The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(8)

But something always went wrong. For three years he’d blamed himself whenever he caught someone tipping their head slightly to the side, as if controlling the urge to wince in disappointment at the way the latest Renard pinot hurried over the tongue, vanishing as a jammy afterthought. Yet he also suspected the old woman knew more about what had gone wrong with the vintages than she’d let on when she sold him the place. He’d hoped his invitation to let her continue living at the house would provoke her into sharing what she knew about the trouble so he could fix it, but she’d merely shrugged and blamed the disappointing harvests on jinxes and bad luck.

The entire valley was obsessed with witches and their so-called influence in the vineyards. He knew most of the big vineyards employed a witch to infuse her brand of magic into the wine as a sort of signature. It was outright charlatanism. An old-world custom bound up in superstition that the locals used to sell their wine to impressionable tourists. But he’d read enough books to know a good wine didn’t require the aura of magic to make it taste amazing. His research told him the winemaking process should be no more difficult than getting the pH levels in the soil balanced, harvesting the grapes at peak sweetness, and allowing the fermentation to do its job. Alas, none of that had worked since he’d taken over, but he still held out hope that things could be turned around. If only the damn weather would cooperate.

He stoked the coals in the brouette, then took out his clippers to finish pruning the last row of young vines. Knowing he had the ability to shape the next year’s growth by trimming the canes back gave him a sense of optimism. It was one of the small things he thought he was doing right. He relished the feeling as he stood alone, master of his fate on a brisk morning.

“You’re too accommodating.”

He turned with a start to find the Boureanu woman standing behind him. How did she do that? Twice now he’d not known she was there until she stood within arm’s reach. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, trying and failing to mask how she’d caught him unaware.

“The drainage system you’ve set up to feed the new vines will spoil them,” she continued, running her hand over the hard canes. “The roots are like children. You can’t pamper them or they’ll get lazy.”

He straightened to look at her, noting with relief the change in her appearance from the night before. She’d found some proper clothes, though they struck him as oddly out of style. The bodice had the distinct pigeon-breasted fullness the women in the city now seemed to shun, and the black wool skirt dragged the ground without so much as a peek at her ankles. But her hair was an attractive improvement, cascading around her face and down her shoulders in a tumult of soft waves rather than the frenzy it’d been when he first saw her. He was glad she hadn’t pinned her tresses up in a pompadour. And, thank God, she now smelled of lavender soap.

He cleared his throat, feeling the need to assert himself. “The vines require all the extra care they can get in these uncertain conditions. I’m not losing another field to drought this spring.”

“You have to let them find their own way in hard times. They’ll be stronger for it.”

He pointed the clippers at her. “If they survive.”

“They will.” She knelt down beside the base of a vine and swept the snow away. Scooping up a handful of wet earth, she rubbed it between her palms, then held the soil to her nose. She closed her eyes, as if remembering a pleasant dream. It smelled, he knew, of flint, oak, chalk, and fire.

“At least the soil isn’t the problem,” she said, opening her amber catlike eyes again. “The calcium and lime components are still intact.” She looked up at him in a most disarming way, as though she could penetrate his heart and mind with a look. “I wanted to apologize for yesterday,” she said. “To come home and find the old place had been sold . . . it caught me by surprise. I may have said some things to you that weren’t fair. I’m sorry.”

The way she stuttered through her apology suggested she wasn’t in the habit of being wrong. He nodded, more than willing to let the matter go. “And I’m sorry you didn’t receive word earlier. I did try to find Madame’s relatives at the time of the sale, but there were no records of anyone alive. If I’d known she had a granddaughter, I would have written you at the time to let you know she was welcome to stay and not to worry.”

“She’s not really my grandmother. Not by blood anyway.”

“Oh? I just assumed.”

“I’ve always called her Grand-Mère, but she’s more of a mentor.” Elena snapped off a dried grapevine and passed the broken end under her nose before tying a purple string around it. The move struck him as a nervous gesture a child might do with their hands. “I was brought to live at the vineyard when I was five. As an apprentice to Madame Gardin and her husband, Joseph, after my parents died.”

“You were sent here to learn the wine business as a child?”

“Among other things.”

He had a hard time imagining the woman standing before him as ever having been a child. There was a flinty edge to her that defied any sense of innocence. “But you are like a granddaughter to her. I can see that.”

“We have a strong bond.” She tossed the vine in the brouette and watched the string catch fire. “That’s why I returned. The vineyard is the only home I’ve ever known.”