell to keep it off the vines?”
Elena ignored him and hurried to the parlor. She pulled the almanac she and Grand-Mère had made out of the drawer and spread it open on the sideboard table. Her finger traced over moons and stars, suns and symbols. She double-checked dates and forecasts.
“Is it true?” asked Jean-Paul. “Can you see it in your calculations?”
Elena shook her head. “No, there’s nothing to warn of frost. Unless we missed something. A sun flare could throw off a prognostication, but that’s rare. And it’s too late in the season for a serious threat.” She tapped her fingers on the almanac before returning to the kitchen. She gripped Madame by her shoulders. “What do you sense now?”
Madame’s head wobbled atop her neck, uncertain. “It’s getting closer.”
Losing even a quarter of the vineyard would ruin him after three bad years already. “If it’s frost, we should prepare,” he said, tired of waiting. “I’m going out to set up the char cans for the fires.”
“I’ll come with you.” Elena followed him out the door, her eyes searching the horizon. She got as far as the center of the courtyard before she stopped and called out. “It isn’t a frost.”
He swung the workroom door open and lowered the bellows and a box of candles to start the fires. “I’m not taking any chances. I’ll walk the fields all night if I must to keep the fires going.”
Elena stared at the road. “It’s not a frost.”
The tone and certainty of her voice the second time she spoke made him set down his tools. With one hand pressed to the door’s edge, he peered around the corner to see what had her frozen to the flagstones. A black coach-and-four, the red crest of the Region of the Chanceaux Valley emblazoned on its side, headed straight for the chateau. Even without the power of premonition, he knew its approach was as threatening as any storm front bearing frost. In that one vision he saw more than just lost crops. An instinct he rarely gave credence to shouted up from the deepest well inside him that something terrible had happened. Was still happening.
He joined Elena in the center of the courtyard, standing shoulder to shoulder as they faced the danger bearing down on them. The coach rattled around the last bend in the road. Three helmeted men on skeletal motorbikes followed at a rumble. The driver lashed his team with the whip from his high perch and then made straight for the gate. The wheels gyrated under the weight and speed of the careening coach, yet it held to the pavement without tipping.
He threw a protective arm around Elena, ready to pull them both to the ground to avoid the speeding coach if he must. The driver shouted “Halt!” and the horses responded, coming to an unnatural stop a yard in front of them. The motorbike riders circled, then shut off their engines.
“Reckless fool, you nearly ran us over,” Jean-Paul shouted as the three bikers surrounded him and Elena on the cobblestones. The coach driver sat silent, his face forward, eyes as placid as the dead.
The cab door opened and the Chanceaux Valley constable emerged, his uniform cape flapping in the wind as he descended in one graceful stride. He wore a look of mild concern as he straightened his gold-corded kepi and glanced at the couple. “You are Monsieur Martel?”
Jean-Paul swallowed. “I am. What business do you have at the vineyard, Constable?”
The policeman, a captain as indicated by the bars on his shoulders, flipped open a small notebook. “And you are Mademoiselle Boureanu, a vine witch employed at Chateau Renard?”
Elena telegraphed her growing fear with a nervous sideways glance at Jean-Paul before answering. “Yes. What is this all about?”
The constable ignored her and signaled instead to the bikers. They set their helmets on their motorcycles and then spread out in the courtyard at his command. The captain clicked his heels together with military precision, took a regimented step to his left, and held open the coach door. Inspector Nettles poked his balding head out, smiling at them with all the appeal of a rabid dog. He exited the coach with an air of cockiness until his short legs forced him to jump the final gap from the steps to the pavement. Jean-Paul felt Elena reach for his hand at the sight of the insufferable inspector. He gripped hers back and squeezed.