The Night Before the Winemaking Contest, Floating Comments Exposed His Plan Chapter 05

The Night Before the Winemaking Contest, Floating Comments Exposed His Plan Chapter 05

The head judge tapped the microphone.

Every vintner brought their entry forward. But the crowd was only looking at me.

“She actually showed up?”

“Her vineyard burned down and her hands are wrecked. What’s she going to compete with?”

I set the tasting glass in front of the judges.

“Please.”

The head judge lifted the tasting cloche. A clean, bright aroma cut through the room.

Nothing like golden muscadine’s heavy richness.

Light and sweet on the palate, with a finish that lingered like the first clear morning after a snowfall, everything waking up, everything new.

Three judges stood at once.

“This is…”

“Snowcrest chardonnay?”

The room erupted.

“How is that possible?”

“Didn’t that go extinct years ago?”

“Wasn’t her vineyard destroyed?”

One of the judges lifted the glass with shaking hands.

“Small, tapered berries. Pale green skin. That aroma, delicate, unmistakable…”

“It’s real.”

“It’s really snowcrest chardonnay.”

Every eye in the room turned to me.

They’d all said I was nothing without the verdant touch.

Eleven tries, eleven failures: coming back for a twelfth was just delusion.

But they forgot something.

The verdant touch could bring dead vines back to life.

But it couldn’t study viticulture for me. It couldn’t sit through twenty years of frost and drought and failure in

my place.

The microphone whined with a quick feedback pitch.

The head judge’s voice carried across the grounds.

“This year’s Champion Vintner: Laurel Whitaker!”

Below the stage, Wesley stood with the crumpled note in his fist.

He stared up at me.

The head judge continued with the tradition.

“By the founders’ covenant, the Champion Vintner may marry into the valley’s top family, regardless of whether the heir is already wed.”

The crowd held its breath.

Someone in the crowd called out with a grin.

“Champion Vintner and the Ashford heir. That’s been the love story of Briarvale for a hundred years.”

“What about Camille?”

“She’s nobody. Of course he’ll divorce her. She can’t compete with a Champion Vintner.”

Wesley said nothing.

Half his face was lost in shadow. I couldn’t read his expression.

Camille tugged at his sleeve, nervous.

“Wesley… is she going to take you away from me?”

He didn’t answer. Something warred behind his eyes.

Camille called his name again, and he flinched like he’d been pulled back from somewhere far away. His voice was barely there.

“No.”

I was already facing the judges’ table.

“I decline the marriage.”

“My demand is the deed to the 1,650-acre abandoned vineyard in Northpine.”

Dead silence.

Wesley’s hand went slack. The note drifted to his side.

The noise came crashing back.

“She’s doing this out of spite.”

“Who does she think she is, going north to grow grapes on dead land?”

I didn’t explain.

Every grower in Briarvale considered that vineyard dead ground. Nothing would take root there.

But it had the only soil in the region where snowcrest chardonnay could thrive.

The head judge leaned toward me.

“Laurel, you’re certain?”

“I am.”

It was done. The crowd scattered.

I gathered my things and headed for the gate.

I’d barely cleared the tasting grounds when I heard him.

“Laurel.”

Wesley stood behind me.

The composure he always wore was gone. What was left looked like panic, the kind he didn’t even realize was showing.

“I took care of the men who burned your vineyard. I didn’t find out until after, and by then you wouldn’t see

me…”

“Laurel. Are you really leaving?”