The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2)

by Petra Durst-Benning

  That evening, when she had told her mother about her helplessness at Josephine’s “housewarming party,” her mother had replied with those pregnant words: “Don’t worry your pretty head about it. You were raised to marry, not to peel potatoes!”

  At the time, Isabelle had thought no more about it. People like her hired staff for such work. That’s just the way it was.

  Perhaps her parents would have done better to raise her to survive, she thought now, when she paused, panting, atop the rise behind the farm. Then perhaps her adjustment to the life she now had to lead would not be so difficult.

  She narrowed her eyes to see better. The fog had thinned somewhat, but from up there, she couldn’t see any sign of Leon. She sighed. To a point, she could understand Leon’s passion for cycling—after all, she had been part of the sport herself until just recently. But things couldn’t go on like this, she concluded, as she slipped and stumbled back down the hillside. Something had to happen, or she’d go out of her mind before spring arrived.

  The next few hours passed very slowly. Isabelle paced around their bedroom, the floorboards creaking tauntingly with every step. Like all the upstairs rooms, the bedroom was not heated. Isabelle pulled a woolen shawl around her shoulders, but it didn’t help much. Going down to the heated parlor was not a good alternative, because it meant having to put up with the pipe smoke from Oskar Feininger and his even more taciturn brother Albert, who also lived on the farm.

  Feeling depressed, she looked around the dimly lit room. She’d run out of reading material weeks before, and there was nothing in the Feininger house to read apart from a Christian periodical. Finally she sat down and began to write a letter to her friend Clara. But she stopped as soon as she’d written Dear Clara. Apart from her moaning and misery, she had nothing to write about. As a doctor’s wife, Clara managed a large practice. And, of course, she had her own household to look after, as well as little Matthias—a full schedule, really, and then some. When Clara found out that Isabelle was sitting around twiddling her thumbs—even though she had no choice in the matter—her reaction would certainly be one of incomprehension.

  The same would be true of her friend Josephine, who was running a successful bicycle business with her husband. And when she thought about Lilo in the Black Forest! Lilo and her husband managed no fewer than three luxury sanatoriums. Isabelle had imagined something similar for her own life in the Palatinate. In her naïveté, she had dreamed of taking control of the winery, together with Leon.

  Dreams . . . as a young woman, she’d had more than enough of those. Maybe that’s why our friendship held? she thought, still staring at the unwritten page in front of her. Apart from the fact that all three of them had lived on the same street, Clara, Josephine, and Isabelle could hardly have been more different. Clara, the good pharmacist’s daughter; Josephine, the rebel of the trio; and then Isabelle herself, the rich daughter of a factory owner. But whenever they were together, they laughed and told each other their secrets, and what they had in common had been stronger by far than all the social differences that separated them. Each of them had her dreams, and to all appearances, her friends had made theirs come true. But here she was, stuck in the wilderness, all out of dreams.

  Disgusted, Isabelle threw her pen and stationery into a corner before a thought occurred to her: The letter that her mother-in-law had been so excited about—why hadn’t Isabelle taken it with her? Then she would at least have something to read. And the letter would probably affect her, too, wouldn’t it?

  When she abandoned Berlin so precipitately, she did not tell anyone except Clara what her new address would be. Even so, it had obviously been easy for her father to find out where she had gone, because a letter from him arrived just a few days after her wedding. The letter had been addressed to Mrs. I. Feininger. He had not even written her first name. In curt, clear words, he had told her that she was dead to him. And until today, she had not heard a word from her mother. Only from Clara, now and then, came a few sparse lines. All her bridges were charred ruins.

  Isabelle occasionally looked out the window, but there was no sign whatsoever of Leon. It was almost dark. When was he finally going to return?

  To divert herself, she went to the mirror on the wall. In the pale light of the gas lamp, she did her best to pluck her eyebrows. Her face had become so round! And her eyes had lost all their shine—all the boredom she felt was reflected in them. To think that she had once beguiled every man she met with her provocative eyes. Nervously, Isabelle tossed the golden tweezers onto the vanity. Then she picked up her sewing box and began to let out the waistband on one of her skirts—something she had to do for all her dresses. In Berlin, she had danced through the nights and trained long hours on her bicycle, and her figure had been slender. But with the inactivity and the rich, plain food in that house, her slim waistline had disappeared. As much as she might hold in her breath, she could no longer lace up her bodice all the way.

  Leon’s mother had already remarked that it looked as if a new family member might be on the way. Pregnant, my foot! I’ll start looking like a potato myself soon, thought Isabelle, adding a good inch of material to the waistband of her skirt. Perhaps she should get some of that horrible brown woolen yarn from her mother-in-law and knit herself a jacket. With something like that, she could perhaps conceal her curves. And she’d have something to do. Oh, good Lord, she couldn’t even imagine doing needlework.

  With clammy fingers, Isabelle sewed away at her skirt for a while. But her thoughts kept returning to the letter. Why hadn’t she taken it with her? With every stitch, her conviction that it had something to do with her grew—Anni wouldn’t have mentioned it to her otherwise! Had something happened to her parents? An accident in her father’s factory? The thought frightened her, but what frightened her even more was the unexpressed pleasure she felt at the idea that in an emergency, she would have to return to Berlin. Everyone would understand that. Leon and his family, her family, her friends in Berlin. She wouldn’t owe anyone an explanation. And then they would see where things went.

  With her heart beating hard, Isabelle went back to the kitchen. She had to read the letter, immediately! But where had her mother-in-law put it? It wasn’t on the sideboard with the doily, nor was it in the basket with the shriveled apples. Disappointed, she was about to head back upstairs when she saw it after all, tucked in behind the yellowing mirror. Isabelle sighed with relief. She had the letter in her hand when she heard Anni’s sharp voice behind her. “Put that down! It’s for Leon!”

  Chapter Two

  Leon came home from his extended ride feeling on top of the world.

  “Isabelle’s upstairs,” his mother had announced bitterly when he arrived.

  His darling wife probably had ducked some housewifely duty again! Leon had sensed that his mother expected some sort of response from him or that he would take her side, but he would not be drawn in. It made no difference to him which of the two women made sure the food was on the table at the right time. He liked his mother’s cooking, and when it came to Isabelle, in bed she was everything a man could wish for. Leon grinned. As he climbed the stairs to the bedroom, he glanced at the clock on the wall. It was just after five, and dinner was at six—enough time for a little activity under the covers. Far from wearing him out, his training ride had only fired him up.

  “I’m back, chérie! Did you miss me?” he called, turning the door handle expectantly. Isabelle was sitting on the edge of the bed, and her expression was not relaxed. She was in another one of her moods. He went over to her and leaned down to kiss her, but she fended him off.

  “How can you do this to me?” she railed. “I sit around here bored out of my mind, while you go off and have the time of your life!”

  Oh, for God’s sake. One would think he’d been gone for months! Leon had trouble stifling a grin at the dramas she managed to conjure up. His beloved wife really could make a mountain out of any molehill.

  “Why aren’t you downstairs
? Mother has chestnuts on the stove, and the whole house smells wonderful,” he said as he pulled off his mud-splattered trousers and threw them on the floor. In the last few months, he’d discovered that the best approach to Isabelle’s moods was to ignore them. “Now I’m back again.” In his underwear, he sat beside her on the bed and kissed her neck. How wonderful she smelled, of peaches and vanilla. Leon felt his excitement quicken, as it always did when he was close to Isabelle. The scent of her perfect skin, her long red hair tumbling wildly down her back—thank God she hadn’t wrapped her magnificent mane into one of those braids he hated. He traced his middle finger slowly down her back.

  “Chérie, I’m sorry, and I would be only too happy to atone for my sins . . .”

  But instead of giving in to his cooing, Isabelle abruptly turned away. “Leon, really, it’s not all right, you going out every day and riding for hours while I sit here with the walls closing in. You could certainly take care of me a little more.” Her voice was unusually doleful.

  “Are we both supposed to sit around and be bored?” Leon replied. “Everybody knows that life on the land is bleak in winter. But in two or three months, spring will be here, and it will be a completely different world.”

  “Waiting for spring is the last thing I want to do. I’m thirsty for a change of scene and a breath of city air . . . or I’ll die like a primrose you forgot to water,” she said angrily. “And then there’s this stupid letter that came for you that I’ve been going crazy about all day.” She told him all her horrible suspicions about what was in the letter.

  Leon’s brow creased. “That can only be the invitations for the races in Kaiserslautern and Worms. Or a newspaper report about the New Year’s race in Mainz, which I won, after all!” he said proudly.

  Isabelle snorted. “Don’t you have anything in your head anymore except your races? Why don’t you go downstairs and get the letter, and then we’ll both know.”

  “It’s from a notary in Pirmasens. Strange . . . ,” Leon murmured when he was sitting beside Isabelle on the bed again a few minutes later. He opened the envelope, careful not to tear the papers inside. “I’m supposed to go there in two days!” He looked up with a grin. “See? Your wish for a little city air is my command.”

  “An appointment with a notary? What in the world could it mean?” Isabelle was looking excitedly over his shoulder.

  Leon looked up at her with a frown. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  One of their neighbors offered to drive Leon and Isabelle into the city in his carriage. Wearing her best dress and wrapped in her warmest coat, Isabelle eyed the decrepit vehicle suspiciously. Sun, rain, and other weather-related phenomena had left their marks on it, making the wood molder and causing deep cracks that ran from the front axle all the way back. And it was supposed to get them to Pirmasens?

  As fragile as the coach was, the horses that the farmer harnessed in front of it were a pair of young and frisky three-year-olds that leaped ahead in fright at every shake of a branch. The carriage groaned ominously, and Isabelle feared a broken axle or worse. Although he cursed aloud, the driver did his best to keep the horses calm. Isabelle’s fear grew. What if they had an accident between two villages and drove into the ditch beside the road? In this thinly populated region, it could take forever for anyone to come to their aid—if anyone could find them at all in the soupy fog!

  To Isabelle’s great relief, they made it into Pirmasens unscathed. She peered excitedly out the window as they passed several factories on the way into town. The air smelled sour, a mix of tanned leather and the smoke rising from the factory chimneys all around. Almost every company sign depicted shoes or a cobbler: “Neuff Shoe Factory,” “Rheinberg Shoe Factory,” “Peter Kaiser Shoe Factory.” Under normal circumstances, as the daughter of a factory owner herself, she would have had a keen interest in finding out why so many shoes were manufactured in Pirmasens. And, naturally, she would also have risked a glance into this or that showroom window, but just then the only thing that interested her was what was waiting for them at the notary’s office.

  When they pulled up in front of a stately building close to the town hall at the end of the Palace Square, Isabelle let out a sigh of relief. Finally!

  The notary wore a brown suit that made him all but disappear against the brown-veneered furniture in his dusty offices, and he read the final will and testament of Monsieur Jacques Feininger in an uncomfortably high-pitched voice. A second man, dressed in dark-green wool, sat beside him. He was a translator officially certified by the district court. At some point in his life, the deceased had taken French citizenship, and because the testament had been written in French and the beneficiaries were German, by law every sentence had to be translated. Isabelle, who had spent years studying French, spoke the language well, and understood it even better, could have happily done without all the wearisome translations.

  “I, Jacques Feininger, do hereby leave to my nephew, Leonard Feininger, as sole heir . . .”

  Leon was inheriting something! In her excitement, Isabelle dug her fingers into Leon’s arm.

  “. . . my vineyard and winery located in Hautvillers . . .”

  A vineyard in Hautvillers? She hadn’t heard anything about that before. Was Hautvillers also in the Palatinate? And who was this uncle, Jacques Feininger? Isabelle, feeling rather confused, looked from the notary to Leon. But he, too, seemed completely at a loss. A deep crease appeared across his forehead, and he seemed to be unable to stop shaking his head, as if he were having trouble assimilating what the notary was reading.

  After an hour, the notary slapped the leather file in front of him closed. The wooden legs of his chair scraped painfully across the graying parquetry as he stood up. Isabelle and Leon rose as well. The translator, his forehead dotted with beads of sweat from his exertions, remained seated as he filled out a form.

  The notary cleared his throat, then reached out to shake Leon’s hand.

  “Congratulations, sir! A wine estate in the province of Champagne—I have seen many a poorer legacy.”

  “An estate in Champagne! Oh my goodness.” They were not even out of the door of the notary’s office when Isabelle laughed out loud and fell into her husband’s arms. Good-bye, Grimmzeit! This was the chance she’d been waiting for. A vineyard and winery of their own . . .

  Leon still looked somewhat lost and sheepish. Isabelle tugged insistently at his arm.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me about Jacques? And why, of all people, did he leave it to you? A vineyard in Champagne! What does it mean?”

  A grin slowly spread across Leon’s face. “Simply this, chérie: it means that from now on, we’re rich! We can do whatever we want!” With a gesture of exaggerated gallantry, he held out his arm for her to take. “Time to celebrate!”

  “Uncle Jakob is—I mean, was—father’s brother, younger by two years. I have no idea when he started calling himself Jacques.” Leon shrugged. “He left Grimmzeit when I was three or four years old. There was some sort of quarrel between him and my father. As a child, you only pick up on these things indirectly, and you never know what it’s about, exactly. My mother cried a lot at that time, I remember that. She must have been about your age, and she often sat me on her lap, as if she might find consolation in me. Strange. I remember it like it was yesterday, how her face was often wet from her tears. Still, I loved being so close to her. Later on, moments like that were rare.” Leon looked off into the distance, lost in thought.

  In the weak light inside the small café, Isabelle listened to her husband intently. It was rare for Leon to speak openly about his feelings, and his words moved her very much. Anni Feininger as a young woman and fragile mother . . . she found that hard to imagine.

  “What then?”

  “After that, we didn’t hear anything from Uncle Jakob for many years. His name hardly ever came up, but I thought about him quite a bit. In my childhood imagination, I assumed he’d gone off to sea and become a pirate. Or that he’d emi
grated to America to fight the Indians. There was something adventurous about him, something daring and fearless. He had an opinion about everything and never shied away from announcing it! Nothing like Uncle Albert, who never says a peep about anything for the sake of peace and quiet.” Leon twisted his mouth to one side. “Jakob was really a daredevil, apparently. I mean, just up and leaving like that . . . that takes some courage, doesn’t it?”

  Isabelle nodded. She’d done just the same when she followed Leon to the Palatinate. But in the enthusiasm of telling his story, the parallel to hers seemed lost on him.

  “Jakob broke free of what was tying him down. For me, he was always a hero. And perhaps a bit of a role model, too.” Leon laughed softly. Isabelle could not stop herself from reaching out and stroking the dimples that appeared in his cheeks when he laughed like that.

  Leon took her hand and kissed her tenderly. Then he said, “I only discovered two years ago that Jakob—Jacques—lived just a couple of hundred miles away. He sent me a letter, inviting me to visit him.”

  “So you know the place?” Isabelle set down her glass of tea so abruptly that the brown liquid splashed onto the tablecloth. “I thought that was all a mystery to you, too!”

  Up to that moment, it had all sounded like a dream, an illusion that she did not want to trust. But if Leon had really been there and seen it all . . .

  “Yes, I know it. I was there for three weeks back then, although I spent most of it out on the bicycle. The roads of Champagne are outstanding. I was already racing successfully back then, and of course I had to keep training. At the Munich Race in the autumn of ’96, for example, I came in second—”

  “Leon!” Isabelle interrupted. “The winery. What’s it like? And how did you get along with your uncle?”

  Leon screwed up his face as if he’d bitten into something sour. “To be honest, there was nothing left of the hero of my childhood. Instead, I found a cranky old coot who’d argue about anything with anybody, including me. I don’t think he was very popular among his neighbors. But his vineyard is beautiful. And”—he paused, as if to build the suspense—“the estate includes not only its own vines, but also its own cellars! Jakob was what they call a vigneron, a grower who produces his own champagne.” The pride in Leon’s voice was unmistakable. “I can honestly say that, for me, my uncle’s champagne tasted wonderful.”