Page 10 of The Widows of Champagne
Josephine
J osephine refused to hide in the wine cellar. No amount of badgering by Marta could change her mind. “This is my home. I will not surrender it to German marauders.”
Marta squeezed her hand. “This is your pride speaking. Pride will not protect you from the savagery of these men.”
It was not a matter of pride. It was the memory of another war. Forced underground, huddled with her neighbors among the racks of fermenting wine, quaking in terror. This time, this war, Josephine would not be sent to cower in fear when the rest of her family was...
Where was the rest of her family?
In the moments she’d spent arguing with Marta she’d lost them. This was not the time for her mind to play its tricks. She took in her surroundings in an attempt to gather her wits. How had she ended up in the parlor, the one Hélène considered her own personal sanctuary, as sacred to her as the cathedral was to other Frenchwomen?
The wireless, perhaps? Yes, yes. Josephine remembered now. She’d come to listen for news of her beloved France. “Why am I, and you,” she added when her eyes landed on Marta, “the only ones in this room? Where are the others?”
“I do not know.”
Josephine had other questions. Why could she not make her mind form the thoughts she needed to speak? The harder she tried to shape the words into sentences, the stronger the ache pounded behind her eyes. It was as if she’d sipped too much champagne and had come away with a sore head. “Where is Gabrielle? Hélène? And...” There was another in the home. A girl. Her name... “Paulette?”
Marta shrugged.
That girl, always disappearing, doing what she wished, when she wished it. Hélène should not encourage such rebellion. To be a mother meant not always making the easy choices. Josephine understood why her daughter-in-law hid certain secrets from Paulette, but that didn’t mean the girl should be allowed to run free.
Static from the wireless cleared, and the voice of a Frenchman reported the news with uneasy desperation. “The Germans have overtaken Paris completely. Nazi flags drape our buildings. Soldiers swarm like insects to every part of the city. They have spread to the outskirts, setting fires to buildings. They loot, and now they—”
“We waste time with things we cannot change.” Marta turned a knob on the wireless and the room went silent. “Come, Josephine. The Germans are invading. We will hide—”
“We will not hide,” she said, cutting the other woman off. “We will stand strong.”
Bold words, and yet...
For a paralyzing moment, Josephine had no idea what to do next. She looked down at her hands, clenching and unclenching at her waist. She was suddenly very cold. Reaching up, she rubbed at her arms to warm herself. The clamor in her head had taken on a frantic spinning of voices upon voices. She would not let the whispers win.
With a tug on her hand, Marta attempted to pull her out of the room. Josephine allowed the housekeeper brief success. One step, another, then she dug in her heels at the sound of the brass knocker slapping at the front door.
“The Germans.” Marta made a strangled noise deep in her throat. “They have come.”
A chill ran down Josephine’s spine. I will not surrender. I will not willingly give what belongs to me and mine. They will have to take it, but I will not give.
Slowly, as though she might disturb her own fragile hold on restraint, she looked to Marta. The housekeeper’s gaze chased around the room, landing nowhere. Another woman grappling for control.
The knocking turned more insistent. “We must answer the door,” Josephine said, thinking of her family first, praying they were somewhere safe.
Why could she not remember where they had gone?
Marta drew herself up. “I will do it.”
“Non.” Josephine set a steadying hand on the other woman’s arm. “I must be the one to face the wolves at my door. You will stay out of the way.”
Marta did not argue, but she did not obey fully. She followed Josephine, only stopping when they reached the edge of the foyer. Josephine continued on her own. With her chin lifted at a haughty angle, she braved the journey with purposeful strides. Each step restored her strength, even as time seemed to bend and shift in her mind, taking her back to another war when the Germans had shown up on her doorstep.
She pulled open the door and flinched. The light of the stark, afternoon sun shone too brightly. Her hand immediately went to cover her eyes.
“Madame Fouché-LeBlanc.” The masculine voice spoke her name in perfectly accented French. Not a native speaker, but close.
Josephine lowered her hand, only to press it to her throat as she experienced a viselike tightening of her breath. That face. She knew it. The sight brought both shock and fury. Not because of the hard angles and sharp planes, but because of its familiarity. This man was no stranger to her. He had roots in Reims. A German wine importer she’d invited into her champagne house, now draped in the uniform of the enemy.
He wasn’t alone. He’d brought along two hard-eyed soldiers to add to his look of importance.
“I know you,” she said. His hair was lighter. Threads of silver now glinted in the pale blond strands that were shorn shorter than when she’d last stood in his presence.
“I’m pleased you remember me.”
“It would be hard to forget a man such as you.” Josephine had never liked Helmut von Schmidt. Her aversion had started from their first meeting nearly a decade ago. It was his eyes. There was no light in them. Pale, icy, not quite blue, not quite gray, they’d always made Josephine uneasy, especially when he looked straight at her. As he was doing now. She felt the chill of his stare, like a breath of frost on her face.
Her stomach roiled. Then her mind cleared, becoming so free of confusion that she could remember each of their encounters in stark relief.
She wished for the fog to return.
His eyes went to the interior of the house behind her, a quick, thorough inventory that brought a hint of satisfaction to his bearing. “You are alone, Madame?”
“Non.” She did not expand.
He spent another moment considering her. Then, he stuck out his hand but must have seen something in her face and let it fall away. “You know why I am here?”
“You have come for my champagne.”
“ Oui , but perhaps not in the way you assume.”
Something there, in his eyes. An ugly greed she’d noted in the past, when he was a younger man not quite able to reach the heights in his career he thought he deserved. In a flash of memory, she recalled the way he signed off on a number of cases, while writing on the bill-of-sale a different one that benefited his own pocket. Her insides shook a little. “I trust you will enlighten me, Herr von Schmidt.”
“It is Hauptmann von Schmidt,” he corrected, snapping to attention and clicking his heels smartly for emphasis. “I have been given the rank of captain in the Wehrmacht.”
She said nothing, not even when he shot out his arm and expressed his allegiance to his führer. Heil Hitler, indeed. The vile autocrat did not deserve such loyalty, not even from a man with his own questionable character.
“I have been commissioned into a special corps of the Wehrmacht to oversee the purchase of champagne for the Third Reich.”
Purchase. That was what the Nazis were calling their theft? Josephine stared at von Schmidt hard, daring him to continue along this ridiculous vein of lies. “Go on. Finish what it is you have come to say.”
“I have been assigned to Champagne because of my connections to the region. I serve second only to Otto Klaebisch.”
Another German with connections to Champagne. Both men were once wine merchants, now turned soldiers meant to purchase champagne for their führer. The Nazis had thought to organize their pillaging. She had not expected such forethought. Or that Hitler would be so smart as to assign men familiar with the region to do his dirty work. “You have come to tell me of your new career, or is there another reason for your arrival on my doorstep?”
“This, I’m afraid, is not an attempt to reignite our friendship.”
At last, they were getting to the purpose of his visit. No matter how pleasant his manner, this man—this German—had come to rob her. How much of her champagne would he take? Whatever the amount, it would be too much. The stony-faced, broad-backed soldiers flanking von Schmidt were proof enough of that.
She would not make it easy for them to steal from her.
Josephine held her enemy’s stare. It was time to form a defense. Her mind worked quickly, quicker than it had in months. And that reminder of her frailty was the strategy she would take. “I am an old woman. My mind is not what it once was. These pleasantries only make me confused. Please, Herr—” She paused. “Herr Hauptmann von Schmidt, I beg you to speak plainly. How much of my champagne do you want?”
With an apologetic incline of his head, he said, “Your champagne is safe. For now.”
For now. Two words that took every ounce of control out of her hands and placed it firmly into his. She understood this game he played. He would toy with her, until he tired of the theatrics. Then, he would loot her wine cellar down to the limestone blocks.
Von Schmidt appeared to be waiting for her to respond to his remark. Did he expect gratitude from her? Of course he did. “Thank you.”
“You are most welcome.”
He would leave now. He should be leaving. Why was he not leaving? “If you have something else to say, Herr Hauptmann,” she prompted once again, “please say it.”
“Very well. I am requisitioning your home for my lodgings while I am in the region. Here is the paperwork.” He made a flicking gesture with his fingers and one of the soldiers pressed a document into her hand.
Josephine blinked at the paper stamped with the official seal of the Third Reich. Her mouth would not work. Her throat had compressed to the size of a pipe stem.
“I see I have shocked you.”
Of course he had shocked her. He was stealing her home.
She attempted to tamp down her panic, even as she watched his gaze take in the elaborate foyer behind her again, lust and greed filling his eyes. “I will, of course, allow you and your family to remain in your home for as long as you choose to cooperate.”
She nearly laughed at the threat uttered within that seemingly magnanimous offer. What was she to say to such conceit?
“You will thank me now.”
“Thank you.” She had to force the words past her clenched jaw.
Von Schmidt didn’t seem to notice her difficulty. Speaking in hard, rapid-fire German, he gave the soldiers their orders. Josephine didn’t understand most of what he said, but she caught enough to know that he was the highest-ranking soldier. And he enjoyed the privilege of ordering his subordinates around.
This was not wholly unexpected.
Taking it as a given his demands would be obeyed, he turned on his heel and gave Josephine his full attention once more. “You will move aside and let me in now.”
He removed his hat, secured it under his arm, then stepped across the threshold. Once inside the chateau, all signs of pleasantness vanished. He wore the face of a conqueror.
Josephine was quivering now, with a mix of fear and rage. She could not set aside the messy stew of her thoughts to move, to speak. To react at all. Where was her resolve to fight?
“You may begin my tour of the property.”
The way he said the words...
Josephine didn’t remember offering to show him around. Another slip within her mind? Or was this man—this German—issuing her orders as he had the soldiers, as though her obedience was a given? She thought maybe the latter.
She felt herself drawing away from reality, as if she dwelled under a glass dome and couldn’t quite reach the world beyond her isolated bubble. The sensation was really quite lovely. And so very tempting. A seductive call she desperately wished to answer.
Her eyes fluttered shut, then snapped open again when someone touched her arm. “Grandmère.”
Gabrielle stood by her side, breathing hard, her presence wrenching Josephine out of her confusion. Her granddaughter smelled of smoke and French outrage. Her eyes narrowed over von Schmidt, contempt dripping from her every pore. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?”