Before the Storm (2 page)

‘Is there?’ Before Mrs Garland could reply, Mrs Knowles bowed her head and smiled broadly at a passing Marchioness, who stared at her blankly before hurrying away. ‘Such a dear woman,’ she remarked brightly, quite undaunted by the snub. ‘I must send an invitation to our next party.’
 

‘Perhaps you should,’ Mrs Garland murmured with a dark look. ‘I’m sure she would be delighted to receive it.’
 

Mrs Knowles smiled smugly and patted her powdered hair. ‘I am sure she would,’ she said before returning again to her favourite topic. ‘And no Clementine tonight?’ she asked with a raised eyebrow. ‘What a pity. I know that my dear Matilda was so looking forward to seeing her. Did I tell you that we are going to engage a governess for her?’

Mrs Garland turned to her in astonishment. ‘A governess? For Matilda?’ she echoed. ‘Whatever for?’ She looked across to where a very bored looking Miss Matilda Knowles was currently dancing without the slightest appearance of enthusiasm with a buck toothed young curate and thought that it would take more than a few French and watercolour lessons to make that mousy haired young lady a social success.

‘My dear Arabella!’ Mrs Knowles exclaimed with a titter, clearly delighted to have scored a point against her rival. ‘Did you not know that governesses are all the rage again? All the best families have them for their girls these days. You sent your girls off to school did you not?’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Garland murmured distractedly, her mind suddenly working more rapidly than usual as she both took in this interesting piece of information and also tried to recover herself. ‘Of course I knew about governesses; we have been thinking about getting one for Clementine,’ she lied. ‘I was just surprised that you are considering engaging one for Matilda when she is already out in society.’ She looked again at Miss Matilda who was now widely yawning without any attempt at concealment as the curate earnestly carried on trying to engage her in conversation. Well, maybe some lessons in manners and deportment wouldn’t be entirely amiss.

‘Are you?’ Mrs Knowles looked a little put out. ‘I don’t see why it should be such a great surprise, madam. After all, Phoebe is probably about to make a most advantageous match and so of course we are now thinking about how best to improve Matilda’s chances.’ She turned her critical eyes upon Eliza Garland, who was dancing up the line hand in hand with the farmer’s son and laughing at something he had just leaned forward to whisper to her. ‘After all, we all know that eligible young men are in short supply and must do everything we can to give our girls an advantage.’

Before Mrs Garland, who felt utterly exhausted after this conversation, had a chance to reply, the music came to a flourishing end and the dancers made their way off the dance floor as the orchestra who sat in the flower bedecked balcony above rose to their feet and applauded them. She pinned a complacent smile to her face as her lovely Eliza came towards her, arm in arm with dusky haired Phoebe Knowles on one side and the mousy Matilda on the other. Despite her feelings of simmering mistrust and rage towards their mother, she had to admit to herself that the trio of girls made a lovely sight with their glowing, smiling faces leaning towards each other as they whispered about their partners. Their full pink, white and yellow gauze and silk skirts swayed together as they half walked, half skipped back to their mothers, who watched them jealously as they approached, envying their good looks, their youth and their confidence.

‘Did you enjoy your dance with Mr Devereux, my dear?’ Mrs Knowles asked her eldest daughter with a sly, sidelong look at Mrs Garland, who pretended not to hear.

Phoebe shrugged indifferently. ‘It was much the same as always,’ she responded without enthusiasm before realizing that her Mama was clearly expecting a little more information and carrying on with a roll of her wide blue eyes. ‘He talked about the weather, the price of wine, how much his new waistcoat cost and how much it was pinching him and about how he really thinks that young men these days don’t make enough effort with their appearance.’

Eliza snorted with laughter, which she hastily repressed when Mrs Knowles turned her dark gaze upon her. ‘And how did you enjoy your dance with Tom Parkins, Miss Garland?’ she asked in dangerously silky tones.

‘Very well indeed, ma’am,’ Eliza briskly replied, her expression making it plain that she found the question both impertinent and annoying. She shared her mother’s impression of Mrs Knowles but was far less inclined to keep the peace, much to the amusement of the other girls and the mingled pride and dread of Mrs Garland who was torn between delight that Eliza disliked Mrs Knowles as much as she did and irritation that she was continually called upon to soothe that lady when one of Eliza’s darts went home.

The awkward silence that followed was broken by Phoebe, who nudged Eliza and discreetly jerked her head towards the dance floor, where a small group was currently making their way past the dancers on the other side of the room. At their head was a short, rather portly man in a blue velvet suit lavishly covered with gold embroidery and with an enormous, old fashioned grey wig on his head. At his side walked a tall, sallow skinned woman in a bright green satin dress with thick auburn hair that she wore lightly powdered and dressed very high with white spangled ostrich feathers and diamond arrows and stars pinned amongst the elaborate arrangement of curls and ringlets.
 

Behind this splendid pair walked a very handsome young man of perhaps twenty years of age who wore a slightly askew garland of pink roses on his white powdered wig. He winked and grinned in the most flirtatious manner at all the young ladies, most of whom looked as though they would like to turn away but found themselves smiling back at him despite their better judgement. He was arm in arm with a very pretty, slender girl in a bright pink silk dress, whose astonishing scarlet hair tumbled down her back in long, silky ringlets. She was lifting her full, pink skirts just high enough to reveal shapely ankles and the flash of green and white striped stockings.

‘That hair cannot possibly be natural,’ Mrs Knowles remarked as she stared at the colourful newcomers who had taken seats at the far end of the Assembly Room and were now gravely surveying the other attendees, while they just as gravely stared back at them. ‘Who on earth are those people? They cannot possibly be known to anyone, surely?’

Eliza smirked a little, pleased to be in a position to impart information to her elders. ‘It is Lord Wrotham, his wife, daughter and nephew,’ she said. ‘They have just returned to England from India. Papa says that he is a
nabob
and made an absolute fortune out there. I expect that is where Miss Wrotham dyed her hair that incredible shade of red. Papa has told me all about the henna dyes that the Indian ladies use.’ She touched her own fair curls and cast her mother a mischievous look. ‘I must confess that I am tempted to try it for myself. How do you think it would look, Mama?’

‘Very ill indeed,’ Mrs Garland retorted with a tight lipped smile. ‘I wonder that Lady Wrotham does not mind her daughter going about the place looking like that, although she is a very pretty girl to be sure.’ She looked rather resentfully up the Assembly Room towards Miss Venetia Wrotham who was resting her lovely bright head on her brother’s shoulder and laughing at something that he was telling her. A quick glance around confirmed that every single young man in the room was also staring in the same direction, a fact that made her heart and that of every other ambitious Mama present sink with despair.
 

Chapter Two

Clementine lay sleepily in bed, listening to the sound of carriages rumbling beneath her window along dusty Milsom Street and the distant chatter of servant girls gossiping, their pails of water and coal clattering and pale, sun bleached cotton skirts swishing together as they went about their duties around the house.
 

There was a soft knock on the door. ‘Miss Garland?’ The maid bustled in with a bright smile, closing the door behind her with a flick of her rump before hurrying forward to put her tray down on the small table beside the bed. ‘Fresh bread, cook’s best marmalade and some newly baked fruit cake, Miss,’ she said, wiping her hands on her crisp white apron and stepping back.

Clementine struggled to sit up. ‘Thank you, Annie,’ she said with a smile, grateful that someone had noticed that she liked to get up early and had more than once been left alone and hungry at the breakfast table, fiddling with tea spoons while she waiting for her mother and sister to drag themselves from their beds. ‘They were at the Assembly Rooms last night so I expect they won’t be up until past noon,’ she said with a wry smile.

Annie laughed as she poured out a cup of hot chocolate. ‘Well, we couldn’t have you going hungry, could we, Miss?’

‘No, indeed,’ Clementine grinned, taking the delicate cup from the maid. It was thick and sweet, just as she liked it and she sipped it happily as Annie busied herself pulling open the heavy pink brocade curtains then laying out shoes and shaking sprigs of lavender and rosemary from the folds of a simple white muslin frock.

‘Looks like it’s going to be a lovely day,’ she remarked, squinting up at the sky from the window. ‘You’d best take a parasol with you, Miss.’ She grinned as Clementine groaned and pulled a mutinous face. ‘Just think of how your mother would be if you were to get freckles,’ she remarked cryptically.
 

Clementine laughed. ‘Oh, very well.’ Freckles were strangely and rather unfairly high in Mrs Garland’s lengthy and often bizarre list of Reasons Why Gentlemen Won’t Marry Certain Young Ladies, which also covered such diverse and apparently unwomanly topics as expressing too many opinions, having too few eyelashes and, worst of all, reading history books and ‘getting ideas’. In fact ‘getting ideas’ was the most cardinal sin of all in the eyes of Mrs Garland, who could never actually say what form these forbidden and unattractive ‘ideas’ took but nonetheless knew with absolute certainty that they were extremely off putting to all eligible gentlemen and so ought to be avoided at all costs.

It didn’t matter that Clementine had argued until she was blue in the face and almost crying with frustration that she couldn’t bear the thought of marriage to a man who would be put off by such trivialities. Mrs Garland remained absolutely resolute in believing her opinions, based on three years of bitter observation from the side lines as Eliza failed to attract a single suitor, to be right and that was that. She never allowed the uncomfortable fact that her perfect Eliza had also remained unmarried to cross her mind, or if she did, it was swiftly dismissed.

‘But why would I want to be married to a man who doesn’t think I should have any opinions?’ Clementine had railed more than once. ‘And why would any man want to be married to a silent, empty headed idiot? Don’t they want someone they can talk to as an equal?’

‘Men’s friends are their equals,’ Mrs Garland pointed out wearily, eyeing her daughter with a mixture of confusion and distaste. ‘We are their wives. That is very different.’

Clementine tried not to think about this as she rushed through breakfast and then hopped impatiently from foot to foot as Annie helped her into her pretty flounced muslin dress, tied a wide pale blue taffeta sash around her waist then bent before her to fasten her blue silk high heeled shoes. She could hardly wait to get outside and feel the sunshine on her face. Her mother and sister were never happier than when they were elegantly arranged on spindly gilt sofas in their sugared almond hued drawing room. They were rather horrified by ‘outdoors’ as they wincingly called it, believing it to be primarily populated by wasps, rodents and mud whereas Clementine hated to be cooped up inside in the half gloom so beloved by her headache prone mother and sister and loved to be outside.

As soon as she was at liberty to leave, she ran down the narrow white painted staircase at full pelt, trailing her straw hat by its narrow pink silk ribbon and noisily running the tip of her hated red Chinese silk parasol along the bannisters before gladly abandoning it at the bottom. Outside the imposing green painted front door, all of life awaited her and her heart sang as she pushed it open and stepped out into the fresh early morning sunshine.

‘Clemmie!’ She heard her mother call peevishly down the stairs as the heavy door swung shut behind her and she skipped down the wide stone steps that led down to the street. It occurred to her that she ought really to turn back and see what Mrs Garland wanted but the thought of facing her mother, wearily irritated and grey faced with her hair askew after a night of excess was not an attractive one. Clementine pushed this unappealing image from her mind and briskly carried on down the street to the elegant Grand Parade, where she usually liked to stand and gather her thoughts in the morning while admiring the view across to Pulteney Bridge.

Clementine was used to being alone at such an early hour, but this morning was different as already leaning on the wall and looking towards the bridge was another girl, who seemed to be gazing down rather miserably at the murky grey green water that flowed rapidly past. As she drew shyly closer, she saw that this very pretty stranger was dressed in an elegant teal silk redingote and had bright crimson hair which hung down her back beneath an artfully tilted feathered hat.
 

She turned to smile at Clementine, utterly unabashed and not miserable at all. ‘Hello there! It’s a lovely morning isn’t it?’ She was holding a thin brown cheroot cigar in her hand, its musky scented smoke curling provocatively into the air.

Clementine blushed. Her father and his friends often had the occasional cigar in his study at home, but she had never seen a female smoking one before and had a vague idea that such a thing was probably considered most improper. In fact it would probably be very high on Mrs Garland’s List, should she ever conceive of such a shocking thing occurring. ‘I am sorry,’ she replied a little stiffly, backing away slightly. ‘I don’t want to disturb you.’