The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2)

by Petra Durst-Benning

  They shared an intimate look, then he said, “We’re going through our stock faster than expected. We’ve still got three hundred bicycles, eighty for women, all the rest for men.” Then he winked and added, “I wonder why women’s bicycles have sold so quickly?”

  Josephine smiled while her customer rode a few final curves. “I wonder! All I know is that I, personally, have sold forty of them in the last few weeks.” Although she knew about the sales, their inventory, and everything that had to do with the business, she still found it hard to believe how successful they had been.

  When, on his trip to America nearly two years earlier, Adrian had ordered two thousand bicycles from the Western Wheel Works, a factory in Chicago, Josephine had been a little worried. What if they had miscalculated and the bicycle boom ended before it had even really begun? “Then we’ll be sitting on an Everest of bicycles!” Adrian had replied, laughing. So they looked ahead instead and opened their bicycle shop and repair business. A short time later, they added a cycling school, offering their customers the opportunity to learn to ride on site. The business flourished, even more bicycles were ordered, and both Josephine and Adrian enjoyed the work immensely.

  “It’s amazing! I feel faster than the wind,” said the woman, her cheeks red and her hair tousled as she climbed off the bicycle. “I’ll take it.”

  Adrian and Josephine laughed as one.

  “That makes seventy-nine. I think I’d better order more, and fast,” Adrian said, leaving Josephine to complete the woman’s purchase.

  Josephine had just finished writing the amount of the sale into her books when the bell rang again, and she lifted her head, ready to greet the next customer. But when she saw who was standing there, she had to blink to make sure her eyes were not lying.

  “A young, healthy man like Leon . . . dead, just like that. It hard to believe, isn’t it?” Clara’s eyes radiated incomprehension and despair. “I don’t want to think what Isabelle must be going through. She was so madly in love with him!”

  Josephine nodded. She herself had married just before Isabelle, and the thought of becoming a widow so young sent a cold chill down her spine. It took no more than a glance at her friend since childhood to know that Clara was thinking exactly the same thing.

  “Isabelle needs us. That much is clear,” Josephine said.

  “But how can we help her? I mean, we’re just her old friends. We’ve all been going in our own directions for quite a while. Shouldn’t this be something for Isabelle’s parents?”

  “Just her old friends—the way you said that.” Annoyed, Josephine shook her head. “Isn’t friendship the only thing that matters? But you won’t be able to count on her parents. Isabelle died for them the day she stopped doing what they wanted her to. Look at my parents. They also stopped wanting anything to do with me when I didn’t do what they expected. Not everyone has a mother and father as nice as yours, Clara.” But when Josephine saw Clara’s guilty look, she regretted her final words. With a husband like Gerhard Gropius, Clara could use every bit of parental support she could get. “Of course it’s going to take time to get over such a loss, but the letter makes it sound as if Isabelle can’t even get back on her feet.”

  “You think so?” asked Clara, chewing her bottom lip. “Poor Isabelle.”

  Their silence was overshadowed by the ticking of the large clock on the wall. Clara plucked at the hem of her jacket sleeve. Josephine stared at the draft of an advertising leaflet lying on the desk in front of her. She’d been planning to give the leaflet a final once-over. The illustrations they wanted to use to explain and extol the refinements of their Crescent bicycles blurred before her eyes into a hodgepodge of strokes, curves, and dots as a thousand thoughts jostled in her mind.

  Isabelle needed her help, that was certain, but how was she supposed to get away from the shop? Their summer business was booming, and even the autumn was looking good. Adrian wanted to push ahead with his new project, organizing bicycle races, in the next few weeks. Since his injury prevented him from racing, he had turned to other ways to stay close to the sport. Now he was planning to stage exclusive track races, bringing in the best cyclists from Berlin and throughout the empire. She couldn’t simply tell him that she was going off to France for some indeterminate time! Besides, why should she even feel obligated to help? In the end, she and Isabelle had no longer been close. The opposite was true, in fact: Josephine falling in love with Adrian . . . Isabelle had not taken that well at all. But at the same time, Isabelle’s earlier engagement to Adrian had been a farce from the start, a business arrangement between their fathers, nothing more. Isabelle didn’t want to have Adrian, but she didn’t want anyone else to have him, either.

  But wasn’t that all water under the bridge? Wasn’t the friendship that had once bound them so closely together worth more than the friction that crept into their relationship more recently? Water under the bridge! Josephine suddenly felt a deep need to stand by her old friend. Adrian would not object to her desire to go away to France, she was sure of that. If they tried, she was sure they would find a way to make everything work.

  Josephine took a deep breath, then looked at Clara. “When do we leave?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “When do we leave?” Clara shook her head. As if it were that simple! She reached for a carrot and began to dice it into small cubes. When Josephine was younger, she followed whatever fancy came into her head. And it had once cost her three years in jail! Apparently, marriage hadn’t changed her at all; such selfishness really did not become a woman.

  She tossed the diced carrots into the pan with the finely chopped onion and both ingredients sizzled away gently in the goose fat.

  Clara hadn’t yet said a word to Gerhard about the letter from France. He would never allow her to go on this journey, not in her wildest dreams, and he’d be up in arms in seconds if she approached him with the idea. Have you taken leave of your senses? he would shout at her. And how could she even consider it? The cost! And who would look after the household and Matthias during her absence? A woman’s place was at her husband’s side and nowhere else. Basta! Clara could already hear his objections. Of course, she could tell him that everything could be organized. She was sure her mother would look after the house and Matthias. And their nanny would still be there. For two or three weeks, they could certainly come up with a solution. Even before she finished the thought, she felt a sharp pang in her chest. She would have to be away from Matthias for so long? She wouldn’t survive it. And she probably wouldn’t trust herself to go off on a trip like that without Gerhard. Who knows what might happen? On the other hand, it would be a wonderful opportunity to actually use the French she had worked so hard to learn. And Isabelle needed her.

  Clara took the chicken out of the wax paper and rubbed the skin with dried herbs and pepper. Carefully, she slid the chicken into the roasting pan with the braising vegetables. It made a loud hiss in the hot oil, and Clara went over to the window to open it. Gerhard didn’t like the house to smell of food.

  If it were anyone else, she might perhaps be able to win Gerhard over. But certainly not when it came to Isabelle Herrenhus. And with Josephine as her traveling companion—in Gerhard’s eyes, things couldn’t get much worse. When he looked at her former cycling friends, all he saw were headstrong harpies. When she and Gerhard had first gotten engaged, he had tried to forbid her from seeing them, but at least on that matter she had managed to stand up for herself—they were her friends, and they would continue to be her friends even after she married! But when Isabelle abandoned Berlin for her life with Leon and Josephine went off to the other end of the city with Adrian to open their shop, Clara’s contact with them had all but stopped. She had her own hands more than full with the house and her son, and her visit to Josephine today was a rare exception. Gerhard knew nothing of the occasional letters she exchanged with Isabelle or of the cookbooks she had sent.

  Clara looked at the bottle of red wine from which she had just
added a full glass to the chicken. It was a burgundy, from France. But where in France was Champagne, exactly?

  Abruptly, she wiped her hands on her apron, then she went to the bookshelf in the parlor. The large atlas contained 170 maps, and it was one of the books that Gerhard liked to browse through in the evenings. He didn’t like her doing the same, however; he was afraid that she would clumsily manage to crease a page—or even worse, tear one.

  “Too much reading gives a woman headaches. You’d do better with a good handicraft,” he was fond of telling her.

  With fingers still smelling of onion, she leafed through the maps until she found what she was looking for. Paris, Reims, Épernay, and there—Hautvillers! Charly-sur-Marne, Condé-en-Brie, Vailly-sur-Aisne. The Champenois certainly had a sense for fancy names for their towns, she thought with a smile.

  France . . . Even if the reason for the trip to Champagne was a melancholy one, the trip itself was sure to be wonderful. She had never seen a grapevine, let alone a vineyard, and apart from that trip to Norddeich, she had never even been out of Berlin. What was the French countryside like?

  Clara looked over at the dining table with its white tablecloth. Goodness! Their guests would be arriving in less than three hours, and she still had to set the table, prepare the dessert, and get herself ready. And the chicken in the oven was already starting to smell a little overcooked. She put the atlas aside. She really did not have the time for vain dreams.

  “And then the girl held my skirt in her little hands and wailed, ‘Why do I have to stay here? Take me with you!’ Hearing things like that as often as I do, well, it nearly breaks my heart!” Natalie Hackestorm, her eyes dark with makeup, looked around the table.

  Clara nodded and covertly pushed a hairpin that had worked loose from her bun back into place.

  The professor’s wife immediately picked up her own thread again. “Helping out in the St. Augustine Orphanage can be so painful sometimes, but when I see the loving children there, when I read them a book . . .”

  While Clara passed around the platter with the chicken, she cast a triumphant glance at her husband. So much for Mrs. Hackestorm not being interested in children.

  Natalie took a piece of chicken breast and sighed deeply. “If I could, I’d take all of those lovely little ones home with me and spoil them every day with food as delicious as this. You are an exceptional cook, my dear Mrs. Gropius!”

  Clara smiled gratefully. Gerhard, sitting beside her, stiffened.

  “Don’t you dare bring those little devils into our home! I think you do quite enough donating so much of my money for your charity work!” said Richard Hackestorm to his wife with an indulgent smile.

  “And what exactly would you have against two or three more mouths to feed at the table?” his wife shot back defiantly.

  Clara held her breath. They wouldn’t get into a fight here and now, would they?

  “I have absolutely nothing against two or three more mouths at our table. But did it occur to you that I might want to produce them myself, my darling?” With an almost lewd gesture, he stroked his wife’s cheek.

  “You old reprobate,” said Natalie in a smoky voice, and they broke out in a carefree laugh.

  Deeply embarrassed, Clara dug into the bowl of potatoes. How could the professor and his wife break all the rules of decent conduct like that? If she tried something like that even once . . . ! With a surreptitious look at Gerhard, she saw his eyebrows were raised in disapproval, and in his expression she saw a mixture of grimness and helplessness. Clearly, he was far from pleased with the way the evening had gone so far. Usually, the men solemnly discussed medical topics while the women sat silently or, at the most, threw in an occasional admiring remark. But thanks to Natalie’s chattering, the conversation had not once turned to medicine. And then came that salacious comment from the professor! Unbelievable! And who would be to blame in the end? She, of course.

  After the main course, Natalie spoke at length about a charity event that she had organized to raise funds for a new roof for the orphanage. Her husband listened patiently, and he seemed utterly unconcerned that his wife was dominating the conversation.

  Clara thought feverishly about how she—for Gerhard’s sake—might steer the discussion to their trip to Norddeich, or even better, to Gerhard’s brilliant skills as a doctor.

  “I see you’re planning to travel, too?” said Richard Hackestorm during a lull in his wife’s monologue. “To France? Are you going over to our archenemy?” He laughed loudly.

  Clara flushed and at the same time felt a chill run through her. Blast it, she’d forgotten to put the atlas away.

  “What makes you say that?” Gerhard asked in surprise. “Oh, of course, travel broadens the mind, as they say, but I find it very difficult to leave my patients unattended. As a local doctor, I like to be available for emergencies day and night.”

  Richard pointed to the atlas, lying open on the sideboard.

  “And what about that?”

  Clara’s jaw tightened. She felt Gerhard’s interrogating eye on her, but at the same time, she saw an opportunity that would present itself only once. She began shaking inwardly with excitement. Should she or shouldn’t she? Gerhard could hardly lash out at her in front of their guests, so perhaps she should risk it and raise the topic that lay so close to her heart.

  “An old friend of mine, Isabelle Herrenhus—Isabelle Feininger now—lives in a town called Hautvillers, in the Champagne region,” she said, unable to keep the trembling out of her voice. “I wanted to find out where that famous region actually lies.”

  Gerhard drew a sharp breath. He already had his mouth open to say something, but Clara didn’t give him the opportunity. “Isabelle’s husband died suddenly. I don’t know how or why. Her neighbor wrote me a letter asking me to come. Isabelle needs someone urgently to help her get back on her feet.”

  Natalie laid one hand on Clara’s arm sympathetically. “How terrible for the young widow! But how good it is that she has friends like you to count on.”

  Clara sensed how Gerhard, sitting rigidly beside her, had to make an effort to control himself. Straightening up, as if doing so might boost her own courage, she said, “Of course I feel the urge to go and help. But my son needs me here, too. And besides, it’s important that Gerhard isn’t burdened, which is why I hadn’t yet mentioned this to him. He works so much—”

  “I know Moritz Herrenhus very well,” said Richard Hackestorm suddenly. Turning to Gerhard, he added, “We eat in the same club, and he is one of the patrons of the Charité. His wife was a patient of ours last year, and when he saw the physical limitations of the facilities in which we have to work, he declared his willingness to donate an annex for the gynecological wing. An extremely generous man—I had no idea that you and he were also acquainted!”

  So generous that he would turn his back on his own daughter just because he didn’t like her choice of husband, Clara thought. The next moment, she nearly fell off her chair with shock.

  “Clara and I have known the Herrenhus family for a long time, haven’t we, dear? Clara and Isabelle rode bicycles together. The businessman, Adrian Neumann, and his wife were also part of your little group, if I remember right,” said Gerhard. He put his napkin aside and went on with a smile. “I thank God that I was at least able to talk my wife out of that dangerous pastime.”

  Speechless, Clara listened to her husband ruthlessly exploiting her friendship with Isabelle and Josephine for his own ends.

  “Oh, you know the Neumanns, too, Doctor?” Natalie Hackestorm’s well-formed eyebrows lifted in appreciation. “I did not know that you moved in . . . such circles.”

  “Adrian Neumann has already allowed his wife to make the trip to Champagne. It’s so important that friends can rely on each other in an emergency, isn’t it? Adrian found that out for himself the hard way.” The words practically fell out of Clara’s mouth before she could think about them. Such circles—pah!

  “What kind of emergen
cy did Adrian Neumann find himself in?” Natalie asked, curious. Clara told them the story of Adrian’s trip to America and the robbery that ended with him getting shot. The Hackestorms listened breathlessly while Clara fell deeper and deeper into her entertainer role.

  “Didn’t you want to serve the dessert, my dear?” said Gerhard when she finished.

  Red-cheeked, Clara went into the kitchen to get the peaches and cream. She couldn’t do anything right with Gerhard. If she talked about children and home, that didn’t suit him. But if she told an exciting story, something the guests obviously found interesting, he still wasn’t happy.

  She reappeared in the doorway in time to hear Gerhard say, “Well, of course my wife will be going to France! Where would we be if we couldn’t help our friends in need? I’ll miss my angel terribly, to be sure, but one has to make sacrifices now and then, doesn’t one.” He laughed jovially.

  Natalie Hackestorm joined in his laughter. “A voyage to Champagne—oh, I do envy you, Clara. But is your French up to it?”

  Clara waved one hand airily as she set the dessert on the table. “At school, I only had one hour of French each week, but I still read a French book now and then. Gerhard would like not only a good housewife at his side, but also a well-read spouse. Isn’t that right, dear?” She looked at him as sweetly as she could and earned a cramped smile in return.

  The professor and his wife exchanged a look.

  “And Josephine Neumann has picked up some French by talking to her French customers. Between us, we’ll get by.”

  Impressed, the professor’s wife nodded. Then she spontaneously took Clara’s hand and squeezed it firmly. “I wish you all the best for this trip. And all the best for the widow, of course. But you have to promise me one thing, my dear!”