Page 3 of Miss Desirable
“Shall I tell you about the wines?” he asked. “I am as effusive as a doting papa when it comes to my vintages. This verbosity is pointless. You will make up your mind based on your experience of the drink itself.”
“One suspects you enjoy airing your opinions, monsieur, and I know next to nothing of fine wines. Why are all the clarets in green bottles, for example?”
Her observation pleased him, if the crinkling of his eyes was any indication. He was dark-haired and had a darker complexion than most Englishmen, and his eyes were a velvety brown. He was emphatically not a Saxon lord, a point in his favor.
“Most people don’t notice the color of the bottles,” he said. “Sunlight can affect the flavor of the clarets over time, just as it can wash out certain gems and fade many fabrics. The green glass protects the wine. Then too, some wines are not so lovely to look at in the bottle. Sediment, clouding, a color other than the customer expects for that vintage can all be unappealing. The tinted glass provides the wine a little privacy. One cannot begrudge a vintage that small boon, can one?”
He was reassuring Catherine in some regard about her own privacy. His perceptiveness both comforted and unnerved.
“So what have you chosen for me to sample?” Coming from another woman, the question could have been flirtatious. Catherine had learned of necessity how to ensure questions were simply questions and answers simply answers.
Monsieur Fournier launched into a little discourse about how to blend clarets, how each strain of grape had particular strengths, though any wine he offered would be well above reproach. One bottle was more affordable than the others because the product was more plentiful—the curse of a good harvest,non? Another—the Cahors that Catherine had chosen herself—was darker and carried more of a plum flavor from the Malbec grapes.
Fournier’s native French gave the recitation a lilting cadence, decorated with the occasional charming cognate. The Cahors was tooaudacieuxfor delicate palates.Le Merlotoccasionally tooarrogant. A flourish of humility here and there—comment dit-on ce mot en anglais?—added a self-effacing quality to his patter, as if his opinions truly were an offering Catherine was free to accept or reject.
She let the mellifluous current of his voice wash over her as the rain washed down the latticed windows and created a barrier between the elegance of Fournier’s office and the grit and coal smoke of the city beyond. Catherine knew exactly what she needed from Monsieur Fournier’s wineshop, and the simple sound of his voice was part of it.
She also knew that Monsieur Fournier had no need to ask her how to translate this or that word into English, because despite his polite question—how does one say this word in English?—he always sailed right along, finding the exact right turn of phrase himself.
To a woman who loved books, such a skill merited notice.
A quarter hour later, Catherine noticed something else: She instinctivelylikedXavier Fournier, which made no sense. He wasn’t a lisping tulip of thetonor a strutting Corinthian, but he was still handsome, and that should have put her off.
He was nonethelessinteresting.
Steak and potatoes affronted him. The new process for making a clear champagne fascinated him. English winters were a trial to his spirit. Unlike the typical lordling, Xavier Fournier did not resort to irony, understatement, and sarcasm to make his points. He was both subtle and forthright, blunt and deft.
Catherine grasped that beauty was easily mistaken for goodness in both men and women. While Fournier’s looks warned her to keep a distance, everything else about him—the charm, the little personal confidences, the fine manners, the passion for his wine, for good food, for London newspapers—beckoned her closer.
Which would not do, though where was the harm in appreciating the man from a safe distance?
“Which one do you recommend?” she asked after he’d waxed effusive about a jocund—his word—Beaujolais that yet had surprising substance in the finish.
“We must taste,” he said, getting to his feet. “And I thank you, Madame, for the opportunity to turn my afternoon in such an agreeable direction.”
He poured them each four small servings, and Catherine observed the pleasant ritual of sampling wine, accompanied by another lovely little diatribeà la Fournier. Catherine enjoyed the wines all the more for Fournier’s explications and found what she’d needed—what she’d hoped to find—in the “black wine” from Cahors.
She’d not tasted such wine in too long—dark as a ripe aubergine, with a brusque, substantial, fruity flavor. Not subtle and exactly what she’d longed for.
“The rain has not let up,” Fournier said when Catherine had sampled all four varieties. “Shall I send you home in my coach, Madame?”
“I have not yet made a purchase.”
“Nor must you. If none of the wines was to your liking, I can pour others, but I chose these based on my sense of your situation. One of them ought to be the best that I can offer. If these wines will not do, I can recommend Colonel Sir Orion Goddard’s shop. He is best known for his champagne, but his other vintages are not to be underestimated.”
Gracious of Fournier, to recommend a competitor, but that was part of his allure. Fournier was not petty. He was absolutely self-secure, and Catherine had almost forgotten there were such men.
“I will take the Cahors,” she said, rising. “A case.” She rattled off her old nanny’s direction, for the wine must not be delivered to her own dwelling, lest the butler take offense.
The sole clue that Catherine had surprised her host came from a slightly raised eyebrow. Fournier rose and tugged a bell-pull twice.
“My coach will be under the porte cochere in less than a quarter hour. Before you go, Madame, I feel it incumbent upon me as a gentleman to ask you one further question.”
“Please do ask,” she said as Fournier retrieved her cloak from the back of the wing chair and draped it around her shoulders. Now he would inquire—so politely—if she was a cousin to the titled Dorning family, for surely that must explain the color of her eyes. Some people were bolder than that, asking which of the previous generation of Dorning menfolk had been her father—the earl, or his notoriously friendly younger brother? Perhaps the middle brother, who’d been as handsome as his siblings, but moodier?
Fournier took her bonnet down from the drying hook and ran a finger over the embroidery on the brim.
“Please do not think me forward, but I must know: Whom do you seek to poison, and what can I do to preserve you from the commission of hanging felonies?”
