Sarah Mallory
To Marianne –
from the proudest mum in the world.
Verdun, France—September 1803
The young lady in the room at the top of the house on the Rue Égalité was looking uncharacteristically sober in her dark-blue linen riding habit. Even the white shirt she wore beneath the close-fitting jacket bore only a modest frill around the neck. She had further added to the sobriety by sewing black ribbons to her straw bonnet and throwing a black lace shawl around her shoulders. Now she sat before the looking glass and regarded her reflection with a critical eye.
‘“Lady Cassandra Witney is headstrong and impetuous,”’ she stated, recalling a recent description of herself. Her critic had also described her as beautiful, but Cassie disregarded that. She propped her chin on her hand and gave a tiny huff of dissatisfaction. ‘The problem with being headstrong and impetuous,’ she told her image, ‘is that it leads one to make mistakes. Marrying Gerald was most definitely a mistake.’
She turned and surveyed the little room. Accompanying Gerald to Verdun had been a mistake, too, but when the Treaty of Amiens had come to an end in May she had not been able to bring herself to abandon him and go home to England. That would have been to admit defeat and her spirit rebelled at that. Eloping with Gerald had been her choice, freely made, and she could almost hear Grandmama, the Dowager Marchioness of Hune, saying, ‘You have made your bed, my girl, now you must lie in it.’
And lie in it she had, for more than a year, even though she had known after a few months of marriage that Gerald was not the kind, loving man she had first thought him.
A knock at the door interrupted her reverie. After a word with the servant she picked up her portmanteau and followed him down the stairs. A light travelling chaise was waiting at the door with Merimon, the courier she had hired, standing beside it. He was a small, sharp-faced individual and now he looked down his long narrow nose at the bag in her hand.
‘C’est tout?’
‘It is all I wish to take.’
Cassandra answered him in his own language, looking him in the eye. As the bag was strapped on to the chaise she reflected sadly that it was little enough to show for more than a year of married life. Merimon opened the door of the chaise and continued to address her in coarse French.
‘Milady will enter, if you please, and I will accompany you on foot. My horse is waiting at the Porte St Paul.’
Cassie looked up. The September sun was already low in the sky.
‘Surely it would have been better to set off at first light,’ she observed.
Merimon looked pained.
‘I explained it all to you, milady. I could not obtain a carriage any sooner. And this road, there is no shelter and the days can be very hot for the horses. This way we shall drive through the night, you will sleep and when you awake, voilà, we shall be in Reims.’
‘I cannot sleep in here.’ Cassie could not help it, she sniffed. How different it had been, travelling to France with Gerald. She had been so in love then, and so hopeful. Everything had been a delicious adventure. She pushed away the memories. There was no point in dwelling on the past. ‘Very well, let us get on, then. The sooner this night is over the better.’
It was not far to the eastern gate, where Cassie knew her passport would be carefully checked. Verdun still maintained most of its medieval fortifications, along with an imposing citadel. It was one of the reasons the town had been chosen to hold the British tourists trapped in France when war was declared: the defences made it very difficult for enemies to get in, but it also made it impossible for the British to get out.
When they reached the city gate she gave her papers to Merimon, who presented them to the guard. The French officer studied them for a long moment before brushing past the courier and approaching the chaise. Cassie let down the window.
‘You are leaving us, madame?’
‘Yes. I came to Verdun with my husband when he was detained. He died a week since. There is no longer any reason for me to remain.’ She added, with a touch of hauteur, ‘The First Consul Bonaparte decreed that only English men of fighting age should be detained.’
The man inclined his head. ‘As you say. And where do you go?’
‘Rouen,’ said Merimon, stepping up. ‘We travel via Reims and Beauvais and hope to find passage on a ship from Rouen to Le Havre, from whence milady can sail to England.’
Cassie waited, tense and anxious while the gendarme stared at her. After what seemed like hours he cast a searching look inside the chaise, as if to assure himself that no prisoner was hiding on the floor. Finally he was satisfied. He stood back and handed the papers to Merimon before ordering the postilion to drive on. The courier loped ahead to where a small urchin was holding the reins of a long-tailed bay and as the chaise rattled through the gates he scrambled into the saddle and took up his position beside it.
Cassie stripped off her gloves, then removed her bonnet and rubbed her temples. Perhaps now she was leaving Verdun the dull ache in her head would ease. It had been a tense few days since Gerald’s death, his so-called friends circling like vultures waiting to strike at the first sign of weakness. Well, that was behind her now.