When this happened, she would get up, driven by an uncontrollable impulse, and fumbling for her cane, make her way barefoot, her red plaits dangling down her back, into the big room near her own where Marianne lay sleeping. She would stand for a long while by the cot, looking down at the baby girl who had become her one reason for living. Then, as the nightmare fears abated and her heart beat normally again, Ellis Selton would go back to her bed, not to sleep but instead to offer up endless prayers of thankfulness to God for granting an old maid this miracle, a child of her own to care for.

Marianne knew the story of her escape by heart, she had heard it so many times from her aunt. Ellis Selton, although fiercely protestant and anchored firmly in her religious beliefs, could value courage when she saw it. The abbé de Chazay's exploit had earned him the Englishwoman's sincere esteem.

'He's a man, that little papist priest!' was her invariable conclusion to the story. 'I couldn't have done better myself.'

She herself was, in fact, a woman of consuming activity and tireless energy. She was passionately fond of horses and, before her accident had spent the best part of her time in the saddle, riding the length and breadth of her vast estates, inspecting everything with her keen blue eyes which very little was allowed to escape.

As a result, almost as soon as she was able to walk, Marianne was hoisted on to a pony and learned to accustom herself to cold water whether at her washstand or in the river where she learned to swim. Wearing little more in winter than in summer, going out bareheaded in all weathers, hunting her first fox at the age of eight, Marianne's education would have done credit to any boy but, for a girl and more particularly for a girl of her times it was more than a little unorthodox. Old Dobbs, the head groom, had himself taught her to handle weapons and at fifteen Marianne could wield a sword with the very best and shoot the pips out of a playing card at twenty paces.

Yet, with all this her mind had not been neglected. She spoke several languages and had been well taught in history, geography, literature, music and dancing and, above all, in singing, nature having endowed her with a voice whose warmth and clarity was by no means the least of its charms. Far better educated than the majority of her contemporaries, Marianne had become her aunt's pride and joy, and this in spite of a regrettable propensity for devouring every novel that came within her reach.

'She might take her place without shame on any throne!' the old woman was fond of saying, emphasizing her words with vigorous thumps on the ground with her stick.

'Thrones are never very comfortable things,' the abbé de Chazay, to whom these glorious visions of Lady Ellis's were usually confided, would answer, 'but of recent years they have become perfectly untenable.'

His relationship with Ellis had always been violently unpredictable and now that it was all over, Marianne could not help looking back on it with a nostalgia touched with amusement. Lady Selton had been a protestant to her very soul and regarded catholics with invincible mistrust and their priests with a kind of superstitious terror. To her, they still carried with them the slight but unmistakable smell of burning flesh associated with the worst horrors of the Inquisition. Between her and the abbé Gauthier there was an endless and enthusiastic verbal duel in which each did his best to convince the other without the faintest hope of ever succeeding. Ellis flaunted the green banner of Torquemada, while Gauthier fulminated against the cruelties of Henry VIII, the fanatical furies of John Knox and recalling the martyrdom of the catholic Mary Queen of Scotts, launched a virulent attack on the whole Anglican citadel. More often than not, the battle was ended by sheer exhaustion. Lady Ellis would ring for tea which came accompanied, in honour of the visitor, by a decanter of rare brandy. Then, peace restored, the two adversaries would confront one another again in a calmer frame of mind over the card table, each thoroughly pleased with the other and themselves, their mutual esteem intact, if not actually strengthened. And the child would go back to her play with the feeling that all was for the best in the best of all worlds, because the people she loved were at peace with one another.

Despite her aunt's convictions, Marianne had been brought up in her father's faith. If the truth were told, this religious instruction, like those interludes nicknamed by the child 'the wars of religion', did not take place very often. The abbé Gauthier de Chazay's appearances at Selton Hall were brief and infrequent. They did not know how he occupied his time but one thing they did know, that he travelled a great deal in Germany, Poland and even as far as Russia where he stayed for long periods at a time. He was also to be found, from time to time, at the various residences of the Count of Provence who, since 1795 and the death of the Dauphin in the Temple, had become King Louis XVIII. The abbé had lived for a while in Verona, at Mittau and in Sweden. Every now and then, he would make his appearance in England, only to vanish again, always in a hurry, always secretive, without ever saying where he was going. And no one ever asked questions.

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.'