This week Cerise Deland offers THE LYON WHO’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS, and as always, she brings the real history in her romance.
The mother of my heroine, Blythe, was French and the daughter of an aristocrat. But the estate was absorbed by the National Assembly during the Terror. Though she and her male cousin on her maternal side visit Paris during the Peace of Amiens and appeal to the Consulate to get the family’s lands returned, the properties are not.
This is true of the majority of those French who returned to France during that period (and others). They failed at seeing their estates returned.
Why?
Confiscating them was largely an act of revenge upon the upper classes by revolutionaries. But it was also an economic maneuver.
How so?
The government declared all aristocrats’ estates forfeit. They were to be for sale and the proceeds were to go to government treasury in lieu of taxing the public. This did not happen.
Why?
Bankers and prospectors bought up the lands, chateaux and the large houses in Paris (hôtels particulier), took the furnishings and contents. They said they would sell the properties and items, then give the profits to the government. Most did not. Those properties they kept for themselves, became the basis of their own wealth. Furthermore, these financiers banded together in groups which colluded to defraud the government of any rightful due. One such group was called the Black Band (La bande noire). Another was a group of bankers, many previously Swiss or German, who controlled the new central Banque de France. They could not control the inflation nor Bonaparte’s constant need for higher revenue to pay for his army.
Chateau de Chambord, looted during the revolution, eventually given to one of Napoleon’s generals.
Another problem I demonstrate in the book is the inability of women like Blythe who descended from wealthy ancestors to lay claim to inherited property. Throughout the period from the start of the revolution through the Revolution of 1830, laws changed constantly concerning the rights of French women. At some points, women could claim money, land and titles. At some points, they could only claim if they agreed to “bend the knee” to the rulers in power at that time. Much of this disregard was inherited bias from the medieval period when females in French territory inherited nothing through their maternal nor paternal lineage.
The prison at Verdun, used for English prisoners
Finally, the picture I give you of the chaos in May 1803 in Paris is real. Bonaparte suddenly declared war on Britain and any British in Paris scrambled to leave. Thousands rushed to the borders. Many were caught and hundreds marched to prisons and kept there for years. Reading about this chaos in Paris spoke to me of the famous wartime movie, CASABLANCA, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The scene of him standing in the rain, waiting for her always strikes me as a man, confused and heartbroken. Bogart lost her not once but twice. In THE LYON WHO’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS, I bring you an HEA for Charles, who gets the woman he adores and wins the day!
About the Book
She left him without a word. He would take her back in an instant…if he only knew where to find her.
Years ago in a crowded Paris boulevard, Charles Winters scooped up Blythe Dandridge to save her from a runaway horse. He took her home, tended her scrapes and cuts—and showed her the true meaning of kindness. She promptly fell in love with him.
But war invaded their lives—and Charles had to leave France and planned to take Blythe Dandridge with him. As he stood for hours in the rain waiting for her, he realized he waited in vain.
Now in a crowded London street, Charles acts on instinct once again. He rushes out to save an older woman and a little girl. When he offers them tea, they insist on hosting him. The woman who comes to them to exclaim over the near-catastrophe in the street is none other then Blythe.
The woman he loved in Paris is still alive. But she tells him she is about to marry a man whom Bessie Dove-Lyon has arranged for her. Yet for a man who believes that all problems have good solutions, Charles will never believe that what he had in Paris was all he would ever have of the woman he loved.
Will Bessie bow to Charles’s plan? And can Charles find a way to save Blythe from the catastrophe that took her from him years ago?
Because he had always had lovely memories of Paris, but he knows that what he does now is right and good, and it will be for them both, today, and all their tomorrows.
I hope you are reading all the books in my series SCARLETT AFFAIRS. You will see many of the minor characters here as those who are integral to other romantic stories of struggle ending in glorious triumph.
Happy Reading!
Cerise
Meet Cerise
Cerise DeLand is the USA Today Bestselling Author who believes love brings rich rewards from a life lived with honesty, valor—and a functioning funnybone.
Known for her poetic elegance and accuracy of detail, she’s won awards for many of the more than 70 novels she’s written.
Her work has been nearly life-long! First published in 1991 by Kensington, then Pocket Books, St. Martin’s Press and independent presses, she is now published by Dragonblade Publishing. Plus her books have been monthly selections of the Doubleday Book Club and the Mystery Guild.
To research, she’s dived into the oldest texts and dustiest library shelves. She travels abroad taking good walking shoes, big notebooks, trusty pens and a camera! She visits chateaux and country homes she loves to people with her own imaginary characters.
And at home every day? She cooks. (Every night.) Never dusts. (That can be a problem.) She goes swimming or pumps iron once a week and tries (desperately) to grow vegetables in her arid backyard in south Texas!
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