No Escape from Love

CHAPTER ONE 1805-1

CHAPTER ONE

1805“It is finished, Mama.”

Lady Waltham, who had been lying back against her pillows with her eyes closed, opened them and said softly,

“I am so glad, darling.”

Her voice was very weak and although she was abnormally thin, almost to the point of emaciation and so pale that her skin looked translucent, it was still possible to realise that she had been a very beautiful woman.

Her daughter Vernita was also thin but she had the grace and beauty of youth, and now she stood up and held up a negligee for her mother’s inspection.

Of Indian muslin with open work embroidery, the gown was bordered with pale rose muslin and fastened with bows of the same material, while the trimmings were of point lace.

The feminine garment seemed curiously out of place in the bare attic room with its wooden floors and uncurtained windows.

“You have made it beautifully, dearest,” Lady Waltham said, “and let us hope they will pay you at once.”

“I have been thinking, Mama,” Vernita replied, “that I will not take it to the Maison Claré, but direct to the Princess Borghese herself.”

“You cannot do that,” Lady Waltham said, her voice a little stronger as she spoke in protest. “It would be dangerous. Besides it was Maison Claré that ordered it.”

“They cheat us,” Vernita added. “They give us a mere pittance for everything we make and charge their customers exorbitant sums.”

“We should starve without them,” Lady Waltham pointed out.

“We will starve anyway if we don’t obtain more money for our sewing,” Vernita replied.

She spoke in the plural although in fact it was only she who had been able to sew in the last few months. Lady Waltham had grown weaker and weaker but they did not dare to send for a doctor and Vernita knew it was not medical attention her mother needed but food.

It was in fact incredible that they had managed to survive for so long while living in hiding. Finally, having sold everything of any value they possessed, they had been forced to rely on what they could make with their fingers.

It had been two years, Vernita thought, since they had come to Paris with her father, as had thousands of other English visitors, when the Treaty of Amiens had put an end to the years of hostility between France and England.

The summer of 1802 had seen England relaxing in the sunshine of the Amiens agreement.

Worn out by nine years of strife, crushing taxation and starvation prices everyone rejoiced in the return of peace and plenty.

Once the fighting was finished, the good-humoured British ceased to worry about Napoleon Bonaparte, the young conqueror of Austria and Italy and even accepted his control of the Dutch Coast.

Tourists, who had endured the years of enmity and longed for the delights of foreign travel, flooded across the Channel and the ports on either side were crowded with rank and fashion.

Sir Edward Waltham had prudently waited until the first rush of excitement had abated and it was not until the following year, in March 1803 that he, his wife and daughter Vernita, had set off for Paris.

They had found the City as attractive as Vernita had expected and were entertained by a great number of friends and acquaintances.

They had seen the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, at a diplomatic reception and thought him an attractive almost handsome man, very unlike the villainous cartoons they had seen in England in which he had been depicted as a monster.

It was therefore all the more of a shock when in May, when they were looking forward to a summer of levees, assemblies and balls, that the Armistice came to an end.

Napoleon Bonaparte was furious.

The war he had intended had come, but too soon! By forcing the issue before his Navy was ready, the English had regained half the ground they had lost in the peace.

But the English abroad were not to be aware of what their Government was doing and ten thousand tourists were arrested and interned.

Such an action entailing the imprisonment of civilians was contrary to all civilised precedents and the British at home were appalled and shocked at this savage action.

This, however, was no consolation for the innocent tourists who found themselves dragged from their houses or the elegant hotels they had rented for the Season.

It was only because Sir Edward had a friend in the French Government that he was warned about what was to happen twelve hours before the edict was put into operation.

Hurriedly he left with his wife and daughter for a house in a small unfashionable back street, which let rooms to anyone who enquired for them and asked no questions.

Unfortunately, while Sir Edward was desperately planning how they could achieve the seemingly impossible and get home to England, he was taken ill.

Vernita was convinced that it was the water of Paris that was responsible for his illness.

But whatever it was, they had no sooner reached the sanctuary of their boarding house than Sir Edward ran a high temperature.

Although his wife and daughter tended him in every way they could, he died suddenly after a week’s agonising pain, leaving them stunned, helpless and alone.

Too late they realised that they should have risked disclosure and sent for a doctor.

Even so the medical service in France had a bad name and it was doubtful if even the most experienced physician could have saved Sir Edward.

Lady Waltham, who had loved her husband dearly, was prostrate with grief and it was Vernita who arranged that they should move from the more comfortable apartments they occupied up into the attics.

Sir Edward had quite a considerable sum of ready cash on him, since, as soon as he had known that they must go into hiding, he had drawn out the full amount of his Letters of Credit from the bank.

But Vernita sensibly realised that this would not last for ever and, as the war before the Armistice had been fought for nine years, she thought with a sinking of her heart that now hostilities were resumed they might continue for another nine.

“We must save every possible penny,” she said to her mother.

She realised from her mother’s helpless response that it was up to her to take the lead and play her father’s part in deciding everything they should do.

It was obvious that most Frenchmen echoed Napoleon’s wrath against the British.

Vernita learnt that the Corsican’s craving for revenge had made him intent on conquering the race of ‘insolent shop-keepers’, as he disparagingly described the British, who barred his way to world domination.

The newspapers reported that he was determined to cross the Channel and invade England.

‘They want us to jump the ditch,’ he cried, ‘and we will jump it!’

Napoleon ordered the construction of hundreds of invasion barges and gunboats to carry an Army to England and mobilised every French seaport.

The French thrilled to his vision and jeered at the British who thought they could defend themselves against such an Armada.

However time passed and by the beginning of 1805 Napoleon began to realise that his dream of crossing the Channel was fading while the British Navy blocked the way.

But that was not to say that Paris was any more tolerant towards the English.

Every time Vernita went out shopping or walked along the streets she could almost feel the hatred for her countrymen emanating from the ‘Victorious French’, who had the rest of Europe under their heels.

But victories did not stop the price of food from rising and Vernita was finding it more and more difficult to feed herself and her mother.

Lady Waltham had never recovered from the shock of her husband’s death and she seemed to her daughter to be fading away month after month, day after day.

Yet there was nothing Vernita could do about it except give themselves up to the authorities.

Every nerve in her body shrank from the thought of internment and something resolute and proud within her made her determined to go on fighting, even if she died in the effort.

Now, looking at her mother in the spring sunshine, she knew that something had to be done and done quickly.

It was while she was sitting completing the elegant negligee she had made on the orders of the Maison Claré that she decided she would take it direct to the customer who had ordered it.

She was well aware that Princess Pauline Borghese had bought a great number of beautiful garments, which her mother and she had made so painstakingly.

Even when the Princess had been in Italy last year orders had come back to Paris for chemises, nightgowns, negligees all of which had to be made in record time so that they could be carried by courier to Rome.

The Maison Claré imposed sweated labour upon their seamstresses.

When Vernita called at the shop to collect materials and laces that she was to fashion into the elegant garments for their customers, she had realised how high their prices were and how much those who made them were exploited.

She felt herself resenting the fact that while she and her mother were employed almost exclusively on garments made at breakneck speed for the Princess, the Maison Claré would not pay them any more.

The Coronation, which had taken place last December, had increased the demand for lingerie as beautiful and ornate as the gowns that were to be worn over it.

Orders from Princess Pauline poured in and when Vernita protested that it was impossible for them to do all that was expected in so short a time, she was told abruptly to do as she was told or she would be dismissed and they would find someone else.

That, she thought, was unlikely, but she dared not risk open defiance.

Only now when she had finished the muslin negligee, which was more elaborate and indeed more beautiful than anything the Princess had bought before, did she decide to take matters into her own hands.

“I will wear Louise’s best gown and hat, Mama,” she said aloud, “and I will look the typical petite bourgeoisie and no one will suspect for a moment that I am anything else.”

“It is too much of a risk,” Lady Waltham said feebly. “Suppose someone discovers who you are?”

“Then we will go to prison and perhaps we will be better off. At least they feed the prisoners.”

Lady Waltham gave a little cry and her daughter went to her side.

“I am only teasing, Mama. No one will guess for a moment that I am not what I appear to be. After all, when I go shopping, the shopkeepers are just as rude to me as they are to all the other poor women who stand hesitating as they choose the cheapest cabbage and haggle over every sou.”

“If only this terrible war was over,” Lady Waltham moaned, “or we had never come to Paris.”

There was a sob in her voice that told Vernita she was thinking of her husband and wishing they had never left their home in England.

‘It is all my fault,’ Vernita thought, as she had done so often before.

Because her father had decided that at seventeen she should have the benefit of foreign travel, they had set out from their Manor House in Buckinghamshire, which had been in the Waltham family for five generations.

She felt a sharp pang of misery and regret that fortune should have treated them so harshly. Then with a philosophical smile she told herself in the words of her old Nanny that it was no use crying over spilt milk.

She and her mother were here in Paris, and there was nothing they could do about it except try to survive.

She bent down and kissed Lady Waltham’s cold cheek.

“I am going downstairs to find Louise,” she said. “She is kind and I know she will not refuse to help me.”

Lady Waltham did not protest, knowing that if Vernita was set on doing something nothing would dissuade her from the path she had chosen.

At the same time she could not help thinking how cruel it was that her daughter, who was so pretty and so attractive, must spend her life sewing against time in this miserable poverty-stricken attic.