If this took me unawares, it shocked my sister Louise, who dropped a napkin in panicked surprise, her voice quavering as she asked, “Fight for America?”
“For a new world,” said Gilbert.
My sister and I were accustomed to our husbands’ summer absences for military training, but it plainly frightened her to think of them crossing the sea. And I wondered if I too should be more afraid. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law, Marc, said, “These Bostonians are just colonial farmers, but they’ve got the Brits on the run. Imagine what these Bostonians might do if France was to support them.”
Grand-mère twisted her pearls in befuddlement. “I don’t understand what you boys are saying. Aren’t these peasants traitors to their king?”
Marc diplomatically ignored this. “If the colonies break away, it could be the ruin of Britain.”
This idea could displease no Frenchman, nor any Frenchwoman, for that matter. Given our humiliation in the Seven Years’ War, even Grand-mère wished to see the British suffer a little. Moreover, my aunt, Madame de Tessé, opined that she thought there was something quite enlightened about these rebels. Yet I knew it would be my father whose opinion mattered most. Surely the duc d’Ayen could not continue to think my husband timid and bloodless if he undertook such an endeavor. If Lafayette couldn’t win military glory in French uniform, doing it in battle with the British was the next best thing. I thought this bold plan was precisely the sort of thing my father would actually admire.
I held my breath as the duc d’Ayen considered, crossing his legs to show his diamond-buckled shoes to great advantage. “Unfortunately, King Louis doesn’t want a war, much less for three of his prominent noblemen to go stir one up on foreign shores. The king of France cannot be seen to give aid to a rebellion against another anointed king. We must remain neutral.”
Gilbert silently stared at his plate as if to disguise his disappointment. My sister, for her part, seemed tremendously relieved, and looked to me to echo her sentiment. I felt only a half measure of relief. I knew my own desire to go to America was a flight of fancy, but Gilbert really could go. It would pain me to be separated, yet it was the lot of every soldier’s wife, and there had been few better causes for it.
Marc continued to argue. “We’ll go of our own accord. Thus, our actions cannot be blamed on France.”
“The Noailles are France,” my father said. “No one in the world will believe this family would act without the king’s blessing. As, indeed, we should not. As we will not, do you understand?”
My father intended this to be the end of the conversation, yet my husband insisted, “I must go, for my honor and the glory of France.”
The duc d’Ayen’s exasperated laughter didn’t tinkle like crystal, not like the queen’s, still it sent the same flush of shame down my husband’s neck, and an answering flush heated my cheeks too when my father said, “Marc might acquit himself well for the Noailles, but, Gilbert, what you would find to do in America, I could not guess.”
“Father,” I cried, provoked beyond endurance.
The duc d’Ayen’s gaze fell upon me, and fear knotted in my throat, making it difficult to speak. Thus I was forced to watch, helplessly, as the brewing storm in my husband’s eyes finally broke. “Do I not have my own family name to uphold?” Gilbert demanded to know. “You wish to prevent me from distinguishing myself with a sacred charge—not only to avenge my father, but to free men from a corrupted system of inequality.”
His appeal stirred my blood, but it did not soften my father’s heart. “I have something else in mind for you, Gilbert,” said the duc d’Ayen. “Given the offense you gave to the king’s brother, you cannot go back to Versailles, but perhaps we can find a place for you in a different court as a diplomat.”
Gilbert shrank away. “So I can bow and scrape to a king that is not even mine?”
My father growled. “You are such a boy, Gilbert. Younger than your years.”
He was not a boy. He was a husband and a father. And with the coming of December, I was at least able to give my husband the consolation of knowing he would be a father again. I hoped this news would bring some end to the turmoil in my family, but my father’s new plans for my husband were taking shape. “I’m sending you to London, Gilbert. Then to Rome for six months, to keep you out of mischief.”
Six months. That would mean my husband would likely be gone for the birth of our child—a thing I immediately protested. I wanted to argue with my father. I was heartbroken Gilbert did not. He claimed he didn’t want to be wrenched away from me before the birth of our child, but I came to believe that his spirit, at long last, had been broken. I had fallen in love with my husband’s defiance. Now, with him completely in my father’s power, I worried that defiance was gone and grieved it even more than our forthcoming separation.