New World, New Love (31 page)

‘You stupid bitch!’ he roared, clasping his hand to his upper right arm, where a scarlet stain was spreading on his shirtsleeve as the blood seeped through his fingers and dripped to the floor. The wound was no more than a deep nick in the flesh, but shock and rage possessed him. ‘You’ll pay for this!’

As he went from the room he met Josette, white-faced, running along the gallery towards Louise’s room. ‘Get water and bandages, girl!’ he ordered. ‘There’s been an accident.’

Josette, after reassuring herself by a glance through the doorway that Louise was unharmed, ran to do his bidding, but had to hide her grin of satisfaction as she bound up his wound, inflicting as much pain as was possible.

The next morning Louise and Fernand faced each other in the library, he regarding her with loathing in his eyes, his thoughts murderous. There was nothing he wanted more at that moment than to put his hands about her throat and strangle her. She spoke calmly.

‘Both of us would prefer not to see each other again, but since we are compelled by circumstances to live under the same roof, we must make the best of it. You may go your way and I’ll go mine, but for both our sakes we shall conduct ourselves civilly at all times. Are you agreed?’

He glared, but gave an angry nod. If he was to be accepted by the local nobility, whose lineage in some cases was superior to his own, he had no choice. He needed to be included in their country pursuits of hunting and drinking and gaming if he was not to die of boredom. Neither did he wish to be whispered about as a wife-beater by married women, who would otherwise be susceptible sexually to him. But when eventually Louise received her inheritance from her old aunt, who seemed to be taking a devilish long time to die, there would be nothing to stop him, as her husband, claiming it all. Then, he thought triumphantly, he would return to Paris and take up the pleasures of the past! But not before he had avenged himself on her for the humiliation she had wreaked on him that last night. He had mutilation of her beauty in mind.

On the last day the workmen were at the château, one arrived carrying two chairs. As he separated them Louise recognized the lyre backs and knew they were from the Music Room.

‘I think these belong to the château,’ he said, somewhat uneasily. ‘I happened to find them in my yard one day not long after you went away. I think looters must have dumped them there.’

She took his lie at its face value, only thankful to have them returned. ‘If you hear of any more items taken from here, I’d be willing to give a reward for their return.’

He blinked in astonishment when she gave him a gold coin, which she hoped would encourage others to bring back their loot.

From then on several other pieces were brought back, but only three hall chairs ever reappeared and none of the smaller items, such as the silver, the clocks and many fine pieces of Sèvres porcelain, which must have been sold on. It was to be expected of starving people when even successive revolutionary governments had sold many of France’s treasures internationally to raise money. It was said that countless numbers of the fine pieces and objets d’art from Versailles and other royal palaces had ended up in the stately homes of England.

When the small workforce departed from the château, it was left smelling of new paint and beeswax and dried lavender, with no sign left of the damage wreaked by the intruders. A number of rooms upstairs and down were then locked up. Those to be kept open were not as bare as before, for, as in any great house, furniture had been changed according to fashion throughout the decades and both the cellars and the attics had yielded up many good and useful pieces.

In the White Salon the sofas and surviving chairs had come back from Bordeaux, where they had been re-upholstered in some yellow-striped Lyons silk that Louise had found stored away in a chest. Pictures that had survived were rehung and others had been brought down from the attics to cover the light patches on the walls. Although two portraits of Louise’s ancestors had been damaged beyond repair, there was a restorer of paintings, also in the town, who had been entrusted to work on the rest. By mail she had been informed that her application for the return of the contents of her library was being considered.

Her new domestic staff would have been by necessity only three in number, but Fernand insisted on having a valet, and she appointed one from Bordeaux, who doubled as a footman. Only two of the former twelve gardeners were re-employed, but although she engaged a gardener’s boy to assist them, she could not afford a third man. In any case, the vegetables in the kitchen garden were more important than flowers for the time being. Fernand, who had an eye for a good horse, would have filled the stables, but Louise limited his purchases to riding horses for each of them and one for the chaise.

All these happenings took place while she and Pierre set improvements on the land in progress. It seemed to her that never before had every minute of her days been so occupied. If the thought came as to how joyous it would all have been with Daniel at her side, she drove it from her.

A
fter what had seemed an endless time of waiting Louise finally received a letter from Madeleine. She read it eagerly. First of all, Madeleine wrote of how much they were all missing her and went on to give news of Delphine, whose romance with John had moved on to a more serious plane, with the possibility of a betrothal before long. The hat shop had been sold to another milliner and three of the staff had been retained, but the new owner’s creations could not match those that Louise had made, either in style or charm. Madeleine also gave news of mutual friends and acquaintances, but did not mention the gossip that Louise knew must have erupted after her departure.
I know you are eager for news of Daniel
, Madeleine continued in her clear hand,
but there is little to tell
.

Louise compressed her lips in anguish. She longed to write to him, but she had to keep to her resolve.

Gradually, as the weeks and months slid by, social life was re-established in the district as the returned émigrés began to feel settled again. Louise was pleased to renew old acquaintances as calls were made and returned. Almost without exception every landowner was like Louise in struggling to make estates profitable again, but there were dining and dancing, cards and picnics and hunting parties just as before, although nothing was on the lavish scale of the past. Yet there was private sorrow too, for there was not a family that had not lost one or more members to the guillotine, and none of the châteaux had escaped the looting, although some had fared better than others.

Louise and Fernand spoke very little to each other, but it suited them both and it lessened the strain between them. He played the role of host to perfection whenever they returned hospitality. He liked to give the impression that he was totally in charge of the estate and its gradual improvement, but he only questioned Pierre enough to talk knowledgeably in company about all that was being done. Except for hunting he was bored by country pleasures and the gaming was not for the high stakes that he enjoyed. But in Bordeaux he could find what he wanted and was often away from the château for several days at a time while he indulged himself at the gaming dens and brothels.

Now and again when he had a particularly good win he went to Paris, spending lavishly to make advantageous connections in his determination to gain an entrée into the high circles of the increasingly extravagant Napoleonic court. It pleased him to be addressed by his title again, which was not surprising since Napoleon had made princes and princesses of his brothers and sisters. It was obvious to Fernand that the First Consul appreciated lavish display and grandeur, which was to his own taste, for he had long missed the great days of Versailles. His current wish was to get an invitation to Malmaison, where Josephine Bonaparte, the great soldier’s lovely wife, held sway. That might have to wait until he had his hands on Louise’s inheritance from her aunt, when he could take up residence in Paris again, but in the meantime he was preparing the way.

Whenever Fernand returned to the château after his money had run out, he was always in a vile mood at having to come back to the dull countryside after a brief spell of living in the manner that he considered to be the inherent right of every nobleman, for the cause of the Revolution had left no mark on him, as it had on other thinking people in all ranks of society. All his life and in every circumstance, he had only considered what was best for himself.

Although Louise had written to Violette in England at the same time as she had to Madeleine, it took several weeks longer for a reply to reach her, which with the vagaries of the mail was not surprising. Violette wrote with compassion of Louise’s having to return to Fernand after finding such happiness in America. She had hoped that Louise would never learn that he was still alive, which was why she had not mentioned his visit in any of the letters she had sent to Boston. Was there no chance of Louise ridding herself of her obnoxious husband through divorce?

Louise looked up from the letter for a few moments. She had thought of divorce many times and wished it was possible, but Fernand would never release her. Although he considered the estate to be essential to his social position, he had no wish to run it himself and, since he had no power to sell any of it for his own gain, he would continue to keep her tied to him until the end of her days. His infidelities would count for nothing, since he could counteract any accusations on her part by pointing out that he had forgiven her for taking another husband overseas.

Returning to the letter, Louise read the carefully phrased reply to her concerned enquiry as to her aunt’s health. Violette explained that she had had a little trouble with her heart and her doctor had advised living in the country, away from the foul air of the city. The letter closed with the assurance that there was no cause for alarm and she sent her most affectionate greetings to her beloved niece while hoping for an immediate visit from her whenever the war between Britain and France should come to an end.

Louise folded the letter, hoping that opportunity would come soon.

Local châteaux owners had begun attending sales and auctions in Bordeaux and elsewhere in the hope of recovering furniture and other family items that had been looted from their homes. Louise was among them, but so far she had not found anything that she recognized. Then one day she discovered a large painting in oils of Alexandre’s old home, which she remembered had hung in his library. Triumphantly, she purchased it to keep until such time as it could be returned to him in a traveller’s safe keeping, not wanting to risk it being lost. She had written regularly to Alexandre and Blanche, although she knew some letters would never arrive, but she hoped that they would receive this special news of her discovery, knowing how pleased they would be. In the meantime she hung it in the music salon to remind her of the happy times she had spent at the château before it had become no more than a fire-blackened ruin.

On a January morning in the New Year of 1801, Louise sat looking over the accounts she had kept since taking charge of the estate after her homecoming nearly ten months ago. She saw again how her American assets had drained away, even the proceeds of her shop having gone towards paying off the high interest on the loan she had had to shoulder to meet the many expenses incurred by the estate. Fernand’s gaming debts were another problem. Whenever he owed money locally he borrowed from her. He had repaid a loan only once, when, in an attempt to humiliate her, he had thrown the money at her feet as if scattering alms to the poor.

On the credit side of her finances the wine harvest had been far better than either she or Pierre had expected and the corn had grown tall and golden, selling for a good price. The woodland had also yielded some good timber, which had been shipped to a naval dockyard, the need for ships to replace those sunk by the British Navy being acute.

There was still much to be done in the way of further improvement to her estate, for many fields had been left fallow for far too long and it was essential that a large area of the vineyard, long neglected in her absence, was revived. But as she considered all that had been achieved since her return, she allowed herself to be optimistic about the estate’s future. Hard work was her opiate for the yearning for Daniel that never left her. She had heard only twice from Madeleine since the letter received after her return last year, and it was obvious that some had gone missing in between. There had been almost no fresh news of him, for there seemed to have been no change in his withdrawn mood or in his solitary living.

One summer morning a newly returned émigré called to make herself known to Louise. Upon being told that the mistress of the château was out, she chose to wait. Two hours passed before Louise, who had been on an inspection of the vineyards with Pierre, returned home. She saw at once from the chaise parked in the forecourt that she had a visitor. Dismounting swiftly from her horse, she went indoors to the White Salon, where her visitor was waiting.

Rose de Torré, whose age was close to Louise’s own, rose to her feet immediately, a smile of greeting lighting up her finely featured face. Tallish, with soft blond hair, her violet eyes large and expressive, she had a warmth and friendliness in her attitude that made Louise take to her at once as they introduced themselves.