The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

“How can anyone be so vindictive? Sometimes I truly wonder—”
    “What? What do you wonder?” Oskar snarled at her.
    Isabelle followed this brief exchange between her in-laws uneasily, but she could make no sense of it. Instead of answering her husband, Anni turned to Leon. “I take it you’ll be wanting to pay a visit to the place as soon as you can?”
    Leon nodded. Then he took her right hand in his, as if he wanted to ask for forgiveness in advance for what he was about to say. “Mother, when we leave, we’re leaving forever. I know what’s waiting for me there, and it would be smart to make the move sooner rather than later.”
    Isabelle rejoiced inwardly. No more dithering, thank God! But when she saw the pain in Anni’s eyes, it put at least a small damper on her excitement.
     
    A week later, Isabelle and Leon were packed and ready to leave. Isabelle could hardly have imagined a cooler farewell from her father-in-law. A quick handshake, a scowl, and that was it. That he had agreed to take them, with all their baggage, to the train station in Pirmasens, felt to Isabelle like a miracle. Anni must have put enormous pressure on her husband; Oskar would never have done it otherwise. Choosing Champagne over the Palatinate had made Leon, in his father’s eyes, another renegade. Instead of giving his son some useful tips to get him on his way, he had taken every opportunity to put him down.
    “ You’re going to try to run a winery? You can’t even do a decent day’s work here. If you still think riding your bicycle comes first, you’ll run your estate into the ground before you know it.”
    Leon acted as if his father’s words couldn’t hurt him, but Isabelle knew that he was churning inside. She could have cheerfully killed her father-in-law! But it annoyed her just as much to realize that Oskar Feininger’s words had planted a seed of skepticism in her about Leon’s abilities as the future owner of the estate. Oskar was at least a little bit right: to that point, Leon had not exactly distinguished himself on the farm. His cycling always had been more important. What a miserable, disloyal wife you have turned out to be! she chided herself inwardly, more than once. Leon would certainly do things differently once they were settled on their own estate.
    Isabelle reached out stiffly to take her mother-in-law’s hand. “All the best. And thank you,” she said halfheartedly.
    Anni, always so down-to-earth as a farmer, shook Isabelle’s hand feebly. Then she nodded slightly and turned to Leon.
    “Leon . . . my boy . . . ,” she whispered, choking up, then she threw both arms around her son. “Farewell.”
    Isabelle felt a chill go through her, and not only because of the merciless east wind whipping across the train platform. The weather would have been more suited to Siberia than the Palatinate, where now, at the end of February, the first crocuses were already beginning to appear in Pirmasens.
    “We’ll write every week, I promise! And when you come to visit, we’ll throw a huge party, and the champagne will flow!” Leon said encouragingly to his mother. In that moment, he looked as if he even believed what he was saying.
    But Anni raised her hand in a gesture that spoke another language: about animals that had to be tended, about their own vineyard, about Leon’s father’s rejection of everything that had to do with Jacques and the Champagne region. She knew that she was unlikely to see her son again soon.
    Awkwardly, Isabelle turned away from Anni, who still clung to her son like she was drowning. The poor woman. For the first time, Isabelle had some idea of what she had done to her own mother by eloping. Once they had settled in on the estate in Hautvillers, she thought she might pick up her paper and pen and write a few lines home to Berlin. Her father didn’t need to find out about it. She could send the letter to Clara, who would hand it to Jeanette Herrenhus personally.
    The shriek