Page 17 of Under the Champagne Moon
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While he rode silentlyand Fleur deftly handled the gig, Cora told them about the plans for the Harvest festival the following weekend. On Saturday, the booths would go up on the green. On Sunday, there’d be a special afternoon church service, and following that, some of the landowners would hold dinners. On Monday, there’d be a parade of wagons, a fair, and dancing. There’d be Morris dancers, games, booths, and a grand bonfire.
For the second time this day, Gareth became lost in his thoughts, something he generally avoided at all costs. The cropped fields and hedgerows they passed brought to mind other hedges he’d dragged his injured self in and out of, hiding from the French.
When the hedgerows of Champagne ended, the road ran along sweeps of trellised vines, the naked twists sporting green buds here or there. At the sound of an approaching cart, he’d staggered into a row where he must have fainted. The next thing he knew, a strong, wiry Frenchman was half dragging him along, all the while cursing under his breath about a woman.
Struggling for one last gasp of strength to break free, Gareth spotted a cart. It wasn’t a gendarme holding the lines, not unless they were enlisting old women.
She railed at the young man to put the stranger into the cart bed, and then to cover him with a scratchy tarp in case of patrols. Once horizontal, Gareth succumbed to the blackness again and woke up in a creaky cot on a lumpy mattress in a room warmed by a small brazier. It felt enough like heaven that he’d slept for three days straight.
He discovered his wounds had been tended to, his clothing cleaned, and a covered dish and flask of wine left on the side table for him.
Etienne Marceau had saved him from the peril of a cold hungry night passed out in the vineyard. Not so much because he’d wanted to; Marceau’s great aunt, the Veuve Hardouin had demanded it.
At this point of the war, helping an enemy officer held little risk for them. Marceau had been too young for the Jacobin madness. Later, he’d avoided conscription in the Grande Armée by keeping his emperor supplied with champagne from the family winery. The Veuve was no fool; she could see the end of the war coming. She’d staged cargo in the lowlands, awaiting an armistice, and seized the opportunity to forge bonds with an English officer who could help Hardouin and Marceau weather the precarious time between armistice and a return to peace and the expansion of their trade.
Plus, Gareth’s death in the vineyard might have spoiled the next year’s harvest.
He chuckled to himself.
“What’s funny?” Cora called, shaking him out of his reverie. “Oh look. They’ve finished the north field.”
The brisk autumn air carried the scent of freshly mowed barley, bringing old memories of his family home, and more recent ones of Champagne where he’d immersed himself as fully as possible for a sheltering enemy soldier in the operations of the vineyard.
He’d risen from his sickbed and joined the Veuve and her nephew for meals, conscious of the need to attempt to contact his regiment. Before he could do so, news came, first of the emperor’s defeat at Toulouse, and then of his surrender. Meals and conversations had led to tours and chats with the Veuve’s workers, and a few months later, a visit during the height of the harvest. He’d pitched in and helped, relishing the excitement of harvest, the soreness and sense of accomplishment after a day of physical labor.
At some point, he’d remembered a little girl with the surname of Hardouin, setting in motion his current quandary.
He was in love with Fleur.
He was in love with Fleur. He, with his two hundred pounds a year. His family didn’t have room for him, much less a wife and children if he married.
He thought of the softness of Fleur under her garments. There would be children, plural.
He wanted to marry her. It was madness. There’d be no champagne for them. They’d be scrimping to have a roof over their heads and food on the table. It would be foolish, reckless, irresponsible.
“Captain, you’ve passed the turn off for Sherington Manor,” Cora called, breaking him out of this particular reverie.
“Why so I have,” he said. “I believe I’ll just ride along the rest of the way and call on your mother.”
“You don’t have to,” Cora said, subdued. “She’ll be resting today. Yesterday about did her in. She was worried but… I don’t think the girl in that locket was Phyllis. Nor did the soldier look like her William. William had dark hair like yours, Captain.”
“You met him?”
“Oh yes. The militia camped near here and came to all the village fêtes. He was very kind. When he offered for Phyllis, Papa said they must wait.”
“But they didn’t.”
“They married in Scotland. That’s all we know.”
Another foolish jump into matrimony.
It wasn’t a leap he would take. In the long run, it wouldn’t be kind. It wouldn’t be honorable. He’d write the letter summoning Marceau to Reabridge as soon as he returned to Sherington Manor.
CHAPTERSIX
With the Bicton Grange housekeeper, Mrs. Knollwood, beside her, Fleur set out early the next day in the gig, leaving Cora and Dulcinea behind to keep company with Helena and see to household matters.
