“Then tell me! Just tell me!” I shouted back.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
That hurt, too. “Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
For a long moment we just stood there and stared at each other. I knew, just as sure as I knew he loved her, that he wasn’t going to tell me how she had hurt him or what she had done to be able to still torment him like this.
I looked away before he did, picking up the first piece of paper I found on my desk. An unsolicited letter from another local limousine company who wanted us to use their services so our guests could sightsee without worrying about drinking and driving.
“I’ve got to take care of this right away.” I indicated the paper. “I think we’re done here. Apology accepted but I’ll hold you to your word it won’t happen again.”
The fire in his eyes changed to ice and all his interior chambers slammed shut. “And I’ve got business in the barrel room, if we’re finished. Don’t worry, Lucie. It’ll never happen again.” He opened my door. “You want this open or closed?”
“Closed. Please.” I managed to say it and still meet his eyes.
But the moment he left I reached blindly for the sweatshirt I’d left on the back of my chair and buried my face in it until I no longer felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.
Amanda Heyward called mid-morning and asked if I could meet her at Mick’s place to discuss the tent and a few other things about the auction. I hadn’t seen or talked to Mick since the evening at Mount Vernon. Amanda didn’t mention whether he would be there today or not.
Another complicated relationship with another complicated man. I seemed to collect them. Maybe Mick would be busy with his horses, but I didn’t want to ask Amanda. Then she’d ask whether it was on or off with Mick and me and I didn’t feel like discussing it with her. Especially since I couldn’t answer the question myself.
“Sure, I can meet you,” I said. “What time?”
“Four work for you?”
“See you at four.”
“Are you all right, Lucie?” she asked. “You don’t sound too good.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry to cut this short, but I’ve got somebody in my office.”
“Sure, sure. Didn’t mean to interrupt. See you later.”
I hung up and swung my chair around, resting my bad foot on the credenza. For a long time, I stared at the wall.
Shortly after twelve someone knocked on my door. Not Quinn. Gina.
She poked her head inside. “I brought you lunch. Hope you don’t mind.” She opened the door all the way and set down a plate. A croissant filled with sliced avocado, sprouts, and Brie cheese.
She knew.
“Did you talk to Quinn?” I asked.
At least she didn’t beat around the bush. “I didn’t talk to anybody. Didn’t have to.”
“Oh God. Did those customers hear us?”
“Not everything. They left before you two were finished.” She sat across from me in a wing chair covered in a pretty flame-stitch fabric. My mother had upholstered that chair. In all the years she and Jacques had occupied the offices Quinn and I now used, I don’t think I ever heard them raise their voices at each other. “Want to talk?” she said.
“Not really.”
She traced the fabric’s design on an arm of the chair with her finger. “You had every right to yell at him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Showing up for work drunk like that.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed a spot in the middle of my forehead that had started to throb. “How did you hear about it?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly hear about it from anybody,” she said. “Just put two and two together after what happened just now. My boyfriend works at a bar over in Leesburg. Quinn came in so drunk he wouldn’t serve him. Charlie took his keys and called a cab for him. I guess Quinn was in pretty bad shape for harvest yesterday, huh?”
Sometimes I should just keep my big mouth shut. “Yes,” I said, “he was. Look, Gina, please don’t say anything about this, okay?”
She stood up, her dark eyes big and serious. “Don’t worry. I won’t breathe a word.” She made a zipper motion across her lips. “You can count on me.”
After she left I stared at the sandwich. In two weeks, everyone from here to Richmond would know about our shouting match and my drunken winemaker. I had just started eating when I saw one of the phone lines in the tasting room light up on my phone.
Nah, not two weeks. It’d only take one.
After lunch I went back to the house to check on Pépé. I found him perched on the sofa in the library, smoking a Boyard, reading a battered copy of yesterday’s Le Monde. He’d probably brought it with him from Paris.
I kissed the top of his head. “Did you eat?”
“I had a coffee. You know I never eat until dinner,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll be going out shortly. One of my friends is coming to pick me up. I’ll be at the International Monetary Fund for a meeting this afternoon, then dinner at the embassy. Don’t wait up for me, ma belle. I’ll probably be late.”
He could still amaze me. “No grass grows under your feet, does it?”
Pépé smiled through a cloud of bad-smelling smoke. Boyards were unfiltered and had the highest tar and nicotine content of any cigarette on the market when they were still being produced. My grandfather’s doctor told him to knock off smoking or it would kill him, but Pépé told him that at eighty-two he was going to die anyway and it may as well be doing something he enjoyed. The unmistakable acrid smell would be embedded in the house for weeks after he left, a lingering reminder of his visit haunting me like a ghost.
“Eh, bien,” he said. “One likes to keep occupied, n’est-ce pas?”
The IMF meeting probably wasn’t a courtesy call arranged for his benefit by a friend. More likely, they’d invited him to ask his counsel on some matter of trade or finance—and he was too modest to say.
“I have an appointment at four,” I said, “but I’ll be here when you get back.”
Outside, tires sounded on the gravel drive. He folded his newspaper and set it on the coffee table.
“That should be my colleague and his companion. Until tonight, mon trésor.”
I walked him to the door and said hello to his friend, a man in his early nineties who had been one of Secretary of State Marshall’s aides. I was happy to see that the companion—an attractive woman who looked to be in her sixties—was behind the wheel.
The phone rang in the foyer after they drove off. I picked it up and sat in a blue-and-white toile Queen Anne chair next to the table. A bust of Thomas Jefferson—one of Leland’s prized possessions—watched me from an alcove across the room.
“Lucie, Jack Greenfield here.” He sounded tense and businesslike.
“Hello, Jack.”
“Probably best if I get right to the point.”
“Sure,” I said. Whatever the point was, it already didn’t sound good.
“I’ve decided to withdraw the Washington bottle from the auction.”
I sagged in the chair and closed my eyes. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said I’ve decided to keep the bottle. When all is said and done, it belongs in my family. I’ve had some time to think it over and I apologize for the inconvenience I might have caused. Don’t worry, I’ll give you something else. You’ll still raise a lot of money.”
What the hell was he talking about? Had someone gotten to him? Nicole Martin, maybe? She’d told Ryan she wasn’t going back to California without that bottle.
“It’s a lot more than inconvenient, Jack. Are you selling that wine to someone else?”
“Of course not!” He sounded insulted. “I just told you I’m keeping it.”
“You’re not selling it to Nicole Martin?”
“Who is Nicole Martin?”
He really didn’t know? “Look, Jack, would you please reconsider—?”
“Don’t make this difficult, Lucie. I feel bad enough already. But that bottle has been great for my business. I’ve been inundated with calls from all over the world ever since Ryan’s column ran the other day.”