With the establishment of the fat king without a kingdom at Hartwell House, the preceding spring, the abbé had seemed to be settled in England for a while. Since then, he made only one short journey abroad. Marianne and her aunt could not help being intrigued by all this coming and going. Lady Selton remarked more than once that it would not surprise her if the little priest turned out to be a secret agent for Rome.
Even so, it had been the abbé she summoned to her bedside as she lay dying rather than the Reverend Mr Harris whom she heartily detested and referred to as a 'damned pompous idiot'. A bad cold, treated by the invalid with her customary supreme contempt, had brought her to death's door within a week. Ellis contemplated the approach of death without flinching, calm and lucid as ever, her only regret that it had come too soon.
'I still had so much to do,' she sighed. 'But whatever happens, I am determined that my little Marianne shall be married a week after I am underground.'
'So soon? I am here to take care of her,' the abbé objected.
'You? My poor friend, I might as well trust her to a puff of wind! One day or other you will be off again on one of your mysterious journeys and the child will be all alone. No, she is betrothed, so get her married. A week, I said. Do you promise?'
The abbé Gauthier had promised. And that was why on this wet November evening in the year 1809, true to his word, he had married Marianne d'Asselnat to Francis Cranmere.
Standing before the altar, wearing a white silk chasuble with gold embroidered lilies lent to him by Louis XVIII's chaplain, Alexandre de Talleyrand-Périgord,[1] the abbé Gauthier de Chazay performed his function solemnly. His tiny, fragile figure in the priestly vestments acquired a kind of dignity enhanced by the slow, impressive gestures. At forty-five, his appearance remained obstinately youthful and only the streaks of white in his thick, dark hair below the tonsure betrayed the passing of time. But Marianne looked at these signs of age with love, dimly aware that they were earned by years of hard labour in the service of others. She loved him dearly, both for what she knew of him and the rest that she guessed and because of this her present happiness was a little spoiled because her dear godfather did not seem to share it. She knew he disapproved of her marriage to an English protestant. He himself would have preferred for her one of the young émigrés in the entourage of the duc de Barry and he was simply conforming to the dead woman's wish. But, besides this, it seemed to her that the abbé de Chazay disliked Francis Cranmere as a man, that he was performing his sacred duty as a priest but performing it joylessly.
The ceremony over, he came towards the couple and Marianne smiled encouragingly at him, as though inviting him to smooth the frown from between his brows and share her happiness. Her own look seemed to say: 'I am happy and I know you love me. Why won't you be happy too?' There was anxiety in the mute inquiry. Now that Aunt Ellis was gone, he was all she had left and she wanted him to enter wholeheartedly into her love.
But the frown did not leave the abbe's brow. He was looking at the young couple thoughtfully and Marianne could have sworn that there was in his eyes a curious mixture of pity, anger and anxiety. There was a silence which rapidly became so oppressive that Gauthier de Chazay became aware of it. His set lips curved into a joyless smile as he took the bride's hand.
'I wish you every happiness, my child. In so far as God wills us to be happy in this world. Only He knows when we shall meet again—'
'You are going away?' the girl asked in sudden alarm. 'But you said nothing to me?'
'I feared to add yet another disturbance to the household and to throw even a slight shadow on your happiness. Yes, I am going to Rome. Our Holy Father has summoned me. But now, I leave you in your husband's hands – I trust they will deal gently with you.'
The last words were directed to the young man. Lord Cranmere jerked up his chin and straightened his elegant back as he met the abbe's eyes.
'I hope you do not doubt it, abbé.' There was the hint of a challenge in his voice. 'Marianne is very young, I am sure she will prove biddable. Why should she not be happy?'
'To be biddable is not everything. There is also affection, indulgence, understanding – love.'
There was in both men's voices a note of barely controlled anger which frightened Marianne. Surely her husband and the priest who had just blessed their union were not going to quarrel right in front of the altar? She could not understand her godfather's scarcely concealed hostility towards the man chosen for her by Lady Ellis. She realized obscurely that this hostility was not religious in origin, that it was directed against Francis himself. But why? What could the abbé have against him? Surely, Lord Cranmere was the most brilliant, brave, attractive, intelligent – whenever Marianne embarked on the attempt to catalogue her new husband's virtues she generally found herself at a loss for superlatives. However, in this instance, she was not called upon to intervene. The abbé de Chazay closed the subject by saying simply: 'I entrust her to you.'
'You may rest easy,' was the dry response.
The abbé turned quickly back to the altar and, taking up the chalice, made his way back to Lady Ellis's old boudoir which had been turned into a temporary vestry. Not that the previous owner had ever had much use for the room as a boudoir, it was usually full of riding crops and hunting gear rather than dainty chairs and cushions.
As though suddenly relieved of some constraint, Francis smiled at his wife and, bending his tall figure slightly, offered her his hand.
'Will you come, my dear?'
Side by side, they began to walk slowly down the length of the big room. As befitted a wedding following so close upon a funeral, there were few people present, apart from the small knot of servants gathered just inside the double doors. But those few guests made up in quality for what they lacked in numbers.
With a firm hand, Francis led his young wife up to the Prince of Wales who, with a few friends, had insisted on honouring the marriage of one of his intimate circle. As she made her deep curtsey to the prince, Marianne found herself wondering that she was not more impressed. The future king had a considerable presence, even a certain majesty, but with the approach of his fiftieth year and the effects of a naturally voracious appetite he was lapsing more and more into obesity while a vinous flush was spreading inexorably over the august features. An aristocratic nose, commanding gaze and sensual lips could not preserve his royal highness from a somewhat comical appearance. Everyone in England, even the innocent Marianne, knew that the prince led a life of debauchery and that he was quite openly a bigamist, having been married first, by inclination, to his mistress, Mary Fitzherbert and afterwards, by necessity, to Princess Caroline of Brunswick whom he heartily loathed.
Such as he was, 'Prinny' smiled benevolently upon the young bride and condescended to incline his ample person to assist her to rise.
'Ravishing!' he pronounced. 'Positively ravishing, Lady Cranmere. By George, if I were not already quite sufficiently well provided for in the way of wives, I do believe I might have stolen you from my friend Francis myself. All my felicitations.'