Before the Storm (34 page)

‘Charles, I don’t want to,’ she said, struggling to pull her skirts down. ‘I can’t do this.’
 

‘I must have an heir,’ he muttered furiously into the side of her neck. ‘You took my money, you little bitch!’

Clementine pushed him away and struggled to the side of the bed. ‘You weren’t buying me,’ she said, rolling onto the floor and backing away from him. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ he snarled, glaring up at her, his deflating erection peeping absurdly from beneath his rumpled nightgown. ‘I wish I had known before that I had only to give you money to get you to spread your legs for me.’

She glared at him. ‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ she said before retreating in terror as he suddenly jumped off the bed and strode towards her.

‘I will speak to you any way that I choose,’ he shouted into her face, his spittle hitting her cheeks. ‘You may be keen to pretend that you are my wife, madame, but I will never forget it.’ He took hold of her wrist and shook her. ‘You belong to me, do you hear me? Don’t think that I haven’t seen you making eyes at other men like the Comte and Lucien, hoping they will take pity and bed you behind my back.’

Clementine shook her head, hardly able to believe what she was hearing and at the same time feeling a pathetic gleam of relief that he hadn’t mentioned Antoine. ‘If you believe that then you must be more stupid than I thought you were,’ she said, struggling to release herself from his grip.
 

‘You bitch.’ He raised his free hand and hit her as hard as he could across the face, releasing her at the same time so that she staggered then collapsed onto the floor, hitting her forehead on the corner of her ornately draped and decorated dressing table as she fell. ‘Whore.’

Clementine began to sob wildly then shuffled away from him before using the sofa to pull herself up again. Her hair had fallen down around her face and she shivered uncontrollably with anger and fear as she looked at him across the room. ‘You will never lay a finger on me again,’ she said, struggling to control her voice and trying not to gag as she tasted the blood that trickled from the corner of her mouth. ‘This marriage was a mistake and from this moment on it is at an end.’

‘I will do as I please,’ he replied, taking a step towards her and lifting his hand again.
 
‘This marriage, madame, is only over when I say so and...’
 

Clementine didn’t wait to hear more and snatched up her shoes, which lay beside the sofa before rushing from the room. A pair of chattering maids stared at her in surprise as she hurried past them down the staircase to the huge entrance hall below. ‘Stop her!’ Charles shouted behind her. ‘Don’t let the duchesse leave the house! Damn you, you bitch, you aren’t getting away from me!’

A footman appeared from the library on the ground floor, his arms outstretched as though to grab her but she managed to neatly sidestep him before hurrying to the front door and with trembling hands, heaving it open. ‘Stop her! Stop her now! Clementine, I’m warning you...’ The door slammed shut behind her, cutting off her husband’s high pitched impotent threats. She was free.

Even the sight of the shouting drunken mob and bonfires blazing away in the square couldn’t dent the elation that she felt as she paused to pull on her shoes then rushed down the steps and away down the pavement. A few people looked at her curiously as she went past, noticing her youth and dishevelled appearance but beyond staring, no one troubled her and she was able to go on her way unmolested.

It didn’t occur to her that she should go to Eliza’s house on the Rue de Grenelle - she instinctively knew that her bruised, untidy and clearly fugitive state would make her an unwelcome guest at the Hôtel de Clermont and that her sister would waste no time in bundling her into a carriage and sending her back across the river to Charles. Instead, she turned her feet in the direction of Phoebe and Lucien on the Rue Saint-Honoré, knowing that they, at least, would be sympathetic to her plight as hadn’t they been urging her for months to leave Charles and return to England?

Clementine walked quickly across the square, adroitly avoiding the drunken revellers as they danced wildly around the bonfires and paired off with each other to slink into the shadowy corners. She heaved a sigh of relief as she turned onto the busy Rue Saint-Honoré, which was packed with people as usual and where hopefully her appearance wouldn’t provoke too much comment. It was a long time since she had walked alone in Paris at such a late hour and she pulled her tumbled hair over her shoulders and kept her eyes carefully lowered as she walked briskly along.

The city streets had been in turmoil ever since the Tuileries had been invaded less than a week earlier and the filthy blood stained pavement beneath Clementine’s now sadly grimy shoes was littered with wickedly glittering shards of glass and chunks of burnt wood from the beautiful old buildings that had been destroyed by the rampaging mob. Safely ensconced in the Place Louis le Grand, she hadn’t given much thought to the lives of ordinary Parisians as rioting and looting swept through their streets, but now she saw the evidence everywhere in the tear stained faces of women who limped past, their bewildered children held close to their sides and the angry unfocussed expressions of the men who loitered drunkenly in doorways and stared at her rudely as she hurried past.

She almost wept with relief when she finally reached the front door of Phoebe’s building. ‘Madame la Duchesse?’ The maid who opened the door peered at her in confusion, taking in her lack of a coat and hat, muddy feet, burgeoning black eye and the blood smeared at the side of her mouth. ‘What has happened to you? Did someone attack you?’ The girl ushered Clementine into the welcoming yellow entrance hall then peered out into the street as if expecting to see a horde of attackers advancing upon them both.

‘Who is it, Barbe?’ Phoebe’s dark head appeared over the bannisters above them. ‘Is everything alright?’ She peered at Clementine without recognising her then gave a cry of shock. ‘Clemmie! Is that you? What on earth has happened?’ She ran down the marble stairs towards them with her arms outstretched. ‘Did Charles do this to you?’ she hissed as she gently moved her friend’s auburn hair out of the way and examined her eyelid, which was beginning to swell up and turn an alarming shade of purple. ‘That bastard,’ she whispered when Clementine silently nodded. ‘You can’t go back to him.’

‘I’m not going to,’ Clementine muttered as they went upstairs together with Barbe trailing behind them.

Phoebe looked at her. ‘Are you going back to London?’ she asked. ‘I can get Lucien to arrange the papers for you...’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Clementine wearily interrupted. ‘I’ve only just left. It wasn’t planned and now I don’t know what to do next.’

‘Wine,’ said Phoebe as she steered her into the white, blue and red papered salon, which smelled comfortingly of lilies, burnt toast and Phoebe’s expensive musky scent. ‘Wine and a bath then bed. Everything will seem better in the morning.’

‘Will it?’ Clementine asked with the ghost of a smile.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

It took a week for the bruising on Clementine’s face to go down and she spent the long sultry days mooching around Phoebe and Lucien’s untidy, sunlight filled apartment, dozing on her bed in their small spare bedroom, longingly watching people strolling up and down the busy street below and listening to Lucien’s friends when they came around to talk about current affairs over several bottles of wine and silver bowls full of oysters sent up from a shop downstairs.

At first the more terrifying revolutionaries didn’t know what to make of Clementine as she sat quietly beside Phoebe, her face discreetly turned away to hide the bruises that even Barbe’s skilful applications of rice powder and paint couldn’t disguise. That she had clearly been roughly treated naturally aroused the indignant sympathy of these radical gentlemen, most of whom had been lawyers, doctors or journalists before the Revolution had come and swept their old lives away, but they were never quite able to forget that once upon a time she had been a duchesse and a lady in waiting to the Queen.

‘What is she really like?’ Danton had asked once, pulling his chair closer to Clementine’s and fixing her with his small blue eyes.
 

She was startled. ‘The Queen?’ He nodded. ‘She’s just a woman like any other.’ Danton looked disappointed and she frowned, thinking about Marie Antoinette as she had last seen her just a few weeks earlier - harassed, exhausted and tearful yet still proud as she gathered her children close to her pale yellow skirts as outside the mob screamed and fired guns into the air. ‘She has unbelievable courage,’ Clementine said. ‘She loves the King and her children more than anything on earth and would, I believe, die to protect them.’

Danton nodded, satisfied. ‘She is a very great woman,’ he murmured before sighing. ‘It’s a pity.’

‘I swear that he’d save her if he could,’ Phoebe whispered to her a few days later when Clementine had finally felt able to go outside and they’d gone together in a hired carriage to the Jardins du Luxembourg for a gentle stroll in the sunshine. ‘Lucien says that Danton is getting more lily livered by the day.’

Clementine couldn’t think of anyone who seemed less lily livered than Georges Danton but bowed her head to what she presumed was Lucien’s superior knowledge of his friend. ‘Is he a secret royalist then?’ she asked as they turned together down one of the paths and went to stand at a balustrade that overlooked the palace and its terrace.

Phoebe shook her head, her dark ringlets bouncing on her shoulders. ‘We don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’s not fond of the King, at any rate, but the Queen...’ She grinned. ‘I’m sure Her Majesty would be extremely gratified to learn that she still has the power to melt men’s hearts.’

‘Even those of her enemies.’ Clementine unfurled her pink silk parasol and looked quizzically across the terrace at the lovely Italian styled palace, which in her opinion was far more beautiful than Versailles.
 

‘Especially
those
hearts,’ Phoebe replied with a laugh. ‘Much good may it do her.’

Clementine looked at her friend. ‘You think something is going to happen?’ she asked.

Phoebe shook her head again. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘Lucien says they intend to bring the King to trial and maybe the Queen too, but can they really do that?’

Clementine shivered, remembering the cold marble tomb of the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots and Sidonie gently saying: ‘Marriage is not always a happy fate for a woman.’ She hoped that it would not prove so for Marie Antoinette.

‘Oh God, we’d best change the subject,’ Phoebe muttered. ‘Eliza is here.’

Startled, Clementine looked up to see her sister advancing towards them along the dusty path, exquisitely dressed as always in pale blue and white striped silk with a gorgeous beribboned straw hat perched on her carefully arranged fair hair. She didn’t look very pleased to see Clementine and barely accorded Phoebe with a civil nod as she moved back to discreetly allow the sisters to talk.

‘So you haven’t gone home then?’ Eliza said without preamble. ‘I heard that you ran away from your house barefoot in the middle of the night.’

‘That’s not quite true,’ Clementine murmured, hiding a smile behind her hand. She might have known that the tale of her leaving the Duc would be embellished beyond recognition in the gossipy aristocratic circles that her sister frequented. Most had emigrated over the years since 1789 but a few remained - bored, resentful and full of spite.
 

‘No?’ Eliza looked furious and also a little humiliated. Clearly she had been taking the gossip about Clementine personally and had perhaps even received a few snubs and pitying looks on her account. ‘So what really happened?’ She didn’t look in the least bit sympathetic.

‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ Clementine said in a low voice.
 

Eliza rolled her eyes. ‘That’s the trouble with you. Clementine,’ she said, almost snarling. ‘You never want to discuss anything of importance.’ She took a step closer to her sister and took hold of her arm. ‘You must abandon this foolishness and go home at once,’ she said. ‘You aren’t a child any more and Edmond and I agree that it’s about time you grew up and considered how your selfishness impacts on other people.’

Clementine stared at her. ‘My selfishness?’ she exclaimed. ‘He
hit
me, Eliza!’

Her sister had the grace to look discomforted for just a few seconds before she recovered herself. ‘That is very unfortunate, to be sure but your
duty
, Clementine...’ She sighed and tried again as her younger sister looked increasingly mulish. ‘Your duty is to remain at your husband’s side no matter what happens between you.’

‘That is no longer possible,’ Clementine whispered. ‘Surely you must understand why.’

‘No, I must confess that I don’t understand,’ Eliza said. ‘It would never occur to me to leave my husband, no matter how he treated me.’

‘Clearly.’ Clementine turned away in resignation, recognising that nothing she said would change her sister’s mind.
 

‘So what do you intend to do now?’ Eliza persisted. ‘You can forget about going back to London. Mama will be furious when she finds out what has happened and it’s only a matter of time before the princes learn of it.’ She was thinking about the King’s two younger brothers who had taken up residence in England. ‘They could make life very uncomfortable for you.’