The French Bride (3 page)

‘She's very rich,' the old King said. His very black eyes looked past Sir James towards Madame du Barry. She blew him a kiss and for a moment the long, melancholy face softened and he smiled.

‘Very rich and well born; a quiet and modest creature, if I recall her properly.' He frowned, trying to remember. ‘Ah yes, delightful, very pretty. Your son is lucky, monsieur. Very well, your arguments about your estates have decided me. You have my permission. You may go, M. Macdonald.' As Sir James bowed, he saw Louis yawn and hold out his hand to the Du Barry. He hurried out of the second-floor apartments which were the official quarters of the mistress, and went back to tell his wife that now the marriage could take place. He was also in a hurry to arrange the payment of Charles's debt.

‘There's no need for you to marry this woman! Why didn't you come to me, I would have mortgaged my estates, done anything – I would have found the money for you somehow!'

‘I told you,' Charles said. ‘There's more to it than the debt. I'm going to inherit my family's lands in Scotland – I need a rich wife; besides, my dear Louise, by the time you gathered the money together, De Charlot would have had me sent to the Bastille, and you know how easy it is to get out of there!'

He closed his eyes for a moment; he felt sleepy and relaxed and rather hungry. He wished that she would stop harassing him about his marriage. He reached out and brought her close beside him; he had only to touch her to feel his strength and his desire surging back like the blood tide in his veins. He kissed her shoulder and began to pull her down with him, caressing her; to his surprise she struck his hands away and sprang off the bed. He opened his eyes and looked at her and laughed.

‘You look very beautiful when you're jealous. Jealous and naked; both suit you to perfection. Stop being such a damned fool Louise! If you won't make love with me, then at least give me some supper. I'm hungry now.'

‘You weren't when you came in,' she said.

She covered herself with a long satin robe; her hands were shaking. Lying beside him, drowsing and whispering, he had suddenly told her that he was going to marry one of the richest young women in France. She hardly listened to his account of his interview with his parents, or the cynical way in which he spoke of the match itself. All Louise knew was that another woman would have legal title to him, a woman she had never seen, a woman who was young and a great heiress.

‘How can you expect me to be anything but jealous?' she demanded. She reached over and began tying the laces of his shirt; her eyes were full of tears. ‘You know I love you more than anything in the world. Don't do it, Charles, don't, I beg of you! I'll go to the Du Barry, she'll help me, she'll intercede with the King. He won't listen to De Charlot. And I'll find the ten thousand livres for you! You've no need to marry her!'

Charles took her hands away and finished fastening the shirt himself. He looked down at her with an expression she had seen once or twice before, a look of cold, irritated boredom that could develop in a moment into the kind of anger that silenced a nagging woman with a blow.

‘If you think that being your lover is more important to me than inheriting my rights in my own country, then you're a very stupid woman. Do you suppose I'm going to be an exile, living on French charity all my life, just because my mistress doesn't want me to take a wife …?'

‘Don't be angry with me,' she said quickly.

She turned away to arrange her hair before the dressing table and control herself. One more tactless word and he would walk out of the room, perhaps never enter it again. She had often amused herself by teasing and provoking her lovers for the pleasure of seeing them come crawling back. Now it was her turn to abase herself, and she wanted him so much that she had long since lost all sense of shame. She pulled out the chair for him and without speaking he sat down in it and began to help himself to the cold meats and pastry dishes. She poured out two glasses of wine and sat opposite to him.

‘I won't mention it again,' she said softly. ‘You know what's best.'

He put down his glass and smiled at her. ‘You've no reason to worry,' he said. ‘She's my
cousin …
nothing will change between us. She'll learn to do what she's told.'

The Château of Charantaise de la Haye had been built in the fifteenth century by the Sieur de Bernard, who designed it as a fortress in command of his vast lands. Little of the original building remained; his descendants, notably the fifth marquis, rebuilt it on the scale of an elegant palace, inspired by the splendours being carried out by King Louis XIV in his palace at Versailles. The beautiful stone building was set in a valley; behind the park of more than a hundred acres, including woods, formal gardens, fountain walks, and a fine orangery; land stretched out as far as the eye could see. Every farm, every tree, stream, and bush, and every living creature belonged to the Seigneur of Charantaise.

For the last twelve years the great estates had been owned by a woman. There were two hundred rooms in the château and one hundred and fifty indoor servants, excluding gardeners, grooms, messengers, woodsmen, and gamekeepers. There was a banqueting hall with a ceiling painted by Vernet, a library containing over a thousand books, and a magnificent private chapel. The woods were full of game, for the De Bernards were great hunters; unlike most of the nobility of the period, they preferred to live on their splendid estates and make only token appearances at court. Apart from her formal presentation at Versailles, Anne de Bernard had stayed at Charantaise.

A group of horses raced across the green parkland, and the sound of a huntsman's horn sang through the autumn air. Ahead of them a deer fled for its life, bounding over the ground, pursued by a dozen hunting dogs in full cry. One horse galloped faster and jumped more recklessly than the rest and it was ridden by a woman in a green riding dress. As she had said to her uncle, Anne de Bernard saw no reason why she should miss an afternoon's hunting even if her future husband was coming to Charantaise that day.

When the riders came back to the château, the light was beginning to fail; the deer had reached the shelter of the woods where the horses could not follow it and the hounds were called off, yelping and barking with disappointment. Their mistress stopped at the foot of the entrance stairs and patted them, laughing. She adored the excitement and the danger of the chase, but she was always glad when the quarry escaped after a good run. A footman came to take her gloves and whip; the enormous doors of the château were opened wide, and inside the marble entrance hall with its palisades and statues, servants were carrying boxes up the staircase, and her own steward of the household came running down the steps to meet her.

‘Madame, your guests have arrived!'

‘So I see – have they been here long?'

‘About an hour, madame; Monsieur, your uncle, asked you to come to him as soon as you returned.'

‘Where is my uncle?' Anne asked him. She paused in the entrance and looked round. There were faces that she did not know, wearing strange livery, and a very thin, grey-haired little woman in a brown cloak, shouting directions about the luggage in such a bad accent that even Anne could hardly understand her. But she recognised her; it was her cousin Lady Katherine's maid, Annie, and Annie was very much a part of their extraordinary story. She had been found a year after their escape from Scotland, the only survivor of the massacre which had killed all her mistress' family, and brought over to France to join her.

‘Your uncle is in the Long Salon,' her steward said. ‘With your guests, madame.'

‘Very good, I'll join them there.' She walked over to the little Scotswoman and touched her on the shoulder.

‘Good day, Annie. Do you recognise me after all this time?'

‘Mme. la Marquise!' Annie's reply was made in lilting Scots. ‘Och, how ye've grown; I'd hardly know ye now from the tiny lassie I used to play with down here!' She curtsied, and her sharp, lined face turned pink. She would never have recognised the shy, ordinary child of years ago in this tall, beautiful girl with her dazzling smile. The change was unbelievable.

‘Have you brought my future husband with you?' Anne asked her.

The old woman's smile disappeared; ‘Aye,' she said shortly. ‘But don't hurry now – it'll do him no harm to be kept waiting! I can't believe my eyes, madame, ye're so much altered.'

Anne laughed. ‘I always knew I was an ugly child. I'd best go and change my dress.' She looked down at her skirt, it was streaked with dirt where the dogs had leaped at her affectionately. ‘If there is anything you need for your master and mistress or yourself, go to my steward Henri; only don't speak to him in English. He doesn't understand it. Good afternoon Annie. And welcome.'

She ran up the wide stairs; like the hall they were made of the finest Carrara marble, imported from the Italian quarries at enormous cost. There were alcoves along the wall where her ancestor had placed the early Roman sculptures he had collected. As a very small child, Anne used to amuse herself by skipping down the staircase, making faces at the figures as she passed. The man her guardian wanted her to marry had been a little boy who used to join her in that game; it was one of the few things she remembered about him except that he was older and she much preferred his younger sister. She and Jean Macdonald de Mallot were still close friends who wrote regularly to each other though they seldom visited. She could remember very little indeed about Charles.

She walked quickly along the upper corridor that was really a fine gallery hung with portraits; generations of De Bernards looked down at her, some in hunting dress with their dogs beside them, others in armour mounted upon rearing horses, others with their wives and children in stiff groups. The ancestress, who had married a Scottish earl and gone to live with him at Clandara in the Highlands, was one of the prettiest of the pictures in the gallery; Annie was her great-niece and Charles Macdonald was her great-grandson. At the far end of the gallery she almost knocked into a man; he had been standing with his back to her, staring at the picture of the dead Countess of Clandara, Marie Elizabeth de Bernard at the age of twenty, wearing the costume of Diana.

‘Monsieur!'

Charles turned and bowed. ‘I beg your pardon, madame. I didn't see you.'

‘Nor I you,' she answered. He was staring at her coolly, and to her annoyance, she blushed. There was something about him, some mocking look that was familiar. ‘I was just admiring this picture,' he said. ‘She's the only pretty one among the whole gallery; the De Bernards are not an attractive family; don't you agree?'

‘No,' Anne said, ‘I'm afraid I don't. I happen to be Anne de Bernard!'

He turned back to her and smiled. ‘I know,' he said lightly. ‘I recognised you the moment you bumped into me so clumsily. Even as a child you were always bumping into things or rolling on the lawns with your dogs. As soon as I saw someone in a riding habit covered in mud to the eyes, I knew it was you. I'm your cousin Charles. Did you recognise me? I hope
I've
changed!'

‘Not very much,' she answered. ‘I don't remember much about you except that you always made me cry. You haven't altered at all. Excuse me, I'm going to change my dress and go down to greet your mother.'

He stood and watched her as she ran down the rest of the gallery and disappeared through the door at the end. He lied when he said he had recognised her at once; as a child her hair had been brown and her face quite unremarkable; there was no distinguishing feature to identify her twelve years later. Now the mousey hair was the colour of the burnished beech trees in the park outside, and the eyes which had filled with tears at his rudeness were large and very blue. She was quite beautiful, but it was not a beauty that appealed to him in the least. He did not know what he had expected and he had not really cared; he was determined to dislike her because she was not his choice. But this naïve, unsophisticated gentlewoman who blushed and blundered into him like an awkward schoolgirl.… He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk slowly down the gallery. He was being made to pay a heavy price for his debts and the estates in Scotland he had never seen. Louise need have to fear. He had hardly been in the house before he was counting the days till he returned to Versailles.

‘What dress will you wear, madame? I've put out three for you, but you left no instructions this morning and I didn't know.…' Anne had two maids to look after her. She often felt that one was quite sufficient, but the De Bernard ladies always had two women of the chamber, and after they were married, they had three.

She went into the dressing closet and pulled out the dresses one by one. There was a yellow silk trimmed round the sleeves with gold lace, a crimson velvet with cuffs and hem lined in imperial sables, and a peacock blue – the petticoat covered in silver embroidery. After a moment Anne pointed to the blue dress. ‘I will wear that; bring out my jewel boxes.'

She had said nothing about meeting her cousin; she allowed the maids to undress her and bathe her, but when they tried to talk about the visit and her fiancé, she told them to be quiet. The laws of obedience to the mistress were very strictly enforced at Charantaise; nobody dared to say a word. After she was laced into the blue dress and sitting before her dressing mirror while one of the maids dressed her hair, Anne opened the jewel boxes one after another, taking out this piece and that and rejecting it. Her mother had been passionately fond of jewels; many of the lovely rings and ornaments were given to her by her lovers. Her husband had been a stern and solid man, devoted to his estates and his sports and accustomed to the vagaries of his frivolous wife which he ignored. Anne had inherited the splendid family jewels of the De Bernards and the sentimental trophies of her imprudent mother. It was a set of these which suited the brilliant colour of her dress. They were pale sapphire, surrounded by large diamonds and exquisitely set in a necklace and a brooch. It was the custom to change four times a day, when one went walking or driving out, hunting, receiving visitors in the afternoon, and again when one dined at night, even alone.