New World, New Love (30 page)

‘Let me find the right women for the task,’ Josette requested firmly. ‘I can meet them on equal terms. We don’t know yet what the attitude of the local people will be towards aristos being back here, even though the Revolution is over.’

It was agreed. Various chores filled the rest of their day while Fernand inspected the cellars. The looting there had left the racks bare, and emptied bottles lay smashed on the floor, but he found some superb wines in the darkest corner, which had been overlooked. He sampled one on the spot and took the bottle with him when he went to inspect the stables and decide how many horses would be needed for riding and carriage work. In the coach house he found two of the three carriages unharmed, except that the gold handles had been stolen from the doors, and there was a two-seater chaise that would be useful for driving into town in the absence of coach servants.

Finally he rode out to view the estate. Much of the land lay neglected, but work had been maintained in some areas and a section of the vineyard showed signs of having been carefully tended. He returned to the château with a tolerable report. Then he went down to the cellars again and brought up two more bottles that he intended to enjoy at dinner. Josette decanted it into crystal decanters, which she had discovered with some fine glasses in a library cupboard together with a number of other useful and quite valuable items that had been left untouched. Louise, using a couple of battered saucepans that looked as if they had been kicked about the kitchen, prepared the meal from a basket of food that she had purchased before they had left Bordeaux. As soon as it was ready Josette took charge.

‘I’ll serve you and the Marquis at the library table,’ she said. ‘That will have to be the dining room for the time being. I’ve laid it with a fine cloth that I found with others in the linen room, but there’s no silver tableware left in the house. I’ve had to put out old knives and forks from the kitchen.’

‘We can rectify that tomorrow. In one of my trunks I have some of the family silver that my sister and I took with us when we left here.’ Louise realized that the homecoming journey was over and routine was being established. Even though she and Josette had worked together all day to do what they could to improve their immediate living conditions, the girl had reverted to the hierarchy of an established household as a natural right. With a smile to herself Louise wondered whether Fernand or Josette would have been the most outraged if she had suggested eating in the kitchen.

Just before she and Fernand sat down to dine, a visitor came to see her. It was Pierre, looking much older, his once-dark hair thickly streaked with grey and his face ruddy and wrinkled as a winter-stored apple, but his grin and his dancing eyes revealed his pleasure at seeing her again. She welcomed him warmly, overjoyed at their reunion.

‘How kind of you to come, Pierre! I was going to call on you and your wife in the morning! How are you both? Come in!’

‘We are a little older, but that is all.’

She took him with her into the White Salon, where he stood to shake his head at the destruction before sitting himself down on a sofa while she took one of the chairs opposite him.

‘It’s good to see you home, madame. There have been some hard times during the six years you’ve been away, but I guess it wasn’t easy for you either in a foreign land. I haven’t come to spend more than a minute or two now, but I wanted you to know that I kept part of the vineyard going as well as was humanly possible in your absence, and there’s some fine claret stored up for you.’ He pulled a bottle from his capacious coat pocket. ‘This is your own wine to welcome you home.’

She was touched by his thoughtfulness and took it from him. ‘Thank you, Pierre. It seems a long time since you saved my life and my sister’s, but I’ve never forgotten all the kindness you and your wife showed us in our hour of need. I reinstated you after my return from Versailles and I hope you’ve retained that authority in my absence.’

‘All I can say is that I did what I could in the circumstances,’ he replied dryly. ‘Madness seemed to reign for a while, but things settled down again eventually. With nobody to pay any wages, people have been living off your land and selling whatever they could, myself included.’

‘Does that mean those who worked for me in the past will agree to work for me again?’

‘You need have no fear about that. They’ll be glad if you’ll let bygones be bygones and pay them regular wages again. But strong young men will be in short supply. So many of them around here, who were boys when you left, have joined Napoleon’s army, as there seems to be a never-ending demand for troops to fight all these foreigners we are at war with these days.’ He glanced around the room again. ‘The revolutionary soldiers did most of this, but there were those locally, whom I won’t name, that did some looting of their own.’

‘Few behaved normally in those evil days. It was like a sickness that affected everybody in one way or another. I’ll bear no grudge.’

They talked for a while, he giving her a brief account of several terrible things that had happened in the district after her departure and also listing various returned émigré families who were back in their châteaux. When he left, it was with a promise that, if Josette called at their cottage in the morning, his wife would find all the cleaners that she would need.

When Louise went to bed she left Fernand getting steadily drunk downstairs, still seated at the table. As he did not try her locked doors when eventually he staggered past on his way to bed, she hoped it meant that he had accepted her independence from him.

Next morning Josette was up by dawn and went early into the village. When she returned she was accompanied by a trail of women, all wary of how they would be received, but Louise greeted them and later saw that they had food at noon. Throughout that day and the rest of the week, dust, cobwebs and spiders were banished, floors were scrubbed or polished, drapes and curtains washed and carpets beaten. Arriving with the women in the mornings were several local workmen called in to repair the damage that had been done to walls and woodwork, although, until more prosperous times, wallpaper had to replace every one of the silk panels in the White Salon.

While Josette supervised the work indoors, Louise rode out with Pierre to make her own inspection of the land. As before, his advice was invaluable. He had made a list of what was needed immediately for the spring sowing and other farm work, as well as essential repairs to be carried out on her tenants’ cottages, the barns, the pens and the fences. She realized that she would have to raise a loan at the bank, which she had hoped to avoid, but the land had to be put back on to a financial footing.

As always, at the end of each busy day, Louise was tired physically and mentally when she went to bed, but she never failed to check that her doors were locked. Then, as she lay down, sleep was immediate and so deep that there were no dreams to disturb her rest, as on the ship, and for that she was thankful. There would be time ahead when yearning for Daniel would be almost beyond her strength to bear, but for a while at least tiredness was granting her much-needed rest.

Her deep sleep one night was the reason why she did not hear the communicating door between her room and Fernand’s give a slight creak as he lifted it away. Earlier he had unscrewed the hinges on his side and, when Louise had checked the key, she had not noticed that the door was any less stable than before. He had been drinking, but he was not drunk as he went silently across to her bed, the moonlight through the windows giving a silvery gleam to his naked body.

He stood looking down at her, hard with lust and impatient for her. She had dared to deny him his rights on board ship, on the journey across land and here in what he now thought of as his own house. The time had come to show her that her defiance was at an end and he intended to punish her for every moment of it. With one hand he grabbed the coverlets and ripped them from her.

She awoke with a scream of horror as he fell on her, thrusting her legs apart to drive himself into her. As she beat at him with her fists, trying to struggle free, he caught her wrists and held them deep into her pillow as he rammed away at her body with his own, exulting in his possession of her at last. He gushed into her sooner than he had intended and as he collapsed across her she seized the chance to push him away and leap from the bed. Yet he had anticipated her action and his hand shot out to grab her nightgown.

Briefly she was held captive, but as he tried to snatch her back on to the bed, the fine fabric tore and she was free. But he reached the door to the gallery before she could unlock it and forced her back towards the bed. Although she screamed continually, clawing at his face as he beat her mercilessly about the head and body, there was no one to hear her. Their struggle excited him and when she lost her balance, causing both of them to fall, he took her again on the floor, viciously and brutally, and her screams were no longer just of outrage but of agonizing pain.

When he lifted himself away from her he gave her a kick where she lay, her cheek pressed into the carpet, her hair tumbled about her tear-wet face. ‘There’ll be no more locking doors against me!’ he exclaimed fiercely, shaking a fist at her. ‘You’re my wife and I’ll come to your bed whenever I choose. Remember that!’

He went back into his own room, but she remained huddled on the floor until she heard his bed creak and saw the candlelight extinguished. She rolled over and sat up. Unsteadily she rose to her feet and slipped on her silk robe, which had been left on a chair. Going out on to the gallery, she made her way slowly to the stairs that led up to the floor where Josette was sleeping.

The young woman awoke with a start as soon as her door opened and sat up. Even in the moonlight she could see at once that her mistress was in an extremely distressed state. She guessed immediately that rape had taken place and leapt from the bed.

‘It’s all right, madame! I know what to do!’ Josette shoved her arms into her cotton robe and went to support Louise with an arm about the waist. ‘There’s an old hip bath hanging in the corridor by the kitchen. It will be quicker if I heat water for that one instead of bringing it in jugs upstairs to your own. There’s a bottle of cognac in the library. I’ll pour you a swig of that.’

Still talking in a reassuring tone, she took Louise downstairs.

In the morning not all of Louise’s cosmetics could have hidden her facial injuries. Her lip had been split, both her eyes blackened, and the purple bruises on her face and neck matched those hidden by her clothes. She was aware of the workmen’s stares when they first caught sight of her and the cleaning women’s whispers, but she carried on with all she had to do that day with her customary dignity. One workman was called from his task to carry out a special assignment for her.

When Fernand came in from riding and went upstairs to change he found that the communicating door between his room and his wife’s had been bricked up and papered as if the aperture had never been.

He made no comment to Louise on what had been done, which she knew to be a danger signal. Josette would have stayed with her that night, wanting to put a truckle bed for herself at the end of the four-poster, but Louise sent her to her own room.

Fernand sat drinking until midnight before he came up the stairs carrying a heavy hammer taken earlier from a workman’s tool bag. One blow would smash open the double doors that led from the gallery into Louise’s bedroom. Pleasurable excitement was high in him. He was going to enjoy this night, with all he intended to do to her, and after it she would never dare cross him again.

As he reached her room he was about to swing the hammer against the door when he saw that it stood slightly ajar. Had she hidden herself somewhere else? Cowering in her maid’s room perhaps? Or had she locked herself in another bedroom? Well, he’d find her wherever she was!

He kicked open the door, expecting to find the room deserted, but Louise, in nightgown and robe, sat facing him on the end of the bed. Surprised, he leaned a hand against the jamb as he set down the hammer and regarded her steadily.

‘So, you’ve come to your senses, have you?’ He gave a contemptuous nod towards the bricked-up aperture. ‘But it’s too late to regret your foolishness now. Tonight you’ll pleasure me exactly as I wish and then maybe – just maybe – I’ll refrain from giving you the further beating that you deserve.’

He slid off his jacket, the silk lining hissing away from his shirtsleeves as he began to saunter across to her. Then he came to an abrupt halt. From the folds of her robe she had raised a pistol and was pointing it at him.

‘This is the last time you are ever to enter my room,’ she said quietly. ‘And you are never to touch me again. If you take another step, I will shoot you.’

He gave a laugh of disbelief. ‘Stop behaving like a fool! These dramatics don’t suit you. Give me that pistol.’

She ignored his outstretched hand and, as he took a step forward, she cocked the weapon that Alexandre had given her long ago for protection on her journey to Boston. At the ominous click, Fernand came to a standstill again, his temper soaring.

‘That’s a dangerous weapon you’re holding! Put it down. You haven’t the least idea how to handle it.’

‘You’re wrong about that. Alexandre taught me when Delphine and I stayed on his farm for a while. I shall not miss my target when I shoot you in the leg, but neither will I if I aim for your heart.’

Her set expression and the level tone of her voice showed him she was not bluffing. Taken aback, he considered what his next action should be. He was not near enough to wrest the pistol from her, but if he could catch her off-guard it would be easy enough.

‘Very well.’ He shrugged casually as if conceding to her wishes. Turning away, he bent down and picked up his jacket from the floor. A second later he had hurled it at her, blinding her in its folds, and was on her at once. The explosion of the pistol in her hand echoed throughout the house and he staggered back as she threw the jacket from her, springing to her feet.