Page 62 of Dagger’s Shield

After logging off, re-encrypting my hard drive, and locking my screen, I took caution one step further and hid my laptop in a place only Marthe and I knew about.

As I made my way downstairs, I could hear her commandeering the kitchen staff, who, when I stuck my head in the doorway, were positioned at various stations around the room. They’d been cooking for a week, and the smell of roasting meat and warm pastry had reached every corner of the chateau. When I offered to help, she pointed at the door with a wooden spoon and said Rémy needed me more than she did.

She was right. He stood in the middle of the area off the main tasting room, where we held larger events, looking perplexed. His sleeves were rolled up, and he was directing the placement of several long tables. He handed me a box of white tapers before saying good morning.

“Do you remember how this works?” he asked.

“Of course I do.”

We spent the next hour covering every surface with linens and setting out the decorations I’d grown up with—pine boughs cut from the property, ribbons, and candles. My mother inspected our work as we finished a section, adjusting anything that wasn’t placed the way she liked it.

When Dagger returned and asked how he could help, Rémy told him to find the storage areas off the vaults and to start bringing chairs up. It was a job that involved a lot of heavy lifting, something Dagger was built to handle.

The families began arriving at three. Within an hour, the caveau was louder than I’d ever heard it. Workers and their wives and husbands took their places at the tables, children ran the length of the room, and Marthe’s food disappeared as fast as her staff could carry it out.

Rémy was everywhere at once. He greeted every family at the doors, and he knew all of them—which vineyard parcel the men or women worked in, which of their kids had started at the lycée—the school—in September. He carried a toddler on one arm and hugged those arriving as though he did it every day. No one responded to him like their boss. It was more that he was one of their neighbors.

He caught me watching and crossed to me with the toddler still on his arm. “You remember Berthe’s grandson?” The boy hid his face in Rémy’s collar, and my cousin grinned and walked away before I could remind him how long it had been since I’d visited Valais.

Dagger didn’t speak ten words of French, but it made no difference. When I found him, he was crouched in front of a row of children, making a coin disappear and pulling it from behind their ears. They shrieked and demanded he do it again and again.

How many rooms had I watched this man charm? Dozens. This was different. He wasn’t performing for anyone. He was playing with kids and enjoying it as much as they were.

I went to refill my mother’s wineglass and noticed a woman who looked vaguely familiar, but who I couldn’t place. Her long dark hair cascaded over her shoulders, a perfect contrast to the tight-fitting red silk dress she wore. When she glanced in my direction, I sensed she recognized me too, but she turned away without acknowledging me. No, her sights were on someone else entirely, and as soon as she found Dagger, she headed straight over to him. She put her hand on his forearm and leaned in when she spoke. Her interest in him required no translation.

He straightened, lifted her hand off his arm, said something brief, then returned to entertaining the children. She walked away as though the exchange had never happened, again avoiding my gaze. But that wasn’t the part that mattered. It was Dagger’s reaction. I’d watched him often enough to know his tells, and while the woman was very beautiful, he hadn’t seemed to notice or care.

“Maëlle, it’s so good to see you. It’s been so long.” I turned around at the sound of a voice I recognized. Jean-Pierre Lavigne had worked for Valais since before I was born.

“Monsieur Lavigne. It’s good to see you too. The years have treated you well.” We cheek-kissed.

He glanced around the room. “This event gets bigger every Christmas.”

“How many years have you attended?” I asked.

“This will be the thirty-second. It will also be the last.”

I put my hand on his arm. “Why?”

“Thanks to your father’s generosity, I’ve been able to put aside enough money to retire. Every year, the bonuses are twice what they were the year before.”

They doubled every Christmas?

“I’m happy Valais has been able to be increasingly generous.”

“The staff is too. And it isn’t only Valais. The region has been boasting record sales for several years in a row.”

“The entire region?”

He nodded. “Even the smaller domaines. Business is booming in Burgundy. Again, thanks to your father.”

“Why thanks to him specifically?”

“He’s the one who negotiated the deal for the Compagnie de Burgondie.”

The group he referred to was the area’s cooperative union.

We chatted a few minutes more about his family, cheek-kissed again, and he walked away.