The South of France
Mozet was a full day’s drive from Paris. Nora took the first shift behind the wheel and Zach the second. The sun had set around five, but Nora still watched the darkened landscape roll by from the passenger window, trying and failing not to think about Nicolas Delacroix and what she was about to do to his life. Was this really the right thing? Find this young man and tell him everything he thought about himself and his family was a lie? Reveal a woman’s deeply personal secret—that she’d had an affair—to her son, without her permission? She could destroy a marriage, destroy a family, destroy the way Nicolas Delacroix saw himself. What choice did she have, though? This boy was a secret she couldn’t keep. Not from Kingsley. She would think about it every time they were in the same room together: that Kingsley had a son he didn’t know about, would never know about, all because of her silence. She’d kept the secret for over a year and it weighed on her like the proverbial stone around her neck. How many times this past year had Søren asked her what was on her mind because she was being quiet, far too quiet? How many times had Kingsley demanded to know if something had happened during the “ordeal” that she wasn’t telling them? How much longer could she go on lying to the two most important men in her life?
She almost hoped Zach was right. Maybe Nicolas wasn’t King’s son after all.
But there was only one way to be certain.
“This should be it,” Zach said as he slowed the car. “Can you read the sign?”
Nora rolled down her window to clear off the rain. VILLAGE MOZET, it read, black paint on a white board. Under it, another sign read L’Un Des Plus Beaux Villages De France.
“One of the most beautiful villages in France,” she translated. Her heart clenched. Suddenly, it was all real. The fantasy was becoming a reality. Excitement turned to fear.
“This is it.”
The road into town was lined on either side by houses and shops that couldn’t have looked much different than they had when they were constructed three or four hundred years ago. The tallest buildings were only three stories high. Nearly every house and shop was built in the timbered style, each a different color of the rainbow. A blue pub. A pink café. A yellow boulangerie. The shop windows were all decorated for Christmas.
“This is the prettiest little town I’ve ever seen in my life,” Nora said. “Add some snow and you’d have a medieval French Christmas card.”
“Very quaint,” Zach said. “I’ve been to the South of France dozens of times and never heard of it.”
“The detective said it’s not much of a tourist town. He warned me almost no one would speak English here, even if they know it.” It’s why she’d brought Zach along. One reason, anyway. Her French was decent, but Zach was fluent and could pass for French if need be. If Nicolas Delacroix started asking complicated questions, she’d need someone fluent to make sure she wasn’t making things worse.
“I think that’s our hotel. The only hotel in town.” She checked the directions she’d printed out and pointed to a large white home with black timbers crisscrossing the exterior. “Les Florets.”
They turned off onto a cobblestone side street and parked in the lot. There was only one other car.
They wandered into the small lobby. They were well past late check-in, but, if the parking situation was any indication, their room would still be available. She paced the parquet floor, inspecting the potted flowers decorating the lobby while Zach checked them in. Les Florets was aptly named: even in late December, the hotel was alive with jasmine and begonias and desert roses and—
“We’ve been upgraded,” Zach said, returning to her with a slight grin on his handsome face. “Honeymoon suite.”
“Did you flirt with the old lady at the desk to get it?” Nora asked, taking a key from him.
“I told her you were a famous author here to research your next book.”
“So you lied.”
“It worked.”
They carried their luggage up the two flights of stairs. They’d been offered a bellhop, but Nora hadn’t wanted to wake the poor boy up. He was on the red sofa in the lobby, a copy of yesterday’s Le Monde over his face.
The honeymoon suite wasn’t large—only a sitting room, bathroom, and bedroom of average size—but it was beautifully decorated. The bedroom’s carved wood four-poster bed, rosé-colored damask wallpaper, and heavy black rotary-dial phone made Nora feel as if she’d stepped back into the 1930s.
“Nice,” she said, nodding her approval. “We’ll have very good sex in this room.”
Zach dropped his bag onto the luggage rack. “Does the decor improve performance?”
“You get a room this nice, it makes you want to have good sex in it. Gorgeous old bed. Fancy wallpaper. Beautiful view. No television. They designed this room for fucking. Hate to let the decorators down, you know.”
“Tomorrow. Tonight we sleep, and in the morning we find this kid.”
“Or we could just stay inside tomorrow and fuck all day.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her on the lips. “Not a chance, darling.” Then he slapped her on the ass—hard. “Supper, then bed. You like following orders. Those are my orders. Come on.”
Nora stared in shock as Zach waltzed out the door. “See if I ever let you ass-fuck me again,” she called after him.
After a late supper, they went to bed. No sex, because Zach was a cruel, evil man, immune to her begging and pouting. He refused to touch her again until she’d gone through with her mission.
So it was no surprise that Nora was out of bed first thing the next morning, mapping their route to the Delacroix vineyard on her phone. Fifteen miles from the village. That’s all. A fifteen-mile drive on a winding two-lane road. So close that the reality of what she was about to do finally hit her.
She couldn’t go through with this…which was why she had to do it sooner rather than later. Even if Zach hadn’t been withholding himself from her, he had the right idea: work first, then play.
Zach took the wheel again today. Her nerves were so frayed, she couldn’t drive; in fact, she’d skipped breakfast, a rarity for her.
It had been dark when they’d arrived yesterday. Now she saw the countryside in the cold light of morning. The sea was south of the village, the vineyard north in the rocky hills. They snaked their way up the winding road, through the dense pines.
Eventually the scenery changed. The pine trees gave way to fenced-in pastures and fields, and then grape vines and arbors—acres and acres’ worth.
The landscape matched the photographs in the magazine article the detective had given her. The wooden fences soon turned to stacked-stone fences. The fields, previously barren aside from trellises and arbors, began to fill with wooden sheds, barns, outbuildings, houses big and small, all surrounded by trees and sleeping winter gardens.
They reached the turn-off to the vineyard. Nora read the simple sign on the open gates: Vignoble Delacroix.
Past the open gate was a narrow lane, all gravel and rutted from the wheels of farm machinery. She saw a small orange tractor parked to the side of an old wooden shed.
“It really is a farm,” she said.
“What did you think it was?”
“You just don’t think of vineyards as farms.”
“They’re grape farms.”
“I’m trying to picture Kingsley on a tractor. Whatever happened to the apple not falling far from the tree?”
“Says the erotica-writing dominatrix whose mother is a nun.”
Nora glared pointedly at him.
They entered through the gate, pressing slowly on down the lane, but the ride was choppy.
“Bit muddy,” Zach said. “Might be easier on foot.”
Nora agreed. She’d prepared for walking today, dressing in her black knee-high leather boots and leggings, which she’d paired with a red sweater and her red trench coat. Zach had on jeans and hiking boots, and a leather coat over his heather gray pullover.
They abandoned their car in a small gravel lot and headed down the winding lane, which was bordered on both sides by white fences. On their right, a few black and white cows roamed and drowsed in their pastures. On their left, the vines stretched into the distance. They were brown, still, sleeping. No grapes in sight, of course—not during this time of year. A listless wind blew through it all.
Still—the sun lurking behind the clouds turned the sky a palette of pale pastel colors, and Nora knew she was seeing what Monet must have seen when he’d painted his winter scenes in pink and yellow and blue. And though it was winter, she smelled spring in the air, swept in on a sea breeze. There was life here, lurking behind the trees and inside the vines and under the ground and over the clouds. Life, biding its time, hiding, waiting…
“It’s just so beautiful.”
“You look smitten,” Zach said. “Never imagined you sighing over a farm. Not even a grape farm.”
She smiled, laughed to herself, at herself. Nora was anything but a country girl. Yet as they walked along the lane, Nora felt the strangest sensation. It was almost as if she was supposed to be here. But of course she was. She was supposed to be here—finding King his son. That wasn’t quite it, though. She didn’t generally give much credence to premonitions, but now she tingled all over with the inexplicable sensation of coming home again. Like when she visited the house her grandmother used to live in, and, even though a stranger lived there, Nora somehow still felt like it was her home.
Nora reached for Zach’s hand, took it, held it, practically clung to it. She had to, otherwise she might have hopped the fence and run through the fields as if she owned them. The stress was getting to her, making her lose it a little. Or maybe it was knowing Kingsley must have walked this very same lane twenty-five years ago. Possibly when he was a child, too, coming here with his parents to visit friends on their long holiday. That didn’t quite explain it to her satisfaction, however. This place was from Kingsley’s past. Why did it feel like a part of hers?
They stopped at a crossroads. An old-fashioned fingerpost-style sign pointed left and right, as the lane split in two. It listed the various buildings on the grounds—wine shop, tasting room, event barn, cuverie.
She looked to Zach. “Cuverie?”
“It’s where they store the wine vats,” he translated. “I suppose we want the tasting room.”
They turned right. The lane sloped uphill and at the crest stood a small timber-frame barn, converted into what looked like a restaurant. Troublingly, the parking lot was empty. The website for the vineyard didn’t say anything about it being closed in December. It listed the daily tour schedule as usual. Then again, it hadn’t been updated since early November. She’d placed a few calls, all of which had gone to voicemail. She began to experience a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, and it wasn’t hunger…
As they neared the barn that housed the tasting room, they saw one of the big double doors standing slightly ajar. The lights were on inside. Her heart skipped a beat.
Even if the vineyard was closed to the public, somebody was here. She would use Zach’s lie, she decided—that she was an author writing a book set at a vineyard in this region, and she would love to meet young Monsieur Delacroix, if he would be so kind. She would, of course, bat her eyelashes a little. She also wasn’t above bribery.
They paused as they reached the double doors. Nora heard voices through the crack. One female, one male. Both young, by the sound of their voices. The woman asked a question in rapid French, to which the man responded, “Non, pas aujourd’hui.”
No, not today.
Another question, and then, “Dans l’ancienne grange.”
In the old barn.
The woman pressed him again about something, her French too fast for Nora. “Je vais bien, ne t’en fais pas,” the young man said.
I’m fine. Don’t worry.
“Shall we?” Zach whispered. “I’ll do the talking.”
She took a breath and nodded. Zach squeezed her hand and pulled her inside.
The young man was gone. Nora noticed immediately, because she’d scanned the room for him at once. The barn’s ceilings were high, with exposed beams. The back wall was lined with a bar featuring a massive wine rack. Behind the bar stood an open door. The man whose voice she’d heard was back there in that little room, Nora knew. She stared at the door, willing him to come out, to show himself.
The woman was on a ladder, dusting the blades of a large ceiling fan. She noticed them, lowered her dust rag, and smiled. “Bonjour?”
Zach replied in his fluent French: “Hello there. How are you?”
“Very well, thank you.” Pretty girl, about twenty-two or three, with braided brown hair.
“Is the tasting room open?”
“Only for cleaning,” she said and smiled more broadly. “We’re getting ready for a wedding on New Year’s Eve.”
Zach apologized for barging in, and the young woman went on talking, pleasantly, but Nora wasn’t listening anymore.
A silver tabby sat on the bar, doing that odd little cat thing where it licked its paw and then ran the wet paw over its ear to clean it. It stopped its bath when Nora reached it, looking at her with bright golden eyes. Nora held out a finger and the cat tilted its head magnanimously, allowing her to pet it.
The girl called out, “Nico? Guests.”
And then Nico—Nicolas Delacroix—finally appeared.