The Tangled Thread

Book 10: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1788: the bloody revolution in France causes upheaval in the Morland family.

Henri-Marie Fitzjames Stuart, bastard offshoot of the Morland family, strives to protect his daughter, Heloise, his mistress, Marie-France, and their son Morland. To this end, he binds Heloise to a loveless marriage with a Revolutionary, and allies himself with the great Danton. But in the bloodbath of the guillotine and the fall of Danton, Henri-Marie loses his head and Heloise flees to England.

She is welcomed with open arms by the family, and in Yorkshire Jemima proudly witnesses three marriages amongst her turbulent brood. At least three may be an heir to Morland Place, but the seeds of disaster have already been sown.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 480

Sample

Though I am sure there will be those who dismiss Lucy’s adventure in this volume as pure romance, there are several well-authenticated
accounts of women serving as ratings in the Royal Navy during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries without ever being
found out. There was also the fascinating case of Dr Barry, who in 1809 entered Edinburgh University at the age of ten, disguised
as a boy, qualified as a doctor and then served her whole life until retirement in the British Army as a military surgeon.
Even after her death, when the woman brought in to lay her out discovered her secret, the military authorities were unwilling
to admit how they had been deceived and continued to affirm that she had really been a man. I refer anyone interested in this
case to June Rose’s excellent biography.


Amongst the books I have found helpful are the following:

T. S. Ashton The Industrial Revolution

T. S. Ashton Economic History of the Eighteenth Century

John Bowie Napoleon

Nancy Bradfield Women’s Dress 7730-7950


Capt. Edward Brenton Naval History of Great Britain

Asa Briggs The Age of Improvement

T. A. J. Burnett Rise and Fall of a Regency Dandy

Hubert Cole Beau Brummell

Paul Emden Regency Pageant

John Fielden The Curse of the Factory System

Joseph Fouché Memoirs

Dorothy George London Life in the Eighteenth Century

R. Grundy Heape Georgian York

William Howitt The Rural Life of England

W. E. H. Lecky History of England in the Eighteenth Century

Michael Lewis A Social History of the Navy

Dorothy Marshall English People in the Eighteenth Century

David Ogg Europe of the Ancien Régime

R. R. Palmer The Year of Terror in the French Revolution

George Rudé Revolutionary Europe 1783-1815

George Rudé The Crowd in the French Revolution

Edith Sitwell Bath

Steven Watson The Reign of George III

E. N. Williams The Ancien Régime in Europe

E. N. Williams Life in Georgian England

Basil Williams The Whig Supremacy

Basil Willey The Eighteenth-Century Background

On a sunny September day in 1788 a gentleman’s travelling-chariot bowled through the gates of the Château of Chenonceau and
up the driveway, between the ranks of magnificent, towering plane trees. The chariot was not new – in fact, it was a little
old-fashioned in shape – but it had been recently refurbished with handsome black paint and crimson trim and a good deal of
gold leaf about the shafts and cornices. It was drawn by four good horses; the postilions were in livery; and on the door
on the near side was painted a coat of arms.


Inside the carriage, upon the new crimson velvet upholstery, with gold tassels upon the fat cushions, lounged Henri-Marie
Fitzjames Stuart, Comte de Strathord, and his long, dark face softened into a smile as he looked at his daughter, Héloïse.
The plumpness of the new cushions had been of no account to her from the beginning, for her whole body inclined forward in
her eagerness to reach her destination, and her thin hands were clasped together so tightly that her knuckles were white.
Her excitement had been growing since, four days ago, she had spent an entire morning packing and repacking her trunk in her
small room in the Convent of the Visitation in the rue Saint-Jacques in Paris. Packing had taken an immensely long time, because
her closest friend, a tall, buxom Normandy orphan named Marie-France, had insisted on examining and exclaiming over every
new item of clothing with which Papa’s money and Tante Ismène’s direction had provided her. The item dearest to the hearts
of both the girls was the new corset, made of linen and canvas, bound with white kid, and stiffened with real whalebone. Héloïse,
at eleven, had never worn a boned corset before, and she hugged to herself the knowledge of it, nestling inside her trunk
in the second carriage which followed behind carrying the baggage and servants.


‘Oh, how I envy you!’ Marie-France had cried wistfully. ‘Such lovely new clothes – and a real maidservant to wait upon you,
too.’


‘Tante Ismène said that as Papa was to be a house guest at the château, it would not be proper for me to travel without a
female companion. Though, of course, Madame Dupin wishes to consult Papa about refurbishment as well,’ Héloïse said apologetically.


‘And you are to stay three weeks. Oh Héloïse, you are so lucky – you go to so many places!’

‘But I have never been so far, or stayed so long, before,’ Héloïse offered consolingly. Indeed, she knew how lucky she was.
She loved living at the convent, was fond of the nuns, and had many friends, but a restless spirit of eleven could not but
be grateful for changes of scene. Papa designed interiors and advised the nobility on refurbishment, and had often taken Héloïse
with him when he went to visit a great house in the country. He also took Héloïse out riding in the Bois de Boulogne every
Saturday, and sometimes in an open carriage to watch the racing on the new course there; and once, as the carriages left,
the Queen in passing had smiled and lifted her hand to Héloïse.


Then there were her vacations from the convent, when she returned to the house on the rue Sainte-Anne where she had lived
most of her childhood. Madame de Murphy, whom she called Tante Ismène – though she was really no relation, but only a friend
of Papa’s – entertained all the most important people, and held regular salons where the Philosophes gathered to talk about the ‘new ideas’ and read from pamphlets and discuss how society could be changed for the better. Uncle
Meurice, who was a colonel in the Écossais, sometimes worried that their republican ideas were disloyal to the King, but Papa
only laughed at him and said that it was merely a new toy to Ismène and her friends, and far less harmful than basset or dice.


Papa knew and talked with real revolutionaries, in the Cour du Commerce on the Left Bank, where he had once lived incognito
as Monsieur Écosse. He had a friend there, a lawyer named Danton, who kept his own salon of lawyers and students, poets, pamphleteers,
out-of-work printers and renegade younger sons; and Héloïse, who knew far more than she should, on account of the servants
not thinking she understood their gossip, knew that Papa still liked to slip away and resume his alias and sup with Danton and listen to the talk, and that he would return sobered and thoughtful.


Héloïse, of course, was not supposed to know of these visits, and was not taken into Papa’s confidence about them, but once,
when he had been quarrelling with Tante Ismène about what he considered a piece of dangerous folly, he had turned away and
said quietly to Héloïse: ‘Your mother would not have been so taken in.’


Usually, however, he merely smiled sardonically at Ismène’s salons and her friends, and it was through them that he had met
Madame Dupin, the châtelaine of Chenonceau. She was a bourgeoise, the wife of a rich farmer, who had the entrée at Court. The Dupins had owned a fine house in Paris, the Hôtel Lambert on the tip of the île Saint-Louis, and Madame Dupin’s
salons there had been famous, for the New Philosophies were her passion in life. Now a widow, she had retired permanently
to Chenonceau, where she still entertained all the best of society. Some years ago Henri had been called in by her to advise
about the restoration of the State rooms, a delicate and difficult task; and now she had invited him to stay for a house party,
and had in her straightforward kindness extended the invitation also to the little girl.


‘Depend upon it, she would not have asked you if you were not one day to inherit your Papa’s title, and his fortune,’ said Manon, the maid Tante Ismène had lent her as lady’s maid, when she came up to Héloïse’s room with a footman
to carry down the trunk. But Héloïse only smiled and disbelieved her, for she saw good in everyone, and turned to clasp her
dear Marie-France in a farewell embrace.


‘I wish you could come too,’ she said sincerely. Poor Marie-France never left the convent, except to go to church, and for
walks in the Jardins du Luxembourg with the nuns.


‘You will have a lovely time,’ Marie-France assured her bravely. ‘Be sure and remember everything about it, to tell me when you come back.’


‘I shall keep a diary,’ Héloïse said sagely, ‘to be sure of forgetting nothing.’

Everything about the journey had delighted her: travelling with four horses, putting up at inns, being waited on like a lady
by a real maidservant, the changing countryside around her, having Papa’s company all day long. At first she had chattered – ’like a little monkey’ Papa said – in her excitement; as
she grew used to being in the coach, she and Papa had had proper conversations, and he had expressed himself surprised at
how much she knew. ‘You have your mother’s head, my child,’ he had said, which she knew was a great compliment. But since
leaving Tours on the last stage of their journey she had been too excited to talk at all, and as the coach came out from under
the trees and swung round on the gravelled forecourt before the château, she could only cast him one silent, expressive look
before her eyes were drawn back irresistibly to the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.


In a moment the step was let down, the door opened, and she was helped out, and could stand staring to her heart’s content.
Before her the river Cher sparkled green-gold in the sun, its further bank a dark mass of trees, just beginning to be sparked
with autumn; and from the middle of the river itself rose the château, small, delicate, graceful, its white stone honey-coloured
in the sunshine, its long sloping roof and slated turrets gleaming blue-grey like a pigeon’s wings. A stone bridge joined
it to the bank, and behind the main building the gallery wing reached to the further bank, spanning with five graceful arches
the river which flowed so tranquilly under the deep blue sky that it barely ruffled the perfect golden reflection of the château.


‘Oh Papa, it’s beautiful!’ Héloïse said at last. ‘It is the most beautiful house in the world.’

‘Yes,’ said Henri, ‘I think it is. Most châteaux, you see, were built by men, to impress their friends or repulse their enemies;
but Chenonceau was built by a woman, to be happy in.’


‘Oh, one would be happy here!’ she said, smiling up at her father. ‘How could one be anything but happy?’

In the hall they were greeted by Madam Dupin with the greatest cordiality. She was in her eighties now, a small, very upright
woman of great elegance with large, dark eyes and a pleasant smile. Héloïse could see that she must once have been very beautiful.


‘And this is your daughter, Henri?’ she said, extending her hand to Héloïse as if she were a real, grown-up guest.

‘Yes, madame, this is Henriette-Louise, but we always call her Héloïse,’ said Henri.

‘Madame,’ said Héloïse, taking the hand and curtsying deeply as she had been taught.


‘Bless you, child,’ Madame Dupin laughed. ‘You should save such deep curtsies for the Queen! Rise up, and let me look at you.
How old are you, my dear?’


‘I am eleven, madame. And three weeks,’ Héloïse said conscientiously.

‘And you live with the good sisters – yes, I know convent manners when I see them. Well, I hope you will be very happy here
at Chenonceau, my dear, and we must see how we can amuse you, while your papa and I are working.’ She turned her smile on
Henri. ‘I hope you don’t think it too bad in me to ask you to work while you are here? But there are still some of the State
rooms in need of attention, and I would not trust anyone but you with a task requiring such delicacy.’


Henri bowed. ‘It will be my pleasure, as always, to serve you.’

Madame Dupin laughed. ‘Your pleasure, I hope, and your profit as well, my dear Henri! Now I am sure you would like to go to
your rooms, before we take a little refreshment. Ah yes, here are your boxes. Caspar, see that the boxes are taken up at once.’


Papa’s room was one of the guest chambers above the gallery. Héloïse thought it splendid, elegantly and thoughtfully furnished
with everything one could require for comfort, and almost a superfluity of mirrors. There was a large dressing-room attached
to it, with a couch on which his servant could sleep.


‘So you may be quite private,’ madame said to Henri, who laughed in a particular way and kissed her hand. Then she turned
to Héloïse and said very kindly: ‘I thought perhaps, as you live so simply with the good sisters, that you might be more comfortable
in something a little less formal than this, so I have given you one of the turret rooms. Gilbert, take Mademoiselle de Stuart
and her maid to her room.’


The white-wigged footman in his green livery preceded Héloïse from the room, held the door for her, and then extended a hand
along the corridor with an ‘If you please, mademoiselle’ and a look that suggested he thought it a little beneath his dignity
to be conducting a mere child. Héloïse walked behind him, along corridors whose floor tiles were patterned with royal fleurs-de-lis and salamanders, whose walls
bore dim oil portraits in gilded frames of ladies and gentlemen in the costumes of half a dozen past ages, and Manon, the
maid, trotted behind her. Following the broad green back, Héloïse noticed that his hair, of which a strand had escaped from
under his wig, was fox-red, and that he had a boil on the back of his neck. It made him seem more human and less awe-inspiring,
which was a comfort.


The room to which he shewed her was quite small and almost round, and seemed very crowded when they arrived, for two footmen
were there putting down her box and valise, while a very small maid tried to squeeze in past them with a ewer of hot water.
The footman Gilbert, to restore his self-respect, commanded the situation with loud and unnecessary orders, and after a few
moments of noise and confusion they all withdrew, leaving Héloïse alone with Manon, free to run to the window and look out.


‘Oh, but the view is lovely. I can see everything!’ she cried. The turret was on a front corner of the house, so that the
window looked back down the avenue of plane trees, on either side of which the woods stretched as far as the eye could see.
Beyond the bridge which connected the château to the bank there was a funny little stone watchtower overlooking the gravelled
forecourt, and to either side formal gardens set out in geometric patterns with clipped box hedges and gravelled walks. By
leaning out and looking to the right she could see, beyond the tall slope of the chapel roof, the dreaming river, on which
a small boat drifted while its occupant held a fishing-line. ‘How peaceful it all seems.’


Manon sniffed. ‘A paltry little room, mademoiselle, if you ask me. I wonder your father should let you be so slighted, when
you will be a countess in your own right one day. It is not at all what I expected.’


Héloïse drew in from the window to confront the situation. The room seemed charming to her, with its stone-ribbed vaulted
ceiling, curving walls and a dear little bed with a snowy-white counterpane and white cambric curtains. Manon had not seemed
displeased when she had been chosen to accompany Héloïse as her maid, had attended her cheerfully on the road, and had even gone so far as to say she would like to see the inside of so famous a château; but now she stood with hands on
hips and a sour expression on her face, eloquent of disapproval.


It was not long before Héloïse guessed what was upsetting her. Though she was only eleven she knew a great deal about the
lives and opinions of the people around her, largely through her habit – which Papa told her was a reprehensible one – of
chatting to the servants about themselves. She knew, for one thing, that a servant’s status in the servants’ hall depended
upon the importance of the person he or she served. She guessed that Manon had just realised that here at the château she
would be held in very little esteem, as the maid of a mere child, who had been given the smallest and meanest of guest chambers.


‘I’m sure madame meant it as a kindness,’ Héloïse said, and then added impulsively, ‘Oh Manon, I am sorry you do not like to
serve me, but I will try not to be a trouble to you, and it is only for a few weeks.’


Manon was only partly appeased, for she liked people to know their place, and it was not for the mistress, though she was
only eleven, to apologise; but she was at least recalled to her duty.


‘Let me help you off with your habit, mademoiselle,’ she said briskly. ‘The water will be getting cold, and it won’t do to
keep them waiting for their meat.’


Héloïse submitted to being undressed and washed and helped into one of her new gowns. The robe was of primrose and white striped
cotton, the white stripes figured with sprays of blue and red flowers on green stems. The stiff bodice tapered to a long point
at the back over a very full gathered skirt, and at the front the skirt opened over a plain white muslin petticoat. The ensemble
was completed by frilled muslin cuffs, and a white muslin kerchief folded over the shoulders, crossed in front and tied behind
the waist.


‘You don’t think it too plain for a château?’ Héloïse asked, with only the faintest touch of anxiety. She loved the dress,
but wished most of all to be correct. Not at all, Manon assured her. It was exactly the thing, and très elegante, which madame would regard more than anything.


‘Now come to the window, where the light is best, while I dress your hair,’ she said. Héloïse was quite happy to stand looking out of the window, patient as a horse being plaited,
while Manon poked and frizzed at her dark hair, and then at last she was allowed to look at herself in the mirror, which Manon
held for her and moved up and down so that she could see everything.


‘I wonder what sort of a woman you will make,’ Manon mused, surveying her critically. Not a very pleasing one, Héloïse thought,
to judge by her tone. ‘However,’ Manon went on briskly, ‘you have good hair, and your eyes are fine. If only you were not
so thin and sallow – but you will probably fill out when you are a little older, and if you don’t, well, there are ways one
can remedy that.’


‘Are there, Manon?’ Héloïse asked with interest.

‘There are, but that’s nothing to you for the moment. Here is someone come to fetch you, if I don’t mistake.’

There were footsteps, a tap on the door, and there stood a footman, not the disapproving Gilbert but a boy hardly older than
Héloïse herself, whose livery was too big for him.


‘I am to conduct you downstairs, mademoiselle, if you are quite ready.’

Héloïse inclined her head graciously and swept out in fine style, only spoiling the effect by giving the boy not merely a
smile – which would have been wrong to begin with – but one broad enough to be called a positive grin.


Downstairs, the company had gathered in the Diane de Poitiers salon to eat. The salon was one of those refurbished and restored
under Henri’s guidance, and he was pleased with the success of his labours, for the room was magnificent, and he ventured
to think that even the King’s mistress herself would not have been displeased if she had been able to return from the past
and see it. The repairs to the massive marble fireplace were undetectable, the gilding of the cornices and ceiling had been
done with a lavish but tasteful hand, and the portraits had come up excellently well after their cleaning. Flemish tapestries
and fine furnishings adorned the room, but the company were much more interested in the buffet spread with a lavish array
of cold meats and fruits, and in conversing with one another.


The talk naturally centred on the proposed calling of the Estates-General for the following May, the news of which had but
recently broken. Everyone seemed to have his own idea of what the assembly was likely to achieve, and of what it ought to
achieve, which were evidently very different things. Henri, ostensibly listening to two languid young men whose sartorial
sophistication was pleasantly at odds with the down on their cheeks, let his attention wander in an unfocused way. ‘Deficit’
and ‘Necker’ were the two words most frequently employed, along with ‘ministerial despotism’, which had a fine ringing sound
like a new-minted coin. There was considerable use of the rather more worn currency of ‘liberty’, ‘justice’ and ‘privilege’,
and one or two coins of a new denomination and doubtful value: ‘patriot’ and ‘nation’.


‘One cannot be glad to see our country so deep in debt,’ one of the young men was saying, ‘and yet one sees that the American
wars had to be fought. We could not leave our American brothers to struggle for liberty alone.’


Henri raised an eyebrow. ‘I had imagined we fought to increase our territorial possessions in the New World,’ he said. The
young man blushed, and his companion came to his aid.


‘That was a secondary aim, of course,’ he conceded generously. ‘But the deficit has had its use, after all. It has shewn the true colours
of the King and his ministers in the high-handed way they proposed to raise taxes to pay off the debt, and then dismissed
the Parlements when they objected.’


The other young man was heard to murmur something about despotism, Rome and Caesar; at any moment someone would say the word
‘republic’, Henri thought, and they would be off on the paths so familiar to him from Ismène’s salons. Behind him he heard
someone say to Madame Dupin, ‘Is it true, madame, that the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau was once tutor to your children?’ A
great weariness came over him, and he was glad to be able to interrupt the young men by saying, ‘Ah, here is my daughter.
Gentlemen, you will excuse me?’


Héloïse’s eyes were very wide indeed, with all there was to see: the wonderful room, the beautiful clothes of the assembled
company, the variety and quality of the refreshments, served to her by a liveried footman on a plate of blue-and-gold porcelain
so fine and delicate she could almost see the light through it. The footman had just offered her a glass of champagne when papa arrived at her side, and solved for her the problem of
whether or not to accept it.


‘Mademoiselle would prefer lemonade,’ he said firmly.

Héloïse gazed at her father in satisfaction. He was, she thought, the handsomest man in the room, and he was wearing her favourite
of his waistcoats, the pale blue one embroidered with blue and pink birds and almond-blossom sprays. All around her people
were eating, and chatting in well-bred voices about people whose names were very familiar to her: Plutarch and Cicero, Voltaire
and Corneille, Mirabeau and Lafayette and the Duc d’Orléans. She smiled at her father as he offered her the glass of lemonade
he had procured for her, and said, ‘Why, Papa, it’s just like being at home.’


Henri laughed. ‘Madame would be outraged to hear you say it; but I know exactly what you mean. They are so very like your
Tante Ismène’s friends, aren’t they?’


Héloïse nodded. ‘But everything is much grander,’ she conceded.


‘You wait until dinner, my marmoset! Madame’s table is renowned.’

‘Papa, am I the only young person here?’ she asked him anxiously, in a lowered voice. Henri was about to point out the two
downy-cheeked young men, and checked himself as he realised that though to him they appeared as children they were at least
seventeen or eighteen, and would be indistinguishable from grown-ups to Héloïse. ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said, ‘but you mustn’t
mind it. It is a great honour for you.’


‘Ah, Henri,’ Madame Dupin said, at that moment reaching them on her round of her guests. ‘Well, my dear,’ to Héloïse, ‘how
do you like your room?’


Héloïse curtsied. ‘Very much, madame, thank you.’

‘I thought that you would. I hope you will enjoy your visit, child. It is a pity that I was not able to procure for you a
companion of your own age.’


‘Héloïse is accustomed to entertaining herself,’ Henri interposed.

‘Well, she may safely walk about the gardens here, and my library is at her disposal,’ Madame Dupin said with a smile. ‘And
– your papa tells me that you like to ride?’


‘Oh yes, madame, above anything,’ Héloïse said fervently. ‘In Paris, where I live, Papa hires a white pony for me, and we
ride in the Bois de Boulogne every week.’


‘Then you shall not lack for amusement here. I have no suitable horse in my stable, but my near neighbour has a pony which
is accustomed to carrying a young lady – his daughter, who is just married and gone away. I am sure he will be happy to place
it at my disposal. I shall send to him at once and see what can be done.’


‘Thank you, madame,’ Héloïse said, her eyes kindling.

Madame Dupin, as practical as she was kindly, went on: ‘I shall tell one of the grooms – Saultier will do – to hold himself
in readiness for you. You may ride whenever you like; no need to ask permission, just ask one of the servants to send word
to the stables, and Saultier will bring the pony up to the house, and accompany you. He will take good care of you.’


‘Thank you, madame,’ Héloïse said, and found nothing would express her feelings so well as the deepest curtsy she had yet performed.


During the afternoon, while Héloïse was being taken on a conducted tour of the château by the housekeeper, who had never had
so attentive a visitor, nor one so rapturously moved by the romantic stories of poor Queen Louise and the battle royal between
Diane de Poitiers and the wicked Queen Catherine de Medici, Henri mounted to the upstairs hall to attend Madame Dupin and
discuss with her her plans for refurbishment. He found her there, but not alone, for she was, apparently, in the process of
welcoming and conducting to their chambers two guests who had just arrived. Henri bowed and prepared to withdraw.


‘I see you are not ready for me, madame. Pray send for me when you are at liberty.’

‘No, no, Henri, on the contrary, I wish you to meet these gentlemen,’ said Madame Dupin, stretching out a slender hand to
him. One of the newcomers was a young and handsome man of twenty-four with the unmistakable look of a Parisian about him.
The other Henri judged to be about sixty. He was tall but unstooped, and though thin to the point of gauntness, there was nothing displeasing or severe in his face. It was rather tanned, fine-featured and sensitive, and made alive by a pair
of large dark eyes full of liveliness and humour which made Henri think – absurdly – of Héloïse. His hair was white without
powder, which made a startling but pleasing contrast with his dark face. His clothes were evidently those of a rich man who
was interested in his appearance, and yet there was something indefinably odd about their style. He looked at Henri with a
frank interest which Henri found irresistible, and he found himself smiling at the stranger before they were even introduced.


‘Henri, may I present to you Herr Johannes Finsterwalde of Leipzig, stonemason and architect. He has been kind enough to offer
his services to Chenonceau. Monsieur de Stuart, Comte de Strathord,’ Madame Dupin completed the introduction.


‘Your servant, sir,’ Finsterwalde said, bowing low. ‘I have heard of you very often, Monsieur le Comte, and even trodden in
your footsteps – I worked upon Monsieur le Prince de Rohan’s house, only a week after you had quitted it, and of course I