'I thank your Highness,' Marianne stammered, her ears still full of the delicious sound of her new name. The prince however was already bellowing with laughter at his little joke and this laughter was dutifully taken up by Francis and the three gentlemen clustered round the heir to the throne. These three, Marianne had seen several times before. They were all three boon companions of the prince and Francis was often in their company. They were Lord Moira, Mr Orlando Bridgeman and the king of dandies himself, George Bryan Brummel, his pretty face with the insolent turned up nose perched above the dizzy folds of an exquisite white neck-cloth and surmounted by a negligent array of silken blond curls.
Lord Cranmere, in his deep voice, thanked the prince for honouring the ceremony with his presence and expressed the hope that his Royal Highness would do still further honour to Selton Hall by presiding over dinner.
'No, 'pon my soul!' the prince answered. 'I've promised Lady Jersey to take her to Hatchett's to choose her new carriage. A new carriage is no light matter and it's a long way to London. I must be off—'
'You will leave me, tonight?'
Marianne saw with surprise the lines of displeasure form round her husband's mouth. Was he then so disappointed to lose his royal guest? For her own part, she was only too desperately anxious for all these people to be gone and leave her alone at last with the man she loved. All the young couples in the novels she had read had asked nothing better than to bid their guests goodbye.
The prince's pleasant, rather foolish laugh rang out again.
'Are you so afraid of being left alone, on your wedding night?' That's not like you, Francis – but take heart, not all of me is going. I am leaving you the better part of me. Moira will stay and so will our American. And then you've your pretty cousin?'
This time, it was Marianne's turn to suppress a look of disappointment. Foppish Lord Moira, with his exquisite clothes and a manner so indolent that he seemed more than half asleep, meant nothing to her but she had not had to exchange more than one glance with the person the prince had referred to as the American to know that she disliked him. And then there was the 'pretty cousin', Ivy with her airs and graces. From the very first she had treated Marianne as a raw country miss and flaunted a provoking 'cousinly' intimacy with Francis.
Turning her head away to hide her annoyance while Francis, on the contrary, appeared much reassured, Marianne met the amused eyes of the American himself. He was standing a little way away from the group around the prince, by one of the windows. Hands clasped behind his back, legs a little apart, he looked as though he had only happened to alight there by chance and formed a strong contrast with the other men present. This contrast had been the first thing to strike Marianne when he was introduced to her and she had been ruffled by it, as though the stranger's air of careless unconcern, verging almost on indifference, had been a direct insult to the irreproachable elegance of the others. It was not just his complexion, tanned by wind and weather, that offended her in comparison with the Englishmen with their pink, well fed faces. They were aristocrats, great landowners most of them, he was only a sailor probably owning nothing more than his ship, a ranger of the seas, 'a pirate'. Marianne had dismissed him instantly. It passed her comprehension how the son of an English king, a man who would be king himself one day, could find any pleasure in the company of a man who dared to turn up at a wedding wearing boots. All the same, her dislike had not prevented her from remembering his name. He was called Jason Beaufort. Francis had remarked with his habitual carelessness that the fellow came of a good Carolina family, descended from the French Huguenots obliged to flee to the new world after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but Marianne suspected her new husband of an excessively complaisant attitude towards anyone accepted by the prince.
'In spite of his looks, he's a gentleman—'
Thus the final judgment pronounced by Francis's handsome lips. Even so, Marianne was none too ready to agree. Although his manners were perfectly correct, she sensed in Beaufort something purposeful and menacing which made her uneasy. Accustomed, early in life, to the fierce pleasures of the chase, she often found herself comparing human beings to the animals she loved but whereas Francis reminded her of a splendid thoroughbred, she saw Jason Beaufort as a hawk. He had the hawk's bold profile, bright eyes and the lean, rangy look that yet gave an impression of dangerous vitality. Even the slender brown hands emerging from cuffs of delicate white lawn recalled the talons of the bird of prey while the look in those bright blue eyes was unnervingly intent. All through the ceremony, Marianne had been uncomfortably conscious of it on her neck and shoulders. She had found herself avoiding those eyes because, for all her native courage, she found it hard to meet them.
He was smiling, just now, as he looked at her. A thin, crooked smile revealing a lightning glimpse of very white teeth. Marianne's hand tightened on her husband's. She hated that slow, appreciative smile which made her feel somehow ashamed, as though the American were able to pierce through the mystery of her clothes and lay bare her girlish body. She actually shivered as she saw him abandon his idle stance and come towards her with his rolling sailor's gait. She looked away, pretending she had not seen the movement.
'May I be allowed to offer my compliments and good wishes?' The American's lazy voice spoke from so close behind her that she seemed to feel his warm breath on her neck.
Good manners obliged her to turn round but she left it to Francis to reply. His white hand clasped Jason's brown one as he exclaimed with a heartiness surprising to Marianne: 'You may indeed, my dear fellow! The good wishes of a friend have a value of their own and yours I know are genuine. We can count on your company?'
'Delighted.'
The blue eyes rested on Marianne's tight face and she thought furiously that he was aware of her dislike and amused by it. However, he had the good manners to go no further and merely bowed as the young couple moved away and turned their steps towards the duc d'Avaray and the bishop de Talleyrand-Périgord, who had come on behalf of Louis XVIII to honour the marriage of a countrywoman both of whose parents had perished in the Terror.
These two were standing somewhat apart, in loftly isolation over by the fireplace, making up by an austere dignity of bearing for their reduced situation as exiles. The simplicity with which both men were dressed formed a strong contrast with the elegance of the Prince of Wales and his friends. Marianne, in her old fashioned dress, made a charming foil to their stiff, outmoded dignity. As the bride made her curtsey to the royal envoys, Francis had the momentary illusion that he was back at Versailles twenty-five years earlier and something of this showed in the involuntary respect with which he bowed. The smooth voice of the duc d'Avaray was already extending the royal felicitations to the young couple, then, turning to Marianne, the old nobleman went on:
'Her royal highness, Madame la duchesse d'Angouleme[2] has been graciously pleased to send to you, my lady, this special token of her esteem. Madame has asked me to give you this, as a remembrance of her—'
He held out a small locket of blue enamel set with brilliants enclosing a fine lock of white hair. When Marianne gazed uncomprehendingly at the strange gift, d'Avaray went on:
'This lock was cut from the head of Queen Marie-Antoinette before her execution. Madame wished you to have it in memory of your noble mother who gave her life for the Queen.'
Colour flooded the girl's face. Unable to say a word, she sank into a deep curtsey leaving it to Francis to express her grateful thanks. Her feelings were, in fact somewhat mixed. These continual reminders of the past at a time when she stood on the threshold of a new life which she passionately hoped would be filled with the love and worship of a single man were more painful than pleasant. To Marianne, her mother was no more than a friendly ghost, the image of a smiling face pictured in an ivory miniature, but on this day the image had grown to the point of obliterating her own personality. There were moments when she wondered if it were really Marianne d'Asselnat and not Anne Selton who had married the handsome Francis Cranmere…