New World, New Love (35 page)

It was early December and Louise was sitting with Rose by a cheerful fire in the music salon, discussing a book they had both read, when a maidservant brought in a letter.

‘A messenger has come from Paris, madame. He will await a reply.’

‘See that he has food and a hot drink,’ Louise said as she took the letter. Then, seeing it was from Violette’s lawyer, she was alarmed and tore it open.

Louise, her face white to the lips with shock, looked across at Rose. ‘My dear aunt has died! I can scarcely believe it! I must leave for Paris at once.’ She dropped her face into her hands, unable to hold back her sudden flood of tears.

Rose darted forward from where she sat to put a comforting arm about her shoulders. ‘I’m so sorry. Such a lively lady! You shall not travel to Paris on your own. I’ll come with you!’

The journey and the days that followed were steeped in grief for Louise. It should have been some consolation to her that the last two years had been among the happiest her aunt had ever known, but her personal sense of loss blocked out all else. The day of the funeral was bitterly cold, snow having fallen in the night. Yet the church was full, many among the mourners having reason to be grateful for the hospitality and generous help Violette had given them in their émigré days. She was buried in a churchyard in the heart of the city she had loved.

It was as Louise turned away from the graveside, wiping her eyes under her black veil, that her arm was gripped painfully. Even as she gasped with shock and surprise, she was wrenched about to face an aristocratic-looking woman in her mid-fifties, well dressed in black, who was completely unknown to her, but whose eyes were blazing with fury and hatred.

‘How dare you mourn your good aunt when you’ve never mourned your evil husband’s victims!’ She hissed her words in her wrath.

Louise wrenched herself free, wondering if the woman was mad. ‘I don’t know you, madame!’

‘But I remember seeing you at Versailles with the Queen! Your husband is that monster, Fernand de Vailly!’

‘Why should you call him that?’

‘He murdered my family!’

Rose, who had been near enough to overhear the woman’s first accusing words, had been quick to turn and divert the mourners leaving the graveside out of earshot and had signalled to Antoine and Ginette that they should take over from her. Then she turned back to Louise’s side. ‘Go away!’ she ordered the woman. ‘You’ve no right to make such accusations!’

‘I have every right!’

Louise intervened fiercely before Rose could speak again. ‘Allow this lady to speak, Rose! I want to know what grounds there are for this accusation against Fernand and me.’

The woman became a little calmer, but was no less furious. She drew herself up, holding her head high. ‘I’m the Duchesse de Roget. My two sisters, their husbands, and seven of my nephews and nieces, all under the age of thirteen, went to the guillotine. They were caught as they tried to flee to safety in England, because your husband betrayed them!’

‘But that’s impossible! He was also condemned. Everybody knows that his life was saved only because of an accident with the tumbril on his way to the scaffold.’

‘Do you truly believe from all you must know of him that he is innocent of the crime I have related?’ The question was rapier-like in its directness.

‘I should need absolute proof before I would believe anybody guilty of such horror.’

Rose intervened, aware of curious glances being cast in their direction. ‘It’s very cold and very public standing here. Would it not be better to discuss this matter in a carriage?’

The duchess gave a vague nod to show she had heard and continued to address Louise as they went side by side towards the nearest equipage, which was the one Violette had bought for herself. ‘I can see my accusation has come as a great shock to you, Madame la Marquise.’ Her tone had become easier. ‘I had believed you knew of your husband’s crimes, but clearly you did not.’

As soon as the three of them were settled in the carriage, Louise clasped her trembling hands in her lap as she faced the duchess, Rose seated at her side.

‘Tell me what you have to say,’ she said, keeping her voice firm.

‘It was during the Reign of Terror that Fernand de Vailly was a spy in Paris and elsewhere for the traitor and regicide, the Duc d’Orléans. Because your husband was a fellow aristocrat, other nobles trusted him when they were desperate to escape with their families to England. He would profess to know a secret route with safe houses along the way to the coast, one he declared he would follow himself as soon as he could locate you. He would say that he could not leave France without taking you to safety too.’

Louise shuddered inwardly at Fernand’s duplicity. ‘How were those unfortunate people entrapped?’

‘They were allowed to get halfway to the coast before an ambush was sprung. To my knowledge only two people ever escaped, each on a separate occasion, and they were both young men travelling with parents and siblings, one with his betrothed as well. The two youths met each other during exile.’

‘Why have they not denounced my husband?’

‘Because one eventually died in England of the wounds he had sustained during the ambush. He was lying bleeding in the bushes when a peasant woman and her husband found him. They took him into their hovel and the woman nursed him until he had recovered enough to get away, but his physical strength was never the same. The other young man was my nephew. He married in England, but a fever took him. His young widow is English and has no wish to live in France, but I visited her during the time of the Treaty of Amiens, and it was she who related the treachery that had sealed the fate of those dear to me.’

‘Why were you not with your relatives in their attempt to escape?’

‘My husband and I had taken our only child to southern Italy for her health’s sake before the Revolution started, and we decided to stay on till all was well in France again. Then our daughter married an Italian, so we have settled there permanently and this is only my second visit home.’

‘I still don’t understand why you haven’t spoken out against my husband.’

The duchess shrugged. ‘Without witnesses?’

Rose turned to Louise. ‘I know that it’s hard for you to accept all you have been told, but I heard in my exile from another émigré of an aristocrat, bearing Fernand’s name, who had deliberately betrayed his own kind.’

‘Has that émigré returned to France?’ the duchess demanded sharply.

‘I have no idea. It was a chance meeting and I never saw him again.’

Louise still felt it only fair to continue to protest on Fernand’s behalf. ‘But my husband was imprisoned and destined for the guillotine, or else his name would never have appeared on the list of deceased!’

‘Agreed,’ Rose endorsed. ‘Maybe he fell from Orléan’s favour and Fernand’s account of his escape is the truth.’

Louise accepted it was the most logical explanation. Many supporters of the Revolution, as well as the ringleaders, had risen high and fallen again during those tumultuous times. She also believed she knew what had caused Fernand’s treachery. It was greed. Not for money then, but for power and position in the new regime. But eventually Orléans had gone to the guillotine, as so many of his victims had done before him, and Fernand had escaped to England just in time to give himself an alibi as an innocent émigré. It was then that he had been able to visit her aunt. She no longer doubted that the Duchess de Roget had told her the truth.

‘We have met through a tragic and treacherous event in the past, Madame la Duchesse,’ she said. ‘Pray accept my most heartfelt sympathy on your terrible bereavement.’

The duchess inclined her head in acknowledgement as she alighted from the carriage. She was too arrogant to show pity, but it was obvious to her that Fernand de Vailly’s wife was in torment over what she had learned.

Most of the mourners invited back to the mansion on the Rue d’Anjou had already arrived by the time Louise and Rose joined them. There were several curious glances sent in Louise’s direction as those present wondered about the altercation they had witnessed in the churchyard, but nothing was said and they left none the wiser after wine and refreshments had been served. Ginette and Antoine left too. They had asked no questions, but had seen that Louise had been deeply affected by the encounter, on top of her deep grief for her aunt.

Going into the lilac-hued salon where Violette had written her letters at a magnificent boulle desk, Louise found Frédéric Terain waiting for her with her aunt’s will. As they sat down together he thought how drained and pale she looked in her black gown, her eyes so full of sadness that he wondered if she would be able to concentrate on all he had to tell her.

‘You have inherited richly from your aunt’s estate here and in England. Apart from a generous bequest to her servant, Marie Mallet, and another to a charitable home for orphaned children, plus some minor amounts to other of her loyal servants in England, all else is yours. The will is somewhat unusual, but I believe you will know the reason for it.’

He read the will aloud to her as a formality. Except for a few treasured possessions and her late aunt’s jewellery, all of which was bequeathed to Louise, everything else was to be sold. This included hundreds of acres of land and some fine properties both in France and England, and certain business premises in London and Paris. The resulting fortune would be secured in trusts tied up legally in such a way that Louise could draw funds for herself at any time, but no other person could lay claim to it.

‘In other words,’ the lawyer added as he folded the will to hand it to her, ‘it means that, although you are a married woman, your husband cannot acquire your fortune, no matter if he does take the matter to court.’ He gave a slight smile. ‘Your late aunt was an astute woman.’

Louise managed to respond. ‘My aunt could never be turned from what she wanted when her mind was made up.’ She paused slightly. ‘There are two other matters I should like to discuss with you.’

‘I’m at your service, madame.’

She spent so long with the lawyer that it was almost suppertime when he left. After telling Rose of her late aunt’s generosity towards her in the will, she also told her what else had been discussed. Nobody else was to know of it until the time was right.

The next day Louise wrote a long letter at the boulle desk, while Rose went shopping. When it was closed and sealed she went to the American Embassy. Theodore had told her that, if ever she were in need of a friend, the Ambassador would help her. She had to wait for half an hour before he could see her, but her name had been given to him together with a reminder of her relationship with Theodore, and he greeted her with a welcoming smile. Her request was simple enough, but when he had heard her explanation, he understood the importance of it.

‘It shall be done exactly as you wish,’ he promised as he escorted her to the door and bowed over her hand. If it had not been for her intense grief in her bereavement, she would have left the embassy with a lighter step.

On the journey home, with Rose dozing next to her and Josette fast asleep on the opposite seat, Louise sat thinking over all she had learned about Fernand as she gazed unseeingly out of the window. She recalled how in rare, tolerant moments towards her he had talked with something close to exultation about the power of Napoleon and how he believed he had made a good impression in showing the great leader that he was a loyal supporter of his aims for France. She supposed he had impressed the traitor Orléans in the same way. The difference was that, if he had spied for Napoleon during the truce, it would have been for information against France’s enemies to help save French lives instead of slaughtering them on a scaffold. Now that France had her first Emperor, it was certain that Fernand would be even more eager to forge ahead in what was said to be the most dazzling court in Europe.

After leaving Rose at her home, where Jerome hurried out of the house to meet her, Louise arrived back at the château to find to her relief that Fernand was still away and had not returned in her absence. But there was a letter waiting from Madeleine. Only one paragraph of it stayed in her mind afterwards.

Louise sat for a long time as if frozen, with the letter lying on her lap. Outside, the daylight faded. A servant came in to light the candles. It was still a long time before she moved.

She was in Bordeaux at an auction, having recognized a harpsichord looted from the music salon, when Fernand returned from Paris. As soon as she re-entered the château she was informed that he was home. She left the manservants to help carry in her purchase, which had been brought by a carter following in the wake of her carriage, and went in search of Fernand. Since he never spoke to servants except to give them orders, she guessed he would not know of her bereavement. She found him writing at the library table. He did not look up as she entered.

‘Close the door when you go out,’ he said, dipping his quill in the ink without taking his eyes from the letter he was penning.

Ignoring what he had said, she went to stand in front of his desk. ‘Ten days ago I returned from Paris,’ she began.

‘Fortunately our paths did not cross.’ His quill scratched on.

‘While there I met the Duchesse de Roget.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Her family went to the blade through your treachery, Fernand!’