The first evening of my father and his friends’ two-day visit spun by. Jacques and I chatted but in the presence of the others. We told everyone we had met briefly once, in Paris, long ago.
“Yet what a coincidence,” I told Jacques after dinner their first evening at Blenheim when I had a moment to talk to him alone. We had not spoken in French so far, but I did now.
“Fate is kind for once, yes?” he whispered as we walked from the Saloon to assemble in the library. “And a blessing that we meet again and can now be friends.”
“You have not married?”
“Not yet,” he said with a shrug. “I found her once but lost her just as fast.”
I nodded, feeling sad for him. I was not so conceited as to think he could mean me, not this charming, handsome Frenchman I had spent barely a quarter hour with years ago.
I had also told Sunny that I had danced with Jacques the night of my debut in Paris. I had received much the same bloodless reaction from him as when I had told him on our wedding day that I had loved another man. “What goes around comes around,” he said this time.
“Well, just as with you and Gladys, it is possible to enjoy the company of another person,” I had replied.
“Quite right. But you like Gladys, too. That Frenchman was not half as interested in our stables or even the estate when I gave your father’s friends a tour. He is more interested in spouting off about how Blenheim would look from a hot-air balloon. Hot air—ha!”
It is true that Jacques was fascinated by not only that now—a passionate hobby, he said—but by the future of something he called flying machines. But I had found all of that quite daring and interesting.
At the first night’s dinner, Jacques had proudly said, “Not only the Americans and Germans, but we French are at the forefront of this endeavor, have been ever since King Louis XVI watched a balloon ascent at Versailles years ago.” The next day at breakfast, he had asked, “Can you imagine men flying over national boundaries, doing reconnaissance in war, let alone peacetime flights? We will need a lightweight engine for powered flight in the future, but I know a man, Léon Levavasseur, who is working on that.”
My father looked interested. Sunny nodded. I was entranced, perhaps not so much by the idea of flight as with my own flights of fancy. Just as I had felt swept away in the brief dance I had shared with Jacques years ago, I sensed the same now. Perhaps Papa picked up on that for he asked me after breakfast, “Why don’t you walk Jacques to the Grand Bridge, my dear? I and the others plan to go hunting with Sunny, but Jacques would rather not shoot birds in the sky, I take it—only fly with them.”
I wondered if Papa—and perhaps Jacques—had set this up. Had Papa sensed some spark between this Frenchman and me? I know Papa thought my husband rather a cold fish, but surely he would not want to encourage me to stray. But with someone I had not seen in years and probably never would again?
“Yes, yes, a good idea,” I told him.
“I CAN HEAR the banging of the guns already,” I remarked to Jacques. “I prefer hearing birds sing to shooting them.”
We walked together around the lake toward the massive bridge that the genius architect Sir John Vanbrugh had fashioned for the first Marlboroughs nearly two centuries ago. I had always loved the balanced beauty of it with its massive, honey-hued stone arches reflected in the lake the famous landscape architect Capability Brown had created from several streams.
“The banging of the guns?” he said. “I thought that was my heart—at the stunning view here.”
He was a bit of a tease and a flirt but never seemed to overstep, perhaps because—even at my age and all I had been through—I was hungry to be courted. I loved speaking French with him. It seemed my senses woke up, the girl or woman in me sprang alive. Yet despite his words and the intense way he regarded me, he seemed so under control, so proper. But beware, I told myself, for he is a Frenchman. Allure and charisma are their stock-in-trade.
“But for London Bridge,” I told him, “this may be the only bridge in England that was built to house people. Several of the chambers have fireplaces and chimneys, but I am not sure anyone has ever lived there. And there is one huge windowless room that had been plastered and fitted with an arch, as if for theatricals. The rooms are locked and off-limits now so that someone does not take up residence there or damage them—or themselves.”
“A lovely place for a picnic or a great adventure. The lake, I believe, came later and put the lower part of the arches underwater. Still, so magnifique, yes? A work of beauty.”
He took my arm and put it through his. His blue eyes seemed bluer with the sky above him. His mustache lifted slightly when he smiled, which was often. Our gazes locked and held. And then, something I had not expected. I had been quite tense but I suddenly relaxed. This man moved me deeply but made me feel safe, too, as well as respected and appreciated. Oh, what a heady mix that was.
We walked up onto the roadway over the highest arch of the bridge and looked down into the blue water of the lake. Despite the midmorning winter breeze, I felt warm, and it seemed as if this huge, solid structure under my feet was moving.
“Consuelo, your two sons are very handsome. The older one a handful, yes?”
“Indeed, he is. Do you recognize a bit of yourself in him?”
“I do. I was throwing toy soldiers off a bridge when I was young to see if they would sink or swim—the tin ones sank and the wooden ones floated, but none flew. As I said, it is beautiful here,” he added. Leaning back, his elbow resting on the bridge, he looked up into the sun beyond my shaded face.
What did he really see? I wondered. An attractive woman, for I knew I had outgrown the gawkiness I once had. A married woman, a mother? A wealthy duchess? All that but still a lonely girl trying to find her place, trying to love and be loved?
“The offer to take you up in a balloon still stands,” he told me as we walked slowly back toward the palace, taking the long way around the lake. “Perhaps when you visit your father next, yes? I shall take him, too, if he wishes, though he seems only interested in land or sea. And you, Consuelo?”
“If you think it is safe—because of my sons, I mean.”
“I shall take care of you. But remember, some things worth having are not safe, at least at first. Ah, like flying machines, yes?” he added, turning to me again. He did not smile this time but seemed to study me. I think he wanted to remember me and this short time we had alone. I felt the same. And more. Even the Prince of Wales’s stares and innuendos paled to nothing beside those of Monsieur Jacques Balsan.
SADLY, SOON, IN October 1899, England went to war, just when Sunny and I were trying to settle into a truce. The South African Boer War they called it because the Dutch Boer settlers in South Africa wanted Britain out of “their” territory. British forces overwhelmed the enemy at first, but the Boers fought back in what they called guerrilla style—unconventional and underhanded. Winston entered the action there as a war correspondent. He had been taken prisoner, made a bold escape, and was now considered a dashing hero here at home.
Sunny was slated to leave for the war soon, in early 1900, as part of the Imperial Yeomanry. I was appalled, not because he would go, but because a London paper intimated he was leaving not to do his duty but to escape marital problems. I thought we had been putting up a pretty good front and I never did learn who leaked the status of our non-marriage to the press.
“Now remember what I said about rearing our sons,” Sunny said in the last few moments before he departed for who knew how long. We stood in the Great Hall at Blenheim, though we had said our good-byes with the children last night. “Boys will be boys, you know.”
“I had two brothers, you may recall, and I do not think they were one whit damaged by learning there were some rules in life.”
“Now do not argue. I am sure Gladys’s staying for a few weeks will cheer you up.”
“She does keep me up on things and is always kind, interested, and interesting.”
“There, you see. Consuelo, my duchess, I know we had a devil of a time in the beginning,” he told me, taking both my hands in his and standing closer than he had for quite a long time. The honorary medals on his scarlet dress uniform caught the slant of sun through the doorway glass and glinted. “And a rough patch here and there after. But you have gifted me with two fine sons and have been a grand hostess, helped me climb back into the good graces of the royals. I believe Queen Victoria is not long for this world, as they say, and then—Bertie as king and your friend Alexandra queen.”
“That will mean a lot of changes, but England will weather them, war or not.”
“Spoken like a true Englishwoman and not only an American.”
“Only?” I said with the edge back in my voice that I reserved for when he lectured me, which was far too often. But I did not want to ruin this rare moment, for there had been so few like this. I realized, of course, that though he would probably be some general’s secretary and not on the battlefield, he yet might not return.
We stared a moment into each other’s eyes. The best I could think of to say was what he really wanted to hear. “I will take good care of our boys and of Blenheim.”
“Dear Blenheim, my third son and heir,” he said with a little shake of his head as he gazed away at the marble bust of the first duke over the Saloon door.
He held me close. His wool uniform smelled of the camphor it had been stored in, and I thought I would sneeze. Thank heavens, I did not, for he kissed me once hard on the lips. He did not want me to go to the station but to stand at the door of Blenheim where I would greet him with both boys when he came home.
“Be safe,” I told him, “and take care of Winston, if you see him. He takes too many chances, but I know that you will be sensible.”
He grabbed his helmet from the chair near the door. I followed him out and saw Gladys waiting by the carriage to say farewell. She said something and bobbed him that little curtsy she always managed as if she were one of his dependents hereabouts. He kissed her on the cheek and climbed into the carriage, which rolled immediately away while Gladys kept waving.