Sweeter Than Wine (24 page)

"You can tell me if I do anything wrong," he assured her with a warm
smile.

But she felt useless and stupid in comparison to his easy competence as he
turned and, without any trouble, found the wrench in the toolbox mounted on the
running board.

It had taken her the better part of a year to realize that she always had to pack
the right tools and a fully inflated spare tire before going on a drive. She had
gotten stuck several times on this road between Santa Rosa and Sonoma, until it
seemed she had discovered all the houses with telephone connections. Peter had
rescued her, once, with the irritability of a man who had better things to do. She
had learned how to change her own tires after that, just as she had tried to learn
how to run the winery.

Another thing she wasn't very good at.

She had tried to make her own wine, and look how her Traminer turned out.
She had thought Hugh her friend--but then, he had every right to criticize her
management. Her memory of Siegfried's shock that day when he had first
inspected the moldy vats still had the power to knot her insides. In her ignorance
she had let Bill's last vintage go sour. And if she had truly been a good wife, Bill
would never have run away to the army...

She was only twenty-two years old, and she was a complete failure.

Her throat threatened to close, and she coughed involuntarily.

Siegfried looked up, concerned. "Am I raising too much dust for you? Do you
need a drink of water? Or," his gaze slid toward the back of the truck, "--
wine?"

"N-no." She wanted nothing to do with wine just now. Montclair was one step
from ruin, though she had tried her best, her very best, to save it, and herself. If
she failed...

Siegfried shrugged one sculpted shoulder and returned to the tire.

She turned to look deep into the orchard. If she failed...If Wartime Prohibition
went into effect before she could sell Siegfried's heavenly wine for the cash to get
through harvest...if Constitutional Prohibition banned wine, and she couldn't crush,
and no one ever bought wine grapes again...

She didn't have the money to switch to chickens or beef or prunes. She
couldn't sell Montclair. Bill had entrusted it to her.

Everywhere she looked, there was only more failure to come.

And if she failed...if she lost Montclair, she would find herself on the road back
to the City, a destitute widow, forced, for lack of anything else she knew how to do,
to return to her old neighborhood, to her mother's house.

Of all her nightmares, that one was the worst. If she went back, she would lose
all the shreds of respectability she had carefully cultivated, all the respect she had
earned from her neighbors in Sonoma. Her poor, sainted father would roll over in
his grave. He had worked so hard to rescue her from iniquity.

She would rather die than go home again. She would rather starve on the
street. But if she lost Montclair...

The sun disappeared behind the hills, and the heated air in the valley seemed
to exhale. A harsh caw sounded and she looked up as a couple of crows, intent on
investigating the truck for food, launched themselves from branches of a tree
opposite.

Siegfried suddenly bent, as if he'd dropped something. He came back up, his
arm moving fast.

There was an aborted squawk, and black feathers exploded all over the road.
The second crow flapped heavily away, out of range of Siegfried's next stone.

Alice leaped up. "What happened? What are you doing?"

Siegfried stood folded, one arm propped on the fender of the truck to hold
himself up. His eyes were closed, his whole body shuddering.

"I hate crows," he rasped.

"What's wrong with them?" Alice was baffled. Crows weren't particularly
beautiful birds, but they were harmless. Not like the starlings that came through in
autumn like rapacious locusts, sometimes stripping a vineyard of its fruit before the
pickers could harvest. The crow on the road was thoroughly dead, blood pooling in
the dust.

"Carrion eaters." Siegfried's mouth twisted into an anguished gash. He forced
a breath. "In the trenches, they never had to look far to feast. I
hate
them."

He didn't look competent now. He had been laid lower than she had been.

Oddly, Alice did not feel victorious, or superior. Her first impulse was to
comfort Siegfried, to quiet his tremors. Her knees were weak, but they carried her
close to him. Lines of suffering were etched into his face. She wanted to smooth
them away, to return his cheerfulness. She hadn't known she would miss his smile
so much.

He opened his eyes, and Alice thought for a crazy instant that he wanted to
eat her up, as if she were the best, most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, as if he'd
waited his whole life to stand right here and look at her. As if he might even love
her.

Alice's heart pounded. Siegfried let go of the truck fender and closed the
space between them with a single step. He put his arms around her and pulled her
tight, leaning on her as if now hers was the strength that kept him upright.

She knew he was going to kiss her, and she wasn't ready. But his chest was
warm and solid with only the thin cotton undershirt covering it, and his arms were
so strong. And now he was kissing her. Not her lips, but her eyebrows and the
corners of her eyes, leaving a residue of tenderness.

She relaxed against him, tilting her face up and waiting for him to bend, as he
must. His mouth captured hers at once. Her eyes drifted closed, and the only
reality became what she could feel: his arms around her, his lips, his wine-flavored
breath mingling with hers. His embrace circumscribed the hollow space around her
heart, defining and containing it. His lips were insistent, nearly as desperate as her
own.

Her hips pressed against his, and she felt him, aroused, through the layers of
navy silk and black wool that separated them. Alice ached in answer, and opened
her mouth to his deep kiss, to his tongue tentatively touching hers. His hands were
at her waist, sliding up and down her back in a rhythm that matched the thrust of
his tongue. If they continued, soon she wouldn't have the capacity to stand.

If only her life were simple, she could just sleep with Siegfried and
be
married to him--

The sound of an approaching car intruded, and she tried to step away, but
Siegfried held her close, oblivious to the embarrassment of being publicly
discovered in so indelicate a position with a half-naked man.

"Siegfried! Somebody's coming!" she hissed, pushing at his shoulders.

"
Ja
," he agreed, dreamily. He did not release her.

"What if it's somebody we know?"

His pulse beat strongly against the hollow above his collarbone. His cheek
against hers was hot. "What if it is? Maybe we are on our honeymoon."

She almost agreed with him, but she forced herself back to her senses and
stamped on his toe to make him let her go. She drew in a gulp of air, furious and
mortified and bereft all at the same time.

Siegfried said unconvincingly, "My poor foot!" He memorized her face,
brushing the back of his hand against her cheek, and stepped away from her just
as another Model-T rattled around the bend.

The car pulled up and stopped. "Why, Mrs. Roy-Rodernwiller! You folks need
any help? I've got a tire pump if you need one."

Alice recognized James Sullivan, who owned a vineyard near here, south of
the Kundes. She served on various church committees with his wife, Betty. Had
she been alone, Alice would have taken his offered help gratefully.

"No." Siegfried said. "All is under control. But we thank you."

"Sure thing. Do you want me to wait until you get moving again?"

"That's very kind of you," Alice said before Siegfried could open his mouth
again. "I'd appreciate it." She wobbled, and Siegfried steadied her.

"Here, Alice. Sit, sit. I am almost finished."

She let herself be led back to the spot where he'd put his coat, and sank down
onto it while Mr. Sullivan helped Siegfried pick up the flat tire to load it in the back
of the Model T.

She had grown used to being Mrs. William Roye, vintner. Had found it
surprisingly fulfilling. Could she accustom herself to being Mrs. Siegfried
Rodernwiller? Did it matter whose wife she was, as long as she was a wife, and
not--?

Alice caught herself before she crumbled the dirt clod in her hand into dust,
and irretrievably stained her glove. She looked sideways at Siegfried as he
wrestled with the tire, all the muscles in his arms and shoulders defined. He was
strong. He was gentle.

He was German--

He wasn't. "I am Alsatian," he had declared. And a lot of the grape-growers at
the Association meeting had had no trouble at all in pronouncing his name.

"Hrodanvilla," Alice practiced under her breath. She checked to be sure
Siegfried and Mr. Sullivan hadn't heard, or noticed her lips moving. "Zigfhreed
Hrodanvilla."

It didn't sound so ugly any more. There was a certain charm to it, now that she
was used to it.

But marriage involved more than a name.

There was a definite tingle in parts of her that she knew she shouldn't
recognize at the thought of lying with Siegfried. She remembered his kisses,
imagined the weight of his body on hers, and the slide of skin against skin--
I
could do it
, she thought wonderingly, and the more she thought about it, the
more she knew she must do it.

She would give him Montclair, and in the giving, bind him to her. And no matter
what happened, she would be respectable. She would say
yes
to Siegfried
at Montclair, if he asked her.
When
he asked her. Tonight. Not here in the
road like some two-bit dock whore.

Her head whirled, so she rested her cheek on her knees. She didn't know if
she wanted tonight to come soon--or never.

* * *

Siegfried unloaded the cases from the back of the truck, humming under his
breath.

They loved his wine.

Alice had let him kiss her.

The other vintners accepted him.

Alice had let him
kiss
her.

He stacked the cases by the winery door, wrung out by all the emotional
storms of the afternoon. Tomorrow he would put them inside. Tomorrow he would
do many things. But tonight...

The faint powder scent from her skin was still in his nose as he walked back to
the house.

She had gone to lie down. She was tired, too, poor thing, rocked by the news
that another had gained the sacramental license she coveted, and devastated by
Hugh's enmity, now common knowledge, as Siegfried knew it must be, once Hugh
realized that he would not be able to buy the property
Opa
Roye had
refused to bequeath him.

Standing near the porch, Siegfried watched a flock of long-necked white egrets
splash elegantly into the shallow end of the reservoir. He had thought his heart
abandoned somewhere in the crumbling sandstone of the Vosges Mountains,
ripped apart by rusty barbed wire, obliterated by the incessant cannonade. But he
was wrong. It was alive, brimming with rash hope that California earth would
accept his roots, that he might thrive and be fruitful here.

"You're back from the meeting?" Maria called from the path to the foreman's
cottage, carrying a basket. "Where's Mrs. R.?"

"She was not feeling well," Siegfried replied when she drew near. They both
turned towards the house.

"Oh, that's too bad! And I'd just plucked a couple of chickens for supper, too."
A stray feather clung to her apron, and she brushed it off. Both of them watched it
float over the porch rail and drift gently down.

With sudden inspiration, Siegfried said: "Maria,
I
shall cook supper for
my wife tonight. You may have the evening off."

Maria dimpled. "Is it a special occasion? Is there some good news?"

His sleeping arrangements--or lack of them--with Alice were no secret to her,
he knew, but Siegfried had no intention of discussing his private life. He shook his
head. "No, but I wish to be alone with her." His face grew hot at Maria's knowing
look.

"Of course," she agreed, her dimples deepening. "Well, then, I'll take the other
chicken with me for Peter's dinner, but I'd better show you what to do, first."

Tugged into the kitchen by the sleeve like a recalcitrant schoolboy, Siegfried
patiently suffered Maria's lecture on the operation of the tall, spindly-legged gas
stove. All the while, his mind was chanting joyously:
Alone with Alice! Alone
with Alice!

* * *

Lying on her bed in a ferment, under a cold damp towel that did nothing for
either her headache or her heartache, Alice plotted.

For the first time in her life, she was going to do the wrong thing, on purpose,
and this time she was not going to let guilt, her loyalty to Bill's memory, or the
thought of what a real lady would do, rule her.

Instead, what ruled her was lustful speculation: what Siegfried's skin would
taste like; how soft his hair would be under her hand, how her bed would creak
with two of them in it.

I'll be his wife. I'll be safe.

A fleeting remembrance of Bill made her curl and draw her knees protectively
up to her chest. If she thought too much about him, she might lose the scandalous
trickle of anticipation twining around inside her.

She was going to make love to Siegfried.

No. She would let Siegfried make love to her--

No, really. She would let Siegfried think he was seducing her, when she was
actually trapping him in her coils.

She would do it, too.

She would.

Really.

When she could get up.

* * *

Heavy-limbed and light-headed, she finally rose from her nap, dressed
carefully, and went down stairs, following the scent of supper. She stood at the
doorway to the yellow-lit kitchen, amazed to see Siegfried wrapped in one of her
aprons and lightly dusted with flour, shuffling a pan out of the oven.