Before the Storm (5 page)

‘Not too bad,’ she murmured with an approving smile as she dabbed a little orange blossom water behind her ears and patted her hair into place. ‘Perhaps I am not too old for a little vanity after all.’

She fastened a thin strand of pearls, a gift from her grandmother who had brought them with her from France when she came to London many years ago, around her throat then with one final, smiling look at the mirror, she picked up her candle and went briskly downstairs to Clementine’s room. She found her pupil lying on the bed, engrossed in a book of poetry and nibbling on a precious violet cream that had evidently been purloined from her mother’s chocolate box.

‘Are you ready to go downstairs?’ Sidonie asked as Clementine shoved the violet cream into her mouth and scrambled to her feet. ‘Don’t touch your dress, dearest. You have chocolate on your fingers.’ She moved forward and brushed the creases out of Clementine’s pink silk dress. ‘Here, let me.’ She handed her the clean cotton handkerchief that she always had tucked up her long sleeve.

‘How do I look, Miss Roche?’ Clementine asked as she wiped her hands on the handkerchief. ‘Mama says that from now on my appearance must have your approval before I am to appear in public.’ She did a little self conscious turn. ‘Minette, the new maid put my hair up for me. She’s very grumpy isn’t she?’

Sidonie laughed. ‘Yes, very. I had to share a carriage with her when we came here and I do not think I saw her smile once. It was very hard work.’ She retied the pale blue velvet sash around Clementine’s waist and straightened her muslin
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then stepped away with a smile. ‘You look just right.’

They went downstairs together and Sidonie was surprised yet very pleased to feel Clementine’s hand steal into hers. ‘Now tell me again who is coming this evening,’ she said with a reassuring squeeze of Clementine’s fingers.

‘It will be just the same as usual, I expect,’ Clementine replied with a heavy sigh. ‘My family; the Knowles family even though Mama hates Mrs Knowles and also the Wrothams. Some of Papa’s friends usually come too. Oh and of course, the Comte will be here as well.’ This last was said with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

‘The Comte?’ Sidonie cast a sidelong look at her pupil but Clementine’s normally expressive face was a closed book.

There was a pause. ‘Yes, the Comte Jules. He has some complicated surname that I can never get right. Something like Shoozool?’ Clementine affected a French accent and said the name with great relish. ‘Jooles de Shoozool.’ She giggled. ‘He’s here in Bath with Madame de Polignac. Have you seen her? She’s very thin and looks down her nose at us all. I wonder why she came at all, seeing as she seems to hate it so much. It’s quite funny really.’

‘The Comte Jules de Choiseul-Amboise,’ Sidonie repeated dully, automatically correcting Clementine’s pronunciation. ‘Does he visit here often?’ Her manner was carefully neutral but her heart raced beneath the grey silk of her gown.

‘All the time,’ Clementine replied candidly. ‘He comes to see Venetia really.’ She looked up at her governess and saw that she had gone so pale that the tiny bit of rouge that she had applied to her cheekbones stood out starkly against her skin. ‘Oh, do you know him?’

Sidonie forced herself to smile. ‘Only a little and not any more.’ She took a deep breath.‘I taught his sisters for a while in Paris. He wasn’t there very often though.’ They had reached the drawing room door. Sidonie could hear laughter from within and her heart sank.

‘Oh, well I am sure he will be delighted to see you again!’ Clementine said with a somewhat quizzical look at her governess.

‘It was a long time ago, my dear. I doubt that he will recognise me now,’ Sidonie replied before taking a deep breath and turning the door handle.

Mrs Garland beckoned them forward as they stepped together into the dim, candle lit drawing room, which smelled strongly of the violet pomade the ladies used on their elaborate hair and the huge blue and white china bowls of rose and lavender pot pourri that stood on each table. She had arranged herself on a green satin covered sofa in the corner and was clearly holding court with Lady Wrotham smiling benignly on one side and the sly eyed Mrs Knowles on the other. ‘How charming you look, Clementine,’ she said appreciatively. ‘That shade of pink is very becoming to you.’

‘Yes, very pretty,’ Lady Wrotham agreed with a smile as she unfurled her painted fan. ‘And is this your new governess, my dear?’ She looked past Clementine at Sidonie, who curtseyed. ‘How kind she looks.’

Mrs Garland beckoned Sidonie forward. ‘Clementine may remain downstairs for two hours,’ she whispered, slightly slurring her words. Her breath smelt strongly of red wine and violet pastilles. ‘We will be playing cards later and I want her back upstairs before then.’

‘Of course,’ Sidonie replied. There was no point pointing out to Mrs Garland that learning how to play cards properly in company was as important to an aspiring young noblewomen
 
these days as the ability to speak Italian, strum a harp or paint pretty watercolours of ruined castles.

‘So how long do we have?’ Clementine whispered as she and Sidonie went to sit down in the opposite corner to her mother. ‘I’m usually banished upstairs after half an hour.’

‘Well, you are in luck today then, because I have been instructed to keep you down here for a whole two hours,’ Sidonie replied. She sat down then looked around the room with an appreciative eye, taking in the pretty little crystal chandeliers that stood on marble pillars in the corners and the collection of rather clumsily executed mythological paintings that hung on the pale yellow painted walls. The drawing room was typical of rented houses everywhere - half empty and decorated with a blandly impersonal elegance.

There were perhaps two dozen people present, which was rather more than she had been expecting and she watched them from beneath her lowered lashes as they sauntered tipsily around the room, champagne glasses in hand, mouths stretched wide in bright, glittering smiles.

‘So you must be Miss Roche then?’ A tall handsome man had come to stand before her. He was holding two glasses of champagne, one of which he handed to her with a smile. His dark eyes were appreciative as he looked her over and she found herself blushing a little. ‘I am Mr Garland. I am sorry that we haven’t yet had a chance to meet but I have been kept busy all day.’ He handed his daughter the other glass of champagne then briefly touched a finger to her nose. ‘And how do you like my girl?’

Sidonie immediately rose to her feet and curtseyed. ‘I like your girl very much,’ she replied honestly with a smile at Clementine, who was gazing up at her father with eyes full of love. Seeing this made Sidonie feel much less uneasy about her pupil - that her mother was bordering on indifferent was plain to see so it was a relief to know that her father appeared to be genuinely fond of her.

‘What do you think of Papa?’ she asked as soon as he had wandered away again.
 

Sidonie laughed. ‘He is very impressive,’ she said, sipping her champagne. ‘He seems like a very kind man.’

‘Oh, he is!’ Clementine replied, spilling her drink a little in her enthusiasm. ‘The kindest ever! If I should marry then I hope that it is to someone just like him.’

‘We’ll have to see what we can do.’ Sidonie watched as Mr Garland walked around the room, very confident and at his ease as he paused to talk to one man, share a joke with another then laughingly clap the back of a third. Not once did he look across to his wife who, she noted, was staring at him intently as he walked back and forth but he did have a few sidelong admiring glances to spare for his daughters’ pretty friend, Phoebe Knowles, who looked gorgeous in a gown of sequin spangled peach coloured silk and gauze.

She was so engrossed in watching Mr Garland that she failed to notice the drawing room door open until Clementine gently elbowed her. ‘The Comte,’ she whispered.

Sidonie shrank back into her chair as the Comte Jules gave one swift look around the room, missing her totally, but sharing a warm smile with Venetia Wrotham, who tossed her hair and turned her back on him. Utterly undaunted, he gave a chuckle and strolled idly over to his hostess. Mrs Garland smiled and simpered as he bent low over her plump outstretched hand and kept him beside her for quite some time, laughing coyly behind her fan at his flirtatious sallies and flicking him admiring looks from behind her fan.

‘I know, it’s mortifying to watch isn’t it?’ Clementine whispered. ‘They are all like that with him.’

Almost as if he had heard, the Comte turned and looked across at them both. At first his glance swept over Sidonie almost unseeingly but then it quickly returned and she was a little gratified to see that he looked just as horrified as she felt. She, at least, had had a chance to compose herself before seeing him again but he had not been so fortunate. If she did not know him as well as she did then she might even have felt sorry for him as he stood there in the middle of Mrs Garland’s crowded drawing room with his mouth hanging open and his brown eyes wide with panic.

It took him a couple of seconds to compose himself and then his eyelids dropped and he executed a low urbane bow to Sidonie and Clementine before turning back to his hostess and her friends. Sidonie responded with a calm nod that completely belied the turmoil that she felt inside.

Clementine had been watching this with astonishment. ‘Are you sure that you don’t know him very well?’ she asked a little uncertainly.

Sidonie took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. ‘Quite sure.’

Chapter Five

The weeks passed rapidly and as a damp spring gradually brightened into a glorious summer, Sidonie and her pupil grew steadily closer. Clementine’s outburst on her first day was now completely resigned to the past and for her part, Sidonie recognised in the girl a lot of her own intrepid, romantic nature, which she was keen to foster.

It didn’t take long for their days to fall into a gentle pattern. In the mornings they would take breakfast together then go for a walk to the Pulteney Bridge before returning for a morning of lessons. Mrs Garland was keen that Clementine should receive full instruction in French, Italian, drawing, music and deportment, which Sidonie was more than able to provide, with an additional dash of history and poetry.

After a light luncheon during which the rule was that they could only speak French, they would don their straw hats and shawls and go out again, this time for a longer walk, perhaps up to the beautiful Royal Crescent or the busy, crowded Pump Rooms. On a couple of occasions, Sidonie wincingly pinched her nose and drank the vilely sulphurous waters that Bath was famous for, declaring that something so disgusting must surely be good for you while Clementine doubled over with delighted laughter.

Their evenings were usually spent quietly reading or drawing together in the drawing room, unless the Garlands were entertaining, in which case Sidonie would accompany her pupil,
 
downstairs to the drawing room for a few hours. It didn’t take Mrs Garland long to discover that Sidonie was an accomplished musician, whereupon she was called upon to play the piano in the corner of the room, while Clementine sat beside her, turning the pages of the music and watching, tapping her feet all the while, while the others danced.

The best evenings though were those when the rest of the Garlands got dressed up in their finest clothes and went out for the evening, perhaps to the Assembly Rooms and Sidonie and Clementine were left alone in the house with only the servants for company. With much laughter and sighs of relief, they would let down their long hair, change into their cotton nightdresses then set up camp in front of the fire in Clementine’s room with a pot of tea. They toasted bread on the fire before smearing it with butter and jam while Sidonie read aloud from her small collection of poetry books and Clementine shyly and hesitantly shared one of her stories.

‘I don’t think I have ever been happier,’ Clementine said with a little sigh, resting her head on her governess’ shoulder and gazing dreamily into the fire. ‘I wish that we could stay here always.’

They couldn’t, of course. The Garland family were only planning to stay in Bath until the end of June and all too soon there were only a few days left before they were due to return to their own house on Highbury Place in London, taking Sidonie with them. Much as she was looking forward to getting back to the capital and seeing her family again, Sidonie knew that she would always miss Bath with its serene, sun warmed streets and quiet bustle.

As a special treat, Mrs Garland decided that Clementine could accompany them to their final Assembly ball of the season. ‘It will do her good to see what is expected of her,’ she confided to Sidonie as they sat together in the drawing room after dinner. ‘You have worked miracles with her, Miss Roche, so perhaps it is time that she came out into society a bit more.’

Clementine listened to this with foreboding as she sat quietly on the overstuffed green silk sofa and listened to them talk over her head. It wasn’t that she was absolutely opposed to going to balls and having fun but the prospect of disappointing everyone and having her marital prospects picked over and found wanting as Eliza’s were on a daily basis was too dispiriting to contemplate.

‘I won’t mind it so long as you are there,’ she said to Sidonie.

Mrs Garland tittered. ‘My dear, you can’t possibly attend a ball with your governess! What would people think?’ she exclaimed. ‘You will be coming along with us, while Miss Roche enjoys a night off!’ She smiled upon her daughter’s governess. ‘I am sure that you will glad to see the back of us all!’