Before the Storm (3 page)

The other girl laughed and drew on her cigar before blowing a careless smoke ring into the air, where it hung for a moment before floating away. ‘Oh no, you aren’t disturbing me at all! In fact, I was just hoping that someone would come along and talk to me. I am not very fond of my own company, you see.’ She stepped forward and held out her hand. ‘This is how it is done in England is it not?’ she asked with a quizzical look as Clementine awkwardly took her hand and shook it. ‘Or is it just the men? I can never remember.’

‘Just the men,’ Clementine said, feeling much less awkward now. ‘I don’t think I have ever shaken hands with anyone before,’ she added, unable to stop staring at the other girl’s astonishing hair, which blazed crimson in the sunlight.

‘I’m Venetia Wrotham,’ the stranger said with a smile, elegantly flicking her cheroot into the water. ‘And no it isn’t natural. We’ve only just returned from India, where I was born. The ladies there use henna to colour their hair bright red.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Clementine replied with sincere admiration. ‘I’m sorry if I was staring.’

Venetia laughed. ‘Not at all. Why else would I have done it, if not to make people look at me?’ She linked arms with Clementine as though they had known each other for years. ‘You don’t mind do you?’ she asked with a smile. ‘I’m afraid that my manners must seem very bad to you lovely, well brought up English girls.’

‘Oh no, not at all. I often think that people here are far too stiff,’ Clementine assured her. ‘I am Clementine Garland by the way, but people usually call me Clemmie.’

‘Clementine Garland,’ Venetia said as they wandered along. ‘What a lovely name. Like something from a fairytale.’

‘Clementine was my grandmother’s name.’ The streets were becoming more busy now and Clementine couldn’t help but notice how most of the men they went past stared in mingled shock and admiration at her pretty companion, many of them actually stopping dead in their tracks to look at her.

‘It is strange to be back in England again,’ Venetia said, without appearing to notice the sensation that she was creating. ‘We used to come back every so often when I was a little girl but I don’t remember very much about it other than the rain and wide streets that seemed to go on for miles.’

Clementine looked at her companion, who was looking pensive now. ‘Do you think that you will miss India?’ she asked.
 

Venetia shrugged. ‘Not really. I’m happy anywhere,’ she said breezily. ‘Have you ever been there?’

‘No,’ Clementine replied, shaking her head. ‘This is the furthest away from London that I have ever been.’ She felt a bit embarrassed and gauche admitting to this. ‘I’d like to travel,’ she added. ‘One day.’

Venetia smiled and squeezed her arm. ‘One day.’ She pulled back and observed Clementine for a moment. ‘Do you know, I think I may have met your sister and Mama last night? Were they at the Assembly Rooms?’

‘Yes, they were there.’ Clementine’s heart sank a little.

‘Ah, that explains it then. You look a lot like them. My cousin thinks that your sister is quite the most lovely girl that he has ever seen. Or at least the loveliest since we left London. I wonder if they will make a match of it?’ She smiled. ‘Your mother was asking mine all about governesses. Poor Mama didn’t know what to say as I don’t think she has ever met one in all her life. I never had one, you see.’ She pulled a rueful little face. ‘That is probably obvious though.’

‘Governesses?’ Clementine stopped dead and stared at her new friend, a dawning sick sense of foreboding growing in her breast. ‘Why was she asking about governesses?’

‘Why for you of course!’ Venetia said with a laugh. ‘Unless you have a younger sister? I distinctly remember her saying that she was thinking about engaging one for her youngest daughter, to prepare her for society? Is that you? Do you require preparation, Miss Clementine Garland?’

‘I suppose I must do,’ Clementine muttered. ‘How awful. I don’t want to be prepared for society by some stupid old woman. I just want to be left alone.’

Venetia looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Oh, it needn’t be that bad,’ she said consolingly. ‘One of the girls I knew in India had a governess and it turned out very well indeed as she was only a few years older and used to carry notes between the girl and her young man. They ended up married, so I suppose in a way it didn’t end all too well for the governess as she had to find a new position.’ She laughed and cast a side long look at Clementine, who was looking rather confused and mortified. ‘Except, perhaps you are not the sort of young lady who likes to meet secretly with gentlemen?’

Clementine shook her head. ‘I don’t think that I am.’ They were walking along elegant Pierrepont Street now, where housemaids sweeping the marble front steps leading up to the houses stared at them as they went past and she idly wondered where they were heading to. It had seemed like an aimless stroll at first but now she wasn’t so sure. ‘I haven’t had much to do with young men though,’ she added with a blush.
 

They had arrived at South Parade, which was lined on both sides by a terrace of imposing sun baked mansions and turned down it to walk towards the river. Six large travelling carriages had just pulled up outside one of the houses and the two girls stopped to watch as a liveried footman sprang quickly forward to let down the steps then pull open the door of the first, a splendidly gleaming yellow and black vehicle pulled by a team of sprightly chestnut horses.

‘Now, if I am not mistaken...’ Venetia murmured, as he helped down a small, thin woman dressed in a tight pink velvet travelling dress and with an enormous matching beribboned and feathered hat perched on top of her elaborately curled and ringleted auburn hair. She paused for a moment and looked at the two girls, inclining her head slightly and rather frigidly to them both before sailing briskly into the house, shouting orders in French as she went. Behind her there waddled four plump pug dogs whose sharp nails skittered on the polished parquet.

‘Who is that?’ Clementine whispered, her eyes wide with wonderment. ‘What an amazing hat she is wearing. It is almost as big as she is.’ She regretfully touched her own plain straw effort. ‘Bigger, in fact. Did you see how tiny she is?’

‘That lady is Madame la Duchesse de Polignac,’ Venetia whispered back. ‘Is she as famous here as she seems to be everywhere else? No? She is the best friend of the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. They are said to be inseparable. In fact, that’s not all they say...’

Madame la Duchesse was followed out of her carriage by a tall, brown haired young man in a long green coat who impatiently waved away the footman who came forward to assist him. He paused for a moment on his way into the house and bowed to them both, his dark eyes making no secret of his admiration for Venetia who smiled and responded with a curtsey.

‘Do you know him?’ Clementine asked as they watched the man go into the house with a final lingering look over his shoulder at her new friend.

‘That is the Comte Jules de Choiseul-Amboise,’ Venetia replied with a tiny shrug as they carried on down the street, where a dozen footmen were swarming around the carriages, busily helping the Duchesse’s fabulously dressed entourage of chattering French ladies and gentlemen down from the carriages and carrying in what appeared to be hundreds of boxes and trunks. ‘I met him once in London. He is quite handsome isn’t he?’

‘I think he is
very
handsome,’ Clementine replied rather breathlessly, feeling a little envious of her new friend.
 

Chapter Three

Miss Sidonie Roche looked about her with bright and curious dark eyes as her carriage rolled through the streets of Bath. Despite considering herself relatively well travelled, she had never been there before, and so was keen to take it all in and compare it against the dark, cramped streets of her own Spitalfields. Her father’s family had occupied the same tall, ramshackle house on Fournier Street, where the weaver’s looms rattled beneath the eaves well into the night ever since their departure from France during the reign of Louis XIV almost seventy years previously.
 

The sullen looking girl sitting opposite her was rather less impressed and only looked out of the window once as they drove through town before throwing herself back into her seat and gloomily pronouncing it ‘not as pretty as Paris’. Sidonie rolled her eyes, having become depressingly used to this refrain since their departure from London: ‘This carriage is not so good as the ones in Paris’. ‘I do not like this ale, it is not as our own French wines’. ‘The beds are not as lumpy as this in Paris’.

‘Really, Minette?’ Sidonie said now in French with barely a trace of irritation. ‘I think it looks very like some parts of the Faubourg St Germain to me. Just look at how elegant the tall pale houses are. I think that you are just determined not to like anything in England.’

‘That is not true, Mademoiselle Roche,’ the girl said now with the wide eyed astonished look that she adopted whenever she suspected that Sidonie was reprimanding her. ‘I was very pleased with the coffee that we were served this morning. Usually it tastes just like dirty water.’

Sidonie sighed and looked across at Minette. ‘My dear, I can’t help but wonder why you came to England at all when you are clearly so much happier in France.’

Minette shrugged. ‘I came with Madame la Princesse and then decided to stay. The English ladies, like this Mrs Garland pay a great deal for a real French maid. More fool them.’ She looked out of the window again and rolled her eyes. ‘Does it always rain in this part of England?’ she asked peevishly. ‘I don’t think it has stopped since we got here.’ It was clear that she took the rain to be as much of a personal slight as the bad coffee and uncomfortable beds.

‘It rains in Paris too,’ Sidonie said, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘Or is the rain in Paris not as wet as that in England?’

Minette considered this for a moment. ‘I do not think that it is,’ she said at last with absolute sincerity.

Sidonie heaved a heavy sigh and looked out of the window again, her heart soaring as she looked up at the grand, golden stone houses that ran in long, winding, almost graceful terraces, their tall windows revealing tantalising glimpses of elegant drawing rooms, fine crystal chandeliers and bright brocade curtains. She looked across at Minette, who had wrapped her green wool travelling cloak around herself and was gloomily perusing her fingernails. How could she not appreciate such loveliness?
 

Sidonie had swiftly dismissed her initial assumption that it was all down to Minette’s tender age after she cast her mind back to her own nineteenth year which she had spent, ironically enough, in Paris. She’d lived in a cramped, rather damp two roomed apartment close to the Place Royale and more than made ends meet by teaching English, Italian and the harp to the pampered, haughty daughters of various aristocratic families - girls not much younger than herself, who had been born into a very different world of privilege and wealth. However, with privilege came obligation and Sidonie, who was free to do as she pleased and safe in the knowledge that she would never be forced to marry against her will, had never once envied these apparently more fortunate young ladies.

She smiled as she recalled a happy afternoon spent walking from the Tuileries to Notre Dame in the pouring rain, staring up joyously at the beautiful old buildings and waving gaily to the boatmen who passed beneath the Pont Neuf. She couldn’t remember a time when she had been happier or more carefree. No, she really didn’t understand Minette at all.

Not long after this their carriage came to a shuddering halt outside one of the tall terraced town houses and a richly liveried footman ran forward to pull open the door and let down the steps. ‘Miss Roche?’ he asked with a wide grin. ‘Mrs Garland is expecting you upstairs.’ Still grinning he looked at Minette, who stared back at him coldly. ‘Mademoiselle Lebrun? I’m to take you to the housekeeper.’

The two young women followed him into the house, leaving three other footmen to divest the carriage, which had been hired at some expense by Mr Garland just to bring them from London to Bath, of their few pieces of luggage and bring it inside. Even Minette looked rather over awed by the shining magnificence of the entrance hall with its polished black and white marble tiled floor, pale cream painted walls, huge glittering crystal chandelier
 
and wide sweeping wooden staircase that led to the upper floors of the house.

Sidonie gave a cursory but approving look around then focused her attention on the smiling, giggling group of five young girls who had arranged themselves in a row in front of the enormous carved pink marble fireplace that took up almost all of one wall. They were all dressed in frothy, flowing white muslin gowns with silk sashes in a rainbow of shades tied around their slender waists. She smiled to herself as she fancied that the supercilious aristocratic lady in blue silk robes in the painting above the mantle was gazing down upon them, these lovely daughters of upstart merchants and bankers with a slight curl to her plump red lips.
How times have changed
, Sidonie reflected with much satisfaction.

‘Good morning, Miss Roche,’ the two prettiest girls, one of whom had the most astonishing dyed red hair chorused together. ‘Can you guess which of us is to be your pupil?’

Sidonie smiled and pulled off her gloves, pretending to seriously consider this conundrum despite the fact that she had immediately guessed which girl, the sullen looking auburn haired child at the end, was Miss Clementine Garland. ‘Oh now, this is too difficult!’ she exclaimed with a laugh going over to them and pretending to scrutinise each in turn. ‘No, it is just too hard.’ She glanced at Clementine, who seemed determined not to meet her eye and instead feigned great interest in her scuffed pink satin shoes, which peeped out from beneath the hem of her flounced white gown.