The Castle Made for Love

Chapter One 1867-2

“That was, of course, due to your mother,” the Comtesse said, “but then – ”

She checked herself as if she thought that nothing good would come of disparaging the dead.

Yola was well aware of the words that were left unsaid.

Her mother, contrary to every tradition of the family, refused to have anyone to stay with them.

It was to be expected that the Comte de Beauharnais, as the head of a large and ancient family, would not only provide for his less fortunate relatives but also house a number of them.

When he had inherited from his father, The Castle had been filled with cousins, aunts, great-aunts, grandparents and close friends, all of whom had grown old beside the owner.

But her mother had managed within five years of their marriage to disperse them all.

What was more, she would not open the house to friends who for years past had come from Paris to spend some weeks or a month at The Castle that they admired and loved.

Yola could remember when she was a child endless arguments and rows between her father and mother because her father wished to entertain and her mother was adamant that they should not do so.

Then suddenly her father had given up the battle and accepted that the guest rooms in The Castle should be closed and that his hospitable impulses, which were so much a part of his character, should be curbed.

The Castle had seemed very large and quiet and sometimes grim as she grew up. There had not been her father to laugh with and, if they had not escaped to go riding so that they could feel free and unrestrained, Yola felt it would have been intolerable.

Gradually she began to understand and realised that her mother ought never to have been married.

She had really wished to become a nun, but her parents appreciated that the Comte de Beauhamais with his magnificent castle and great estates was an important and highly eligible parti.

They had forced her against her will to accept the arrangements they had made without consulting either her or, as Yola knew, her father.

He had accepted as inevitable that his marriage would be an arranged one and that his bride would bring him a huge dowry to add to the already large fortune he possessed.

Only when he realised the violence of his wife’s hatred for him did he know with horror that he was sentenced to a lifetime of misery.

They had had one child, after which there was no chance of there being any more.

Yola could never remember her mother kissing her with any affection or holding her in her arms. Her days and many of her nights had been spent in the exquisitely beautiful Chapel that stood alone a little way from the house.

Built between 1520 and 1530 it was in the purest Renaissance style and connoisseurs went into ecstasies over its sculpture and decoration.

But to Yola it was a place of repentance that vibrated with the wrath of God and the fear of punishment.

Forced to attend a Church service every day before she could read or understand what was being said, her only consolation had been that sitting in the hard carved pew she could look at a magnificent Aubusson tapestry that traced the history of Joan of Arc.

It was thus that the Saint was impressed indelibly on her mind, while her mother’s religion made her feel cold and critical.

How could it be right for her mother to wish to be a Saint, to pray incessantly to God and at the same time to be so unkind, unsympathetic and unfeeling towards her husband?

Why should she expect God to bless her, when she in her turn gave only hatred or indifference to other people?

It was a long time before Yola put such thoughts into words and yet they were there as soon as she could begin to think objectively.

It was not surprising that her father was everything in her life and, because he was an extremely intelligent, well-read man, he not only taught her but talked to her as if she was a contemporary.

She could argue on abstract subjects almost before she could do simple arithmetic.

She read the French classics when other children were learning nursery rhymes and her father also taught her to appreciate beauty while his suffering made her sensitive and perceptive about everybody and everything.

Looking at her granddaughter now, the Comtesse thought that her huge dark eyes mirrored her feelings so clearly that anyone watching her could actually see what she was thinking.

Aloud she asked,

“What do you know of the Marquis if you have never met him?”

“I have – heard about – him,” Yola replied.

“From whom?”

“The girls at school. He was talked about by them and presumably by their parents, as often as they discussed the Emperor.”

The Comtesse’s lips tightened.

She might live in a secluded villa in the South of France, but she was well aware that the Emperor Louis Napoleon’s love affairs were discussed over the length and breadth of France and none of them to his credit.

“The Marquis is a young man,” she said after a moment, “and must therefore be expected to enjoy himself.”

“Yes, of course, Grandmère,” Yola agreed, “but I don’t think that the pleasures of Paris will give him an appreciation of The Castle.”

“How can you be sure of that?” the Comtesse queried almost sharply. “He was happy here as a boy. Your grandfather was very fond of him and so was I.”

She was silent for a moment.

Then as if she looked back into the past she said slowly,

“He was a handsome little boy and his tutors spoke well of him. I remember your grandfather used to take him riding and say that he was fearless on a horse.”

“I am sure he is a sportsman,” Yola said, “but that is not to say, Grandmère, that he is the kind of man I want to marry.”

Her grandmother made a gesture with one of her hands and her rings glittered.

“My dear child,” she said softly, “the decision does not rest with you.”

“That is not true!”

“Not true?”

There was no doubt that the Comtesse was startled.

“I intend to choose my own husband.”

“But that is impossible!” her grandmother cried. “No French jeune fille has such a choice. Of course, if you loathe the Marquis on sight and he hates you, then excuses could be made and negotiations, even if they were already started, could be stopped and we could find someone else.”

“We?” Yola questioned.

“It is just a figure of speech,” her grandmother said with a smile. “As your father left everything in my hands, I have written to the Marquis – Leonide, as I used to call him – to ask him to stay with us next month.”

“You have already written to him?” Yola questioned.

“I have not, of course, said anything specific or binding,” her grandmother replied quickly, “but the Marquis is a man of the world. He will read between the lines and I have a feeling that he was waiting to hear from me.”

“Why should you think that?”

“I gathered from your father, of course, and as I did not know he was going to die, I did not press him for details that there was already an understanding between him and the Marquis that when you were old enough you should be affianced.”

“I do not believe that Papa would have forced me into a marriage without first consulting me!”

Yola’s voice was firm and there was a note of rebellion in it, which her grandmother did not miss.

“I am sure, ma petite, he would have discussed it with you. I know how much you meant to each other and your father would never have made you unhappy.”

“It will make me very unhappy,” Yola said, “to be married off to a man of whom I know nothing. You said yourself, Grandmère, that you have not seen him since he was twelve. How do you know what he is like now?”

Her grandmother was silent and Yola went on,

“The girls at school talked of him as if he was Don Juan, Casanova and the Devil himself all rolled into one!”

“Oh, no! That is not true!” her grandmother cried.

“They said it was true,” Yola replied. “I used to get tired of hearing of the exploits of the Marquis just as I was sick of hearing of the different ladies who were favoured by the Emperor.”

“There is no comparison between the two,” the Comtesse said swiftly. “Louis Napoleon may be Emperor of France, but he is not a man I would welcome here. The Marquis’s family is as good as our own and he has Beauharnais blood in his veins.”

She paused to look a little apprehensively at the darkness in her granddaughter’s eyes before she went on,

“Of course you know that Montereau Castle was destroyed by the Revolutionaries and their estates confiscated, while we here were so fortunate.”

Just for a moment Yola’s expression softened.

She had always been touched by the fact that during the French Revolution when Anjou was one of the chief battlegrounds of the Republicans and Royalists, General Santerre had arrived from Paris with a troop of revolutionary reinforcements.

Then miraculously the beauty and the atmosphere of the Garden of France had cooled their ardour so that they had laid down their muskets and cast off their accoutrements.

That was why so many castles in the Loire valley had not been destroyed or burnt and the families who owned them had not lost their lives.

“So you are thinking,” Yola said slowly, “that the Marquis has been waiting unmarried all these years to own Beauharnais?”

“It is what your father wished,” the Comtesse replied, “and you have to marry someone.”

“Why in such a hurry?” Yola enquired. “I have only just left school. I have seen nothing of the world and, I thought, Grandmère, that at least I would have a Season in Paris.”

“Paris is now nothing but a sink of iniquity!” the Comtesse exclaimed harshly. “The Emperor and Empress reign over a régime of such extravagance and such depravity that they have scandalised every decent country in Europe.”

Yola looked startled.

“Do you really believe that is true?”

“It is true,” the Comtesse said grimly, “and this International Exhibition that is taking place this year is only a ruse of the Emperor to cover up from the eyes of the world his deficiencies in other respects.”

While her grandmother spoke so positively, Yola was silent.

It would have been impossible for the pupils at the fashionable finishing school at St. Cloud not to be aware of a great deal of what took place in Paris.

Girls, who were supposed to be blind and deaf until they emerged from the schoolroom into the salon, heard and repeated every item of gossip that was exchanged between their parents, their parents’ friends and, of course, the servants.

Her father had often said, Yola remembered, that people always behaved as if the servants had no feelings and the children were morons.

“They talk over their heads as if they did not exist,” he said, “and yet I am convinced that more scandal is carried from house to house by the Major Domos and grooms than actually travels from salon to salon.”

Yola had often visited the other pupils in their homes and she found that the parents talked to each other when their daughters were present in a manner that they would have thought twice about in the presence of their friends. And many things that were said concerned the Marquis de Montereau.

“What has ‘le Marquis Méchant’ been up to now?” Yola heard one attractive Parisian say to her husband when she and their daughter were supposedly looking at photograph albums in the salon.

“What do you imagine?” had been the reply. “And it will mean another duel, another affaire scandaleuse and one can only hope to Heaven that the newspapers don’t get hold of it.”

“He is incorrigible!” the lady of the house had exclaimed.

It was not a censorious criticism, but almost one of delight.

Thinking of it now, Yola realised that, if she married the Marquis de Montereau as her grandmother wished, she would not have a marriage of frustration and privation like her fathers, but one of endless frivolity, extravagance and scandal!

Something hard and resolute rose within her to make her feel that she must fight every inch of the way to prevent herself from being swept up the aisle with such a man.