by Mary Nichols
‘Would be horrified,’ she interrupted him. ‘Is that all you can think of?’ She blinked back the tears which sprang to her eyes. How could he be so blind? It was almost as if he was trying to turn her against him.
‘It is a little late to go down on my knees and propose in the conventional manner, Maryanne. I remember you telling me you would not marry me however compromised you had been, but we cannot go on like this. God, woman, don’t you know what it’s been like for me these last weeks? I won’t be held at arm’s length and played with like a cat plays with a mouse.’
‘I haven’t done any such thing!’
‘Oh, yes, you have. Now, you must make up your mind, once and for all. If you come, it will be as my wife or...’ He did not want to say it again, knowing he was tempting fate. But he had to know.
She was in tears. ‘Adam, I have said I will come with you, I have always said it.’
‘As my wife?’
‘As your wife.’ The words were whispered.
He let out his breath in a long sigh of relief. ‘You will not regret it,’ he said. ‘And one day, as God is my witness, you will be able to hold up your head anywhere in the world.’ He kissed her then, but she felt wooden and unresponsive, the exuberance of a few minutes before gone. If only he had wanted to marry her because he loved her, if only...
They were married the same day, in a quiet ceremony witnessed only by Lerue and another old acquaintance of Adam’s, neither of whom Maryanne had met before. They came, she realised, from Adam’s past, from his jackdaw days, and she found them rather frightening.
‘They are good men,’ Adam assured her. ‘And who else could we ask?’
He was right, of course; all their Parisian friends believed them to be already married. It did not help her to feel any less nervous about the step she was taking. She wanted, more than anything in the world, to be his wife; she wanted to be done with pretence, to share his life and to know that, whatever happened, they were united in their love for each other. But how could that be achieved when it was all so one-sided, when his prime consideration was the silencing of gossip?
She forced herself to put her doubts behind her as he took his place beside her in the church and the parson began the service. It was done now and she must make the best of it. Perhaps, in time, it would all come right; perhaps, when the past had been put behind them, they could build a future for themselves.
As soon as the ceremony was over, they left Paris in a hired chaise. Adam was relaxed and cheerful and talked of his home and his parents and how eagerly he awaited his reunion with his mother, so that by the time they stopped at an inn for the night she had caught his mood. Perhaps it was only in Paris he was so morose, and now that he was going home she would come to know the real Adam Saint-Pierre.
He ordered a meal to be brought to their room, but, unable to think of anything but the big four-poster bed, she had no appetite.
‘Is it not to your taste, my dear?’ he asked, after watching her push her food round her plate.
‘I find I am not hungry,’ she told him.
He smiled and stood up. ‘Neither am I.’ He took her hand and drew her to her feet. ‘My hunger is of a different kind.’
She stood, almost impassively, as he kissed her, but when his hands began the gentle task of rousing her she found herself responding, shyly at first, then, as he removed her clothes, taking his time, kissing her and caressing her with great tenderness, she became more and more inflamed. Her love, her desire, her need found expression in a passion that not even he could have guessed at. Delighted, he picked her up and carried her to the bed.
Not until the following morning did she realise that, whatever happened, nothing would ever be the same again, that irrevocably she was his wife and if he could not find it in his heart to love her as a husband should, at least he knew how to be kind and gentle. She would try to be content.
Chapter Ten
They reached Challac two days later, two days in which Maryanne was blissfully happy. She was almost afraid to arrive, in case it should all come to an end.
The village nestled in a valley enfolded by hills. There was a church with a very tall steeple and quaint little cottages grouped around a tree-lined square where a fountain played. There was a plinth beside it, but no statue. ‘They took it down,’ Adam said, smiling. ‘It was one of Bonaparte. I imagine they are in no hurry to replace it with another of Louis.’
His home was called Les Cascades, he told her, because of the many little waterfalls which tumbled down the steep slopes that surrounded it. From a distance it looked a beautiful house, not quite a chateau, nor an English mansion, but when their coach made its way up the drive and they drew nearer they could see it was almost derelict. Windows were broken, slates missing from the roof and the oak door looked as though it had been battered down with a tree-trunk. The garden was a wilderness of weeds, except large areas where the grass had been trampled flat.
‘They must have had heavy guns here,’ Adam said. ‘It is a wonder the place is still standing at all.’
Next to the house, they saw a tiny patch of cultivated ground where potatoes and onions grew, and here a bent old man was hoeing. He stopped what he was doing as the coach came to a stop and stood watching them. Suddenly his face broke into a grin, revealing a single broken tooth. ‘Monsieur Adam!’ He turned to scuttle back into the house, crying, ‘Anna! Anna! Monsieur, our master, is back. Come and see!’
A little round tub of a woman came to the kitchen door, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Oh, monsieur, can it be you?’ She peered short-sightedly at Adam. ‘All the long years we prayed for you and now our prayers have been answered.’
‘Thank you, Anna. It is good to see you again. And you, Henri. Maryanne, these two good people, Henri and Anna Garonne, were here in the old days.’ He turned back to the old servants. ‘This is my wife. She is English but she can understand your French if you speak slowly.’
The woman bobbed a curtsy. ‘Come into the kitchen. The rest of the house...’ She paused to wipe a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron. ‘It is not fit to see.’
They followed the old couple into the house and were conducted round the empty rooms. They inspected the broken plaster, the scuffed paintwork, the scorched fireplaces, the staircases with their missing banisters and the chipped tiles on what had once been an outstanding mosaic floor in the main hall.
‘What could we do?’ Henri asked plaintively. ‘We are old.’
‘You did well,’ Adam said. ‘And we shall soon set it to rights, ready for madame, my mother’s return.’
‘She is alive?’ Two pairs of eyes lit up with sudden joy. ‘She is really alive?’
Adam nodded. ‘I believe so.’
The old woman fell to her knees, to clasp his hand. ‘Praise be to God. Where is she? When shall we see her?’
‘Soon,’ Adam said. ‘Now we must go, but we will be back tomorrow. I want you to make a list of all the repairs that need doing. I mean to lose no time.’
‘Yes, monsieur, of course. God bless you.’
‘They were overjoyed to see you,’ Maryanne said when they had returned to the carriage.
‘Yes.’ He seemed preoccupied, as if he was not really listening, as if he could hear other sounds, echoes of a past she could not share.
At the convent, she waited in the coach while he jumped down to ring the bell. A nun came to the grille and Adam spoke briefly to her, then the door was opened and he turned and beckoned to Maryanne.
‘Maman is in the garden,’ he said. ‘We are to go and find her.’
‘Be gentle with her,’ the nun said. ‘It will be a shock.’ She folded her arms into her wide sleeves, smiled at them both and turned away.
They followed the path she had indicated into a secluded garden where several women sat or walked in the sunshine. They were all dressed in similar shapeless gowns and Adam could not, at first, pick his mother out. ‘They are all so old and bent,’ he said. ‘Maman
was...There she is!’
Maryanne restrained him as he started forward. ‘Adam don’t rush, go slowly. I will wait here.’ She sat down on a bench against the wall and watched as he approached the woman he had singled out, took her arm and led her to a seat, talking and smiling. He was rewarded with a blank stare of incomprehension; his mother did not recognise him. He looked up at Maryanne in despair, his need for her support obvious in his face. She stood up and went over to him.
‘Maman,’ he said, reaching out his hand to draw Maryanne forward. ‘This is Maryanne, my wife. We are going to take you home.’
The blank eyes looked up at him. ‘Home?’
Maryanne smiled and sat beside her, taking her hand. ‘Yes, but not until you are ready. This is your son. This is Adam. Don’t you know him?’
‘My Adam is a child. The Committee of Public Safety took him. They killed him. They killed Louis too.’ She spoke flatly. ‘You are one of them.’
‘No, I...’
‘Murderer!’ she screamed suddenly. ‘Killer of little children!’
Adam groaned and covered his face with his hands. Maryanne put out a hand to him as tears squeezed themselves between his fingers. She became aware that his mother was staring at him with her eyes wide and mouth open, as if something had touched a chord in her memory.
‘You are James,’ the older woman said slowly. ‘James Danbury. What are you doing here? Go away! Go back where you came from!’
Maryanne turned from her to Adam and then she saw plainly what had always been there to see - his likeness to James. Adam was James’s son! Everything that had happened in the last year flashed across her mind: the way they had met, his odd references to the Danbury family, his refusal to fight Mark, the curricle race and James’s strange reaction to the mention of Adam’s name. She remembered how she had felt when Caroline had said she was James’s by-blow: shame and anger, but most of all a vulnerability. Adam looked like that now and her heart went out to him. No wonder he was bitter, no wonder he could not talk of it. Miraculously it did not seem to have turned him against his mother, even if she did not want to be reminded of it.
Maryanne put a hand on his arm. ‘Adam, we can’t take her away from here today, the upheaval would confuse her more than ever. We must come again tomorrow and every day until she gets used to us.’
He seemed incapable of speech and simply nodded his acquiescence. It was not until they were in the coach and travelling to the Count of Challac’s chateau that he spoke, and then it was in tones of despair. ‘What am I to do, Maryanne? She thinks I am...’
‘I know, but don’t you see, it is a good sign? It means the past is not entirely forgotten. We can have no idea what horrors she lived through during her years of imprisonment, but if she was incarcerated with revolutionaries, criminals and ruffians and shut away from what has been going on in the world it is hardly surprising that she is confused. Once your mother accepts us, whoever she thinks we are, and we take her home, things will improve. We must have patience.’
They stayed with the Comte and Comtesse de Challac while Les Cascades was made habitable. The Countess was a lively, bubbling person and Maryanne could easily see why the Count was so devoted to her. It made her all the more aware of what was lacking in her own marriage: a togetherness, an understanding that needed no words, a devotion that all could see. They could not have been kinder, but Maryanne could not stop herself feeling depressed and homesick. It would be decidedly cool in England now and the leaves on the trees in Beckford woods would be a glory of gold and red, falling to spread a soft carpet under the boughs. In the rectory the fires would be lit and there would be roasted nuts and wrinkled apples and the window-panes of a morning would be misted. Soon there would be frosts. Did they have frosts in the south of France? They were in a mountainous region, so she supposed they must, but now, in October, the air was still warm and dry.
Did those at home - she persisted in thinking of it as home - still think of her as a party to murder? Or had they ceased to think of her at all? Did it matter? She had to admit it mattered a great deal and she wished she could go back and show them how wrong they were. But Adam never spoke of the possibility; all he seemed to think of was Les Cascades, the state of the country and whether war would come again.
He would not bring his mother home until the repairs had been done, believing that the sight of her home in ruins would make her worse, but by the middle of December they had finished restoring the main rooms and, as she had shown signs of considerable improvement and sometimes talked quite rationally, they had moved out of the chateau and into Les Cascades and fetched her home.
There were occasions when she seemed much better and others when she was as confused as ever, and Adam was frequently in despair. Her behaviour varied from that of an imperious aristocrat, demanding instant obedience, to that of a mischievous child. Sometimes she spoke like a lady, sometimes like a gutter urchin.
The last of the old year had gone by and they were two months into 1815 before Maryanne began to catch glimpses of the woman Eleanor had once been and she could understand Adam’s love for her. But by then Adam was not there to see it. She had once asked him what he did when he was away, but he had turned the question aside with some teasing comment which told her nothing except that her company was not enough to keep him at home. He had been gone much longer than usual this time and she was becoming concerned, though she said nothing of that to her mother-in-law.
The sun was warm and the wind had lost its keen edge for the first time since Christmas and, walking in the garden with Madame Saint-Pierre in the first week of March, Maryanne felt the first faint stirring of spring.
‘He said he would come back,’ Eleanor said, startling Maryanne, because they had been walking side by side in silence for so long. ‘But I told him not to. "It’s not fair on the child," I said.’ She appealed to Maryanne. ‘Was I right? Should I have stopped him from coming back?’
‘Who are you talking about, Maman?’ Maryanne asked gently.
‘James. I told him to stay away from Adam. Adam was mine, he gave him to me. I didn’t want him changing his mind and taking him back. Was I wrong?’
‘No, dear, you were not wrong,’ Maryanne assured her. How could anyone censure this poor muddled woman?
‘He has grown into a fine man, has he not?’
‘Who?’
‘Adam, your husband,’ she said sharply. ‘Who did you think I was talking about? He is just like James was. Do you know, sometimes when I look at him I think he is James? Foolish of me, isn’t it?’
‘Not at all.’ She paused; was this the long-awaited recovery? ‘Do you remember what happened?’
‘No.’ The older woman turned away abruptly. ‘I do not want to remember.’
Maryanne took her arm. ‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Maman. Come, let us finish our walk.’
‘James shan’t have him back, I won’t let him go,’ she said vehemently. ‘And if anyone asks me I shall deny everything.’ She gave a laugh that was almost a cackle; it reminded Maryanne very forcefully that there were periods of the older woman’s life it was better not to delve into.
She was almost glad of Henri’s interruption. ‘Madame, I must speak to you,’ he said.
‘Of course. Is something wrong?’
‘There is a report.
‘Report of what?’
‘The second coming, madame.’
She had been so immersed in her work in the house and looking after Eleanor that she had paid little attention to what was going on in the outside world. Adam did. He wrote and received letters and he sometimes spoke of his impatience with the Congress of Vienna, which seemed more concerned with parties and balls than completing its business, but he had expressed the hope that now the Duke of Wellington had replaced Castlereagh as the British plenipotentiary things might begin to move a little faster. He had also been extremely relieved to hear the Duke had left Paris, where trouble between Bonapartists and Bourbonists
made it a dangerous place for him to be. The day he and Maryanne had left Paris a shot had whistled uncomfortably close to his head.
She smiled. ‘Oh, that old rumour about Napoleon escaping from Elba. You don’t believe it, do you?’
‘It is not a rumour, madame. It has already happened. I was told by a courier who stopped on his way to Paris to change his horse. Bonaparte landed at Frejus with a thousand men a week ago. Since then he has marched, unopposed, past Cannes, through Digne and Sisteron towards Grenoble, and will soon be at Challac.’
‘Isn’t anyone going to try and stop him?’
He smiled his toothless smile. ‘I doubt it, madame. The army is on his side, even if some of the officers are not, and the people have had enough of fighting; it matters little who rules us as long as we can be left to live our lives in peace.’
Her heart began to beat uncomfortably fast at the thought of Les Cascades being, once more, in the path of an army. Ought she to do something to defend it? But how could she with only a handful of servants? ‘What should we do?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, madame. He will be heading for Paris and will not step aside from that unless he is opposed.’
She hoped he was right. Until Adam returned, she had to pretend everything was normal for Madame Saint-Pierre’s sake. She turned to seek her out, all too aware of the heavy burden of responsibility she carried. If Adam did not come home soon, the house, the servants and a confused, prematurely old woman would all have to be taken care of. There was Eleanor now, kneeling on the damp grass with no thought for the aches and pains which might result. Maryanne hurried to help her up. ‘Maman, the ground is too wet to kneel.’
The older woman turned to her with an expression of childish delight. In her hand she held a small bunch of violets. ‘Look, Maryanne, look! Spring has come at last.’
Napoleon Bonaparte had been the ogre of Europe nearly all Maryanne’s life; like all English children she had been brought up to dread his coming. ‘Behave yourself or old Boney will get you’, was as familiar a saying as, ‘If you are naughty, you won’t go to heaven’. And now he was only a few miles away. Telling herself he was only a man like any other did nothing to calm her fears. She longed for Adam. Why could he not be content to stay with her? Why was he not fulfilled unless he was chasing round the countryside on some secret errand? It almost made her angry. Perhaps it was better to be angry; anger was easier to bear than hurt.
