The French House by Helen Fripp (english readers TXT) 📗

back. ‘About what? One of those men who thinks he owns the whole of France, including you.’ He picked a grape. ‘This one is perfect.’

She bit through the skin, immediately forgetting about Moët as a burst of sweetness was released – a kaleidoscope of soft rain, mellow sun, a year’s worth of dusks and dawns, frosts and summer breezes, the taste of the terroir, right there on her tongue.

Chapter 3

Truth and Dare

Late October 1797

Republican date: Brumaire, year VI

Antoine and Claudine had saved her from death-by-marriage. François had been their doing, a carefully planned campaign, given an early start the day that Nicole clattered up their stairs unexpectedly after Monsieur Moët’s proposal.

But of course they’d noticed how unhappy she was, Antoine and Claudine told her. They’d known her all her life and they could see she was fighting a losing battle against the growing pressure to marry. Any day her papa could agree to an unsuitable match, with her best interests at heart of course, but she’d be trapped forever against her will. When François had visited Antoine to consult him on the acquisition of his latest grand cru vineyards, he was like a breath of fresh air compared to the small-town rigid traditionalists who would be deemed a match for Nicole. François was well-travelled, open-minded, cultured and a dreamer. The way he spoke so poetically about the vines beguiled everyone he met, and his quick wit and intelligence would be more than a match for their restless, rebellious Nicole.

A firefly, he called her. Quick and sharp and charged.

‘Chérie, the carriage!’

Nicole checked herself in the mirror before running down to take it. Why had she asked for a whole month to consider Moët’s proposal? Because she didn’t know how to say no, and it seemed a decent amount of time to give him as her father had advised, unfair to dismiss his proposal in a shorter time span. Still a week to go before she could get it over with, but it was an eternity now there was François.

Every minute without him was dull. She found an excuse to bump into him every day, touring the Ponsardin family vineyards. If she was to consider Monsieur Moët’s proposal, she argued, she should spend time in his milieu of winemaking. François was always working at the Clicquot vineyards nearby, with a new thing to show her every day, he promised – a blend to taste, a delicious pinot to try, an undiscovered place where the poppies edged the cornfields, catching the sun in flames.

Sometimes at dusk, the time of day when the sky turned translucent blue like Chinese lacquer, they watched the clouds turn with the sunset, making out shapes.

‘A bottle of champagne,’ said Nicole.

‘Wrong shape, it’s clearly a bottle of Gamay.’ François concentrated hard, eyeing her sideways. In the dying rays of the sun, his skin glowed in the rosy light.

‘How on earth do you know?’

‘I don’t,’ he laughed, hugging her close.

The shapes didn’t matter, but staying a little bit longer was everything and they would linger until the last fine thread of light on the horizon would send her parents searching for her in the dark.

As the month had mellowed and the days grew shorter, they’d fed each other blackberries from the hedgerows, and they had never tasted so dark or sweet to Nicole. When they could escape for long enough, François laid his jacket under the twisted beech trees in the forest of Verzy and they read together, from Rousseau, or Voltaire. Neither of them could concentrate long enough to read anything of note. It was a game of chicken to see who could last the longest before meeting eyes and stealing blackberry-streaked kisses.

On the day the ripe October sun had shone through swollen raindrops and lit them in a thousand spheres of warm rain, they were caught at the walled vineyard at Villers-Allerand. They polkaed up and down the rows at the sheer joy of it all, soaked and laughing, François singing to the sky at the top of his voice, whirling her skilfully through the vines.

Now, with a week to go before she could release herself from Monsieur Moët’s proposal, she stood in the vast hallway of her family home and saluted herself in Maman’s prized Venetian mirror for her good fortune.

‘Vite, chérie, Claudine est arrivée!’ shouted Maman.

Her mother kissed her on both cheeks, delighted to see her in her new silk dress, hair brushed into a chignon.

‘You’re growing up, Babouchette. About time.’ She winked.

Whatever guilt Nicole felt was swept away by the thought of François, the daily poems and letters he slipped into her pocket, and today’s invitation to meet him at the lake. Nothing else mattered.

The lake was green, like the Vesle River, translucent and made pale by the chalk banks. François threw a stone and the October sun picked out ripples in silver.

‘Not bad,’ said Nicole.

‘What does it take to impress you?’ laughed François.

‘I don’t know. A dragon? Wine from water?’

‘We’re going for a swim. I promised you, something new every time we meet. Turn around.’

He undid the laces at the back of her dress, loose enough to take off.

‘You do it,’ he said.

Nicole hesitated, but his ‘something news’ were always irresistible. She took off her dress and turned to face him, her body a shadow under her muslin slip. He touched her shoulder. A breeze shuffled the oaks. A new hunger engulfed her and he kissed her. When he let her go, she felt as dizzy as she had when he had spun her down from the barouche.

‘Now!’ he yelled and pushed her in, stripping his shirt off and jumping in after her. The water screamed cold, her blood rushed and tingled and when she came up, he kissed her again, the water muddy and sweet and slippery between them. They laughed at the shock and kissed more deeply this time, hands in places they shouldn’t be, couldn’t stop until she broke away, afraid of the intensity.

He took her hand and they