Vintage (22 page)

“A proper drink?” he suggested.

Odile gratefully accepted.

“And how is this year shaping up for Maison Randon?” she asked.

“Vintage,” said Randon.

“Mathieu, you say that every year,” teased Odile. “I heard through the grapevine that you’re interested in expanding your operations in Le Vezy.”

Randon nodded.

“Clos Des Larmes? The pride of Champagne Arsenault. Am I right to understand that Champagne Arsenault was once part of the Randon estate? Until your great-grandfather lost it in a bet.”

Randon’s right eye twitched. Odile was satisfied that she had hit her mark.

“It’s a fabulous vineyard,” she said. “I’m not surprised you want it. Shame it isn’t for sale.”

“Everything is for sale. You just have to guess the price.”

“But you’re still guessing.”

“For the time being.”

“I have to say I think you’ve underestimated her.”

“Of course, she’s your new protégée. I heard about the wager. She’s quite a girl,” Randon admitted.

“I’d have to agree with that,” said Odile. “I fear it may be quite a battle to part her from her vineyards. Oh look. There she is. I’d better leave you. Wouldn’t do any good at all for me to be seen fraternizing with her number one enemy.”

Randon and Odile shared a knowing smile.

Madeleine paused at the entrance to the hall. It wasn’t that she was trying to make an entrance, more that she was a little nervous. This was her first public event as the proprietor of Champagne Arsenault. She wanted to make the right impression. She scanned the room for friendly faces.
Her gaze was immediately drawn to Odile Levert, who was talking to Hilarian Jackson.

Madeleine felt herself transported back to her school days when she saw Odile. So elegant. Absolutely timeless. It was impossible to tell whether her fellow Frenchwoman was thirty or fifty. Looking at Odile made Madeleine very glad that she had dressed up. Especially when Odile caught her eye and nodded her approval.

She scanned the room for other familiar faces. Remi Brice of Champagne Brice was entertaining a crowd of women with, no doubt, his patter about each of his single vineyard wines representing a different aspect of femininity. Perhaps he was offering them a glass of “pleasure,” his favorite line.

There was no one else she recognized.

“Madeleine.”

A hand on her elbow made her turn around.

Her smile instantly disappeared. “Axel.”

It was the first time she had seen him since that terrible weekend in Le Vezy. Although it wasn’t so strange that he should be there, Madeleine was a little surprised. The really big players, like Domaine Randon, didn’t always bother to send their best men to the London trade fair. Especially in a Vinexpo year. That Randon and Axel were both there was quite something.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” he said.

“I didn’t tell you.”

“Are you having a good time at the festival?”

“Wonderful,” she said.

“Do you have a stand? I didn’t see one.”

“I’m sharing a stand. This year.”

She tried not to meet Axel’s gaze. Instead, she looked over his shoulder in search of someone, anyone, she could claim she needed to talk to instead. She prayed that Remi Brice might stop reading the palm of one of his pretty
companions and beckon her over. He didn’t. Madeleine could see no other escape route. An emergency toilet break would be much too obvious.

A waiter passed by. Axel took a glass of champagne and proffered it to Madeleine.

“I can get my own,” she said sharply.

“Take it,” said Axel. “You’re empty-handed. And it’s not as though I’m buying you the drink. It’s free.”

Madeleine snatched it from him.

“On second thought,” said Axel, “perhaps I shouldn’t have armed you with something you might throw at me if I say something wrong.”

“You’re very good at saying the wrong thing,” Madeleine snapped back at him.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about—”

“Oh, watch out, Axel,” Madeleine interrupted him. “Here comes your master. Better snap to heel.”

Mathieu Randon was walking toward them, hand extended to shake Madeleine’s. She didn’t offer her own hand in return, merely dismissively flicked her eyes down toward Randon’s. He withdrew it.

“Mademoiselle Arsenault. Allow me to introduce myself—”

“Monsieur Randon, you need no introduction.”

Randon shrugged in what he obviously assumed was a charming manner.

“Well, it’s nice to be known,” he said.

“You certainly have a reputation.”

“And so do you,” said Randon. “I’d heard it said that you are the most beautiful woman in Champagne. Now I think that description can be widened to make you one of the most beautiful women in the world.”

Madeleine raised an eyebrow to let him know that she was unmoved by his flattery. Unimpressed.

“I don’t think we need to continue with this charade,
monsieur, I know you’re only interested in my champagne house.”

Randon shrugged his shoulders again and had the decency to look just a little embarrassed.

“Of course I am interested in Champagne Arsenault. Who wouldn’t be? I was a great admirer of your father, Madeleine. He was a true artist. I have, in my cellar, a bottle of his Clos Des Larmes from 1975. I have yet to find an occasion special enough to warrant drinking such a masterpiece.”

Madeleine said nothing. The Clos Des Larmes made in 1975 was her father’s favorite vintage; the one he made in the year of her brother’s birth. Her own birth year wasn’t good enough to warrant a vintage at all.

A wine waiter hovered. Randon waved the man away and stepped a little closer to Madeleine as though he were about to impart a great secret.

“Madeleine, I understand your loyalty to your father’s memory. You believe that he would want the Clos Des Larmes to stay in the family. Knowing your father as well as I did, I believe he actually had a slightly different plan.”

“What do you mean?” asked Madeleine.

“I understand that you spent the last ten years working in London. Investment banking, wasn’t it? The hours are very long, I know. It can be difficult to keep up with your family obligations when your career demands so much from you.”

“What are you getting at, Randon?”

“In the ten years prior to his death, I believe I spent more time with your father than you did, dear girl. I presented myself to him as a disciple. I wanted to know everything your father could tell me about champagne. I revered him above all other vignerons. We became good friends.”

“He didn’t tell me you were such great friends.”

“When would he have told you? You didn’t see him at all in the year before he died, am I right?”

Madeleine looked sharply to Axel. Had he told Randon that? The possibility that Randon was actually telling the truth about his relationship with her father was just too horrible. Madeleine tried to picture Mathieu Randon sitting beside Constant Arsenault’s deathbed. She imagined her father telling Randon that his daughter never visited anymore. Randon sympathizing. No. Randon
had
to be lying. If he’d felt such strong regard for old Arsenault then why hadn’t Randon been at the funeral?

As though he were able to read Madeleine’s thoughts, Randon continued, “I was terribly sad to miss your father’s funeral. I was detained in New York by bad weather. I asked Axel to pass on my regards.”

“I don’t think my father missed you,” said Madeleine.

“Your father confided in me that he wanted Clos Des Larmes to be cared for by someone with a passion for wine.”

“Stop,” said Madeleine. “Don’t try to tell me that my father would want me to sell Champagne Arsenault to you?”

Randon gave a little nod.

“You’re lying, Randon. Family was the most important thing to my father. I may have let him down in the ten years prior to his death but I’m damn well not going to let him down now. I will send you a bottle of my first vintage at Clos Des Larmes to drink when you open the ‘75. And I promise you, it will be a vintage that would have made my father proud.”

“Or perhaps, as is more likely, you will finish the job your father began and send a once great marque into oblivion.”

Randon leaned forward and took Madeleine by the elbow as though he were about to give her a friendly kiss
good-bye. Instead, she felt his fingers digging hard into the bare flesh of her upper arm as he hissed into her ear, “You’re a proud and stupid woman, Mademoiselle Arsenault.”

And with that, Randon withdrew.

Axel remained. He looked nervously after Randon, finding himself between a rock and a hard place. “Madeleine, I’m sorry. He came on a bit strong there. I didn’t know that stuff about your father. I mean, I knew that they knew each other. I didn’t know they’d actually talked about the future of Clos Des Larmes.”

“Just leave me alone,” said Madeleine. “There’s no point trying to mend bridges.”

“Madeleine—”

“Fuck off. If I never see you again it will be too soon,” she said. “You betrayed me, Axel. The only news I ever want to hear of you is that you are dead.”

Madeleine exited the ExCeL building as though the devil himself were on her tail. She snatched her coat from the cloakroom attendant and threw a couple of pound coins into the tip dish. Then she made for the door, walking as fast as she could. Trying not to run. She didn’t want anyone to see her running. She especially didn’t want anyone to see that she was starting to cry. Though by the time she reached the big glass doors of the exhibition center, she was pretty much blinded with tears, which was how she came to run straight into the chest of someone heading in the opposite direction at equally high speed.

The man grasped Madeleine by the upper arms to stop her from falling.

“Steady on,” he said as he set her upright again.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. Happens all the time,” he said. “Women can’t help throwing themselves at me.”

Madeleine paused just long enough to thank him and to take in the scent of Creed Royal Water, and the teddy bears on his Hermès silk tie, before she was off again, into the night.

Odile Levert watched Madeleine leave. Madeleine was an intelligent girl but overly emotional, Odile decided. Such softness would be her undoing against an opponent like Mathieu Randon.

T
hough she was nobody’s first choice, none of the PR team could deny that Christina was making a real effort as the biggest celeb at the wine fair. For the
Vinifera
dinner supporting ISACL, she dressed in Armani Privé. A heavily sequinned dress in pale lemon with matching shoes by Manolo.

“Almost the color of champagne,” Christina explained to Lauren, the PR girl charged with looking after her. “I thought that would be appropriate for the evening.”

The evening opened with aperitifs, of course. Guided by Lauren, Christina mingled with the party guests. Except that Christina could never really mingle. As usual, the moment she walked into the room, she found herself surrounded by a knot of admirers, most of whom were too shy to actually talk to her as she made her way around the room like a whale shark followed by a shoal of remoras—
a very small whale shark, Christina assured herself, even as the thought popped into her head.

She spotted the French girl, the one who had been vomited on, in conversation with Mathieu Randon and hoped he wouldn’t call her over for another introduction. The French girl’s dress looked expensive, Christina observed from a distance. And it fit her well. She had a particularly small waist. Curvy. No matter how hard Christina worked out, she could never quite get that shape. She felt another pang of unease of the kind that she didn’t often feel even in a room full of models. Somehow, she felt in competition with Madeleine over more than just their wine.

The English girl, the one who threw up (Christina couldn’t remember her name), was nowhere to be seen, thank goodness. What a stupid little girl. She had a lot to learn about the art of making a good first impression. Mess up in the first few minutes and you could spend a lifetime trying to change someone’s mind. Though her incredible vomiting stunt had saved Christina from having to get heavy with Gerry over the photo issue. Christina was grateful for that.

“Christina, can I introduce you to … ”

Suddenly Ronald Ginsburg stood in front of her, blocking her view of Madeleine Arsenault. He had on his arm a blond woman in her late twenties or thereabouts who wouldn’t be a challenge to Christina even if she spent two years on one of those plastic surgery cruises. Christina didn’t catch her name and didn’t bother to ask to hear it again. Instead she offered the girl her hand with about as much enthusiasm as a princess shaking hands with a stinking shepherdess. Then she turned her attention back to Ronald, who was saying something complimentary about her dress.

“You look sensational.”

Christina couldn’t hear it often enough.

For the dinner itself Christina was seated with Lauren, the PR person; Gerry Paine, the editor of
Vinifera;
Ronald Ginsburg; and his guest.

The chat largely revolved around wine, of course. Gerry and Ronald talked excitedly about the wager.