“Your father fell in love and it would have been understandable, even if he had quite amicable feelings towards your mother, that he should spend some of his time away from home.”
“That is the French attitude!”
“And you are French, my dear,” Aimée replied. “It may seem reprehensible to some other nations, but it is our way of life, whether we or anyone else likes it or not.”
“If Leo really loves me as much as he says he does, he would want me as his – wife.”
“Do you really credit that that would be possible, seeing where he has met you, what you look like and the attitude of other men towards you?”
The way Aimée spoke aroused Yola’s attention.
“What do you mean by that?” she enquired.
“I was going to speak to you tonight or tomorrow morning at the very latest,” Aimée said, “because, whatever your relationship may be with the Marquis, you have to leave Paris at once!”
Chapter Six
Yola stared at Aimée in surprise and it flashed through her mind that Aimée wished to be rid of her because of the Duc.
Then she knew that that idea was absurd and after a little pause she asked,
“Why must I go?”
Aimée sat down on the sofa and, throwing her gloves onto a table beside her, said,
“The Prince Napoleon has been here.”
“What for?” Yola enquired.
“He came to see me,” Aimée replied, “because he is determined, completely and absolutely determined, that you should belong to him.”
“Then he will be disappointed!” Yola said sharply. “And I am quite prepared to tell him so.”
“It is not as easy as that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he will not only harm me, which he has threatened to do, but also the Duc and that is something I cannot allow.”
Yola’s eyes were wide with astonishment and then she reached to take Aimée’s hand in hers.
“You know I would not do anything to hurt either you or the Duc, for you both have been so kind to me,” she said, “but please explain, because I really don’t understand.”
“The Prince Napoleon is a very important man in Paris,” Aimée replied, “and people will do anything rather than incur his enmity. He has a violent temper and like other clever men he can be very spiteful.”
“Are you saying that the Prince expects you to force me into accepting his advances?”
“I mean just that,” Aimée replied.
“But it is incredible!”
“Not really,” Aimée answered. “He has been very spoilt and in a way he is proud of his reputation with women.”
She smiled a little wryly before she went on,
“If you refuse him, he feels that it might make him a laughing stock that he, who has been the lover of the most fascinating women in Paris, should be turned down by someone of no consequence.”
“I have never heard anything so ridiculous!” Yola exclaimed.
Aimée smiled again.
“My dear, men are only children and in Paris they vie with one another in showing off their amatory conquests just as Englishmen value their prowess in the hunting field or on the Racecourse.”
“How could he hurt you?” Yola asked curiously.
“The Prince, like his sister, Princess Matilde, mixes with the intelligent and artistic set in Paris. If he really declared me to be his avowed enemy, the majority of people who grace my salon would be too afraid to accept my invitations.”
“And the Duc?”
“That is something far more serious,” Aimée replied and her voice was soft as it always was when she spoke of the man she loved.
“But the Duc is so important,” Yola said. “He is a man of such distinction that it is hard to imagine that anyone would listen to what the Prince said about him.”
“The Duc, although he belongs to one of the most ancient families in France, has accepted the new Emperor, which many other Noblemen have not done,” Aimée explained. “He is therefore persona grata at the Tuileries, but at the same time he has many interests that concern the Prince.”
“What sort of interests?”
“Some of them concern the development of the arts, while others are plans to restore prosperity to the parts of France which at the present are not of any interest to the Emperor.”
“That is certainly important,” Yola agreed.
“It is vital for France and for the Duc himself,” Aimée said. “He has spent so much of his time, his thoughts and his own money on these projects that I could not bear for him now to have them taken from him and to be left outside the negotiations that are currently taking place.”
“No, of course not. I understand,” Yola said. “But even if I leave Paris, will the Prince not try to get in touch with me?”
“I have thought of that,” Aimée replied, “and I shall tell him that you have made up your mind to return to a very obscure part of France where you will be married.”
She pressed Yola’s hand as she added,
“That you are to be married is certainly true, at least I hope so.”
Yola did not reply to this, she merely kissed Aimée and said,
“I shall always be grateful for your kindness to me. I will leave early tomorrow morning before there is any possibility of His Imperial Highness calling to see me.”
She went up to her room and told the maid who was waiting to attend to her to bring in her trunks.
It took them two hours to pack the beautiful gowns that Yola had purchased from Pierre Floret and there were so many of them that she had to borrow two of Aimée’s trunks.
When finally everything was finished and she could fall into bed, her problems kept her tossing restlessly in the darkness.
She told herself she must think of what had happened calmly and logically as her father would have wished her to do.
But while her brain told her one thing, her whole body cried out that the love that the Marquis professed for her should be great enough for him to offer her marriage.
Whatever Aimée might say, whatever she knew about the traditional French mariage de convenance, she wanted a Cinderella story for herself.
She wished to be loved without having anything to offer a man in return except her heart.
She wanted the Marquis to want her as she wanted him, just as a person, without her castle, without her fortune, even without knowing that her breeding was as good as his.
Her logical mind told her that this was quite impossible and that Aimée was right, the Marquis was French and Frenchmen did not think like that.
But something childlike and idealistic made Yola feel that she could not compromise, could not accept that the Marquis should love her as a man but not as an aristocrat.
At times she wanted to cry, remembering that for one moment, when he told her of his love, she had touched the heights of ecstasy and happiness, only to find it dashed away and to know that it, like a will-o’-the-wisp, was now out of reach.
‘If I marry him in the circumstances,’ she told herself, ‘I would never again believe his protestations of love. I would never think that he felt as I did or that our love was Divine.’
She clenched her fingers together in the darkness as she whispered,
“He would have the woman he loved as his mistress and The Castle as well, while I would have only a man who did not love me enough to offer a wedding ring.”
*
When dawn came, she rose to pull back the curtains and look out the window onto the garden.
In the distance she could see the jagged roofs of Paris and the sky grey and a little overcast above them.
It seemed to Yola an omen of what her life would be in the future, a life without the sunshine of love that had transformed her in such a way that she could never again return to how she had been before.
‘How could this have happened?’ she asked herself, ‘and why should I have to suffer?’
She had behaved as no other lady in her position would have done and now she was being punished for it – punished so that the rest of her life would be as grey as the sky and love would always elude her.
It was in that moment that she decided she would not marry the Marquis.
She could not imagine a more agonising hell on earth than to love him so overwhelmingly and to know that what he offered her in return was not the real love of a man for a woman who belonged to him so that nothing else in the universe mattered.
“I can never forget! I can never forgive!” she called out aloud.
Although it was still very early, she did not pull back the curtains but lay watching the light creep across the sky, thinking that at home it would be touching the turrets on The Castle and making them glow as if they were burnished with gold.
It occurred to her in that moment that The Castle lay at the root of all her troubles.
It was so beautiful, so alluring, that she was certain the real reason the Marquis would not give her his name as well as his heart was that in doing so he supposed he would be forced to relinquish it.
‘I will write him a letter telling him that I will not see him again,’ Yola told herself.
Then she remembered that she would have to persuade her grandmother to cancel his invitation to The Castle.
For a moment she felt almost sick at the thought of the row that would ensue and of the anger her grandmother would feel at having to change her plans.
Worst of all would be the difficulty of trying to explain why she had suddenly decided not to marry the Marquis and that she did not wish him to come to Beauharnais.
‘I will not write,’ Yola thought. ‘I will tell Aimée to tell him the same story she will tell to the Prince Napoleon.’
That, she thought, would dispose of Yola Lefleur and somehow when she was back at home she would think of some excuse as to why the Marquis should not come courting Marie Teresa de Beauharnais.
The maid called her and she rose and dressed herself in a new and elegant silk gown, which had a light cape that she could wear over it for travelling.
Its colour was emerald green and it made her skin look very white and her eyes almost the colour of real emeralds.
There was a smart little hat trimmed with ivy leaves to match and Yola was just about to put it on her head when there was a knock at the door.
The maid went to open it and she heard a footman say,
“Monsieur le Marquis de Montereau has called to see M’mselle.”
Yola looked at the clock on the mantelshelf. It was not quite nine o’clock and she knew that Aimée would not yet be awake, for she invariably slept late.
Her first impulse was to tell the Marquis that she would not see him. Then she felt that he must have a reason for calling so early and he might insist, which would make a scene in front of the servants.
She put her hat down on the dressing table and said to the maid,
“Inform Monsieur le Marquis that I will be down in a few minutes.”
The maid gave the message to the footman and when the door was closed Yola said,
“I don’t wish Monsieur to realise I am leaving, but order a carriage to be ready for me in half an hour’s time. There is a train at just after ten o’clock which I intend to catch.”
“Very good, m’mselle,” the maid replied. “I will see to everything and no one shall know that you are packed or departing until Monsieur le Marquis has left.”
“Thank you,” Yola said.
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and saw that after a sleepless night her face was very white and there were lines under her eyes.
Because she was returning home she had not used any mascara on her eyelashes, rouge on her cheeks or even salve on her lips.
She wondered if the Marquis might think she looked strange and different from the way she had before. Then she told herself that it was not of the least consequence and after today she would never see him again.
She was determined to be calm and not let him know what she was feeling.
Yet, as she walked down the stairs, her heart was thumping violently in her breast and her fingers were cold.
The Marquis was waiting for her in the salon, standing at one of the long windows looking out onto the garden. As she entered, he turned and she saw that he too was pale and his face was lined as if he too had spent a sleepless night.
“You – wish to see – me?” Yola asked, and her voice sounded strange even to herself.
“It is early,” the Marquis answered, “but I could not wait and somehow I felt you would be awake.”
Feeling as if her feet would hardly carry her, Yola crossed the room to sit down on a chair which had its back to the window, hoping that the Marquis would not be able to read in her eyes what she was feeling.
As it happened, he did not look at her but walked to stand a little way from her with his back to the empty fireplace.
“I have been walking about all night,” he said.
“Walking?” Yola questioned in surprise.
“I wanted to think. God knows where I went, but I stood for a long time beside the Seine, seeing your face in the water.”
“I-I do not – understand.”
“I know that,” the Marquis answered. “And I know, as I have always known, what you were thinking last night and what you felt.”
She did not speak, but she clasped her fingers together in her lap.
“That is why I want to give you an explanation,” the Marquis went on, “to try to make you understand why I behaved as I did.”
There was a note in his voice that Yola did not recognise and she glanced at him and then looked away again.
“We have told each other very little about ourselves,” the Marquis said. “There has never seemed to be time for it. But I think you know that my grandfather was guillotined in the Revolution and all our estates were confiscated.”
He spoke the words casually, as if it was not of any great importance, and continued,
“My father was therefore very poor and when he died he was able to leave my mother only a mere pittance. But through the great kindness of a distant cousin, the Comte de Beauharnais, I was well and expensively educated.”
Yola drew in her breath but did not speak and the Marquis went on,
“What is more, the Comte took us to live in his castle in the Loire valley.”
He paused before he continued in a low voice,
“I cannot tell you how happy I was there. There were not only horses to ride and a thousand things to do which would delight any small boy, but there was also The Castle itself.”
He paused before he said,
“It is without exception the most beautiful perfect place I have ever seen in my life. As a child it was not only the embodiment of all my dreams, but it inspired me in a way which is hard to understand.”
Yola did understand. It was the effect The Castle always had on people – it was the effect it had on her.
“Then when I was nine,” the Marquis continued, “the Comte died and his son succeeded him, a man to whom I gave a kind of hero worship, a man who was the best and most wonderful friend anyone could have.”
Yola felt the tears come into her eyes at this tribute to her father and she looked down at her hands in case the Marquis should see the expression on her face.
“The new Comte de Beauharnais not only carried on my education, which his father had begun,” he went on, “but he taught me many things himself and his intelligence and his wisdom were something I shall never forget.”
He sighed.
“Unfortunately his wife was very different from him.”
Yola longed to agree, ‘very different!’ remembering only too well what her mother had been like.
“The Comtesse was a religious fanatic,” the Marquis continued, “and she managed
to make life at The Castle unbearable not only for her husband but also for the many relations who lived there.”
He made a gesture with his hand as he added,
“One by one they left and finally, because she was so unpleasant to my mother, we left too.”
“Where did you – go?” Yola asked, feeling that, because he had paused, some comment was expected from her.
“The Comte bought us a house on the outskirts of Paris,” the Marquis replied. “He sent me to the best and finest school in France and engaged tutors for me in the holidays with whom I travelled to various parts of the world, including Italy, Greece and England. He planned everything as if I were his – son.”
Yola was suddenly still. She was beginning to understand.
“And that was what he intended me to be,” the Marquis said, “and what he explained to me quite simply when I was eighteen.”
Yola felt the Marquis must hear the beating of her heart as he went on,
“The Comte had only one child, a daughter. She was three years old when I last saw her. He told me that it was the dearest wish of his life – and that was why he had educated me so generously – that I should marry Marie Teresa and become the owner of Beauharnais Castle.”
The Marquis was silent and after a moment Yola managed to say,
“The idea – pleased you?”
“I was at first stunned,” the Marquis replied. “Then I knew that it was a gift so stupendous, so fantastic, that I could hardly believe the truth of it.”
“Did you – suggest that you might – see the – girl you were to – marry?”
“Naturally I suggested it, but the Comte replied that he thought it would be a mistake.”
“My daughter is going, I believe, to be a great beauty,” he told me, “but colts are often ungainly before they grow to their full capabilities and I want you to see Marie Teresa at her best.”
“He smiled and added, ‘there is plenty of time’.”
The Marquis walked a few steps away from the mantelshelf and back again.
“The Comte repeated the same thing some years later when I asked him again if I could meet his daughter. ‘There is no hurry, my dear Leo’, he said. ‘I want you to meet Marie Teresa when she is old enough to fall in love with you and you with her’.
64 The Castle Made for Love Page 13