Vintage (59 page)

He closed his eyes and pressed his pelvis against hers.

“I want to be on top,” she told him.

Mackesy duly lay down on his back. Madeleine sat up astride him and looked down into his face. She studied his eyes as though looking one more time for a reason not to do this. She didn’t find one. Her own expression relaxed.

“You look beautiful up there,” he said, touching her face again.

She was still wearing her bra.

“Take it off,” he said.

With a single, subtle action, she freed herself from the black lace cups that had been holding her so prettily all night. Mackesy smiled at the first sight of those fabulous breasts, shaped like a pair of perfect champagne bowls and topped with nipples like small flowers of pink frosting. They were begging to be licked. Mackesy tried to raise his head toward them but Madeleine held him down by the shoulders. She moved so that she was hovering directly above Mackesy’s penis. It pressed upward insistently.

Madeleine took Mackesy’s penis in one hand and lowered herself down onto it. Her eyes closed automatically as though to see as well as to feel at that moment might be a
sense too much. How easily he slid inside her. All the way, so that her buttocks rested upon his hipbones.

Madeleine eased herself up again, her hands back on Mackesy’s shoulders for balance. He held her gently by the waist, encouraging her to keep moving. Gradually, Madeleine’s rocking grew faster. Her eyes still tightly closed. She let her head hang forward so that her long hair brushed Mackesy’s face and chest. The sweet smell of her fine dark tresses filled his lungs.

“Look at me,” he instructed her.

Madeleine opened her eyes and locked onto Mackesy’s face as he studied hers. Her cheeks were flushed rose pink with exertion. Her smooth lips seemed bigger. Her eyes darker.

Inside her body, Madeleine could feel Mackesy’s penis as though it had become part of her. She could feel the pulse of the blood flow that made him harder as she rode him faster.

“Don’t stop!” he begged her. She wasn’t about to. Madeleine wanted to feel Mackesy lose control.

Determined that he wouldn’t be the only one coming that night, Mackesy licked his fingers and reached for his lover’s clitoris. Madeleine shuddered with pleasure as his fingers made contact and drew her closer to a climax.

Mackesy’s breathing grew ragged. Each time Madeleine’s body moved downward, he thrust up to meet her. He grasped her by the waist again, holding her more firmly.

Madeleine threw back her head, exposing her long white throat. All sensation was centered on the point where Mackesy entered her. All she could hear was the rush of blood through her veins.

The excitement finally overtook them. They couldn’t wait. They had wanted each other for far too long. Mackesy pulled her down against him, breaking her
rhythm. Down, down, down, down, down. Going impossibly deep inside her. She closed her eyes. She groaned.

Mackesy sighed her name as he came inside her. When she finished bucking with her own orgasm, she fell upon him, laughing softly into his shoulder.

“How long before you’re ready to do that again?”

T
he coroner’s office could be excused for being overwhelmed. The earthquake—the biggest the state had seen since 1906, had left an enormous workload for the six-strong coroner’s team. And so the body of Odile Levert was processed in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Head injuries, the coroner decided. Commensurate with her having been hit by wine barrels dislodged by the earthquake. If anyone suspected foul play, they didn’t have time to investigate it.

A long search for Odile’s family found no living relatives (her mother had passed away two years earlier). It was Ginsburg who eventually had her body collected from the morgue and arranged for her cremation.
Vinifera
ran a special memorial pamphlet inside the main magazine. It contained some of Odile’s most infamous and inflammatory reviews along with tributes from her former colleagues.

Almost two years after the earthquake and Odile’s death, Ronald and Hilarian met in Champagne—at Les Crayères in Reims, Odile’s favorite restaurant—and
lunched at a table set for three. Afterward, they drove up to the windmill near Verzenay and discreetly scattered Odile’s ashes around the vines. They knew she’d like the view from up there.

“She used to bang on about it often enough in her column,” said Hilarian fondly.

“Did you bring the wine?”

“Of course.”

Hilarian opened the boot of the car and fetched out a chilled bottle of Froggy Bottom, Cuvée Kelly.

“She said it was the best in its year.”

Ronald raised the toast to their former colleague.

“That girl knew her wine.”

T
wo and a half years after the San Francisco earthquake, for most of the good people of the city, life was entirely back to normal. The horror of that terrible night had faded. Earthquakes were once again just something you thought about when renewing your insurance.

Just one earthquake casualty remained in the intensive care unit of the hospital.

Mathieu Randon lay in a coma. There was no shortage of visitors to his room. In his absence, control of Domaine Randon had fallen to two men. Both of them visited Randon’s bedside as frequently as possible, hoping that their would be the face he saw when he came around.
Such loyalty, they had both decided independently, would be rewarded with greater power.

But, so long after the earthquake, Randon still showed no sign of recovering from his injuries.

“I hear he was a really powerful guy,” said one of the nurses charged with rolling Randon over from time to time to make sure he didn’t get bedsores.

“Don’t think he’s going to be chairing any board meetings any time soon,” said the other nurse, as she bestowed Randon’s bum with a gratuitous slap that set her colleague giggling.

“You can’t do that! It’s disrespectful.”

“Just watch me,” said the nurse, giving Randon’s bottom another smack.

That was when it happened … 

“Dr. Levinson! Dr. Levinson! Come quickly.” The nurse who had administered the slap ran down the corridor as though the devil were right behind her.

Dr. Levinson cut short his flirtation with the new girl at the admissions desk and raced to his patient’s side. The other nurse was standing with her back against the door, as though the man in her care had returned from the dead, rather than just the nearly dead.

Dr. Levinson leaned over his patient and held his breath as Mathieu Randon slowly but quite deliberately opened his eyes.

“Welcome back, Monsieur Randon,” said the doctor. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

“Yes,” said Randon in perfect English. “I think I’d like a glass of champagne.”

Writing this book has been such fun in great part because of the wonderful people I’ve met during the process. Special thanks are due to:

Peter Hall of Breaky Bottom in Sussex; Annie Lindo of Camel Valley in Cornwall; top sommelier Guy Harcourt-Wood; Marius Latergan of Morgenster in Stellenbosch, Adam Mason of Klein Constantia in Cape Town; Christian Denis of Bollinger; Remi Brice of Champagne Brice; Michael Mackenzie and Laurent Chiquet of Champagne Jacquesson; Simon Berry of Berry Bros. & Rudd; Michaela Baltasar and Philip Lambert of Clos Du Val in California; Tim Ludbrook; Amy Poon; Jack-Olivier Parisot; Mark Williamson; Steven Spurrier; Marguerite Finnigan; Guy Hazel; Victoria Routledge; Serena Mackesy; my agents, Antony Harwood and James Macdonald Lockhart; and my editors Carolyn Mays and Kate Howard, and in the US, Caitlin Alexander, as well as copy editors Justine Taylor and Pam Feinstein. And last but not least, Nat Wilde—a.k.a. “The Lovely Nat.” Dear Nat, thank you. You really are lovelier than “an Aston full of shoes” (copyright: Victoria Routledge).

Thirty-two-year-old Olivia Darling was born and raised in Cornwall. At the age of eighteen she met an Italian art student in St. Ives and ran away to Tuscany in hot pursuit of him. The love affair didn’t last but Olivia’s sojourn in Montepulciano inspired a much more enduring passion for Vino Nobile. She lives in London.