‘It’s just as if we were eloping.’ She tilted back her head, laughing happily.
‘I suppose in a way we are!’ he declared, laughing with her.
The minister had called in his wife and daughter to be witnesses while he married Daniel and Louise in the otherwise empty church. The ring that Daniel slid on to her finger was a family heirloom of diamonds and pearls set in gold. They looked at each other very seriously before they kissed once the minister had pronounced that they were now husband and wife.
‘Now to break the news!’ Daniel declared with a grin, kissing her again on the church steps.
The Bradshaws were surprised, but pleased about the marriage. Delphine, after her initial disappointment at not having been a bridesmaid to outshine the bride, realized with relief that she would be free at last from her sister’s eagle eye. Louise had always been able to read her like a book, whereas Madeleine only saw her in a rose-tinted light.
Theodore announced the marriage of Daniel and Louise that same evening at the soirée and there were congratulations and good wishes from all present.
Louise was to stay with Daniel all the time the alterations and decorations took place at the shop. There were several delays when it was discovered that the property had to be re-roofed and subsidence corrected in the basement. She visited Daniel’s warehouse to select the silk fabrics she would need for her millinery. Afterwards, in a special storeroom, she had her choice of the exquisite Lyons silks to be made into high-waisted coats and gowns by the best seamstresses.
Neither she nor Daniel had ever been happier and they made love at every opportunity. It was as if their passion, long denied, could never be assuaged.
She called into the shop every day to see how the work was progressing. At her instructions the atelier and her office were the first to be made ready. Then she interviewed a number of women sent to her by an agency. Several were suitable, but she chose two older women with considerable experience in the millinery trade, as well as an apprentice, who showed she would be quick to learn the unique plaiting for the straw hats.
Finally she engaged a young woman of twenty, named Amy Saville, to assist in the showroom itself. She was the plainest of the applicants, but she was stylish in her simple summer clothes and wore her hat with flair. Louise intended to teach her how to show and display hats with the right tilt of the head, just as she herself had once done for Daniel at Miss Sullivan’s. He had long since admitted that his purchase had been a pretext by which to meet her again, something she had known from the start.
To build up stock Louise took on four other milliners on a temporary basis and they and the two others were soon at work at the long tables, cutting and shaping and steaming. The hats they produced were from Louise’s own designs, which she had started to sketch during her days at Miss Sullivan’s and had continued periodically ever since. The latest London fashion plates showed that hats were gaining high crowns and narrower brims, some without brims at all, and even a bonnet shape that was all brim, like half a flowerpot.
By chance Louise met an American woman at a card party, Mrs Amelia Jackson, who was visiting her daughter in Boston after just returning from travelling with her husband on a diplomatic mission to Paris. She spoke descriptively of the neoclassical styles evolving there and of the hats being worn, which included spectacular turbans. Louise was delighted to know that, in spite of the war, fashion was rising again in France under the ruling Directory. Some of it sounded extreme, such as a daringly low décolletage, almost to the nipples, with the throat wrapped in a silk neck cloth. There were also bonnet brims extending to absurd lengths over the face. Yet it was through exaggeration that trends were set for the future.
Louise went to every social occasion that allowed her splendid eye-catching hats to be seen. Madeleine was delighted to have her company at any time and Daniel was always at her side at evening events and other important festivities. At the ball for Delphine and others that followed, Louise created a headdress for herself of pearls or plumes or ribbons. She knew that wherever she went women were starting to watch for her arrival to see what she was wearing.
‘Why don’t you make me a pretty hat?’ Delphine pouted. She had no lack of male admirers herself and her coming-out ball had been an enormous personal success, but she had begun to resent the attention directed towards her sister. Men had always given Louise a second glance, a sharp turning of the head so often following in her wake, but now she was making her mark on Boston society in general and Delphine felt in danger of being overshadowed.
‘I can’t make you one yet,’ Louise replied, ‘because I need to wear my own designs exclusively to get them talked about. Then, when I open my shop, I hope everyone will come flocking to buy. But I have a special creation in mind for you and you shall have it on my opening day.’
By October, when the trees were in their full glory, Daniel had become convinced that Louise had dismissed all thought of moving into her own apartment, even though it had been furnished and ready for some time. So it came as a shock to him on the eve of the shop’s opening when he saw her trunks being carried down the stairs. He went in search of her, flinging open doors and charging from one room to another until he finally found her with her writing box on her lap as she penned a letter. She looked up with a smile, about to tell him she was answering a letter from her aunt in England, and then saw his rage-congested face.
‘Why?’ he demanded furiously before she could speak. ‘There’s no reason at all for you to move out! You can be at the shop for opening hours like anyone else running a business. You don’t have to live on site!’
She answered him quietly, putting the writing box aside. ‘You’ve known from the start that this is what I planned to do. When the property became mine I told you that I’d move in on the eve of its opening. You agreed to it.’
‘My God! I thought that once you were here you’d never leave. This house will be like a morgue without you. I want you here! I need to hear your voice and your laughter in these rooms.’ He flung his arms wide. ‘Your footsteps on the stairs. The essence of you in my breathing. To see you come through these doors. And I want you in my bed, to feel you there all through the night and to wake to the sight of you.’
She felt overwhelmed by this passionate outpouring of his love for her and rose to her feet, for he had been towering over her. During the past weeks her excitement over her shop had blunted her realization of what her absence from his house would mean to him, no matter how cheerfully he had accepted the arrangement originally.
‘I would stay if I could, but you know only too well that I have this desperate need to achieve success independently, to prove to myself that I am a whole person by right and not just a chattel. Somehow it’s the only way by which I can shake off the past that still haunts me. I want to be free. Not of loving you, but of all the old nightmares.’ She caught up his hand and clasped it to her. ‘I shall be here often, always with you when we entertain our friends or wish for an evening here on our own, and you can come to me and to my bed every night. Everything will be just as you mapped out when you suggested marriage and gave me your word that you would keep to our agreement.’
Her calmness had the effect of exacerbating his anger and he jerked his hand away. ‘I never thought you’d keep me to such a promise! I believed you loved me enough to realize that we couldn’t live apart. You’re throwing me out of your life!’
‘That’s not true! All I’m asking is a breathing space in which to slay all my dragons. Is it so much to ask?’
‘Indeed it is! You’re driving in the thin edge of the wedge. This separation is only the beginning of the end!’
Her face became rigid with the gust of anger that swept through her. ‘After all we have been to each other, do you still know so little about me that you believe I would be so devious?’
‘I don’t know what to believe any more!’ he gave back fiercely, a desolate bitterness behind his rage.
‘In that case, ther
e’s nothing more to be said.’ White-faced, she swept furiously away from him and out of the room.
He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation before he slammed his way into the library and threw himself into a chair. He was shaking with rage and frustration. Louise was the most infuriating and stubborn and desirable woman he had ever known, but she was in his blood and his bones, the other half of himself, and there was nothing he could do about it. Half an hour later he heard her come from the stairs and across the marble floor of the hall to pause outside the library door. He thought for a few swift moments that she was coming to tell him she had changed her mind about leaving, but then she went on out of the house. He heard the door close after her.
That night, Louise spent a restless night on her own in her new surroundings, unable to put the quarrel from her mind. She was thankful when the first light of dawn signalled that it was time to get up.
The fresh flowers she had ordered arrived promptly at seven o’clock and she set about arranging them in the crystal vases that Theodore and Madeleine had given her, the scent banishing the last hint of new paint from the showroom. Then she stood back to get the effect. A dividing wall had been taken down during the alterations and the showroom was now a spacious area enhanced by cream wallpaper striped with green and supplied with plenty of gilt-framed mirrors and chairs. The whole place was unrecognizable from how it had been before. Everything was ready, even the specially made leaf-yellow silk turban that she had set aside as a gift for Madeleine, knowing how it would suit her.
Her staff arrived early, all of them excited by the importance of the occasion, Amy wearing the new russet velvet gown that Louise had supplied. For the winter, spring and summer collections there would be a gown for her in keeping with the main colour of the season, but for the present it had to be in tone with autumn. Louise herself had chosen bronze silk gauze, but had not dampened it to cling to her figure as Mrs Jackson had said many fashionable women were doing in France.
The shop window had curtains across it to hide the display until the opening at ten o’clock. Louise gave a final touch to the cream silk draped over the stand holding the solitary creation, a pumpkin-orange hat with a rolled brim and a sunburst of feathers in all the hues of the brilliant foliage that made the trees such a vista at this time of year. It was both spectacular and beautiful, a work of art that would enhance the looks of any woman, whatever her age.
Shortly before ten o’clock Madeleine arrived with Delphine, coming in through the staff entrance. ‘There are quite a few carriages waiting outside, Louise,’ Delphine exclaimed excitedly. ‘And I saw Mrs Featherstone and Mrs Lucas chatting on the opposite side of the street, but they had one eye on this shop and I’m sure they’re waiting to be first in.’
Her words proved to be right. They must have moved at the first ripple of the drapes being parted in the window, because, as Louise looped back the cream silk folds, they had already crossed the street to peer in at the window. When they entered the shop, both wanted the hat in the window. Louise, seeing there would be friction, explained that it was only for display at the present time, but she would show them other hats that were on the same theme. When they were seated, together with Madeleine and Delphine and several other women who had come from their carriages, Amy paraded in the various hats as rehearsed. More well-dressed customers arrived and the novelty of seeing the hats being shown in this completely new way proved highly popular.
In spite of their quarrel, Louise fully expected Daniel to make an appearance during the day, but he did not come. She had sold many hats and there was a long list in her order book when she took the special creation from the window and placed it in one of the new black and white striped hatboxes for Delphine.
It was then that Daniel came, tapping on the door as he looked through the glass panel at her. She shot back the bolts again and let him in.
‘Did you have a good day?’ he asked reservedly, making no attempt to take her into his arms.
‘Yes, it was more successful than I dared hope. My milliners will be kept busy for weeks to come.’
‘Congratulations. But you must be tired.’ He made a conciliatory gesture. ‘I’ve come to take you home to dine. I’ll bring you back here afterwards.’
‘No, stay here. I ordered a cold supper to be brought in for the two of us. It’s ready upstairs.’
His reserve broke and he pulled her to him, locking her in his arms as he kissed her passionately, her head cupped in his hand, and she responded with loving abandon, tears flowing from under her lids at the mending of their quarrel, even though its cause still remained.
‘I love you so much,’ he declared ardently, drawing back to look into her face and smoothing away her tears with his thumbs. ‘Have your two years and longer if it means you’ll come home to me eventually. Live your own life. Follow your own way. But don’t ever leave me.’
‘Never!’ she promised vehemently, unable to envisage anything able to take her from this man. ‘Nothing shall ever part us.’
Fifteen
Two years went by during which Louise’s shop became renowned for its beautiful creations, and her customers could be sure that they would never meet anybody else in the same hat. It also became the place for brides to order hats and headdresses, and Louise began a successful sideline of bonnets for babies, employing two lace makers.
Her relationship with Daniel had never been stronger. There was constant speculation in their social circles as to why they lived apart, some of the women privately envying Louise’s independence, while most of the married men thought Daniel fortunate that he did not have his wife under his roof to check all his comings and goings.
By this time Louise felt ready at last to move back into Daniel’s house. He had been saying that he wanted her to have her portrait painted, but in the meantime she had had a miniature of herself done for him, which she would give him on their first evening together. The two years of hard work had enabled her to prove herself and to feel at last a person in her own right, with all nightmares banished. Before the Revolution there had been a strong movement in France, by women in her social class, to gain equality with men. She had heard that it had survived with renewed force and she found it intensely satisfying that she had achieved that same equality here in her new country. Most important of all, it was the foundation of her marriage in a true partnership. Daniel had never asked her to return sooner than the time she had stated, but now that the two years were up she knew he was hoping that she would not extend it.
She had stopped using precautions against pregnancy. An understanding duchess at Versailles had given her certain advice during her first marriage, when she had become fearful of having a child by Fernand after being abused by him. Now every time she and Daniel made love she hoped to become pregnant. She was soon rewarded and he shared her joy.
‘I’ll be able to come home with you to stay very soon now,’ she promised him when they met to go to a concert together. ‘Today I appointed an experienced manageress, Mrs Saunders, who has been in millinery herself, and she will take over my workload. It means that in future I’ll be able to concentrate wholly on designing and, most importantly, on taking care of our child.’
But their happiness over her pregnancy was short-lived and her homecoming not as expected. On her last day in her apartment she missed her footing at the head of the stairs while carrying one too many hatboxes. She had the sickening sensation of stepping into nothingness before she began to fall, crashing from one tread to another all the way down the flight. Mrs Saunders and Amy heard her cry out and ran to find her tumbled at the foot of the stairs amid crushed boxes and hats. She had knocked herself out on the way down.
‘Fetch Mr Lombard at once!’ the manageress ordered immediately, sending off one of the apprentices. ‘And run!’
Then she and Amy carried Louise to a couch with the help of a customer. Daniel arrived in great haste and rushed to where Louise was lying. She had recovered consciousness, but a large
bruise was already showing on her forehead.
‘It was my own fault,’ she said weakly.
‘You haven’t broken any bones,’ he said consolingly. He took her home, where she was put to bed and a doctor attended her. But the damage was done and in the night she miscarried.
At first Louise was inconsolable and then deeply depressed for a long while afterwards. Eventually she recovered her spirits, taking heart from the doctor’s reassurance that if she waited for a few months there was no reason why she should not become pregnant again. It gave her high hopes for the future and she looked forward to New Year’s Eve, when Madeleine and Theodore were holding a ball to welcome in the new century. She hoped that the year of 1800 would bring the child that both she and Daniel wanted so much.
He had been extremely pleased with the miniature of her, but he had arranged the first sitting for her portrait and she had decided to wear the gown that had been made for New Year’s Eve. As Louise was dressing for the occasion, helped by her émigré maid, Josette, she gave thought to her native France. She was glad that the old century was passing, with all the horrors of the latter years. Now a thirty-year-old Corsican, named Napoleon Bonaparte, was rising to heights of political and military power in France and, according to the latest newspaper report, he seemed destined to become a great ruler of her homeland. France had been at war with Britain and other nations for far too long, and she hoped fervently that eventually he would lead her homeland into more peaceful times.
With the last hook fastened at the back of her high-waisted, silver gauze gown, Louise sat down again at her dressing table. Then, just as she was putting on her pearl eardrops, she suddenly shivered.
New World, New Love Page 20