The Heiress (22 page)

‘The King! Don't worry, Madame. I won't fail you—or myself!'

Then she was gone and Louise settled down on a chair to wait. The hours went by so slowly, and yet she could not even doze. She heard the Palace clocks chime through the night and there was no movement, no opening of the inner door. It was five o'clock in the morning and she had drawn back the curtain to see the dark sky turning grey, when a hand touched her and she swung round. De Verier stood before her, his thin face creased by a smile.

‘Congratulations, Madame. His Majesty sends you his thanks; he is enchanted, delighted. I have his authority to grant any favour you may ask.'

She gave a sigh, a long, trembling sigh of pent-up nerves and rising triumph; for a moment her knees shook under her. ‘You know what I want,' she whispered. ‘The Comte told you?'

‘He mentioned it,' de Verier admitted. ‘A
lettre de cachet
, Madame, with the name left blank? One moment, and I will prepare it.'

He went through a door in the tapestry which was cleverly concealed and held it open for her. His little cabinet was beyond it, a small room well lit and comfortably furnished, with a writing-table and bed in it. She waited silently while he sat down, waited interminably while he selected a quill and tested the ink and spread out a sheet of paper, and then she saw the signature already written at the bottom of it, a new signature with grains of sand still clinging to the final stroke beneath the name. The valet spoke again.

‘There, Madame—there is your reward. Fill in the name yourself. I suggest that you go now. I will look after Mademoiselle. You will not be seeing her again.'

‘No one will know?' Louise whispered. ‘You will be discreet?…'

‘If I were not, Madame, I'd hardly hold my post,' he answered gently. ‘I have never seen you, I know nothing. No one will ever know. I think you'll find that paper contains all you want.'

She found her way back down the long passages, already turning light with the dawn, and shut herself into her own room. Slowly, with her hands trembling, she unfolded the paper and began to read it:

This is to authorize the arrest of
—a blank space followed—
and their confinement in the fortress of the Bastille in strictest secrecy, that confinement to continue in perpetuity unless the King's mercy intervenes
.

The
lettre de cachet
in those terms was a sentence of imprisonment for life. The King's mercy never intervened. He did not even wish to know against whom he had signed the order. The victim would never be seen or heard of again. Louise went to her table and sat down. She wrote very carefully and clearly in the empty space the name of Anne Macdonald, Marquise de Bernard.

‘Under the circumstances I think that the time is right for you to go to Scotland,' Sir James Macdonald said. ‘You can get leave from the War Ministry for a month's absence or more.'

‘If you insist,' Charles said. He stretched out his legs in front of him and then crossed one over the other. He was bored and he was showing it in his casual slumping in the chair. He watched his father with hostile eyes.

‘I suppose I shall have to visit the godforsaken place some time and it might as well be now.'

‘You'll not only have to visit it,' Sir James snapped, ‘you'll live in it and look after your people, or by God you'll answer to me!'

‘I don't know why you didn't give the estates to Jeanne,' Charles retorted. ‘She'd fit the role of Scottish landlord far and away better than I shall. Especially since I'm deprived of my wife's services …' and he laughed.

‘That's your own fault!' His father gestured angrily. ‘I'm glad you find it so amusing, I assure you we don't. Anne is finished with you. There's no point in discussing why. You will restore Dundrenan and Clandara on your own; perhaps a little really hard work will improve you. Personally, I doubt it,' he added.

‘Oh, but I know Mother has faith in me,' his son sneered. ‘Father—don't imagine I have any complaint about the separation; I never wanted to marry her, I never cared a curse about her. She's been a damnable nuisance to me all along. And since you only wanted her for the money, and you've got that, I don't see why you're not as satisfied as I am. And by God I feel as if a great weight had been lifted off me! I should hate, you and Mother to feel you'd done me an ill turn by encouraging the separation,' he added coolly.

‘We weren't thinking of you,' his father retorted. ‘Only of Anne. You're a scoundrel, you know.' He looked quite calmly at his son, appraising him as if he were a stranger. ‘A heartless, ruthless scoundrel. One day you'll go too far and then someone will kill you. Not one of your family will shed a tear.'

‘Not even Mother?' Charles asked gently, and then burst out laughing. ‘Am I forbidden to speak to her still, by the way?'

‘She has nothing more to say to you,' his father said coldly. ‘I only speak to you because I must, and I've nothing more to say. Make your arrangements to go to Scotland. And remember one thing; I meant what I said if you try and molest your wife again!'

‘Don't worry,' Charles got up and stretched; he looked so like Sir James's dead brother that it made him shiver. ‘I wouldn't go within a mile of her.'

When his father left him he hesitated, and a mischievous impulse sent him in search of Louise. She had been restless and on edge the last few days, quite unlike herself; she was always so cool and poised. He was surprised at how much she irritated him, even when she was trying most to please; he had accepted so much about her before because she satisfied him in so many ways. Now he found himself becoming more and more critical, more and more cruel in their relationship. He did not want to go to Scotland; he did not know what it was he wanted, and the only thing he could imagine which might pass the time was the sport of baiting her with the news of his departure. He had never loved her; in the old days, when they were lovers, he used to tell her so if she became demanding or when they quarrelled, now he remarked on his absence of feeling for her at every opportunity. It pleased him to see her flush and turn away as if he had struck her, and he knew that in a sense he had; that pleased him too. When he made love to her he was deliberately selfish and abrupt and often when it was over he felt irritable and dissatisfied. Desire between them was still hot and urgent, but a new element was creeping in which he could not understand. Even when she pleased him, he resented it. Boredom nagged at him sometimes; not only boredom but the infuriating suspicion that in some hidden way she had won a victory over him, and victory was something Charles had never permitted any woman.

When he told her he was leaving, she showed no regret; he could almost have sworn that the fleeting look in her eyes was akin to relief. He twisted the dagger a little to see if the wound would bleed.

‘I may be gone for months.'

‘Oh no, you won't.' She had come up and put her arms around his neck, standing very close to him in the way that always brought him into her arms, except that now he didn't feel like holding her.

‘You'll be back as soon as you can get a passage. I know you, my love. You'll be dying of boredom in Scotland within a week.'

It was the truth, and he knew it. He pulled her arms away and pushed her back.

‘And when I do come back, how do you know it will be to you?' The dark eyes flashed at him and for the first time in weeks she laughed. There
was
a victory, there was something which gave her secret confidence and strength too, the strength to bear with his moods and his calculated cruelty. He caught her arms and held them so tightly that he hurt her.

‘How do you know?' he demanded. ‘What makes you so damned sure?'

‘Because there won't be anyone else left for you but me,' she said, and that was all he got from her before he left Versailles at the end of the week.

He left France on the morning tide at Calais on a ship bound for Leith, and from Leith the journey was arranged to take him to the Highlands, to the ravaged lands of his forefathers; the ship was full of exiles, going home at last; he kept aloof from them, and to many bearing the name of Fraser and Mackintosh and Ogilvy, his own name was enough. They left the sullen, arrogant Macdonald to himself. He returned to Scotland a stranger, born and brought up in France with a foreign accent when he spoke to his own people, and no man he knew to greet him. He made the slow journey to Dundrenan first, and on a wild day, with the winds blowing hard across the heather and the summer rain whipping his face, he stood in the blackened ruins of his family's great house, and from there set out on horseback for the ride to all that remained of Clandara, the gutted remains of the great Fraser stronghold, put to fire and sword by his father thirty years before.

It was not one month but three before Charles Macdonald set sail again for France.

Seven

In one more week the Hôtel de Bernard would be completely closed up; in four more days Anne herself would be on the road to Charantaise. She leant back in her coach and closed her eyes; she was tired and it was very late. She was on her way back from a music recital given by the Vicomte de Louvrier and his wife, both good friends she had made at Versailles. It had surprised her how many people had taken the trouble to seek her out when they heard of her separation from Charles. Anne had expected to be isolated once it was known that she was leaving Versailles and closing up her house. It was only too easy to be the most popular hostess at Versailles for one night, and completely forgotten the next, once it was known that she had decided to retire to her estates. But she had friends in unexpected places; not all those at Versailles were without heart or completely ruled by what was fashionable. The de Louvriers had been extremely kind to her, and she had enjoyed the recital as much as she was able to enjoy anything. They owned a charming little Château a few miles outside the Palace boundaries; it had been a hunting-box belonging to the Vicomte's grandfather, and it had been converted into the intimate small country house which was one of the delights of rural France. Etiquette was lax; Anne had taken her second coach and only one postilion as escort and dressed simply, with few jewels. It was almost like being at Charantaise once more, now that the unhappy struggle for her husband was at an end. As the coach jogged slowly down the country road towards Paris she fell asleep.

The road wound onward through a small wood; the night was very dark. A lone fox barked somewhere among the trees. Four men were waiting by the roadside where the wood enclosed the roadway, their horses tethered back in the woods. A fifth sat on the box of a small plain carriage built like a square box and painted black; the windows were covered with an iron grille and thick blinds were pulled down over them.

‘They should be coming into the wood now,' one said.

‘Silence!' his companion snapped. ‘How the devil can I hear if you keep gabbling!' He was the senior of the officials of the Paris police, the protectors and enforcers of the King's law in the city, and there was little enough to choose between most of them and the ruffians they were empowered to arrest and hang for breaking those laws. He went up to the silent man on the coach-box.

‘When we've made the arrest,' he said, ‘I'll go inside with the prisoner and you'll drive. Wait, I think I hear them coming now!' He took out a pistol and primed it and ran back to the others waiting by the road's edge. ‘Take up your places!'

The first shot woke Anne; the next moment she was thrown to the floor of the coach. There was a frightful scream and the sound of men shouting; for a moment she stayed on her knees, half dazed. Her first thought was that the coach had been attacked by thieves, and when the door was wrenched open, she shrank back. When a man caught hold of her she screamed and tried to strike at him, but her assailant was quick and powerful. He dragged her out on to the road and held her, one hand over her mouth. There seemed to be men everywhere, and then she saw the postilion lying on the ground beside the coach, sprawled on his back, his face blackened with blood, his dead mouth gaping.

One of the men came up to her.

‘Do not struggle, Madame, or it will be the worse for you. We are His Majesty's officers. Gaston, let her speak! Are you Madam Macdonald, Marquise de Bernards?'

‘I am,' she gasped. ‘Let go of me, you wretch! How dare you—'

The words were choked back as her captor stifled them with his hand. The man who had spoken nodded to the one who held her. ‘This is the woman,' he said. ‘Bind and gag her and put her in the coach.'

One wild scream more rang out through the dark wood, waking the sleeping birds, but they were experts and within a few minutes Anne lay on the ground, her wrists and ankles bound, a cloth tied over her mouth. The officer in charge pointed at the small, shuttered coach and Anne was lifted up and laid inside it on the seat. She had ceased struggling now; she lay back helpless and half fainting for what seemed hours, while the men dragged the bodies of her dead coachman and postilion clear and threw them into her own coach, which was then driven on ahead, the horses bounding along the road. The instructions were—no witnesses, no sign of any struggle. The bodies would be disposed of, the Marquise's carriage sold with all signs of ownership removed. The price was one of the senior officer's rewards. He had done well out of this business, and he was in a good humour when he climbed into the dark coach and slammed the door. The woman who had given him the order for arrest had made a further contribution. There was a purse with twenty louis d'or in his pocket to make sure he showed his prisoner no mercy and left no trace of her behind. There was a tiny candle in the coach wall, shielded by glass. He lit it and turned to his prisoner, pulling her upright on the seat. The blue eyes stared back at him, mute with terror and appeal. He was used to that look; he had seen it for twenty years on human faces and he had never once felt pity. It was a rare thing to seize a noblewoman, though he had carried off gentlemen before with the
lettre de cachet
. He wondered idly what this one had done, as he tested her bonds and made sure she could not move. Offended the King, annoyed the Dubarry … she had as much hope of mercy, then, as any of the wretched prostitutes and thieves he had dragged off to prison or the gallows. He tilted her head up and looked at her again; her eyes were closed. She must have fainted. He pulled the hood of her cloak over her head until it hid her face, wedged her unconscious body in the corner, and then banged on the coach wall. It began to move forward, slowly at first and then with increasing speed as they left the wood and came out on to the Paris road. He blew out the candle and settled back to doze for the rest of the journey.