The Champagne Widow

by Helen Fripp

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction; Romance; Historical Romance; Military Romance

Synopsis

‘ Wow! What a story… I was captivated… I found myself reading late into the night… extraordinary… so moving and totally enthralled me… will stay with me for a long time.’ NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Reims, France, 1805. Looking back at the crumbling house hidden away in the vineyards, the sound of her daughter’s laughter carrying on the breeze, Nicole plucks a perfect red grape and is reminded her life will never be the same. With her husband gone, her troubles are hers alone… For grieving Nicole Clicquot, saving the vineyards her husband left behind is her one chance to keep a roof over her head and provide a future for her little girl. She ignores the gossips who insist the fields are no place for a woman: but one day, buying fresh croissants at the boulangerie, Nicole is shocked to hear a rumour about her husband. They say he died with a terrible secret. One that brings disgrace on Nicole and turns the whole town against her. Heartbroken, her reputation in tatters, and full of questions no one can answer, Nicole turns to her husband’s oldest friend, travelling merchant Louis. His warm smile and kind advice seem to melt her troubles away. And as they taste her first golden wine of the season and look out over the endless rolling hills, Nicole starts to believe she can turn her fortunes around, and be welcomed back into the local community. But when Louis avoids her after a long trip abroad, Nicole sees he has secrets of his own… and just as she doubts if he’s on her side, she realises how her feelings for him had grown. Desperately torn between her head and her heart, Nicole works day and night on a plan for her future: but to save her home and her little daughter from ruin, she must risk everything… Fans of Chocolat, Carnegie’s Maid, Dinah Jeffries and anyone longing to sip champagne under the stars will adore this stunning historical read, inspired by the true story of how Nicole Clicquot blazed her own path to build the world’s greatest champagne house: Veuve Clicquot. Read what everyone’s saying about The French House : ' Extraordinary. Outstanding... absolutely amazing... just wow!... this book is exquisite. Absolute perfection. A masterpiece. One of my favourite reads ever... one of the finest books out this year and one of the best historical fiction reads ever.’ Renita D’Silva, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ One of the best books I’ve read… stunning… it grabbed me and pulled me right in to Nicole Clicquot‘s story… unforgettable… addictive… you feel really caught up in the twists and turns… has to be experienced to truly realise how special it is… I was totally immersed.’ On the Shelf Reviews ‘A fascinating book… very heart-warming… I found this book very hard to put down and I thoroughly enjoyed every page.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Beautifully written, fascinating novel… comes alive on the pages… wonderful… extra special.’ Angela Petch, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ What a treat… emotional… An excellent read.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Instantly and completely immersed me in a beautifu l romance, heartbreak and the passion of Madame Clicquot…. The author’s ability to whisk me away… is extraordinary.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Wow! An incredible historical novel… All the feels.’ Chaos Happiness Book Mama, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘This book transported me to another world… fascinating… I found it difficult to put the book down! ’ Corinne Rodrigues Booknista, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘I was utterly charmed… the vineyards of France come alive. I can’t wait to read more.’ Fireflies & Free Kicks

Release date: March 4, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

Nicole stopped at the crossroads on this glorious morning and considered her choices. Should she take the rue des Filles Dieu, a shaded, godly alleyway for obedient girls leading straight to her convent school, or a forbidden detour across the open square, where the sunlight quivered in a haze above the cobbles?

She flipped a coin, caught it on the back of her hand and shut her eyes. Pile ou face, heads or tails. It didn’t matter – the forbidden square was always going to win, especially on market day. It was the only real choice, brimming with promise, and she ran towards the sunlit square.

At King Louis XVI’s statue, she stopped to pat the stone horse’s weathered muzzle for luck, dipped a mock-curtsey to the king and froze… A noose was slung around the king’s neck. And someone had daubed droplets of red paint under his regal eyes. The king was crying blood! Surely this wasn’t Xavier’s work? He sometimes gave the king a charcoal moustache or stuck a geranium under the horse’s saddle to protrude from his arse, but never anything this macabre.

So it must be true then, about the news from Paris. The whole town was simmering with it. Quatorze Juillet, the day France turned upside down. The king discredited. The people’s republic, the revolution. Loud arguments on street corners and endless gossip, all about something miles away. The noose and blood was the kind of thing that happened in Paris, not here in safe, sleepy Reims.

Defacing an image of the king was a serious offence – one the Comte’s soldiers would be sure to punish. They were an undisciplined gaggle of bored thugs who regularly patrolled the streets for someone to beat, including truants, even rich ones like her.

Nicole walked as fast as suspicion allowed to the safety of the square. On market days, the place was usually teeming with champenois farmers setting out their bright stalls like sacrifices to the tall cathedral that guarded the square. But not today. The old widow from Aÿ stood disconsolately by a couple of fraying baskets. Her straggly parsley had bolted and the meagre handful of mouldy onions should have been pickled long ago.

The haggard jam lady from Allers-Villerand was there, as always. Nicole might only be eleven, but she prided herself on noticing and that jam hadn’t sold for the last three markets. She knew because the lady had spelt strawberry wrong on this batch and anyone who could read was too polite to say.

She didn’t recognise the man from the butcher’s stall selling skinned rabbits on the other side of the square. Their raw bodies were topped and tailed, with furry heads and paws, bloated flies drooping over them like drunks.

‘Xavier!’ Nicole had spotted her friend standing next to the rabbit stall chatting with a gaggle of mates. She’d know him a mile off, with his compact frame and wiry black hair and she had hoped she would see him here. He would love the treasure she had in her pocket, a shiny green beetle, iridescent like a jewel.

He pretended not to hear her and arced a gob of glistening spit onto the cobbles. She was impressed.

He had been her playmate until her body made her different from him. She missed him now she was at school and he had to work. So why wasn’t he at her papa’s wool mills today?

‘Xavier, look what I found!’

He ignored her, so she marched closer, hand outstretched to show him the beetle.

‘It was on the rose bush in Monsieur Moët’s vineyard.’

Xavier smiled, but then remembered he was with a crowd of mates.

‘So what?’ he sneered. ‘What the hell is it anyway?’

‘Everyone knows it’s a rose beetle, you stupid grape-eater,’ she countered, smarting at his betrayal.

Xavier pretended not to care, but Nicole could tell he did by the way he sniffed and tossed his head. Grape-eater was the worst insult anyone could give in a wine-grower’s town, what they called workers from the Marne Vallée who didn’t know anything about vines, and ate the profits.

‘Aristocrate,’ shouted one of his friends, like it was a dirty word.

‘Leave her. She’s just a kid.’ Xavier jerked his head at Nicole. ‘Get lost, laide.’

Xavier had always been kind and he probably meant to be now. But the ugly – laide – stung. He constantly teased her that she was so petite she’d snap, and that her grey eyes were like a wolf’s rather than a girl’s and her reddish blonde hair looked like it was going rusty.

‘You don’t own this square,’ she snapped.

‘We do now. Va te faire foutre, aristocrate,’ the mate shouted. Fuck off, aristocrat.

‘I am the same as you,’ she protested, holding up her fists, flashing her pale eyes in fury. She might be small, but she was fast and strong and equal to any shouty boy. Damn that her mother had twisted her hair into stupid girly ringlets for school, today of all days.

Xavier pushed her. ‘Are you stupid? He’d crush you like a bloody ant.’

‘Fighting little girls, young man?’

It was the Comte d’Etoges looming over them, all the way from the château! His red silk coat blazed in the sun in stark contrast to the drab workers in the square, who glowered menacingly at him.

The Comte twisted Xavier’s arm behind his back. It looked like agony, but Xavier didn’t wince and Nicole was glad.

‘Apologise to Mademoiselle Ponsardin, you stinking little ruffian.’

The Comte pulled Xavier’s arm higher until Xavier turned ashen with pain. Nicole was scared he’d wrench his shoulder right out.

‘Sorry,’ he said, grimacing.

‘And you. Act like a lady, not a street urchin.’

Street urchins beat ladies any day. ‘Let him go. He was helping me,’ she said.

‘Know your place and assert your natural authority, young lady, or this rabble will imagine they are the deserving poor and demand justice. How old are you?’

‘Eleven.’ She refused to add ‘sir’.

‘You’ll learn. Give an inch and they’ll take a mile.’

He stomped off and Nicole pulled a face behind his back to impress Xavier, but he was already returning to the stall to stuff a rabbit in his sack. The butcher didn’t ask for any money and Xavier looked ashamed. Then she understood – the rabbits were alms for the poor. She wished she hadn’t called her friend a grape-eater.

Around the square, the red geraniums in the urns were neglected and withered, the houses were crumbling and the paintwork was peeling. Crops were dying in the fields again this year. Nicole couldn’t remember a year when there’d been a celebration at harvest time, nor a big creamy moon lighting a magical evening of dancing, like she had heard about in the old days. Every week, the whole town prayed for a good harvest, but God wasn’t listening. This was why they were rioting in Paris, her father had told her. The aristocrats were stuffing themselves while the workers starved. Queen Marie Antoinette was so stupid, she’d offered cake to the poor instead of bread.

But Papa hadn’t told her the most gruesome part. Xavier had told her about that in graphic detail. The workers in Paris were going to rise up and round up all the aristocrats, take them to the Place de la Revolution and chop their heads off with a gruesome new thing they’d invented called the guillotine. It could efficiently kill ten aristocrats an hour, Xavier had told her, a big blade that slid down a frame and did the dirty deed, with aristocrats lining up one after the other, witnessing the death of their fellows and family before getting the chop themselves. Nicole had shivered, wishing he hadn’t told her, and hoping it wasn’t true.

She looked down at her dress, almost the same red as the Comte’s jacket, coloured with the kind of rich dye that the people in the square could never afford. Would she herself be counted as an aristocrat? But it was a fact that the king and queen weren’t in charge any more. The world was different and she felt frightened, even here, in her square.

She wished she’d gone to school after all, but the cathedral bell began striking. She would be too late and the nuns would tell Papa, so she might as well make the most of the trouble to come.

On the ninth toll of the bell, crowds of people filed into the square to queue at the rabbit stall. Most were country people, too poor to be regulars in this part of town. The butcher doled out one rabbit each. Some had sacks, others wrapped them in their aprons, a few didn’t have enough fabric to spare and held the meat by the ears. She watched for a while, then ran to the bakery.

‘Nicole! No school today?’ said Daniel, the baker.

‘The coin landed on tails,’ she lied.

‘Again? Tut tut. The nuns will cane the skin off your knuckles. Let me see?’

She held out her hand and showed him the welts from the last market day she had played truant.

He handed her a religieuse, a big, round choux pastry with a smaller one on top, filled with cream and topped with chocolate to resemble a nun. ‘Here, you can pretend you’re biting their heads off.’

She bit hard.

Daniel’s wife, Natasha, gave her a snowglobe to shake, a world of glittering frost and gilt ballrooms. Natasha was willowy and dark, with sallow skin and knowing brown eyes. She wore dirndl skirts edged with stitched patterns and symbols, like a Romani, and best of all she was from Russia, a world away from the little town of Reims. Nicole loved her stories of far-away icy wastelands and golden domes.

‘Delicious.’ Nicole grinned with her mouth full, when something splintered the boulangerie window and shattered it to the ground.

‘Ach,’ screamed Natasha, tracing figures of eight in the air as the patisseries were pierced with shards.

Daniel scooped a rock from the bakery floor and stormed out, waving it in the air. ‘Who the hell threw this?’ It was the stone hat from the king’s statue.

Outside, the old widow was on her hands and knees scraping spilt onions back into her baskets and the jam lady screamed vengeance for her smashed jars.

Three men straddled Nicole’s lucky statue of the king and the horse, bashing at it with hammers. They knocked off the easy bits first – the horse’s ears, the king’s foot, a length of his sword, egged on by a gang of men who were using the spoils as missiles.

‘Not the horse!’ Nicole yelled.

‘Hush! Get back here, you’ll get hit!’ Natasha urged, ushering her behind the counter and wrapping her in her skirts.

Amidst the chaos, the queue at the rabbit stall was still going. Muddy workers from the field, widows in black headscarves, barefoot, skinny children with grown-up, scabbed faces. The square was so busy now that she’d lost track of where Xavier and his friends had got to.

A gunshot ricocheted around the square. The queue froze, a child howled and the butcher dropped the rabbit he was holding. The three men slid down off the statue and slinked behind its broken flanks.

‘Nobody move!’

The Comte d’Etoges was back in his flashy silk jacket, this time at the head of a battalion from his private army, who fanned out into the square, blocking all the exits. A group of soldiers wrestled the three statue destroyers to the ground and handcuffed them. A roar of protest tore through the crowd.

The Comte’s powdered wig and white face made him look like a menacing ghost and his cool, fixed expression was more disturbing than the crowd’s anger. His voice boomed over them, but he wasn’t shouting.

‘These vandals have committed a crime and will rot in jail for the remainder of their days,’ he said calmly to the desperate bystanders who’d been innocently queuing at the rabbit stall. ‘The rest of you are charged with poaching and will be severely punished.’

‘They’re hungry, you can spare them,’ Daniel shouted back.

‘Hush, milaya,’ Natasha beseeched her husband, hugging Nicole to her.

‘Name, scum?’ said the Comte, pointing the gun at him.

‘Daniel. From the boulangerie.’ He pointed to the smashed window.

Behind him, the priest creaked open the big cathedral doors and raised his hand.

‘Calm, in the name of Jesus!’ he bellowed.

Someone threw the horse’s ear at the priest and ran before a soldier could react.

Nicole screwed her eyes tight and waited for lightning to strike. The gargoyles would come to life and scream hellfire and they’d all burn for eternity for throwing stones at the priest. But God did nothing. The priest staggered back inside and slammed the church door. He was supposed to be in charge. Coward!

The Comte waved his gun at Daniel. ‘You, tell your comrades to disperse. Those rabbits are stolen goods.’

Daniel folded his arms. ‘These people are starving. The rabbits are already dead and decaying. They’re no use to you.’

‘Daniel, look out!’ shrieked Nicole as the Comte cocked his gun and shot.

The baker slumped, clutching his chest. Natasha flew to him, black hair streaming. She tore open his shirt and screamed, her hands slippery with blood.

Don’t die, don’t die, prayed Nicole, cowering behind the counter.

Natasha cradled him, ripped her skirt and pressed wads on the wound, but blood leached over her fingers. The old widow from Aÿ untied her scarf to make a bandage and limped stiffly towards them.

‘Don’t move!’ the Comte bellowed.

She halted, face tight. Everybody stopped dead.

Natasha was alone, keening like a madwoman in the sudden silence. Nicole sneaked out from behind the counter and ran to them.

‘Bordel de merde, stop I said!’ the Comte yelled at her.

A bullet shot past her ear and the crowd roared again. She flung her arms around Natasha’s neck. The air was so thick and hot, it hurt to breathe. Daniel’s eyes were open, but unseeing.

‘Is he dead?’ she whispered.

Natasha didn’t answer.

‘Take aim!’ ordered the Comte.

The soldiers shouldered their guns and pointed them at the horrified crowd. Surely God would intervene now? The cathedral door stayed locked.

Natasha cradled her husband in her lap, appalled, a pietà in the square. Nicole huddled behind her back.

‘Go home and don’t look back, little one,’ said Natasha steadily.

Nicole got up, straightened her skirt and walked slowly towards the Comte. He kept his gun on her, adjusting the sights as she came closer.

‘You killed him,’ she spat.

‘These people are thieves and that, little girl, is called justice.’

‘I will never forget,’ she said quietly, ‘and neither will they.’

She kept her eyes on him and walked on. She belonged here, with Natasha and her dead husband, with the workers and their scraps of stolen meat. She ducked behind the pump in the rue de la Vache and turned to watch. She would be their witness.

‘Let this be a warning,’ shouted the Comte. ‘Go back to your work. Anyone who defies the rule of law will die like your friend. Men, let’s go!’

The statue defacers were bundled into a cart and beaten with rifle butts as they were driven off, defenceless and handcuffed. The soldiers melted away and the Comte followed in his carriage, wheels crunching gravel.

The widow from Aÿ was the first to reach Natasha. She crossed herself for Daniel and whispered in her ear. Natasha nodded and allowed two men to carry Daniel back to the bakery, holding his hand to her cheek. He looked heavy, like his soul was gone, vulnerable, bloody and raw as the dead rabbits.

Men slid off their caps, women bowed their heads and the crowd stayed rooted in respectful, stunned silence until Daniel and his makeshift cortège disappeared inside. Then the rabbit queue erupted, hurling the table of meat in a swarm of flies and heaving over the urns of withered geraniums.

Peeking from behind the relative safety of the pump, Nicole saw Xavier rip a torch from the blacksmith’s, igniting a hay bale that sprung wild flames in the stifling heat. The crowd smashed the windows of Moët’s wine merchant, poured stolen brandy on the flames and chucked in the bottles, glass popping and exploding in the fire. A new gang set upon the king’s statue, more organised this time, a foreman yelling instructions, until it toppled to the ground and crumbled into pieces.

‘Goodbye, mon grand,’ Nicole whispered to herself, a farewell to the broken horse, but she was glad about the smashed-up king. The Comte deserved to be smashed up, too – vive la révolution!

She jumped up to run home through the chaos.

‘Watching the poor suffer for fun, rich girl?’ One of Xavier’s friends blocked her way.

‘No! The baker was my friend.’

‘The Comte spared his own though, didn’t he? No bullet in the belly for you. You’re one of them, a rich, spoilt little aristocrate who’d kill us for a rabbit.’ He slapped her face.

She spat in his eye and ran, cut down the snicket, his footsteps close behind. She darted sideways down allée Libergier, then swerved along rue du Cloître towards the convent. A spooked horse reared, towering over her. She detoured left, past the silversmith’s broken windows, dodging a mother dragging her wailing toddlers and then – bang! A body encircled her. A greasy waistcoat and grubby britches. She kicked hard.

‘Ai! Putain, you can pack a punch for a squirt!’ He dragged her through a doorway. She struggled and scratched like a cat. The door slammed shut. ‘It’s me for fuck’s sake!’

‘Xavier!’

Nicole fell to the ground and sobbed.

‘Daniel’s dead.’

‘I saw everything. I hope that fucker the Comte burns in hell. Follow me before you get yourself into more trouble – the whole town has gone mad, including you. You could’ve been killed,’ he said proudly. ‘I know a place to hide you away.’

They ran down a back alley and slipped through a hole in the fence into a yard full of wine barrels. Xavier heaved aside a stack of hay bales and lifted a cellar door.

‘Vas-y.’ Xavier gestured to dark steps. ‘Get in, and stay there. I’ll find your papa and tell him where you are.’ He thrust a lantern into her hands. ‘Don’t light this ’til you’ve bolted the door behind you. And don’t look like such a sissy, I thought you told me you weren’t afraid of anything. Go right down inside, we’ll come back and find you when it’s safe.’

Xavier winked, but he looked afraid, too.

She hesitated. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m not a little rich girl, I’m one of them, which works in my favour for once. Go on then, close the fucking door so I can get the hell out of here,’ he said.

Nicole plunged into the darkness and bolted the trapdoor behind her. Her hands were slick with sweat and her stomach pitched as she fumbled to light the lamp. The flame jumped and lit the steep cellar steps, but she couldn’t see to the bottom and it was dark and silent as a tomb. She held her breath. Xavier had never let her down. There was the time she got stuck in the apple tree trying to prove she could climb higher than any boy and he helped her down. And the incident with the farmer where she had to hide for hours when she got caught driving his horse cart round the orchard. Xavier had returned, as promised, to tell her when the coast was clear.

She held the lantern higher and struck out down the stone steps. At the bottom was a long corridor. She waited, alert for footsteps. Nothing but muffled silence. She pressed on down another corridor, and turned again, further into the labyrinth, feeling safer with each turn. It was surprisingly warm and the walls were chalk white. She touched them. Damp, like sponge. Lamps lined the walls and she tore her dress to make a spill to light two of them.

The space filled with light and she saw that she was in a wine cellar. It was beautiful here, with rows and rows of neatly stacked bottles, straight passageways and lofty vaulted ceilings. Light funnelled underground through tall chimneys and the wine bottles gleamed, green as the River Vesle. This was a fairy grotto after the horror of the streets, a place of safety, order and alchemy.

Nicole sat on a barrel and closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted. It was only now she thought of the terror and injustice she had witnessed. Daniel was dead, murdered like an animal. She belonged to the workers in the square now, and shared their rage, grief and desperation. She spat on her palm, like she’d seen Xavier do to seal a bet, and made a pact with herself, there and then, for Daniel. She would work to build her own wealth, her own power, and she would use it for good, for her own revolution.

Republican date: Fructidor, year V

Everything changed, and nothing had changed. Europe was at war and all the talk was of a brilliant young general, Napoléon Bonaparte, who was advancing his battalions against Italy with great success. It was hard to imagine marauding armies in the Reims countryside, and apart from Monsieur Moët boasting about his schooldays with the great general, and heated exchanges of news in the bakery, it all seemed far away to Nicole. The Comte d’Etoges, who had shot Daniel dead almost in the spot she was standing, was dead himself, slaughtered at the guillotine. Nicole crossed herself at the thought. Xavier had been right about that gruesome invention. Many lives had been lost and turned upside down since the day, eight years ago, that the revolution had begun, and she had taken refuge in the cellars.

The days and years had different and incomprehensible names now. The republican state had restarted the calendar to the beginning of the republic, and renamed everything so no royalist or religious references were made. There was no more October or November, but instead Latin or made-up names that reflected the weather of that particular month – Brumaire, ‘mist’, or Frimaire, ‘frost’. Everyone was in a muddle with it, never mind the illiterate workers who’d always learnt everything from previous generations. The old cathedral with its gargoyles and filigree stone was now the people’s Temple of Reason, but people still worshipped their old Christian God in secret.

Nicole crossed the square, past the boys who were crowded around the new statue of the Goddess of Reason to smoke and make owl calls. The Goddess of Reason was really Saint Joan of Arc on her horse, but no one dared say it out loud. The boys stubbed out their cigarettes on the horse’s hooves and sauntered off to the waiting carts to join the rest of the town for the grape harvest and, in that, life in Reims continued as it always had.

Not for her, though. Until recently, everyone had just accepted her as an anomaly, a rebellious child who loved being outdoors and doing everything at a million miles an hour, whether she was galloping a horse at breakneck speed, or pitting her wits with the boys in their games in the square. She wished she could join them now and ride out on the cart to the vineyards, but Nicole’s presence was required at home. Life at nineteen was a tedious parade of potential husbands, expectations of womanly submission and hand-wringing parents. Worse, her straight, slippery hair was pinned against its will into curls every day which took hours, and Maman insisted on a wardrobe of tight-fitting, stifling dresses. For someone who was always in a hurry, the dresses were like vices.

Thankfully, Josette took pity on her and tied her corsets loose. And today, even Maman had to agree that her new empire-style dress made from light, loose cotton and silk suited her petite figure, so at least she could move. That was today’s victory, and no one could stop her stealing Papa’s wine manuals and reading them on the nights the moon was in her favour to teach herself, if no one else was going to. Every day, she found a way to contravene a rule without anyone noticing – it was the only thing that kept her sane until she could somehow escape the womanly constraints that had settled around her as she grew.

When she reached the crossroads and was out of sight of anyone who might tell, she undid her bonnet where the ribbon chafed under her chin, shook her hair loose from its pins and faced the sun to just breathe.

The cathedral clock struck the hour. She’d be missed if she didn’t hurry, but before turning the corner towards home, she paused at the crossroads to touch the horse’s nose, her talisman now that King Louis XVI’s statue was torn down. A champagne cork topped Joan of Arc’s sword and an empty bottle balanced in the crook of her arm. That much hadn’t changed.

‘A saint drunk in charge of a horse, tut-tut. Who would do that?’

She spun round and there was Xavier, short, stocky and suntanned, secateurs hanging from his belt for the harvest. He used the secateurs to sweep his thick black hair from his brow and stubbed his cigarette to join the others.

Nicole jerked her chin at the statue. ‘What’s this?’

‘Art.’

‘You mean Etienne chucked you out early from his bar and you took the opportunity to taunt your boss?’

‘Talking of which, there he is, sliding your way as fast as shit off a shovel.’

An imposing man advanced towards them, grey hair tamed into a wave from a strict side parting, strides oiled with the ease of the rich. Xavier made himself scarce, but it was too late for her to escape.

Monsieur Moët bowed. ‘Your parents advised this horse was a favourite of yours.’

‘He brings me luck,’ Nicole replied.

‘You’ll need it, mixing with those peasant boys, and you know you shouldn’t be out without a chaperone. It’s a good thing I’m here, n’est-ce pas? Our little secret.’

‘I don’t need to keep any secrets with you, Monsieur Moët. My parents are happy to let me walk to the square on my own,’ Nicole lied. She gave him a tight, unfriendly smile and turned to leave, but he wouldn’t go away.

‘Your eyes are better than mine, Mademoiselle Ponsardin. Is that one of my corks?’ asked Monsieur Moët, straining to see the top of the sword.

‘I’m afraid it does say Moët,’ replied Nicole, just able to see make out the capital ‘M’ from where she stood.

‘I’ll see they are punished. Was that Xavier Jumel I saw you talking to? People like him are not our kind and shouldn’t be encouraged, Mademoiselle. I’m sure you mean well, but it’s just not the order of things. They can get the wrong idea and then where would we be? Come,’ he commanded, ‘I happen to know, contrary to your suggestion, that your parents would rather you weren’t wandering around alone. It was them who sent me to get you.’

He tugged his shirtsleeve free of his jacket, twisted his crested cufflink and held his arm out for her to take.

She politely refused. This was his third visit in a week and an afternoon of endless stories about his esteemed friend and associate Napoléon stretched out ahead like a dusty journey on a featureless road.

For a man usually in a hurry, he walked painfully slowly back to the house, pointing out the property and businesses he owned along the way, as if she ought to be interested. She tore a bunch of lavender from a hedge. Bees scattered lazily.

Monsieur Moët stiffly picked a rose and gave it to her, most of the petals dropping from the plucking. She reluctantly added it to her lavender bunch, hoping no one would see.

‘You shouldn’t be fraternising with servants. What will people think? Especially now you’re of marriageable age…’

A trap she couldn’t quite nam. . .