The pin in his cravat was gold tipped with nacre, which strictly speaking was allowable for daytime, though unusual. Rye felt about as well turned out by comparison as a raven would next to a peacock.
“I won’t take up much of your time,” he said, “and you need not trouble with the hospitable displays. I come on a matter of business.”
Fournier’s smile dimmed. “You want to buy my champagne. You have your foot in the door at the Coventry, but lack the inventory to meet the demand. I congratulate you on your good fortune, but that is no reason to neglect the civilities.”
“Brandy, then.” The day was chilly and gray, as the next five months were likely to be chilly and gray.
“Brandy is the French choice. One applauds.” Fournier poured from cut crystal decanters on a rose marble-topped sideboard. The scrollwork and ornate brass fittings proclaimed the piece an example of Louis XIV cabinetry.
The rest of Fournier’s office was furnished with a similar blend of tastefully displayed wealth and understated style. His carpet was Savonnerie, his curtains delicate Brussels lace. His andirons were topped with brass fleur-de-lis polished to a high shine.
Ann would notice the scent, though all Rye could detect was a faint fragrance of sandalwood that probably emanated from his host.
“To a world that adores our champagne,” Fournier said, touching his glass to Rye’s, “and pays a good price for it. I hope Dorning is not getting too much of a family discount from you?”
The brandy was excellent, mellow and fiery, complex and satisfying. Ann would enjoy it for the nose alone. She might also enjoy Fournier’s gracious good cheer, though Rye found his host’s expansive charm unsettling.
“Dorning isn’t getting any family discount, not that my arrangement with him is your business.”
“Good for you,” Fournier said, sipping his drink. “And Dorning pays on time and doesn’t play games about broken bottles or mislaid cases. I was never successful getting Jules Delacourt to develop recipes to flatter my champagne, but then, Jules is a cook, not a sommelier. Shall we pace around one another hissing and spitting like lovesick tomcats, or sit before the fire like gentlemen?”
Rye took a seat before the fire, for good brandy ought to be savored. “My errand is actually somewhat insulting—to you.”
“Not very English of you, to offer insults to my face. The Scots will insult a man openly, but so cleverly he doesn’t notice until the whole room silently mocks him. The Irish speak eloquently with their fists, but the English murmur in their gilded tents.”
A biblical allusion, and apt. “Somebody is murmuring about me and my past, Fournier. Is that somebody you?”
Fournier took the opposite wing chair and crossed his legs at the knee, like the Continental dandy he pretended to be.
“Non. You do not deserve ill treatment from me, and—quel dommage—your champagne doesn’t either. I serve a good wine, you serve a fine wine. The question is, can the English tell the difference, and are they willing to pay for quality when they bother to notice it? You hope yes, I hope no.”
That query was, in fact, the pivotal point upon which Rye’s business would prosper or flounder. Would the English pay more for higher quality? The temptation to explore the topic further with Fournier was distracting.
“You aren’t putting it about that I sold out to the French while yet wearing a British uniform?”
Fournier’s dark gaze lost any hint of jovial bonhomie. “You famously did not sell out, which is why you now support half the old women among the émigrés. This is common knowledge in certain quarters.”
“I do not support half the old women among the émigrés.”
Fournier held up his glass, the amber liquid reflecting the flames dancing on the hearth. “Lucille Roberts, as is known to all the world, presides over a henhouse full of elderly ladies and their various impecunious nephews and un-dowered nieces. The grannies would canonize you if they could, and because you look after them, their families are in your debt. The most common reason to curry favor among people who have neither wealth nor influence is guilt, though the English call this charité. Ergo, you remained loyal to the English half of your heritage, and you are atoning to the French half with your generosity.”
The brandy made a good first impression and improved upon that with further acquaintance. “You don’t consider basic decency a reason to look after the elderly?”
“Basic decency is fine for one’s immediate family and donations to the poor box, but it does not sell many cases of champagne. Tell me of the slander, Goddard. I like to think of you suffering, for God has surely blessed your vineyards to an unfair degree. I prefer that you suffer for some heroic fault—vanity, perhaps—which does not appear to afflict you, if your tailoring is any indication. Maybe stubbornness will be your downfall. I can but hope, non?”
“Must I have a downfall?”
Another smile, more piratical. “Frankly, no. The English became fond of champagne before we French saw it as anything other than a failure of proper winemaking, but then, the English had sturdier bottles than we did, thanks to their endless supply of coal-fired furnaces. If enough Englishmen become enamored of effervescent wine, then London will soon be flooded with others like us, peddling their French vintages. France can make a fortune off the Englishman’s thirst. I like this plan very much.”
“Sparkling wine strikes me as a libation that ladies should enjoy,” Rye said, though what had that to do with anything?
“Everybody should enjoy champagne,” Fournier said, finishing his brandy. “L’empereur had the right of it in this as in so many things: ‘Champagne! In victory one deserves it, in defeat one needs it.’ Napoleon’s dictum applies to life, does it not, for what is life but a series of victories and defeats?"
Rye did not want to like Fournier, did not want to find him charming and shrewd, and yet, he was both. “For some, there’s apparently time in life to spread treasonous rumors about me. If I went back to France with my tail between my legs, you could make your fortune that much faster.”
Fournier took his empty glass to the sideboard and resumed his seat before the fire. “You are still at war, Goddard. You suspect ambushes behind every stirring of amorous hedgehogs in the English undergrowth. The London market has room for us both, and for others besides, but we must each find our place in that market. My tenure at the Coventry was limited by the size of Dorning’s demand. His club prospers, his orders for champagne grew quickly, and now lesser venues are copying his signature gesture of hospitality. Unlike Dorning, those lesser venues do not cater to discerning palates.”
“You can charge them more for a humbler product.”
“Precisely, and there are more of them, so I need not rely on the whim of a single customer to whom all my best inventory is promised. I will part from Dorning without rancor, because he has you to meet his demand at prices he can afford to pay. All is well, the customers are happily swilling champagne, and I need not worry that you will accost me in some dark alley with revenge on your mind because I have put you out of business. Am I not a genius among men?”
“And so humble, Fournier. I do not take revenge in dark alleys.”