Following a cherished ritual, she would open the bedroom window wide and dreamily let her white muslin robe slip off her body and drift to the parquet floor. Then she would recline on the old sofa, which was loosely draped with Indian fabric, and for hours, sometimes the entire night, she would o...
I know that I often annoyed you with my advice and petty obsessions. Do you remember that tartan scarf that you never wanted to wear to school? We played a little game every day when it was cold outside. I would pull it up around your ears in the morning. And in the afternoon, when you came home,...
It was January, but it felt like an aging autumn in this part of the Touraine region. Lazy cows grazed in the pasture, just as they had in the summer. From the terrace of the Château de La Tortinière, Benjamin Cooker stared at the blurry lines of the landscape. In the distance, the Montbazon cast...
Zoltán was showboating at the wheel. His cousin Pavel was sitting next to him, laughing. Evidently Vilmos was a no-show. Perhaps he had stayed behind in the vineyards? At this time of year there was plenty of work to do. Above the River Tisza, the sun had given way to thic...
He inhaled the aroma of the leather upholstery, listened to the engine purr, and gauged the responsiveness of the manual transmission. The memory of his grandfather Eugène was so palpable, it wouldn’t have surprised him if he had looked in the rearview mirror and seen him sitting in the backseat,...
But Father Péchaudoux, addressing the confined assembly in coats reeking of mothballs and dried lavender, was clearly in his element, and the Mass went on and on. The priest’s voice rose to the rafters as he swept from one part of the liturgy to the next. “Receive, oh Lord...
For three hours now, he had been sitting at the table between the wife of the ambassador to the Netherlands and a film star whose name he dared not ask for fear of offending her. He vaguely remembered having seen her in a period piece where she played the harpsichord in a château full of mirrors ...
They were battalions in golden armor ready to do battle in the valley. But these vines would never cross the Mosel River. Such a maneuver would have been suicidal. Riesling needed exposure to southern sun and a steep incline in slate-rich soil that furrowed in stormy weather. The steeper the slop...
Guillaume Périthiard then purchased his cousin’s Beaujolais vineyards. Eric Chavannes closed his real estate agency and moved out of the region. The Vol-au-Vent Régnié turned out to be delicate and perfumed, seductive, supple, round, and generous, w...