Bayonne, on the French-Spanish border, and after a tense wait for Mitford's visa, they took a cargo boat to Bilbao. By then, their families had discovered the subterfuge and were aware of the fugitive couple's whereabouts and of their intention to marry. The families, bitterly opposed to the union, hoped to avoid press attention, but Romilly opportunistically exploited press interest by selling his story through an intermediary. Headlines appeared in the Daily Express on 1 March 1937 announcing, "Peer's Daughter Elopes to Spain". At the same time, the Redesdale family used all their connections to try to bring Jessica home, including the connivance of the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the use of a naval warship to dispatch the eldest Mitford sister, Nancy, to Bayonne. The couple were initially intransigent, but threatened with the loss of their Spanish visas, they agreed to return to Bayonne, where they were met by Nancy. The elder sister's remonstrances were unavailing, as was a later visit by Lady Redesdale. The couple were married in a civil ceremony in Bayonne on 18 May 1937. The press reported it as "the wedding that even a destroyer could not stop". Meanwhile, there had been a degree of rapprochement with both families and so both Lady Redesdale and Nellie Romilly attended the ceremony. London The couple remained in Bayonne since Romilly hoped to return to Spain to report on the war. Thwarted by his failure to obtain a visa, he worked on Boadilla, an account of his experiences fighting with the English brigades. He secured a publisher's advance of £50, which he rapidly lost through an unwise gambling scheme. Mitford was now several months pregnant, and they decided to return to London to a flat in Rotherhithe in the East End that a friend had made available. The ground floor of the building operated as a casino, and Romilly worked there as a croupier before landing a more regular job as a copywriter with the advertising firm Graham & Gillies. Boadilla was published in the autumn of 1937, but initial sales were poor. In December, a baby daughter named Julia Decca was born but failed to survive a measles epidemic that broke out in the spring of 1938. The baby died on 28 May. The stricken couple abandoned their London life and fled to Corsica, where they spent the summer in a cheap hotel and eked out