The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2)

by Petra Durst-Benning

  The balls Isabelle had frequented in Berlin had always been glamorous affairs, but there had always been a trace of Prussian modesty about them. Here, by contrast, a wasteful opulence held sway. In her traveling dress, beneath which she was not even wearing a corset, she felt poorly dressed—or, even worse, practically indecent! If only she had at least gone to the trouble of putting up her hair properly!

  But the waiter who served them gave not the slightest hint of condescension, as she might well have expected in a fine Berlin restaurant. He cheerfully explained the dishes on the menu, and Leon acted so interested that one might actually have believed that he could understand what the man was saying. Isabelle smirked.

  “We’d like the poached salmon as an appetizer, followed by the roast venison,” said Leon when the waiter had finished. “Et une carafe d’eau.”

  “I thought you couldn’t speak any French,” said Isabelle in astonishment the moment the waiter was out of earshot.

  “Well, I can get by. I told you that I’d raced successfully in France, didn’t I? You pick up a phrase here and there. I can speak a little English, too. When I was racing over in London, I had the feeling that I was learning the language very easily.” Musing, he added, “You know, I never had the chance to go to secondary school. All there is in Grimmzeit is the village school. And it never occurred to my parents to send me off to school in Pirmasens or somewhere else. I would have liked to learn more. But my parents believed that secondary school was only for the rich, not for boys who grew up on vineyards. So I began to look around for something I could prove myself with, and I came across cycling. My parents had no objections, because it fit in well enough with the work on the farm. I finally had a few far-reaching goals of my own. But sometimes I think I could have been a bit more than just a good cyclist.”

  “Oh, Leon,” said Isabelle, moved. “I know what you mean! My father never put much stock in me, either. For him, I was nothing but some kind of merchandise. The best future he could think of for me was to marry me off to a good match. But what really counts is what we have here and now! You’ll be a wonderful landowner, secondary school or not. And I plan to show everyone that I can be more than just a bauble on the arm of a rich businessman. Together, we’re strong.”

  Leon nodded. “You’re right. From now, we’ll show everyone what we can do!”

  While they waited for their food to arrive, Isabelle gazed around the obviously popular restaurant. All the tables were occupied, and a virtual armada of waiters was hard at work bringing food and drink to the tables. Now and then, a whiff of something delicious wafted over to them. Beautifully decorated pastries, caviar piled in the finest crystal bowls, whole fish baked in a salt crust and filleted at the table—only the best was served here! Champagne bottles cooled in ice buckets, and the guests raised their splendid glasses in toasts to one another. At the next table, at which sat a particularly well-dressed group, a new magnum of champagne was just being served. No wonder the spirits at that table seemed particularly high. With a sigh, Isabelle sipped at her glass of water.

  “That’s the regular table of the champagne makers,” the waiter whispered to Isabelle. “They meet here once a month, and right now they are in a wonderful mood.” He smiled generously, then set two plates in front of Isabelle and Leon. With a flourish, he lifted the silver cloches that covered the individual dishes. “Poached salmon à la maison—bon appetit!”

  While Leon went to work on the appetizer as if he hadn’t eaten for days, Isabelle felt her own feelings of insecurity dissolve. She took a little of the delicate fish, and it was simply delicious. The festive mood inside the restaurant was heightened by the lively tunes of a string duet.

  Isabelle winked at Leon.

  “If everyone here is drinking champagne, it can’t be so horribly expensive, can it? Don’t you think we could . . . I mean, if not now, then when?”

  “Monsieur, the champagne list!” Leon called to the waiter. But when the man handed him the open leather-bound menu, Leon’s smile faded. “There must be over a hundred kinds of champagne here!” he said, loud enough that a few heads at neighboring tables turned in their direction. A few women giggled.

  Isabelle leaned over to see the menu, too. Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, Piper-Heidsieck, Moët, Louis Roederer—the list went on and on. And then there were the prices! A single bottle would dent their resources.

  While Isabelle tried to think of a way to extricate themselves from the situation gracefully, one of the women from the champagne makers’ table leaned over to her. Her hair was piled high on her head and held in place with pearl-studded needles, and her face was made-up dramatically. She wore an off-the-shoulder dress, and although she was no longer particularly young, her décolleté was as impressive as any twenty-year-old’s and was adorned with a gold collier and a teardrop-shaped diamond pendant as big as a hazelnut.

  “May I make a suggestion?” she said in an unusually deep voice. As she spoke, she raised her champagne glass as if she wanted to toast them.

  “If it comes from such a beauty . . . ,” said Leon.

  Isabelle heard a certain undertone in his voice. His pupils widened a little, as they always did when he saw a woman he liked the look of. Isabelle twisted her mouth to one side.

  “Not everything that is expensive is good,” said the woman, and she swept her hand as if to discard the champagne menu. A gust of perfume swirled around her words. “Order yourselves a bottle of Trubert Millésime, and you will have the best that Champagne has to offer!”

  Her words were confirmed by a laugh from the others at her table, and the woman laughed, too. They all started speaking at once, and they called out the name of one champagne after another.

  Leon joined in their laughter, but Isabelle grimaced. Though she didn’t understand what they were saying at the next table, she had the unpleasant feeling that a joke had been made at their expense. Abruptly, she turned to the waiter, who was still waiting patiently.

  “A bottle of Feininger, please,” she said loudly and prayed that the champagne made by Leon’s uncle was on the list.

  Chapter Four

  Isabelle turned her head to the side so that Leon could kiss her throat more easily.

  “You smell so good,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck. Then he bit the lobe of her left ear tenderly. “So sweet, like a candied cherry.” His fingers traced her nipples, his body pressed against hers. Sighing with desire, Isabelle pulled him even closer. She wanted to take him inside her, to feel him . . .

  “I have an idea,” said Leon, as they lay side by side, fulfilled by their lovemaking.

  Golden sunlight filtered through the wooden shutters, falling onto the bedcovers and Isabelle’s naked body. She stretched luxuriously and said, “We stay here the whole day and do what we just did again?”

  Leon laughed his usual throaty laugh. “Half-right, sweetheart. We’ll certainly stay here, but not in this room.” Playfully, he picked up a lock of her long red hair and draped it across her breasts. “We’ll be at the estate soon enough, and the work isn’t going to go anywhere. One day of idleness now is just what we need. Besides, after last night, we definitely have to find a restaurant that serves Feininger champagne.”

  Isabelle laughed, too, but inside she was torn. On the one hand, she was already so curious about Hautvillers! And hadn’t Leon told the overseer that they would be coming that day? But on the other hand, this would probably be her last chance for a long time to enjoy some big-city life.

  She rolled over and plucked her travel guide from the nightstand. “What shall we see first? This old triumphal arch, or—”

  “Chérie, darling,” Leon interrupted her. He took her hand and planted a kiss playfully on her palm. “My plan is a little different.”

  Dressed in an elegant—if no longer completely modern—ensemble of strawberry-red velvet and a cream-colored woolen jacket, Isabelle set off a short time later in the direction of the world-famous cathedral. She had put on several pearl neck
laces and had tied her hair into a sizable bun on the back of her head. A few loose strands curled behind her ears, accentuating her slender neck. All in all, she thought, catching sight of her reflection in a showroom window, she looked more like she’d just come from Berlin than from Grimmzeit.

  The sun was shining, but there wasn’t any warmth in it. Shivering, Isabelle regretted—not for the first time—that she hadn’t taken any of her furs with her when she abandoned Berlin. But it had been late summer when she left, she had packed her bags in a hurry, and the furs had been stored away so she had no idea where to find them. Who thinks of sable and silver fox when they are blissfully in love?

  As soon as they were settled in and champagne sales were going well—she assumed they would after seeing, in the restaurant the previous evening, just how freely the bubbly liquid could flow—she would get herself a new fur coat. Already she had her eyes open for a shop that would be able to sell her one. Her very first fur coat that her father had not paid for!

  Her ire at Leon’s preference for seeing Reims from the saddle of his bicycle rather than on foot with her soon melted away. As usual, she could not stay angry with her cycling husband. There were advantages to her being out alone, too, because it meant that she could admire the window displays of all the lovely shops in peace.

  In a perfumery, the window display of which advertised French scents, Isabelle bought soap and a hand cream. She was already paying when she caught a glimpse of a collection of tiny jars, their lids decorated with colored stones. Her mother had possessed just such a tiny jar.

  “May I see that?” she asked in French. The language felt strangely out of place in her mouth as she asked, although she had spoken French regularly at the aristocratic balls she’d attended in Berlin.

  “Our finest color for cheeks and lips, my lady,” the young saleswoman explained. She obligingly screwed the lids off several of the jars, and Isabelle saw that they were filled with creams in different colors. She found one particular copper tone particularly appealing.

  “S’il vous plaît?” The saleswoman held out the jar to Isabelle invitingly.

  Isabelle did not need a second invitation. Like a starving woman, she dipped her right index finger into the jar, then dabbed the color on her lips. It had been so long since she had worn perfume, so long since she had put on any kind of makeup. Grimmzeit is far away, she thought, and a smile crossed her face.

  The cream felt delicate and soft, like a kiss from Leon. When she looked at the mirror the saleswoman held for her, she had to smile—she suddenly looked just as French as the elegant women she had seen in the restaurant.

  Isabelle left the shop a few minutes later, satisfied with her purchases but with far fewer francs in her purse. Again and again, she stopped in front of shop windows to delight in her reflection and her copper-red lips. She felt better than she had in a very long time. Smiling to herself, she stopped at a street dealer carrying a vendor’s tray of postcards of the city. The cathedral, the town hall, and there—that regal-looking pharmacy she had admired in real life the evening before. She bought the card for Clara; she knew her friend in Berlin would like it, and she would be surprised to receive a postcard, out of the blue, from France.

  As Isabelle walked down a long street with a tramline running down the center, she suddenly understood what it was, apart from the shops and the overwhelmingly hospitable people, that made Reims so special: it was the white sandstone that was part of practically every building she saw. It reflected the sunlight in a transcendentally beautiful way. The thought that this splendid city was just fifteen miles from her future home and that she would come here often filled her with joy.

  Notre Dame de Reims was already in sight when Isabelle passed a shop that had nothing in its window but an empty champagne bottle and two glasses arranged on material that looked like molten gold. The tableau looked not only exceptionally elegant but almost arrogant, as if the person who had conceived it wanted to say, This is all one needs, isn’t it? The small scene radiated an intimacy as well. It was just an empty champagne bottle and two glasses, and one of the glasses was lying on its side as if someone, in the heat of emotion, had knocked it over. A guest at an elegant table. A lover in his beloved’s embrace . . .

  Isabelle abruptly turned her gaze up and away from the window, as if she had been caught in the act of peering secretly through a keyhole. “Champagne & Champagne” was written in black letters on an imposing cream-colored sign above the window. Not “Champagne and Wine” or “Champagne and Spirits.” What was the owner trying to say with a name like that? As if magically drawn, Isabelle pressed her nose to the window; the next moment, a man’s face appeared from inside. Shocked, Isabelle jumped back. Then she hurried on down the street.

  Life-size figures, small figures, angels, fabulous creatures, the Virgin Mary . . . Isabelle couldn’t take her eyes off the world-renowned Notre Dame de Reims cathedral. In her travel guide, it said that the centuries-old building was almost five hundred feet long and that more than 2,300 figures had been counted on the facades. Isabelle found the “smiling angel” that she discovered just to the left of the west entrance especially enchanting. Faced with so much beauty, she was a little afraid to step inside.

  But when she finally did so, she felt a lump form in her throat from sheer emotion. It was even more beautiful inside. It was comforting that this church smelled just like any other on the inside—of dust and candle wax, old stones and incense, sins and forgiveness.

  The soft strains of organ music mixed with the dull knocking of the stonemasons working on the restoration of the external facade. The sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows refracted into thousands of prisms, like a kaleidoscope. With every step, Isabelle felt more like Alice in Wonderland. She flinched slightly when, close beside her, she heard a light scraping sound that she could not classify. It was a middle-aged man with a small knife in his hand, scratching something into one of the steps that led up to the choir stalls. A name, perhaps? Then Isabelle saw that on every stone windowsill, every step and wall, there were thousands of scribbles—letters, names, whorls, strange symbols. Did the visitors want to be one with this place, becoming part of the structure and leaving behind something of themselves? For a moment, she thought about whether she, too . . . she had a nail file with her . . . But then she decided against it and instead lit a candle at one of the many candle altars. She knelt and closed her eyes and prayed.

  Dear God, thank you for this fairytale that has already begun, here in Reims.

  When Isabelle left the cathedral an hour later, she felt nothing but serenity and confidence. The estate would be a unique opportunity for Leon and her to grow into a good team. He might not yet have fully grasped the enormity of their undertaking, but with their arrival at the farm, he would understand that the time was ripe for something other than cycling.

  The champagne shop she had seen earlier reappeared ahead of her, and she slowed her step. Left and right of the door, there were two large, hip-high vases that had not been there before. They were filled with white lilies and looked exceptionally graceful. Inside the shop itself, several chandeliers had been lit, and they only heightened the stylish radiance of the place.

  Isabelle stopped short a few yards from the entrance. As an aspiring champagne maker, whatever the shop offered was bound to be of interest to her, but she still was wary about going inside. What nonsense! She turned the handle with determination and opened the door.

  The owner, a strikingly attractive gentleman, was, to Isabelle’s relief, busy with another customer. He smiled and nodded to her, and with a gesture, he invited her to browse.

  Isabelle returned his smile cautiously. Inside, the shop was just as lovely and unusual as it looked from outside: on the polished granite floor lay a magnificent Aubusson carpet, and instead of pictures, several mirrors in different sizes with ornate golden frames graced the cream-colored walls. Isabelle cast a skeptical look at her reflection, as if to ask, What do
you think you’re doing here? When she walked toward the wine racks that took up the entire left-hand wall of the shop, the carpet swallowed the sound of her footsteps. Isabelle found the sight of the hundreds of bottles impressive, perhaps even a little intimidating.

  “For a father, it is always painful to let his daughter go,” the owner said. “Even when he knows she’s in the best of hands and that the future son-in-law is as respectable as . . .” As he spoke, the man took a champagne bottle out of a cooler and opened it expertly. Two long-stemmed glasses were on the counter, and he poured both half full. He had beautiful hands, Isabelle saw from beneath lowered eyelids. At once strong and sensitive, like the hands of a pianist. Every movement he made radiated self-confidence and dignity, as if he were carrying out a sacred deed. Mesmerized, Isabelle could hardly look away.

  “Isn’t it a consolation to know that champagne offers us support at times like these? Joy and suffering—siblings, they are! Who could know that better than we Champenois, with our eventful history? So many wars, so much unrest, and in between the most marvelous savoir vivre.” The man behind the counter gestured in the air, a casually elegant motion. “Let’s leave big politics out of it. I’d much rather tell you a small personal story. When my dear friend Louise Pommery saw her daughter married off to Comte Guy de Polignac, she naturally served the best champagne that her house could offer at that time: the 1874 Pommery. And what can I tell you?”

  The customer looked at him expectantly. And Isabelle, standing by the wine racks, was transfixed.

  “To this day, whenever anyone who was at that wedding comes into this shop, they talk about that dry, powerful champagne they found so breathtaking.”

  The customer nodded, obviously impressed. “The guests at Marie-Claire’s wedding should also have something to talk about! Money is no issue. What I want is a truly spectacular champagne. One wants to show what one is capable of, after all. Am I right?” He laughed, then stretched his arms out, as if doing that might underscore his words.