Read Before the Storm Online

Authors: Melanie Clegg

Tags: #England/Great Britain, #France, #18th Century, #Fiction - Historical

Before the Storm (7 page)

BOOK: Before the Storm
9.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

‘Can I help you, Miss?’ A plump, over rouged female with frizzy blonde hair and several missing teeth stepped in front of her and reached out to touch Phoebe’s green silk sleeve, which she quickly whisked out of reach of her grimy fingers. ‘You look lost.’ She stank of cheap musky scent and gin.

Phoebe shook her head and touched the black silk domino mask that she had put on in the carriage, reassuring herself that it was still in place. ‘No, I am not lost,’ she said curtly. ‘I know where I am going.’

The woman shrugged, but her face was disappointed. It wasn’t the first time that Phoebe had been approached in such a way and she now knew that it was a common practice for the brothels who populated the winding old streets around Covent Garden to send old bawds out on the hunt for fresh meat. Their usual prey was naive country girls, newly arrived in London and keen to better themselves. You could spot them a mile off as they stood in the middle of the street, their cloth bags clutched tightly in their tanned hands, their eyes and mouths wide Os of wonder as they looked around them.

Phoebe hurried on across the noisy, thronged piazza then plunged into the stinking warren of streets that surrounded it. She’d been there several times before and now instinctively knew her way to her destination, a small dark brick house on Maiden Lane. Her black mask and obvious youth attracted a few curious stares but to her relief, most passersby didn’t give her a second glance, probably because they were just as intent on not drawing attention to themselves.
 

She shivered and pulled her black cashmere shawl closer about her shoulders as she turned off Bedford Street onto Maiden Lane. She had heard that at night the tall windows of the soot stained houses that loomed overhead were lit up with dozens of candles and filled with scantily clad girls who brazenly showed off their bodies and called down to passing men, trying to lure them inside. Now though the windows were dark and empty, giving no clue of what vice and depravity lay behind them.

Taking a deep breath Phoebe marched up to the shiny red painted front door of number 5 and let herself in. The hallway was small and dark with raspberry pink painted walls, old portraits of wet lipped ladies with tumbled hair and shimmering silk robes that barely concealed their breasts and, most surprisingly, a large Bible lying open on the round mahogany table. It was covered in a thick layer of dust and had clearly not been touched for a long time.

‘Madam says it’s there to confound the Runners should they come a calling,’ said a young slender blonde girl who had slunk down the dark wood staircase. ‘She says they’ll see the Bible and think this is an honest house.’
 

Phoebe smiled. ‘If she dusted it every so often, they might even believe her.’ She looked the girl over, taking in her magnificently gaudy purple and pink silk dress, the bright spots of crimson rouge that she wore high on her cheekbones and the false yellow saffron assisted tint of her loose, untidy hair, which hung below her thin waist. She was probably about the same age as Phoebe but in just a couple of years she would look like the woman who had accosted her in the piazza. The thought of it made her feel sad until she realised that the girl was looking her up and down with a derisive curl of her glossy red lips.

‘I’ve seen you here before,’ she stated flatly in a northern accent as she stepped closer. The air between them filled with the rich, heady jasmine scent that she wore. ‘You come to meet that man.’
 

Phoebe didn’t reply, preferring instead to lift her chin and sweep past the other girl, who obligingly stepped aside but continued to stare after her as she went up the stairs. ‘You aren’t the first, my fine lady,’ she muttered resentfully as Phoebe pretended not to hear her. ‘You are no better than me so don’t bother giving yourself airs. We’re all here for the same thing - the only difference between you and me is that you give it away for free.’

George Garland was waiting for her in their usual room and had clearly been there for a while as he’d taken off his blue silk jacket and white wig, throwing them over a pink upholstered sofa and had a half finished glass of claret in his hand. ‘I was starting to think that you weren’t going to come,’ he murmured, rising to his feet as she closed the door behind her and let her shawl drop to the floor, swiftly followed by her dress as he tore at the lacings then carried her, their mouths locked hungrily together, to the huge pink velvet hung bed.

It had started in Bath, first with a few admiring glances then some pretty compliments about her hair, her eyes, her lovely face and then finally a stolen but deliciously lingering kiss in the dark ante chamber of her mother’s rented house. She had been simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the prospect of being found out and this had quickly caused their few brief meetings to become highly charged and addictive until finally they had returned to London and began to meet in this house. Tentatively at first but then with enthusiasm.

That she had lost her virginity, which she had always been taught to prize above all things, in the highly scented pink bedroom of a brothel rather than within the starched expensive sheets of her future marriage bed was of course an annoyance but Phoebe tried not to let it trouble her too much. Better by far, she reasoned, for one’s first lover to be an experienced man of the world than some callow, fumbling youth. She dreaded to think how her mother would react should she ever find out though. The shock might actually kill her.
 

She could hear the sounds of other couples in the house, their sighs and moans floating through the walls and surrounding them both as he gently slid her fine linen shift off her shoulders and kissed her breasts then slipped lower down her body until he was nuzzling between her thighs, gently teasing her legs apart as she groaned and pushed herself against his face. A bed somewhere else in the house was banging furiously against the wall behind it and she heard a man cry out with each thud until finally both he and the bed fell silent to be replaced by a woman’s high pitched giggle.

‘I wish that I could let down all your hair,’ George murmured as she mounted him, her long dark ringlets tickling his chest as she leaned forward to kiss him. ‘It’s so beautiful. You are beautiful.’ He flung his head back as she lowered herself up and down upon him, pressing his hands to her breasts and biting her lip to hold back the cries as pure pleasure flooded through her body.

‘My turn now,’ he whispered, kissing her hot neck as she collapsed on top of him. Obligingly she rolled to the side and spread her legs wide, stroking herself as groaning with lust, he lowered himself onto her. ‘Oh, you beauty, you beauty,’ he murmured as they kissed deeply and she clutched wildly at his buttocks, pulling him further inside. Their headboard was banging noisily against the wall now and the thought of the house’s other inhabitants hearing them made the pleasure sear and course through her body for a second time.

They lay together for only a short time afterwards, softly kissing and gazing into each other’s eyes before George sat up, picked his white linen shirt up from the dusty floor and pulled it over his head. ‘I can’t stay for long today,’ he said over his shoulder as he did up the buttons at his wrists. ‘I’m sorry.’

Phoebe stretched and sat up. ‘I have to go anyway,’ she said with a mischievous smile, resting her chin briefly on his broad shoulder. ‘I’m meeting your daughters for tea this afternoon.’
 

He paused and turned to look at her. ‘At my house?’
 

‘Yes, at your house.’ She laughed at the look of abject horror on his face. ‘Oh come now, George. It was bound to happen eventually,’ she said, pulling her shift on over her head. ‘I can’t keep making excuses not to go there. Mama has started hopefully asking if I have fallen out with Eliza.’

George watched her for a moment, admiring her slender figure and firm, rosy tipped breasts. She was so unlike his wife in every way. He still loved Arabella, of course but she no longer excited him in any way, there were no secrets left to discover and no great passion that made his feet hurry home to her at the end of a long day. ‘I have something that I’d like to give to you,’ he said now, reaching down to feel in the pocket of his breeches.

‘I can’t accept anything from you,’ Phoebe replied reproachfully as he handed her a small pale blue velvet covered box. ‘I don’t want to look at it,’ she said, longingly stroking the velvet with her fingers. ‘If I love it then it will be doubly hard to return to you.’

‘Why can’t you have it?’ he asked, standing up and pulling on his coat. He sounded a little hurt.

Phoebe sighed. ‘Because there would be questions about where I got it from,’ she said. ‘Mama notices everything.’

‘Not everything,’ George replied with a smile. ‘Keep it for when you are married then,’ he said. ‘Husbands tend to be far less observant than mothers.’

She laughed at that then took a deep breath and opened the box. ‘Oh George,’ she breathed, ‘it is beautiful. Really. It’s exquisite.’ Inside the box, resting on a bed of watered shell pink satin there lay a beautiful pale blue cameo pendant depicting a woman in profile with her long hair pulled back in a chignon. Impetuously, she leaped to her feet and kissed him on the mouth.

‘I am glad that you like it,’ he said, taking hold of her waist and pulling her towards him for another kiss. ‘It’s from Pompeii. I saw it in a dealer’s window and knew straight away that I had to get it for you.’ He kissed her neck. ‘She looks a bit like you, don’t you think?’

‘Pompeii?’ She stroked it reverently, imagining it around the throat of a now long dead Roman lady. ‘It’s so old and now it is here with me. Incredible isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so.’ Pleased that his present had been a success he carried on getting dressed, wondering as he did so if the pair of emerald earrings he had in his other pocket would go down as well with his wife. He gave a rueful smile as he half wished that he hadn’t fallen into the expensive habit of buying her some new trinket whenever he strayed - surely a nosegay of flowers or a new dress would be a far less ruinous way of assuaging his battered conscience?

Phoebe kept her hand on the precious velvet box in her pocket all the way from Covent Garden to Highbury Place. It was the first time that she had allowed Mr Garland to give her a present and although she wasn’t sure that it was wise to accept such a costly gift, she had found herself unable to resist as it was so beautiful. She felt a little ashamed though that she had been half expecting something horribly flashy when she first opened the box - she’d seen the lavish, rather vulgar jewels that her lover’s liked to give his wife after all.

She leaned back against the carriage seat and gazed thoughtfully out of the mud splattered window as they left the bustling city behind and gradually the tall grime stained houses, dirty bustling streets and high pitched imperative cries of wandering vendors gave way to the trees and peaceful market gardens of Islington village.
 

As they made their way up to the north of Islington, the gardens began to give way to the unedifying rubble and dust of building works and the stately newly built terraces of town houses that appeared phoenix like from the heart of them, the most elegant of which was Highbury Place, a sweeping row of pale stone mansions protected by wide gates at either end and with a view across pleasant rolling countryside. Her mother often liked to scoff at the Garlands and their delusions of grandeur with their brand new house and exclusive address, but Phoebe, who loved new fashionable things and despised this tedious clinging on to the outmoded furbelows of the past always felt a thrill of happiness as her carriage went through the gates and rolled down the clean, newly laid cobbles.
 

As far as the rather envious Mrs Knowles was concerned, the expensive parvenu newness of Highbury Place was something to be despised but Phoebe, who tried her best not to think of herself of a poacher on the Garlands’ land, could not help comparing the bright, spacious interior of their villa with her mother’s rather shabby but undoubtedly genteel residence in Bloomsbury.

‘Bloomsbury is by far the better address,’ Mrs Knowles liked to remind her daughters as they sighed and rolled their eyes. ‘You need never blush when you tell people where you live. The Garlands are welcome to their Highbury Place as all the world knows that this is a vastly superior area.’ And once upon a time, this had been true but the once fashionable Bloomsbury had lost its appeal over the years and had been long since deserted by its more aristocratic inhabitants, who had fled to the elegant new squares and bright lights of Mayfair.

The carriage came to a shuddering halt and Phoebe took a moment to straighten her hat and hide the little blue velvet box down the side of her seat before Samuel, the Garlands’ young footman came running forward to open her door and let down the little metal steps. ‘Very pleased to see you again, Miss Knowles,’ he said cheerily, his pock marked face breaking into a wide grin as she stepped down on to the pavement and walked to the green front door.

She acknowledged his words with a nod and a smile, adjusted her white gloves, took a deep breath and stepped into the spacious buttercup yellow entrance hall, where a large portrait of Mr Garland’s parents, their faces stiff, thin lipped and disapproving looked down on visitors from a vantage point above the ornate white plaster fireplace.

‘The young ladies are waiting for you upstairs,’ Samuel said as she hesitated for a moment at the bottom of the wide sweeping staircase. The Garlands’ house may well be less than ten years old, but it was done up in excellent albeit showy taste thanks to Mrs Garland sparing no expense when it came to hiring decorators and ransacking the fabric and furniture warehouses of the capital. Mrs Knowles may delight in mocking the auction house bought old portraits that filled the house, but to Phoebe’s uncritical eye they looked perfectly at home on the freshly painted and papered walls of the house.

BOOK: Before the Storm
9.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Nashville 3 - What We Feel by Inglath Cooper
Dead Run by Josh Lanyon
In Darkness Lost by Ariel Paiement
A Summer Seduction by Candace Camp
Chasing Kane by Andrea Randall
Grim Tuesday by Garth Nix
Into the Labyrinth by Weis, Margaret, Hickman, Tracy
After: The Shock by Nicholson, Scott
Bounty Hunter by Donna Kauffman