It was time to go to Chavaniac and see what sort of man, or marriage, I would find waiting for me there. Of course, my family didn’t want me to go when Gilbert sent for us. My father warned it would be an arduous journey. Maman fretted about the cold and the possibility of highwaymen. She reminded me that I had never gone anywhere farther than Versailles without her. Only my sister Louise supported my determination to set out by carriage with my children for the unknown. Thus, that spring, I left behind Paris and staked all on a wilderness adventure.
As our carriage jostled its way up rough mountain roads, I glimpsed breathtaking gorges of red stone. Volcanic peaks and bubbling hot springs of black water. I pointed out to Anastasie and little Georges the thick pine forest tangled with green vines where their father hunted the Beast of Gévaudan as a boy. I began to fear the place was entirely untamed, but now and again a statue of a saint arose at the lofty top of a stone outcropping, serving as testament that Christian souls resided here.
When at last we reached our destination, I could not quite fathom the squat, utilitarian structure that my husband called home. Why, this so-called castle with its white feudal towers was—by the standards of my family—no more than a hunting house, half falling to shambles.
Yet I already loved it—every crack and stone!
Alighting from the carriage, I set three-year-old Georges down, and he ran through the garden as fast as his little legs would carry him. His dog—and his older sister, Anastasie—chased after him. Meanwhile, baby Virginie was polite enough to gurgle a smile at her father, who bounded out to greet us, and Aunt Charlotte was not far behind. “Madame la marquise,” said the woman who had been all but mother to my husband. She kissed my cheeks, and I was charmed to learn she was not a simpering sort. “Oh, mon Dieu, these beautiful children are too thin. Get them into the house for some wild strawberry pie!”
Gilbert kissed me sheepishly and led us into the house, where the coolness of its stonework lent a pleasant air. The thirteenth-century ground floor was dark like a cave, light filtering through rounded, almost nautical peek-holes. But upstairs, tall windows afforded a bright sunlit view of the forested mountains.
And I began to feel a strange, heady freedom . . .
I had never been any place like this. Here at Chavaniac, there would be no glittering salons at which I must watch every word for political import. No galas at which I must wear hoops, headdress, and tight laces. No stink of summer heat in the city. No army of liveried servants bustling about. It was so quiet, I thought, This is a place one can hear God . . .
Our supper was served on humble white plates, but the food was plentiful—thick cuts of ham with lentils, finished with a delicious confection. And the conversation with Gilbert’s widowed aunt Charlotte was lively and entertaining. She plainly worshipped the ground my husband walked on, tearfully saying that when she sent him to Paris as a boy, she never believed she’d live long enough to see him again.
After we put our three exhausted children to bed, Gilbert brought me to his round tower bedroom—the same place he was born. “My study is below,” he explained. “If I wake in the wee hours of the night, it is easy enough to slip down the stairs and up again without disturbing anyone.”
How many sleepless nights did you spend writing your letter to Aglaé?
I did not ask. I did not want to know. I pushed aside that poisoned chalice of jealousy, wanting to put it in the past. Here at Chavaniac, I believed that we could.
Later, I slipped my hand into his. “I think this place explains you.”
He had come of age here, the little lord of these lands, raised on tales of chivalry, his days spent exploring these forests, these mountains, the streams, in perfect innocence. Now he was a grown man determined to live up to those tales. And again, I wanted to help him do it.
In the days that followed, I found I did not mind that there were not enough servants to see to our creature comforts. I did not mind that food sometimes came cold from the old giant oven. I did not mind the creaky floors or old-fashioned torches that left soot on the walls. I liked knowing that the king, the queen, and the royal court were far away. That the Noailles were not here to tell us what to do. And that even though General George Washington smiled down benevolently upon us from a portrait on the wall, he had no authority here either.
Gilbert was sole master of this place, and I was its mistress.
The reality of which became real to me on the day the bailiff explained that my husband’s tenants were on the verge of starvation. I had heard this already and sent monies ahead, but seeing the wretched state of the peasants in the village was an entirely different thing. Children crying, trembling with hunger, their bellies distended, little ones rasping with coughs. Their parents gaunt, ill clad, terrified to be evicted from their homes . . .