The Bachelor's Bargain (34 page)

Perhaps . . . perhaps in spite of everything she had said to him and everything lowborn she had brought to their marriage . . . perhaps Prudence had spoken the truth. Perhaps in his own way Ruel had loved her.

If so, what right had she to abandon his dream? Monsieur Robidoux was right. Ruel had given her his name, his titles, his wealth. He had trusted her to be his partner. And he had given his life for her.

Until now, Anne had chosen to act on impulse. She had created the lace with the Chouteau medallion, wed a man she hardly knew, and allowed that man to claim her heart. All without consulting God or seeking His will. She had told Ruel that she believed the Lord could make all things work together for the good of those who love Him. Was this the good that God had brought her to do? To prosper and refill the coffers of the Chouteau family while seeing to her own father’s safety? How could she think otherwise?

“I shall stay,” she said softly. “Until my husband’s goals are achieved and my father is freed from prison, I shall stay in France and help you.”

Prudence took Anne’s hand. “I mean to stay with you. I have neither the funds nor the courage to get back to England on my own. I am your friend, Anne, and I cannot leave you.”

“Very well then,” Anne said. “We shall build a lace machine, and in the name of his son, we shall do our best to restore the fortunes of the Duke of Marston.”

Monsieur Robidoux patted her arm. “
La belle dame d’esprit.
Your husband knew you well.”

Ruel leaned over the ship’s rail and looked down into the gray-green water swirling below. Beside him, Walker reclined with his back against the rail, his eyes searching the vivid blue sky.

“My life runs in a circle, like the flight of those weary seagulls who follow our ship,” the Indian said. “My existence is one of endless repetition. Everything I have loved has been taken from me. My family. My home. The woman.”

“I did not know you cared so much for Miss Watson,” Ruel said.

“I speak of days long ago.”

“You were once in love?”

“More than once. I lost everything then. Now I have lost my world again. When Miss Watson entered my life, I began to believe something good might come to me after all. The woman had such faith in the Creator.”

“As did my Anne.”

Walker nodded. “Prudence was young and full of hope. So pale and beautiful. You know, she did not care about the color of my skin. She told me I was handsome.”

Ruel glanced at his friend. A wry smile was written on the older man’s face. Ruel smiled in return.

“You
are
handsome, Walker. You are tall and strong. I suppose in a way you are rather striking.”

“I have the face of a buzzard.” He gave a rueful laugh and then let out a shuddering sigh. “I loved her, Ruel. Even though I knew she was too young, that her heart would change, that we could never marry . . . I loved her deeply.”

“I had no idea your feelings were so strong. I am sorry.” Ruel shut his eyes against the recurring image of the two women sprawled on the wagon bench. “At least Prudence knew of your love for her. I never told Anne. Unable to admit it to myself, let alone say the words to her. I had no idea I was even capable of such emotion. I imagined love was a pastime for dandies and women. Romantic nonsense, I always maintained. To me, marriage was an arrangement for social benefit and the procreation of children. Secret liaisons took care of the rest. That was it. All I thought life had to offer. Love? I never believed I had it in me.”

“The day you came to see me at the smithy in Tiverton I knew you loved that woman. The look in your eyes was one of terror. She might die, you said. ‘You have to save her, Walker.’ So I did.”

“A lot of good it did her. I led Anne from one catastrophe to the next. Shot through the leg. Tricked into transporting contraband across land and sea. Forced to carry contemptible lace machine parts in her baggage. Obliged to drive a cart through a bloody battlefield. She spent her days as my wife either fending off barbs from those in my Society or ducking lead balls being fired by someone trying to assassinate me. Oh, I did well as a husband, Walker. Very well indeed.”

The Indian rested silently against the rail for a long time. His eyes combed the clouds as though he might read answers in them. “All the same,” he said finally, “you cannot flee from your responsibility.”

“I should let Alex have the duchy of Marston and all that goes with it. He is more comfortable in that world than I have ever been.”

“You know Sir Alexander would squander his position. The family wealth will run through his fingers as flour through a sieve.”

Ruel studied the waves slapping against the side of the ship. Overhead the masts creaked and the sails snapped. The scent of saltwater stung his nostrils, easing in his chest the agony that had weighed on him like a millstone.

“I shall never relinquish my title,” he said in a low voice. “I have lost the lace machine, but I must manage our properties. Believe me, my brother’s hands will not hold the purse strings. When I am back in England, I shall again see to my responsibilities there.”

“You are wise.”

“I am a fool. I had everything, and I could not see it. Now I have nothing. Nothing.”

“You are young. Intelligent. Not without means. You have enough.”

Ruel slammed his palm on the rail and turned away. Striding down the deck toward the ship’s stern, he fought the black mist of hopelessness. What good was youth if he had no one with whom to enjoy the long years to come? What use was intelligence if there was no one to match wits with? Of what benefit was wealth in an empty bed in the middle of a cold night?

Yes, he would go back to England and continue to try to save the duchy from financial ruin. He came to a standstill on the slick wooden planks and lifted his head to the billowing white sails. But what good was it? What good was anything without her?

Seventeen

Anne and Prudence moved into a small house in the town of Douai on the border of France. Like many other homes in the region of Calais, this one had been built of stone, its walls plastered white and its steep roof heavily thatched. The two women slept upstairs in a bedroom with a view of the River Somme. Anne wrote a letter to the Duke of Marston and Prudence wrote to her sisters, but with France in a state of chaos, they could not be sure whether their messages would reach London.

Using funds previously deposited by the Marquess of Blackthorne and managed by Monsieur Robidoux, Anne purchased pots and pans for the cozy kitchen. She furnished the small living area and bought a table and four chairs for the dining room. She hired a cook, planted a vegetable garden, and employed a tutor to teach her and Prudence to speak French.

As the days passed, Anne again learned that though some might have called her husband a wastrel, he had not earned that label. Ruel had been no fool. His plan to enrich the duchy of Marston had been a good one, and his trust in Monsieur Robidoux was well founded. The Frenchman was a master stockinger with a profitable weaving business, and a leader in the town. He told Anne he had met Ruel many years before, but their partnership in the lace business had been undertaken solely through letters. Anne felt certain that had he lived, Ruel would have made his enterprise successful.

After settling the women into their house, Monsieur Robidoux had driven the cart into one of his large warehouses on the outskirts of town, opened the trunks, and removed the machinery. He and his employees labored day and night to assemble the equipment. Though the English-made machine had been adapted from a common stocking loom, Robidoux was challenged to figure out its workings and its quirks, learn how to thread it, and, finally, begin to operate it. When the first inch of lace net rolled off the loom, even Anne felt a measure of satisfaction.

While struggling with grief and the very effort of survival in a foreign land, Anne and Prudence eagerly waited for each tidbit of information Monsieur Robidoux brought them from the outside world. Shortly after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, their host told them, the emperor abdicated in favor of his son, Napoleon II. But the Chambers denied the young man recognition. As Wellington and Blücher advanced, Napoleon fled the country by sea on July 8, the same day the English escorted King Louis XVIII into Paris.

Though Wellington wanted Napoleon handed over to the King of France, the man managed to board the ship
Bellerophon
and sail for England, where he hoped to solicit mercy from the regent. On July 20, buckling to allied pressure, eight hundred French generals and senior officers surrendered in Paris. Everyone from Napoleon’s former regime—his son, brothers, members of the Chambers, and even his foe, Fouché—was expelled from the country. Napoleon’s defeat was complete. Four days later, the
Bellerophon
arrived in England near Torbay.

To the surprise and delight of Anne and Prudence, Monsieur Robidoux pointed out to them one day that Miss Pickworth’s column of rumor and advice from
The Tattler
was translated each week into French and placed prominently in the local newspaper. Miss Pickworth’s reports about Napoleon’s lifestyle in English territory appalled Anne. Rather than living in shame, he was treated by London Society as the celebrated emperor he once had been.

“Sightseers in boats surround the
Bellerophon
,” Miss Pickworth wrote. “Napoleon’s avid admirers call to the elegantly exiled emperor every time he parades on deck. In recent days, he has been moved to Plymouth, where nearly ten thousand gawkers gather around his ship to gaze at him and exclaim on his fine features and magnificent manners. Indeed, Napoleon has charmed everyone in England and is beloved beyond belief.”

Magnificent manners
, Anne fumed.
Murderer
would be a better description of the despicable man. If not for the French people’s fawning admiration of English citizens, she and Prudence would have been mortified to let their nationality be known. Everywhere in France, Napoleon was vilified, while Parisians cheered as British troops marched in parade down the Champs-Elysées.

With the monarchy restored, Hezekiah Cutts’s smuggled machine went to work. The sudden voracious demand for lace by everyone from the wealthy aristocracy to the humblest peasants took even Monsieur Robidoux by surprise.

“Lace,” Miss Pickworth reported one day, “has enthralled everyone across the Continent.”

She was correct.

Anne hardly had time to breathe, and the spectacled little weaver became positively frenetic as they worked to keep the lace machine running constantly. Prudence took it upon herself to become fluent in every aspect of French fashion. Anne was relieved that the dark malaise which once had compelled her friend to leave London in search of solace in the countryside at Slocombe did not return. Despite Prudence’s longing for London and her sisters, and though she continued to mourn the loss of Mr. Walker, the young woman fairly threw herself into the tasks of browsing shops, scouring newspapers, and even consorting with French Society in an effort to assist in the new enterprise.

Prudence informed Anne that the war was beginning to influence even the simplest of designs. Within two weeks after Waterloo, men began wearing full-skirted frock coats modeled after military wear. The single-breasted coats featured distinctive Prussian collars without lapels. Wellington’s name was given to every type of clothing from coats to pantaloons to boots.

The end of hostilities also brought a tide of new fashions for women. Straight-edged lace went suddenly out of fashion. Blonde lace began appearing on everything from dresses to aprons.

In a headlong rush to escape her memories, Anne flung herself into making Ruel’s dream a success. Aware that many of the elderly laceworkers in Calais had abandoned their techniques, and no young women knew the methods, she thought about starting a lace school. She could begin by teaching her students how to embroider the muslin and net that rolled off the machine in Monsieur Robidoux’s warehouse. And there might come a day when the more talented employees could begin enriching parts of the white embroideries with sumptuous fancy fillings in needlepoint stitches.

A month after arriving in France, neither Anne nor Prudence had heard a word from London. Anne had expected nothing from the house of Marston. After all, there was no doubt the Chouteau family preferred to pretend that a brown-haired housemaid named Anne Webster had never existed. But Prudence began to grow alarmed. What if something dreadful had happened to Sarah or Mary? What if Trenton House had burned or Mary’s baby had fallen ill or Mr. Locke had taken them all to China to grow tea?

Sir Alexander had failed to answer Anne’s letter to him in Paris, nor had she received any word from her mother. Miss Pickworth made no mention of the Duke and Duchess of Marston. Indeed, it was as if England and Anne’s life there had vanished the moment a cannonball exploded near her cart on the battlefield at Waterloo.

One glowing pink evening just at sunset, Monsieur Robidoux knocked on the door of the house where Anne and Prudence were staying.

“Information regarding the Duke of Marston,” the Frenchman said as he presented her a copy of the evening newspaper. “The family is in London. The duke’s son, Sir Alexander, is to marry Gabrielle Duchesne, daughter of the Comte de la Roche, there at the end of the month. Will you go to this wedding?”

Anne glanced up in surprise at his tone. He sounded resentful, almost angry, that she might leave. “I do not know, sir,” she replied. “I have not been invited to the wedding, and I suppose . . . I suppose I may not be welcome. Not everyone in my husband’s family was pleased by our marriage.”