The Winemaker's Wife(6)

“No.” Céline didn’t look at Inès as she placed her crate on the stone floor of the hidden cave. “My father manages a winery, and nearly all his workers were sent to the front. He felt he could not leave. He’s quite loyal to the owner, who has been good to him. My grandparents decided to remain with him.”

“Well, surely they will be fine.”

“Surely they will be fine,” Céline repeated, but Inès could hear the bitterness in her tone, the fear, so she went silent and returned to her bottles.

Inès supposed she would be worrying about her own relatives, too, if she had any left. But both of her parents had died when Inès was just sixteen—her father felled by a stroke, her mother by a heart attack two months later. There were no siblings, no extended family; Inès was entirely alone. Thankfully, her dear friend Edith’s family had taken her in, and Inès had found a home again.

It made sense, then, that in early 1938, when Edith had fallen in love with a young restaurateur named Edouard Thierry, who had inherited his family’s brasserie in Reims, Inès would accompany her to Champagne. She had no reason to remain in their hometown of Lille, and though she resented Edouard at first for taking Edith away, she was surprised and moved by his offer for her to come and stay with them in his large apartment, situated just over the brasserie. You are her dearest friend, he had said solemnly as she wiped her tears away after their modest wedding at the baroque-domed église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Old Lille. Of course you will be with us for as long as you like.

She hadn’t believed at first that he actually wanted her there, but he’d been a genuinely enthusiastic host, often including her in social engagements and sometimes even asking her opinion about world affairs. He’d even let her help out behind the brasserie’s bar on occasion to make a bit of money. When Edouard brought his old friend Michel Chauveau around for dinner one cold evening in the fall of 1938, announcing that Michel was a very eligible bachelor, it seemed predestined that Inès would fall in love with him.

“Oh, Michel is so handsome!” Edith had exclaimed later that night, clapping her hands as Edouard walked Michel out, leaving the two women alone. “Don’t you think, Inès?”

Inès had smiled, her heart still fluttering. “Did you see his eyes?” They were a piercing blue, the kind that could see right through you. He was tall, solidly built, with sandy blond hair and sharp features, and though his suit was a bit outdated, he wore it well.

“His eyes?” Edith had repeated with a laugh. “I noticed only that they were focused on you all night, my dear friend. And how could he resist? You’re beautiful.” Edith had a way of making Inès feel that way. She had always been that kind of friend, the kind who lifted you up when you were down. “Can you believe he owns the Maison Chauveau?” Edith added, raising both eyebrows meaningfully.

“And yet he was so modest,” Inès said. He had come bearing chilled bottles from three different Chauveau vintages, but he deflected Inès’s questions about his champagne empire gracefully, turning the attention back on her, asking her about her life in Lille, her friendship with Edith, and whether she’d yet had a chance to tour Champagne.

Later, she and Edith agreed that he had been asking her for a date. Like Edouard, he was several years older than Edith and Inès, and more serious than they were, too. Inès supposed it was because he and Edouard had both been forced into their family businesses early; they had taken on responsibilities she could barely imagine when they were in their early twenties.

“I haven’t ventured beyond Reims yet,” Inès had told him. “But I would love to see the countryside.”

“Would you?” Michel smiled, and Inès’s stomach fluttered. He had called on her the following week, and by the spring, they were engaged. They married the first week of May, for there was no reason to wait; like Inès, Michel had no living family.

It had all seemed so very dazzling at first. Inès was the new wife of the owner of a prestigious champagne house! She would be living in the midst of rolling vineyards! She would drink bubbly every night!

But the reality was quite different. Once Inès and Michel were wed, they rarely went into Reims; the picturesque scenery became mundane after a while; and even the nightly bottle they opened with dinner began to feel repetitive.

The biggest problem, though, was that Inès no longer had Edith to gossip with on a daily basis, or even Edouard to engage her in conversation, now that she was no longer living with them. Michel was even more introspective and serious than he had seemed during their brief courtship; they often spent entire meals in complete silence as he ruminated about problems with the production schedule or issues with growers—neither of which he wanted to discuss with Inès.

Inès had imagined that she and Michel would go back to Reims often to see their friends, but though the small city was only forty minutes from Ville-Dommange by car, it might as well have been in another country. The demands of champagne production kept Michel busy from dawn until dusk most days, and he didn’t like her taking the car without him. Inès was effectively trapped in a place that still didn’t feel like home.

And though Inès had met the burly, dark-haired Theo and his strong, elegant wife, Céline, on her first visit to the Maison Chauveau and imagined they might become her friends, that hadn’t happened, either. Theo was so immersed in his work that he could vanish for weeks at a time, while Céline was as quiet and solemn as Michel. The more Inès tried to bond with her over gossip or news from town, the more Céline seemed to withdraw.