New World, New Love (38 page)

‘I leave tomorrow for Boston.’

‘So soon!’ Elizabeth exclaimed as they entered the house. ‘Then we must not waste a single moment of today. Gregory, my husband, will be home later and he’ll be delighted to meet you too.’ She discarded her hat and then held it for a moment before handing it to the waiting maidservant. ‘Do you remember the hat you advised Daniel to choose for me?’

‘Very well indeed.’ Louise smiled. ‘I can see now that it would have suited you very well.’

Elizabeth, whose hair was as dark as Daniel’s, had a creamy complexion and a smiling mouth. She led the way across the hall to a large drawing room. As Louise sat down she could no longer hold back the question she most wanted to ask.

‘How is Daniel?’ Her voice faltered slightly.

Elizabeth gave her a direct look. ‘He’s well and settled in Jonesville in Alabama. The past is behind him. He has made a successful new start to his life. I should not want anything to spoil it.’

They continued into the drawing room with its sofas and chairs upholstered in rose-patterned silk. Above the fireplace was a portrait of Elizabeth that must have been painted when she was about eighteen, dressed in a cinnamon-hued gown with a fichu such as had been fashionable at that time.

‘That’s a very fine likeness,’ Louise said admiringly as she and Charlotte sat down opposite each other. ‘I would have recognized you from it just as you knew me from the miniature. Please don’t think I’m inquisitive, because I’ve been looking around me at everything, but it means a great deal to me to be in Daniel’s family home.’

‘I’m sure he felt the same when he visited your château.’

‘He was never there!’ Louise replied.

‘Indeed he was! Afterwards he went to Paris to see the city that you had known so well. He told me all about it.’

‘He was in France?’ Louise’s cry tore from her. ‘I never knew! I must have been visiting my aunt in England at the time!’

Elizabeth was regarding her steadily. ‘No. You were in France, but you chose to absent yourself from the château as soon as you knew he was in the district. I realize you did it for the best,’ she added quickly, ‘but it would have meant so much to my brother just to see you again, even if a divorce on your part was still out of the question. It was a final blow when your housekeeper gave him your message.’

Louise had turned white and she clasped her hands, raising them up and down in her despair. ‘I left no message! I never knew he had come!’ Then she shut her eyes as a terrible realization hit her. ‘Did he say if he went to the theatre in Paris?’

‘Yes, two or three times, I believe.’

‘Dear God! Then I did see him there one night! I even called his name, but he did not hear me and I thought I’d been mistaken! Fernand must have made sure that I’d never be told!’

Elizabeth was touched by Louise’s deep distress. ‘I’m so sorry that you failed to see each other. It would have meant so much to him.’

‘Why did he come looking for me? We had agreed that we should not even correspond.’

‘He wanted to know if anything had changed in your marriage and some loophole discovered that might still give a chance for you both. I warned him not to be too hopeful, but he said he had to find out for himself.’

‘My poor Daniel,’ Louise said softly.

‘You haven’t told me yet the reason why you’ll be visiting Boston after leaving Charleston. I hope your relatives there are well?’

Louise nodded. ‘I’m widowed now and I have come back to live in the States again. After visiting my cousins in Boston and my sister in Washington, I may settle in New York, where I have friends.’

‘Does Boston have too many memories for you?’

Louise nodded. ‘I could never live there again.’

‘It was for the same reason that Daniel decided to sell up and move back to the South. Our late uncle and his wife had always been fond of Daniel and it was to be expected that the Alabama plantation should be bequeathed to him one day.’

‘Daniel told me about his boyhood vacations with them and how he still thought of their house as a second home.’

‘That’s right, but he has built a fine new mansion there now. Gregory and I visited a while ago.’ Elizabeth paused, looking down at her hands in her lap, as if deciding what to say next, before her eyes met Louise’s gaze again. ‘He has changed, Louise. I saw a great difference in him when he first came to stay here after leaving Boston, but since returning from France he seemed shut away within himself and no longer the brother I knew.’

‘But you said yourself he had made a successful fresh start.’

‘So he has done commercially, but emotionally is a different matter. After what he thought to be your total rejection of him in France, there was so much hurt in him that I believe it shattered him inwardly.’

Louise shook her head despairingly. ‘I’d try to heal that hurt if it were not for Sarah Jane.’

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. ‘What has she to do with it?’

‘Are they not married?’

‘No!’ Elizabeth made a dismissive gesture. ‘I don’t doubt he shared her bed when it suited him while he was here, but that was all. Rumours of a possible marriage flew around as gossip always does in Charleston.’ Then what Louise had said seemed to hit her and she sat very straight. ‘Do you mean what you said? You’d go to see him?’

‘Yes!’

Elizabeth looked doubtful. ‘You could be greatly hurt in your turn.’

‘I’m willing to risk anything!’

‘A great gulf has widened since the two of you were last together. There may be no bridging it now. Have you faced the fact that his love for you might have died?’

‘I realize that is a possibility. But all my life I’ve had to fight for what I wanted, not always successfully, and this time it will be the most important venture of my life.’

‘I wish you well, but I’ll give you the same warning as I gave Daniel when he left for Europe. Don’t raise your hopes too high.’

On the long journey to Jonesville, Louise saw vast cotton plantations, for such was the great demand from the textile industries. The sight of the slaves working on them disturbed her. Slavery had always been abhorrent to her and it was encouraging that politicians in England were fighting to get it abolished, which made her hope that this country and others would soon follow suit.

Overnight halts were made on the way and she arrived in Jonesville on a late May afternoon in a coach covered with red dust from the rough roads and found the little town gloriously clouded by magnolia trees in full bloom.

The only accommodation available was a room in a modest hotel on one of the smaller streets. After soaking in a cool hipbath she felt refreshed as she put on a lily-green gown with a new yellow straw hat of her own making. The landlady gave her directions how to find the address that Elizabeth had given her.

She walked slowly, exploring and observing everything. There was an air of prosperity about the place, with plenty of shops, a courthouse and two banks, both with a columned frontage, a library and streets of fine mansions that were evidence of the fortunes and trade generated by cotton.

Daniel’s house was large and white with a long columned porch that stretched the width of the house and a flower-lined drive with wide lawns. She did not stay at the gate as she had at his childhood home, but took a deep breath and went straight up the drive. After mounting the wide steps up to the porch, she lifted the shining brass knocker and banged it twice. A butler opened the door to her.

‘I’m Madame de Vailly and I’m here to see Mr Lombard,’ she said, stepping inside.

‘He’s not at home, ma’am.’

‘When is he expected back?’

‘Not for an hour or more. He is at a business meeting.’

‘I’ll wait.’

From the large hall with its sweeping staircase, where magnolias filled tall vases in the wall niches, Louise was shown into a spacious drawing room. The fashionable scroll-ended furniture made her wonder if somehow it had been imported from France. There were more magnolias here, arranged in a Sèvres bowl on a round rosewood table, their porcelain-like petals seeming to add to the refreshing coolness of the window-shaded room.

An ormolu clock ticked the time away, but Daniel did not return. She became restless, trepidation mounting, and moved about the room to study the paintings on the wall. Double doors into the next room had been folded back, letting the cool air drift through into other rooms beyond. She wandered on and went through a dining room into another fine drawing room, where glass doors led to the flower garden and lawns at the rear of the house.

She opened them and stepped out, closing them after her. It was just beginning to get dark, the magnolia trees standing pale and fireflies already darting here and there like tiny stars. There was a garden seat under the nearest tree and she drifted to it, taking off her hat and setting it beside her as she sat down. In the house, candles were being lit and chandeliers had begun to glow. There was no dusk in this part of the world and almost at once she was in darkness, with only the light through the glass doors falling across the grass and etching her where she sat. Gradually she felt at peace, for this flower-scented setting was almost dream-like.

The glass doors opened and Daniel stood silhouetted, looking towards her. ‘Louise,’ he said quietly, as if unable to believe she was there.

She stood and went towards him. He drew her into the candlelight and held her gently by the arms as he looked down into her face. She was no longer afraid. Whatever difficulties lay ahead, they could be overcome. There was a deep look in his eyes that told her that all her long journeys were over at last.