Page 11 of The Widows of Champagne

Gabrielle

G abrielle held the soldier’s stare, refusing to recoil under the severe slice of cheekbones and rigid set of his jaw. He seemed very German. But also, somehow, familiar. They’d met before, though she couldn’t quite place the face.

She was too agitated to make more than a cursory attempt to recall their past connection. The images from Reims were still fresh in her mind, the smoke still in her nose, the feel of her neighbors’ fear still humming in her blood.

Now, the horror stood in her home, wearing an immaculately pressed officer’s uniform. She disliked him and his proprietary manner and, she feared, her derision had sounded in her voice. All of a sudden, she realized her mistake. She’d made demands of her oppressor. That had not been wise.

“Gabrielle.” Her grandmother touched her arm, waited for her to glance in her direction before performing the necessary introductions. “This is Herr Helmut von Schmidt, or rather...Hauptmann von Schmidt.”

Von Schmidt. The name did not bring up a memory.

“Herr Hauptmann, this is my granddaughter Gabrielle LeBlanc Dupree.”

“A pleasure, Madame Dupree.”

Gabrielle did not offer a response. She gave him no hand to clasp, only a slight frown to convey her mood. She dared not show more defiance. She wasn’t supposed to be facing the enemy with only her grandmother. If Benoit were alive—

He would be fighting in the French army. And Gabrielle would still be confronting this soldier without him. For some reason, that made her all the more furious over his intrusion.

Von Schmidt didn’t seem to notice her hostility. Or perhaps, he simply didn’t care what she thought of him. For a long moment, he did not speak. He simply held her stare with an arrogant one of his own. She wanted to shout at him to get out of her home. To get out of her country. He didn’t belong. But that wasn’t true anymore. France had fallen into German hands. The government had rolled over and shown its jugular to the dogs.

The truth of that still hadn’t fully settled.

Gabrielle glanced at her grandmother. Josephine’s shoulders were hunched and most of her color had left her skin. It was as if she were shriveling away right before her very eyes.

Von Schmidt broke his silence at last, and Gabrielle was struck by the faultless French accent. “I have long desired to meet you, Madame Dupree.” His eyes gave a contradictory message. “My business was always with your grandmother in the champagne house while, as I understood it, you tended the vines.”

A wine merchant, yes. She remembered now. Helmut von Schmidt worked for an import company from the Rhineland. Her grandmother had not enjoyed their association, but he’d been employed by one of her most important accounts.

Now, he was a soldier. An officer. Standing in their home. A ten-minute walk away from the wine cellar. He’d come for the champagne. Would he see the wall? Would he know it was fake?

And now, she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs. Fear wanted to overwhelm her. She thrust the useless emotion aside. The images of the looting she’d just witnessed were not so easily dismissed. The soldiers’ faces were the same as the one staring at her now. Hard, indomitable, full of arrogance and entitlement.

The comparison only made her dislike this man more.

What was he doing in her home? And why this pretense of civility? Gabrielle turned to her grandmother for answers, putting all her questions into a single word. “Grandmère?”

“Herr Hauptmann has requisitioned our home for the duration of his stay in the region.”

Gabrielle’s entire world crumbled at her feet. She opened her mouth to resist such an impossibility, but the man himself transferred the paper in Josephine’s hand to Gabrielle’s. “As this document explains, you will not be put out on the streets, if that is your concern.”

It was one of many concerns. She wanted to ask about the champagne. She knew not to give him ideas.

“Now that the introductions have been made, you will continue showing me around your home.” He spoke directly to Josephine, and she flinched under the brutality in his tone.

Gabrielle opened her mouth to scold him for his insolence. How dare he speak to Josephine Fouché-LeBlanc in such a manner? She chose a less combative tactic. “I will finish the tour of our home. Marta, come here, please.” She motioned to the housekeeper lurking in the shadows like a frightened mouse. “Grandmère has grown tired from all the excitement of the day. She needs to rest. You will take her to her room.”

Josephine put up a half-hearted argument that seemed to drain her of what little energy she had left, which only proved Gabrielle had been right to take over. She put her grandmother in Marta’s capable hands, then directed von Schmidt to follow her. “We’ll start in the parlor.”

The room looked as though it had been abandoned in haste. A half-filled coffee cup sat on the small table near the window. Newspapers lay spread on the seat around the window recess. At least someone had thought to turn off the wireless. She did not want to hear details of the German invasion with one of them standing beside her.

Jaw set, she guided von Schmidt to another room. He became engrossed with the contents and studied one of the paintings very closely, a Renoir, then went on to the next, a Degas, and the next, a Monet. Gabrielle half expected him to pull out a notebook so he could keep a tally.

She led him to another room. Again, he took his time inspecting the contents. As she watched him taking his mental inventory, her fear began peeling off, exposing the fury beneath. This was her home. This man’s very presence was an insult, an outrage. A LeBlanc had lived within these walls for two hundred years. Von Schmidt had walked on these floors for less than an hour and was already treating the contents as if they belonged to him.

His conceit was too much.

“A word of advice, Madame Dupree.” Von Schmidt’s exquisite French broke into her internal tirade. “Your dislike means nothing to me.”

It would be unwise to respond. She would not speak well for herself, or for her family. They were her top concern. She must maintain her composure for them.

Von Schmidt seemed to approve of her silence for he gave her a small nod. “I can be of great service to your family.”

“Oh?”

“I can protect you from certain... realities of occupation.” He let this hang between them for several seconds. “I can be your friend or your adversary. The decision rests with you.”

How simple he made it seem. Even he must know that having a choice was not the same as having control. “And if I choose wrongly?”

He slid his gaze over her face. “I think you would not wish for a misfortune to befall your grandmother.”

Her breath clogged in her throat. In that moment, she knew, with unavoidable certainty, that this man’s control over her and her family was absolute. Her fury didn’t vanish under the weight of the revelation, nothing so sudden. It dissipated like a fragile mirage fading from view. “I will keep your advice in mind.”

“See that you do.”

She led him into the main salon with its white-and-gold Louis XIV decorations. He ran his fingertip along the edge of the mahogany table once used by Napoléon during his Elba exile. As it had in the previous room, his interest moved to the paintings on the walls. One in particular caught his eye, an equestrian scene by Delacroix. Gabrielle attempted to take in the room from his perspective. All she could see was lost hope and renewed despair.

The tour of the first floor came to an end. She felt sick that she must show him the upper levels where her family slept. Once he chose a room for himself, the invasion of their privacy would be complete. For a terrifying moment, she could not continue. Her legs felt boneless. She had to reach out to the nearest wall to steady herself.

Von Schmidt’s eyes went to her hand and she saw the look of pleasure in his gaze. He knew what this “tour” was costing her. Her hatred for him became a burning rage so profound she hardly recognized herself. Despite her distance from God, this was a disturbing turn for a woman raised in the Christian faith. She was supposed to love her enemies.

Not this one.

“Are you unwell, Madame Dupree?” The question sounded like a taunt.

Gabrielle would not allow herself to react. “It’s nothing. I lost my footing for a moment, that is all.” She feigned a carelessness she didn’t feel. “The bedrooms are on the second floor. I assume you would like to see them now, perhaps pick the best for yourself?”

If von Schmidt noticed her disdain, he did not remark on it. He mounted the stairs ahead of her, passing so closely that she smelled the tang of his cologne. Another scent she would never forget. It would always remind her of her own capacity for hate.

A whiff of brimstone would not have been so foul.

Something her father said during one of his lucid moments came to mind. Courage is not a single act, Gabrielle, but a mindset that, like the vines, requires constant tending.

“We will start with my sister’s room.” She gave a cursory knock before opening the door. To her relief, the room was empty.

“Your sister could use a lesson in discipline.”

Gabrielle saw no reason to respond. Paulette’s disregard for order showed in the pile of discarded garments on the floor, the bed, everywhere but the hamper.

She led von Schmidt back into the hallway. Without commentary, she showed him her mother’s room, then her own, both of which were larger and tidier than Paulette’s. He took his time among her belongings. She endured the indignity in fuming silence. When he picked up the framed photograph from her wedding day, she moved swiftly, snatching the picture away and setting it back on her dresser. “My grandmother’s suite of rooms is at the end of the hallway.”

With a hitch of her chin, she indicated he take the lead.

He remained unmoving, his eyes hard and very German beneath the neatly trimmed silver-threaded blond hair. “Madame Dupree. Whether it is out of rebellion or ignorance, you seem not to understand the magnitude of the gift I have given you and your family.”

Her stomach clenched, but she managed to make her mouth curve. “What gift is that, Herr Hauptmann?”

“I have saved your champagne from the looters.” He leaned in close and assaulted her with his nauseating scent again. “Is that not a grand gesture on my part? Is that not a show of faith that I mean to be an easy guest?”

Of all the insults he’d thrown at her today, this false show of kindness was the hardest to swallow. “What payment, I wonder, will you require for this...gift?”

To his credit, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand her meaning. “I ask only that you provide me with fine cuisine and your best champagne from your private stock to wash it down. Not so terrible, you see?”

She saw his intent very clearly.

He took a slow, assessing turn around her room then gave a sharp nod of satisfaction. “This one will do nicely. You will have it prepared for me at once.”

He turned to leave.

She made to follow him out of the room.

He stopped her with a hand in the air, palm facing out. “I will finish my inspection of the chateau without your assistance, Madame.”

There was nothing more she could do but watch him go, her thoughts as heavy as the despair weighing in her heart. Only an hour earlier, she’d witnessed the barbarity of German soldiers ravaging her city. Rabid wolves, all of them, without a single ounce of conscience. Now, one of them would be living in her home. Taking liberties as he pleased.

After all she’d done to protect the champagne, it was secondary to another, more insistent worry. If Reims was not safe from the enemy, if her own home was not safe, what of her family? Her mother, her sister... Grandmère . What would become of them?

You will keep them safe , she told herself, thinking of the women she loved. Not herself. Her family, only them.

You will do whatever it takes.

No matter the cost.