New World, New Love (3 page)

At any other time Louise would have been overjoyed at the prospect of balls and parties and entertainments presided over by the lovely Queen Marie Antoinette herself, but she was presently too steeped in grief at losing her father.

‘Not yet, Oncle,’ she said haltingly, her throat still sob-strained, her handkerchief tear-sodden in the pocket of her skirt. ‘In a while, but not yet. In any case, Delphine is only five. She wouldn’t like to be away from home in strange surroundings.’

Although Louise had been only ten herself when their mother had died, she had become instantly protective towards her newborn sister and that had never changed. Her uncle gave an impatient snort.

‘Don’t talk nonsense, girl. Delphine will stay on here with her nurse until she is of marriageable age, as you are now. The present châtelaine is running the household efficiently and your late father’s bailiff has kept the estate in good order. However, I shall send a bailiff of my own to take full charge of the land, a capable man by the name of Jacques Droux. We don’t want the peasants taking advantage of your father’s demise to become lax in their toil. In fact, to my mind, he was far too easy on them.’

Louise had been looking down at her hands in her lap, clasping them tightly. Now she raised her head, steely determination in her clear green eyes.

‘I’ll not go anywhere without Delphine!’

The count remained unmoved. He knew how to crush rebellion, whether in a horse or a woman. ‘If you do not agree to do as I say, I shall put you in one convent and Delphine in another. Is that what you’d prefer? I’ll not ask you again.’

It broke her. She could never let her sister go among strangers on her own and this man’s will was of iron. Her parting with Delphine had been agonizing. The child had wept and screamed and clung to her. Louise, also in tears, had tried to comfort her.

‘I’ll do everything I can to bring us together again soon. And I’ll write often. You’ll write to me too, won’t you?’

Her last view of her sister that day had been of her breaking free of her nurse to run after the coach, her face tear-streaked and her arms outstretched.

Louise sighed at the memory. Now they were both in an alien land and all they had known lost for ever. In that moment she felt a terrible upsurge of homesickness for the contented days at their country château, before she ever left for Versailles – in those years before France descended into chaos.

Before undressing, she took off the scarlet ribbon from around her neck. Another widow on the ship had given it to her, but she would not wear it again. Neither would she use her title any more, which was why she had not given it with her name to Mrs Ford, for it belonged to the past, together with private and agonizing memories of rape, brutality and deceit that she had been forced to endure. As for her wedding ring, that had gone long since in desperate circumstances, and it was her mother’s that she wore.

She had also finished with mourning black. Nothing could ever make her forget those dear to her who had gone, but for Delphine’s sake she had to make tomorrow a new beginning and the way to more secure times.

B
efore breakfast next morning Louise had decided against the employment vacancies that previously had most interested her. One had been for a hairdresser – and she was deft at dressing her own hair and her sister’s rebellious curls – the second a post for a governess and the third that of a housekeeper. But she had come to the conclusion that it would not be wise to work away from Delphine for the time being and they must find employment under the same roof.

Since her escape from France, Louise had held no false pride about the status of whatever work she might have to take, but she wanted employment that would interest her. If it should be in a trade that she could learn to master, there would be possibilities for advancement. She realized that opportunities for an ambitious woman were as limited in this country as they would be anywhere else in the civilized world, but she intended to keep her eyes and ears open for any chance that came along. As for Delphine, her oft-stated aim was to make a good marriage with a rich man, but that was no more than a dream in their present circumstances.

After breakfast Louise returned to their room with borrowed pen and ink and a stick of red sealing wax to write a letter to their aunt in England, leaving her sister chatting to Mrs Ford downstairs. She sat down at the little table and began to write. Violette, her late father’s sister, had married an Englishman over thirty years ago and Louise had visited them in London during the early years of her marriage to Fernand de Vailly. He’d let her go on her own, having no interest in going himself, and she’d had a happy, carefree visit that stood out in her memory. She knew that Violette would be bitterly disappointed that she and Delphine had not sought refuge with her, but this letter would explain the circumstances.

When Louise eventually put down her pen she sealed the letter using her own seal with its family crest, one of the few things she had been able to bring with her from home. She was glad to be on her own for a little while. As she had written to Violette, when planning their escape from France, she had expected that they would get across the Channel to England by fishing boat as so many other émigrés had done, but fate had intervened and brought them to the other side of the world instead.

Her thoughts ran back to the day at Versailles when that great angry mob had come from Paris to swarm through the palace gates. Just before they had broken into the palace itself and had come roaring for blood up the staircase, she and some other ladies of the court had been elsewhere in the great palace and were cut off from the royal family’s presence. They could do nothing but wait in an agony of suspense until their worst fears were realized. Through a window they glimpsed that hideous procession as the King and Queen and their children had been taken off to Paris, the heads of loyal soldiers carried triumphantly on pikes ahead of their coach like banners.

It had been a signal for many aristocrats to get over the borders into neighbouring countries without delay, for nobody knew what would be happening next, but her one thought had been to get home to her sister. It had been a hazardous journey made in a working woman’s clothes that a maidservant had found for her. She had set off on a horse from the palace stables, but it was stolen one night while she slept under a tree. All the time, she avoided entering any taverns or hostelries, fearful that she might be spotted as a noblewoman and murdered by peasants fired up by the Revolution. Her money soon ran out as suspicious farming folk charged her exorbitantly for whatever food they could spare. Eventually she arrived home on an old nag for which she had exchanged her wedding ring. In spite of her bedraggled appearance Delphine had recognized her from a window and come running joyfully to meet her.

The countryside around was quiet enough at the time, but there was a change in the atmosphere. When she rode around the estate the morning after her homecoming the peasants, some of whom she had known all her life, barely answered her when she spoke to them and looked away when they saw her riding nearby. Only Pierre, the former bailiff, a conscientious fair-minded man, was the same as he had always been towards her, knowing it was no fault of hers that he had lost his authority to the bailiff, whom her uncle had installed over him. Delphine had written that the workers had come to hate the ruthless intruder, who had cut their wages and brought them close to starvation, but those letters had been intercepted and Louise had never received them.

‘I thought you didn’t care,’ Delphine said, ‘because you never commented on what I’d told you in your letters to me.’

Louise shook her head despairingly, still shocked at learning that Jacques Droux had been stabbed to death with a pitchfork only days before her return. ‘Naturally you would have assumed that was the case, just as you thought I didn’t want to see you when I never came home after those first early visits. But I will try to put things right.’

She had reinstated Pierre immediately and restored the workers’ wages to the previous level. The accounts had shown her that the murdered bailiff must have pocketed the difference taken from them, for there was no record of the pay cut in the books. She had hoped by her actions to undo the damage done in her absence, but years of brutal treatment had taken its toll on her estate. The seeds of the Revolution had already been deeply sown in the small corner of France that meant so much to her.

With a sigh, Louise rose from her chair, took her cloak and hat from a peg, Delphine’s as well, and went downstairs with her letter. Their first call was to the post office, where Louise sent her letter on its way. Even if Violette replied by return it would be many weeks before she could hope for its arrival.

By the end of the first week in their new land they had explored the city extensively. Louise treated this time as a vacation before starting work, during which they bought fabric from one of the city’s markets, and made themselves new gowns. Louise also altered the black silk gown in which she had landed, adding a row of small scarlet bows down the front of the bodice and using braid in the same bright hue around the neck and sleeves, finally banishing its mourning look. They also retrimmed their hats with roses, which they had made themselves out of coloured ribbons. Later they would have new headgear as well, but Louise considered that would be an extravagance for the time being. In any case she liked her yellow hat, which Delphine had made for her when they were hiding from the revolutionaries, even though its over-bright colour was due to a misjudgement of the amount of natural dye required.

They had one frightening experience when they emerged from a shop on Pearl Street to see an advancing procession of shouting demonstrators swarming towards them with banners, the Tricolour and the Stars and Stripes held high and fluttering side by side. Nearly all were wearing the scarlet Phrygian caps that had come to symbolize the Revolution to Frenchmen and foreigners alike. Delphine cowered back, terrified of being seized, and instinctively Louise put her arms around her. An elderly man, standing nearby, noticed and guessed their nationality.

‘There’s no need to be afraid, ladies,’ he said reassuringly to them. ‘This is just a band of hotheads who want President Washington to go to war on the side of France against Britain and her allies. They argue that the French helped us during our revolution, but they forget we weren’t murdering our own people.’

‘Is the President considering aid?’ Louise asked in surprise.

‘It’s my guess that he won’t. He has enough to do building up this new nation of ours. Tomorrow you’ll probably see another demonstration against supporting France. We like to air our opinions in this country. It’s what freedom is all about, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Louise agreed firmly, thinking that nobody held to the principles of freedom more than she did herself. She continued to keep her nervous sister close to her until the marchers had gone by, although none had looked in their direction. It was the first of many similar demonstrations they were to see, but neither was alarmed by them again.

After several days of walking about the city to apply in vain for work together, it was Louise’s yellow hat that eventually gained employment for her and Delphine on Broad Street with a milliner named Miss Sullivan. A sharp-faced businesswoman with elaborately dressed fair hair, she eyed Louise up and down, knowing French chic when she saw it. But it was the hat that intrigued her.

‘I notice that the straw of your hat is plaited in a most unusual way,’ she said, trying not too show too keen an interest. ‘May I examine it more closely?’ She held out a hand, expecting it to be removed for her inspection.

Louise smiled, making no move, for she sensed the woman’s eagerness. ‘It’s a traditional pattern from my home district in France and to my knowledge not to be found anywhere else. My sister made my hat as well as the one she is wearing, which is a variation on the same pattern. I was first taught the skill by an old nurse and passed my knowledge on to my sister.’

‘So, you are both able to make them!’ Miss Sullivan thought swiftly ahead to the summer, when such flattering hats would be in demand. A stock could be built up in good time before the warm weather set in. ‘Has either of you ever made any other kind of millinery?’

‘We have both altered hats of felt and other materials to suit us.’ Louise did not add that it was when she and Delphine had found a collection of old ones in a box in the attic after her homecoming and worked on them for fun.

Miss Sullivan paused for a few moments as if considering carefully before making a decision. ‘I think I can offer you both a place each in my workshop.’ After stating what their wages would be, she added, ‘You may start on Monday morning. I supply clean aprons and caps. Be sure that you’re here promptly at seven o’clock.’

But Louise was not ready to accept yet. She had seen that she had the upper hand as far as the straw hats were concerned. ‘I should like to know what bonus we would receive on each French-styled straw hat that we make.’

Miss Sullivan was taken aback, but she did not want to lose the two young women’s skills to a rival milliner. Negotiations followed, Louise standing firm, and she left the shop satisfied with the extra that would be added to their low wages, which the milliner had promised would rise with time and satisfactory work.

That same day they found a small apartment of two rooms furnished with a few usable pieces that included a cupboard and a table with two chairs. The rent was moderate as it was in a poor area of the city, but it was still within walking distance of their new employment. Delphine complained bitterly about its humble location, but Louise pointed out that it had the advantage of an indoor water pump and a privy that they would not have to share in the tiny courtyard at the rear of the house.

Together they scrubbed and cleaned their new accommodation from floor to ceiling, Delphine moaning about what it was doing to her hands, until Louise was satisfied with the result.