The pace of my furiously beating heart kept time with my rushing feet. A crack of thunder roared above and spots of fat raindrops came sailing down from the sky. I ran into the barn to find Achille standing in the center of the floor, placing a bucket of freshly picked grapes beside the crushing barrel.
He started when I came rushing in, as a curtain of torrential rain dropped from the dark clouds outside. His blue eyes were surprised at my intrusion, but then heat exploded in my stomach as Achille, completely frozen to the spot, raked his gaze over me in my dress. And there was nothing innocent or timid about the sudden flare of passion in his eyes. The need and want was there, as plain as day. The muscles on his bare torso bunched and tensed; his hands clenched at his sides. Spatters of dirt and grape juice lay on his bronzed skin, his black hair unkempt and in disarray.
I imagined the picture we made. Me, a duchessa, styled and dressed to the nines and him, a winemaker, dirtied and roughened from an honest day’s work.
I averted my gaze when I could no longer take the hunger in his eyes. I strived to find my composure, to find the courage to speak. But when my eyes landed on the trash can in the corner of the room, on the wrinkled newspaper that was still its only occupant, I rushed forward. I took out the paper and read the article, no longer caring if the story about me was good or bad. I just had to know. I read every word, and with every sentence, my heart broke a little more.
How long had he kept up this charade? How long had he kept this secret? Then my soul cracked completely. He had been without his father for months. A man who would have helped him. A man who read to him when Achille couldn’t read for himself.
Achille . . . he was so alone.
So completely lost.
I felt him behind me. Still on the same spot across the room. I looked up; his distraught eyes were focused on the paper in my hands. “Achille,” I whispered, feeling tears build in my eyes. “It made no mention of my staying here in Umbria. Or anything about the prince, like you said. It was a piece about my life in New York, about my family and the business.”
Achille’s skin became ashen. He looked away at the sheet of rain dancing beyond the open barn door.
“The labels.” I dropped the newspaper on the floor. “The missed mistakes, the incorrect sample . . . you didn’t know, did you?”
“Don’t,” Achille bit out when I was a mere three feet from him. “Don’t talk of things you don’t know, Duchessa.”
“Achille—”
I expected him to shout, to display the aggression I knew he harbored so deeply inside, the aggression he had shown me twice before. The aggression born from frustration.
But instead Achille tiredly hung his head, his body losing its will to fight. “Please . . . don’t . . .” He took a deep breath. “Not you . . . not from you . . .”
My bottom lip shook at the defeat in his voice, in his stature. My soul screamed in sympathy for the torment afflicting his. Because this reaction, this lack of willingness to argue, told me everything I needed to know.
He truly couldn’t read or write. He could make the world’s finest wine, could be such a kind and gentle man, yet he could not read the labels of the award-winning merlot he made with his talented bare hands.
It was the cruelest of God’s jokes.
“Don’t pity me.” My breath paused at the softly spoken request. “I don’t want your pity.”
“I don’t pity you,” I said, my voice shaking with the tension of the moment. “I am angry for you. I am so angry that you were never given the help you should have been.”
Achille flinched, as if my words had physically wounded him. An expression of pain disfigured his beautiful features.
Achille avoided my eyes, instead searching the barn. His hands shook at his sides, but not with anger. There was no anger left in this hollowed-out space. I could feel only Achille’s despondency, his lack of understanding about what to do now that his greatest secret had been exposed to the harsh light of day.
I saw the empty buckets spread around his feet, only one still full. I saw the rest of the grapes in the barrel ready to be crushed. Achille’s eyes shone like the most beautiful stained glass as helplessness gathered in their depths.
I had never wanted to hurt him, to shame him. I only wanted to help. My pained soul wanted nothing more than to see him healed of this injustice.
I needed to make him feel comfortable.
I needed this lost boy found.
The old cassette player was sitting on the countertop. Skirting around the motionless Achille, I pressed play . . . and my eyes closed as a wave of emotion washed over me. The opening bars of “Sogno”, my dressage music, graced the humid stormy air with their perfect sound.
Achille had been listening to this music today. The old speakers of the player were still warm. He had been listening to this song. As Andrea Bocelli sang of sleep and of dreams, I turned and saw a bead of sweat travel the length of Achille’s back. His skin shivered in its wake and his muscles danced.
I approached him slowly, like one would approach a wild animal. I stood before him, and his nostrils flared. His eyes were still focused outside. “Were you about to crush the grapes?”
My diversion tactic worked; Achille’s eyebrows pulled down in confusion and his eyes fell to mine. “Yes,” he said.
“Then let’s crush them.” I bent down to take off my shoes. Achille watched me as I kicked my heels aside. He looked dubiously at my dress, but I didn’t let that stop me. It was only fabric, and replaceable. Achille was a fellow human in pain. There was no comparison.
“Do we wash our feet?” I asked, looking around the barn for cleaning supplies. Achille took a while to move. He led me to a metal trough filled with an astringent-smelling solution. As I stepped into the cold liquid, Achille bent down to rid himself of his boots and roll his jeans up to his knees.
I stepped out of the bucket. Achille washed his own feet, then he poured the final buckets of grapes into the barrel. Lifting the hem of my dress, I hitched the material up to my thighs and tried to climb in, but the sides were too high. Just as I was about to ask for Achille’s help, he slipped his hands around my waist, and as if I weighed no more than a feather, he placed me in the barrel. The top layer of grapes exploded under me, the juices slipping between my toes and flowing over my feet and ankles.
Achille watched me in fascination. The final note of “Sogno” sounded from the cassette player. A clicking noise sounded though the speakers, and then another song began to play.
“Are you getting in?” I asked.
I was rewarded with a timid smile. Then Achille stepped in, his tall, broad frame crowding me in the barrel. I yelped as I was thrown off balance by a shift in the mass of grapes beneath us. Achille reached out and steadied me. His hands wrapped around my own, causing the hem of my dress to fall back to my knees. His gaze drifted downward, and mine followed. The bottom of my dress was covered in red juice.
“You are ruining your dress.”
“Yes, I suspect I am,” I replied. A husky sliver of a laugh escaped his lips. It was the most heavenly sound. “So,” I asked, ignoring his concern for my attire. “How do we do this?”
“We stomp.” He began lifting his feet, slowly crushing the grapes under them. Holding onto him more tightly, I copied his movements, the sticky juice flowing faster the more we stomped.
“It feels bizarre,” I said, looking down at the grape juice rising up the sides of the barrel. “The juice is sticky, the grape flesh soft, but the stems are hard. They keep stabbing the soles of my feet.”
“We leave the stems on to strengthen the tannins and deepen the color of the wine.” The more Achille talked of the wine, the more his confidence returned to his voice. Wine, he knew. He could never be caught off guard when it came to his beloved merlot. It followed a system at which he excelled. A routine that he knew as well as he knew himself. There was no threat, no feeling of inferiority.
“How long do we do this?” I asked as we circled the barrel, ensuring each grape was paid equal attention.
“As long as it takes,” he replied. “I can be here for an hour on my own. With you, it will be less.” As the minutes passed and the juice rose, the splashes came higher, reaching my chest and his stomach.