New World, New Love

by Rosalind Laker

  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.

  ‘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 Loui
se 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.

  Seventeen

  After 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.

  He rarely attends balls and parties these days and I’ve only seen him once. That was this week, when he called on me in the hope that I had received a letter from you. I regretted having to disappoint him and we both agreed how much we wished mail could be speedier and more reliable, but that is just a dream when distances are so great and ships dependent on sea and weather. I have to say that Daniel is not the same man, very grim and reserved. Occasionally Theodore plays cards with him at their club, but he is more often at the gaming tables. Can you not show a little mercy and write to him? I have never seen a man more changed in such a short time.

  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.