of lilacs that trailed behind the woman. Outside, the automobile started up on the first try. Elena flew to the window in time to see the couple chug down the road as the light faded from the sky.
With nowhere to hurl her swelling anger, her magic found the nearest inanimate object, shattering the half-empty bottle of wine on the table in front of Jean-Paul.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He’d seen champagne bottles burst spontaneously before but never a wine bottle. And not one that was nearly empty. There must have been a flaw in the glass. A crack. Or perhaps the atmospheric pressure had dropped too quickly.
Jean-Paul had also seen Elena fly off in anger before, but she looked near deranged as she stood at the window, wrapped in a tablecloth, her fist banging against the glass as Du Monde drove off. No consolation would allow her to believe the man had graciously left so that his offer might be given proper consideration without further unnecessary pressure.
Then she turned on him.
“You cannot sell Château Renard to that man. I won’t allow it.”
He bent to collect the shards of glass. “You won’t allow it?” Du Monde’s offer had, in fact, rankled his pride, and he was in no mood for an argument with a woman over business. “It’s no longer your place to decide such a thing,” he said and hoped that would be the end of it.
Elena shot across the room and scooped up the glass with her bare hands. “Oh, but it is my place.” She muttered some child’s verse under her breath, then tossed the broken pieces of glass into the fire. “And this vineyard is not for sale,” she countered. “Not to that man, not to anyone.”
Too late, Grand-Mère raised her hand to stop Elena.
The glass fizzled and turned to smoke in the flames, as if it weren’t glass at all. More evidence there was something inferior about how it was made, he decided. And also evidence there was something wrong with this woman. Who disposes of broken glass in a fireplace?
“I don’t know what to make of you,” he said, finding the will for a fight after all. “You turn up on my doorstep dressed in rags after being gone for years, yet claim the château is the only home you know. You ask me to keep your presence here a secret, presumably from the man you just ran away and hid from, and yet you storm down the stairs to confront him the moment he shows up on the doorstep.” He took a step toward her. “Do you play me for a fool?”
Elena narrowed her eyes at him. “I realize you’re limited in what you can see and understand—”
“Oh, yes, by all means insult me too.”
“But I am as much a part of this vineyard as the vines themselves. I do have a say.”
He picked up his glass of wine. “Do you know why a man like Du Monde wants to buy Château Renard? For the terroir. To own grapes grown in soil capable of creating something this divine. It’s also why I bought the vineyard. Here, taste it. See what a real vigneron is capable of creating with this plot of soil.”
“I don’t need to taste it.”
He swallowed the wine after she refused, savoring the sensuous aftertaste, until the inevitable feeling of defeat followed. “But the grapes won’t yield,” he said. “Not for me. I don’t know how to re-create this. I don’t know if anyone can. So, yes, there are days I’m tempted to sell and admit I’m no winemaker. Maybe that time has come, but it’s for me to decide, not you.”
“I can do it.”
He looked her up and down full of doubt as she stood wrapped in an old tablecloth with a candle wax stain on it. “Yes, you’re supposed to know all the old master’s secrets. I’m sorry, Elena, but your bold promises are beginning to wear thin.”
“Your problem isn’t a lack of knowledge. Or bad luck. Or even bad weather.” She picked up the fireplace tongs and sorted through the ash in the fire. “It’s a lack of vision,” she said and fished out a perfectly round piece of melted glass. A lens, really.
Madame spoke up from her chair. “Elena, are you sure you want to do this?”
“He needs to know the truth.”
“What truth?”
She blew on the glass, then dropped the lens from the tongs into her hand. It should have burned her skin, but she didn’t even flinch. “If you are serious