New World, New Love

by Rosalind Laker

  ‘We’ll see about it tomorrow,’ Louise promised willingly. Except for the gowns they were wearing, which had been kept for this day of arrival, the few garments they had with them had suffered through being washed in buckets of sea water. As soon as they had an outfit each in which to present themselves to prospective employers, she would find work for herself and a suitable place for Delphine. She was lucky in having her jewellery still in her possession and a piece could be sold when money was needed. She also had in her safekeeping a few fine pieces that Delphine had inherited but she was determined that these should never be sold. It was her fervent hope that with better times her sister would be able to wear them, which was something she had never had the chance to do at home.

  As Delphine continued to chatter happily like a child about all she was seeing, Louise smiled, pleased to see her sister so merry after all they had been through together. Although thin from their recent poor diet – Louise was aware of her own gown loose on her – Delphine was still exceptionally lovely with her piquant, almost elfin looks and her curling, copper-red hair inherited from their late mother.

  The carriage turned into a narrow side street and Delphine’s exuberance waned as it drew up outside a moderately sized, tawny brick house, the woodwork in need of a coat of paint.

  ‘Do we really have to stay here?’ she protested sulkily. But Louise was already getting out of the carriage. The door was opened by a plump, middle-aged woman, a white frilled cap on her tightly curled grey hair.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Ford.’ Louise handed over a message that Captain Hooper had written for the woman. ‘We have just landed in New York from the Ocean Maid. Captain Hooper suggested we should seek accommodation here.’

  ‘Oh, he’s in port again, is he?’ She read the message through before regarding the sisters on her doorstep with narrowed, assessing eyes. ‘You both speak English? Good! He has remembered that I don’t deal with folk who can’t understand me.’ Her glance swept Louise up and down. ‘You’re a widow, ma’am?’ She paused before attempting Louise’s surname. ‘De Vailly? Is that right? And you’re with your sister?’ Her glance went to Delphine. ‘Miss de Montier?’

  ‘That’s correct,’ Louise replied.

  ‘Well, I’ve only one room left, but it should suit you.’ She led the way upstairs. There was a reassuringly clean aroma of beeswax and newly washed floors.

  The room shown to them was small but adequately furnished. Louise paid two weeks’ rent in advance as requested. In turn Mrs Ford offered the use of the laundry tub in the basement and, for a little more money, hot water in the bathhouse. The sisters accepted eagerly the chance to bathe away the effects of their voyage. Afterwards Mrs Ford had ready for them a simple meal of cold ham and other meats with salad and crusty bread. Neither Louise nor Delphine in their hunger could remember enjoying food more.

  When they went upstairs again to their room Delphine thumped herself down on the edge of the bed as she took up her protest once more. ‘This accommodation is so cramped! I still don’t see why we couldn’t have gone straight to Cousin Madeleine instead of coming here.’

  Louise shook her head firmly. ‘Not until we’ve established ourselves with our own apartment and full-time work. We’re not going to be a burden to anyone, even though I know she would welcome us gladly for our own and Maman’s sake.’

  Delphine sighed at her sister’s attitude, but said no more. She made up her mind to call on their first cousin once removed by herself if circumstances became intolerable. She’d endured enough hardship and privation to last a lifetime and wasn’t going to prolong it unnecessarily if an opportunity was there for the taking.

  Louise was eager to get her bearings and, after getting directions from Mrs Ford, she and Delphine went out into the city. Their first call was at a banking house, recommended by Captain Hooper, where she deposited her jewellery in a box for safe keeping. The banker himself was able to advise her as to which jeweller would give her a fair price whenever she should wish to sell a piece. Afterwards they explored a little, walked as far as Trinity Church and sat for a while in a park, watching the New Yorkers go by. On the way back to the lodging house they passed the Tammany Museum, where a notice outside announced its latest attraction, a full-sized replica of the guillotine complete with a decapitated wax victim. Both sisters shuddered and hurried by. In the next street Louise bought two newspapers, a New York edition and another printed in French.

  When Delphine was in bed and asleep Louise sat down to read the newspapers by candlelight, trying not to disturb Delphine’s sleep by rustling them when she turned a page. In the American edition there was news of the war in Europe, for after the universal horror at the regicide of Louis XIV at the guillotine, the British and their Allies had taken up arms against France. There was also a section that listed work vacancies and another that advertised the skills of those looking for work.

  She encircled three adverts that looked promising. Although she had learned in conversation with Mrs Ford that most émigrés were making use of whatever talents they possessed, she still was amazed when she read the advertisements put in by her fellow aristocrats, in which they offered their individual skills. The men had become dancing masters, riding and fencing and archery instructors, gardeners and teachers of mathematics and various languages. As for the women, they were now seamstresses, embroiderers, makers of beauty preparations, wig-dressers, weavers of fine ribbons and, like some of the men, singing and music teachers.

  Louise knew from many of the noble names that in the past they would have been waited on hand and foot by a horde of servants, never having to reach for a fan or even put on their own shoes. She admired them for their efforts in new and difficult circumstances.

  Turning to the French newspaper, she caught her breath at the list of those at home in France who had most recently gone to the guillotine under the Reign of Terror, as the latest wave of savage murder was called, instigated by the tyrant Robespierre. It was in just such a list that she had found the name of her own husband and, only a matter of days before, that of an uncle, three cousins of whom she had been extremely fond and several close friends. Through the slowness of travel the list she was reading now was already old news and many more names would have been added to it by now.

  She put both newspapers aside and gazed unseeingly down into the moonlit street below. At least her parents, although they had both died far too young and tragically, had been spared such an horrific fate, her mother in giving birth to Delphine and her father five years later through a riding accident. That was when she was fifteen, so her father’s only brother became her and Delphine’s guardian.

  Count Henri de Montier was a stern, well-intentioned man, long-established at the court of Versailles, who enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle such as had never appealed to their father. He was a widower with no children of his own, but had made up his mind unyieldingly how to deal with his two new charges. He had arrived at their home, the Château de Montier, in time for the funeral and afterwards talked to Louise on her own.

  ‘I’m taking you back to Versailles with me. Your father has provided you and your sister with large dowries and neither of you will have any difficulty in making a good marriage when the time comes. You are also an heiress in your own right, Louise. Your father’s hobby of studying those ancient law books from your great-grandfather’s collection, which I remember filled many shelves in this château’s library, enabled him to invoke an old law in his will. It ensures that this property and rich estate will always be yours and never your husband’s unless you should choose to sign it over to him. We shall leave here tomorrow.’

  At any other time Louise would have been overjoyed at the prospect of balls and parties and entertainments presided over by the lovely Queen Marie Antoinette herself, but she was presently too steeped in grief at losing her father.

  ‘Not yet, Oncle,’ she said haltingly, her throat still sob-strained, her handkerchief tear-sodden in the pocket of her skirt. ‘In a
while, but not yet. In any case, Delphine is only five. She wouldn’t like to be away from home in strange surroundings.’

  Although Louise had been only ten herself when their mother had died, she had become instantly protective towards her newborn sister and that had never changed. Her uncle gave an impatient snort.

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, girl. Delphine will stay on here with her nurse until she is of marriageable age, as you are now. The present châtelaine is running the household efficiently and your late father’s bailiff has kept the estate in good order. However, I shall send a bailiff of my own to take full charge of the land, a capable man by the name of Jacques Droux. We don’t want the peasants taking advantage of your father’s demise to become lax in their toil. In fact, to my mind, he was far too easy on them.’

  Louise had been looking down at her hands in her lap, clasping them tightly. Now she raised her head, steely determination in her clear green eyes.

  ‘I’ll not go anywhere without Delphine!’

  The count remained unmoved. He knew how to crush rebellion, whether in a horse or a woman. ‘If you do not agree to do as I say, I shall put you in one convent and Delphine in another. Is that what you’d prefer? I’ll not ask you again.’

  It broke her. She could never let her sister go among strangers on her own and this man’s will was of iron. Her parting with Delphine had been agonizing. The child had wept and screamed and clung to her. Louise, also in tears, had tried to comfort her.

  ‘I’ll do everything I can to bring us together again soon. And I’ll write often. You’ll write to me too, won’t you?’

  Her last view of her sister that day had been of her breaking free of her nurse to run after the coach, her face tear-streaked and her arms outstretched.

  Louise sighed at the memory. Now they were both in an alien land and all they had known lost for ever. In that moment she felt a terrible upsurge of homesickness for the contented days at their country château, before she ever left for Versailles – in those years before France descended into chaos.

  Before undressing, she took off the scarlet ribbon from around her neck. Another widow on the ship had given it to her, but she would not wear it again. Neither would she use her title any more, which was why she had not given it with her name to Mrs Ford, for it belonged to the past, together with private and agonizing memories of rape, brutality and deceit that she had been forced to endure. As for her wedding ring, that had gone long since in desperate circumstances, and it was her mother’s that she wore.

  She had also finished with mourning black. Nothing could ever make her forget those dear to her who had gone, but for Delphine’s sake she had to make tomorrow a new beginning and the way to more secure times.

  Two

  Before breakfast next morning Louise had decided against the employment vacancies that previously had most interested her. One had been for a hairdresser – and she was deft at dressing her own hair and her sister’s rebellious curls – the second a post for a governess and the third that of a housekeeper. But she had come to the conclusion that it would not be wise to work away from Delphine for the time being and they must find employment under the same roof.

  Since her escape from France, Louise had held no false pride about the status of whatever work she might have to take, but she wanted employment that would interest her. If it should be in a trade that she could learn to master, there would be possibilities for advancement. She realized that opportunities for an ambitious woman were as limited in this country as they would be anywhere else in the civilized world, but she intended to keep her eyes and ears open for any chance that came along. As for Delphine, her oft-stated aim was to make a good marriage with a rich man, but that was no more than a dream in their present circumstances.

  After breakfast Louise returned to their room with borrowed pen and ink and a stick of red sealing wax to write a letter to their aunt in England, leaving her sister chatting to Mrs Ford downstairs. She sat down at the little table and began to write. Violette, her late father’s sister, had married an Englishman over thirty years ago and Louise had visited them in London during the early years of her marriage to Fernand de Vailly. He’d let her go on her own, having no interest in going himself, and she’d had a happy, carefree visit that stood out in her memory. She knew that Violette would be bitterly disappointed that she and Delphine had not sought refuge with her, but this letter would explain the circumstances.

  When Louise eventually put down her pen she sealed the letter using her own seal with its family crest, one of the few things she had been able to bring with her from home. She was glad to be on her own for a little while. As she had written to Violette, when planning their escape from France, she had expected that they would get across the Channel to England by fishing boat as so many other émigrés had done, but fate had intervened and brought them to the other side of the world instead.

  Her thoughts ran back to the day at Versailles when that great angry mob had come from Paris to swarm through the palace gates. Just before they had broken into the palace itself and had come roaring for blood up the staircase, she and some other ladies of the court had been elsewhere in the great palace and were cut off from the royal family’s presence. They could do nothing but wait in an agony of suspense until their worst fears were realized. Through a window they glimpsed that hideous procession as the King and Queen and their children had been taken off to Paris, the heads of loyal soldiers carried triumphantly on pikes ahead of their coach like banners.

  It had been a signal for many aristocrats to get over the borders into neighbouring countries without delay, for nobody knew what would be happening next, but her one thought had been to get home to her sister. It had been a hazardous journey made in a working woman’s clothes that a maidservant had found for her. She had set off on a horse from the palace stables, but it was stolen one night while she slept under a tree. All the time, she avoided entering any taverns or hostelries, fearful that she might be spotted as a noblewoman and murdered by peasants fired up by the Revolution. Her money soon ran out as suspicious farming folk charged her exorbitantly for whatever food they could spare. Eventually she arrived home on an old nag for which she had exchanged her wedding ring. In spite of her bedraggled appearance Delphine had recognized her from a window and come running joyfully to meet her.

  The countryside around was quiet enough at the time, but there was a change in the atmosphere. When she rode around the estate the morning after her homecoming the peasants, some of whom she had known all her life, barely answered her when she spoke to them and looked away when they saw her riding nearby. Only Pierre, the former bailiff, a conscientious fair-minded man, was the same as he had always been towards her, knowing it was no fault of hers that he had lost his authority to the bailiff, whom her uncle had installed over him. Delphine had written that the workers had come to hate the ruthless intruder, who had cut their wages and brought them close to starvation, but those letters had been intercepted and Louise had never received them.

  ‘I thought you didn’t care,’ Delphine said, ‘because you never commented on what I’d told you in your letters to me.’

  Louise shook her head despairingly, still shocked at learning that Jacques Droux had been stabbed to death with a pitchfork only days before her return. ‘Naturally you would have assumed that was the case, just as you thought I didn’t want to see you when I never came home after those first early visits. But I will try to put things right.’

  She had reinstated Pierre immediately and restored the workers’ wages to the previous level. The accounts had shown her that the murdered bailiff must have pocketed the difference taken from them, for there was no record of the pay cut in the books. She had hoped by her actions to undo the damage done in her absence, but years of brutal treatment had taken its toll on her estate. The seeds of the Revolution had already been deeply sown in the small corner of France that meant so much to her.

  With a sigh, Louise rose from her chair, took her cl
oak and hat from a peg, Delphine’s as well, and went downstairs with her letter. Their first call was to the post office, where Louise sent her letter on its way. Even if Violette replied by return it would be many weeks before she could hope for its arrival.

  By the end of the first week in their new land they had explored the city extensively. Louise treated this time as a vacation before starting work, during which they bought fabric from one of the city’s markets, and made themselves new gowns. Louise also altered the black silk gown in which she had landed, adding a row of small scarlet bows down the front of the bodice and using braid in the same bright hue around the neck and sleeves, finally banishing its mourning look. They also retrimmed their hats with roses, which they had made themselves out of coloured ribbons. Later they would have new headgear as well, but Louise considered that would be an extravagance for the time being. In any case she liked her yellow hat, which Delphine had made for her when they were hiding from the revolutionaries, even though its over-bright colour was due to a misjudgement of the amount of natural dye required.

  They had one frightening experience when they emerged from a shop on Pearl Street to see an advancing procession of shouting demonstrators swarming towards them with banners, the Tricolour and the Stars and Stripes held high and fluttering side by side. Nearly all were wearing the scarlet Phrygian caps that had come to symbolize the Revolution to Frenchmen and foreigners alike. Delphine cowered back, terrified of being seized, and instinctively Louise put her arms around her. An elderly man, standing nearby, noticed and guessed their nationality.

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid, ladies,’ he said reassuringly to them. ‘This is just a band of hotheads who want President Washington to go to war on the side of France against Britain and her allies. They argue that the French helped us during our revolution, but they forget we weren’t murdering our own people.’