Before the Storm (14 page)

Sidonie sighed, thinking of lovely Venetia. ‘So she is a success then?’

Her friend laughed. ‘Most assuredly. She has won every heart both here and at Versailles.’ They turned away from the window and watched the Garland girls as they sat together on a sofa, their bright heads together as they looked through a fashion journal that had been discarded on a nearby table. ‘Even the Duc and Duchesse adore her, but then she has presented them with their only grandchild, which is quite a feat considering how matters used to stand.’

‘I expect that they had quite given up hope of such a happy event,’ Sidonie remarked, recalling the Duc and Duchesse de Choiseul-Clermont’s ongoing problems with Comte Jules and his elder brother. ‘I expect that they are now more keen than ever that Comte Edmond should marry and provide them with an heir.’

Madame d’Albret laughed again, shrugging her rose scented shoulders. ‘Oh my, yes. Madame la Duchesse is quite desperate to find Edmond a wife but has had little success due to a general lack of girls who are both wealthy enough to appeal to her and pretty enough to appeal to him.’

‘I see.’ Sidonie’s expression gave nothing away but Madame d’Albret had known her for
 
a long time and was not fooled at all.

‘So they are going to the Château de Clermont tomorrow?’ she asked with a mischievous grin.
 

‘Comtesse Jules wrote to say that Madame la Duchesse had extended an invitation to both girls.’ She gave a casual little shrug. ‘It is kind of her to do so.’

‘Kind?’ The Vicomtesse smiled behind her pink fan. ‘Oh, my dear, I think not. It sounds to me like the Comtesse Jules has already been hard at work on their behalf.’

Chapter Thirteen

The Château de Clermont was an imposing white stone edifice, built by a long dead Duc during the reign of François I using, it was rumoured, money that had been given to Madame la Duchesse by the King for services that had been enthusiastically rendered in his bedchamber.

Clementine ignored Eliza’s exhortations to sit properly on her seat as the carriage rattled down a long avenue lined with lime trees towards the château and instead pushed down the mud splattered window and put out her head to stare at the huge turreted castle that lay at the end. Minette, who had accompanied them to act as their maid for the visit, didn’t so much as glance out of the window - she’d been delighted to return so unexpectedly to Paris and was now in a sulk because they were back out in the countryside again, albeit only a few leagues away from Versailles.

‘Won’t Phoebe be envious when she hears about this?’ Eliza sighed, her eyes taking in the of tall turrets that topped the dark slate chateau roof, the four round towers that stood at each corner and the dozens of windows that gleamed and flashed across its frontage. ‘How many storeys are there?’ she asked. ‘Five? Six?’

‘It’s like a fairy castle,’ Clementine breathed, finally pulling in her head and sitting down with an excited bump. ‘Eliza, can you see? There are towers and turrets everywhere! There’s even statues on the roof!’

The carriage pulled up in front of the château and a dozen footmen in bright crimson and gold livery ran forward to let down the steps, pull open the doors and help them down. Eliza stepped down first, her eyes shining as she gazed up at the turrets that soared dizzyingly towards the blue sky. ‘Oh, it is just too beautiful,’ she said with a happy sigh.

‘Darling girls!’ Venetia, dressed in white silk with a pink velvet fringed scarf around her waist appeared above them in the huge doorway then ran full pelt down the sweeping marble steps towards them. ‘You’re here at last! I can hardly believe it!’ She threw her arms around each of them in turn, kissing them soundly on both cheeks. ‘Was your Mama cross to be left behind?’

Eliza laughed. ‘Not at all.’ Mrs Garland was ambitious for daughters, not herself and was more than happy to remain in the background while they went out into society. The thought of visiting Clermont had filled her with dread and she’d been only too happy to wave them off from the Rue de l’Université then go on a long and delightful shopping trip by herself.

The three girls went arm in arm up the steps, leaving Minette to follow behind surrounded by a crowd of luggage carrying footmen. ‘Well, what do you think?’ Venetia cried as they entered a vast white entrance hall with a well worn black and white marble floor. ‘Cold isn’t it?’ She rushed them through the hall, tugging at Clementine’s arm as she craned her neck, trying to look up at the beautiful old portraits that hung high on the walls.

‘Oh, never mind all that!’ she chided with a laugh. ‘I want to take you upstairs for a gossip! It’s been far too long!’ Chattering non stop, she led them up an enormous carved sandstone double staircase to the first floor and then down an airy long gallery to her room, a large violet scented chamber with pink flower papered walls and an enormous four poster bed hung with pink brocade.

‘Venetia!’ Eliza gasped, looking around at the lovely room. ‘How beautiful.’

Her friend smiled wryly and gave a little shrug. ‘It’s my reward for presenting them with a grandson,’ she said, chewing at her fingernail. ‘I’ll take you up to the nursery in a while so you can meet the little Comte.’ She tried to sound dismissive but her eyes shone when she mentioned her son. ‘I’m told that he is an excessively beautiful child, but all mothers think that, don’t they?’

‘Oh Venetia.’ Clementine sank down on the vast bed then threw herself back against the embroidered pillows. ‘I can’t believe that you have a husband and a baby now.’

‘I know,’ Venetia said with a smile, wrapping her arms around one of the gilt twisted posts of her bed. ‘It seems like so long ago that we were all in Bath together doesn’t it?’ She looked at Eliza, who was perched on a low wooden stool in front of a vast lace and pink ribbon bedecked dressing table. ‘You’ll be next, mark my words.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Eliza demurred, toying with a small porcelain pot of rouge. ‘Paris is lovely but I don’t think we’re going to find husbands here.’ She opened the pot and applied some rouge to the apples of her cheeks, turning her head this way and that to admire the effect.

‘No?’ Venetia hid a smile. ‘Well, we shall see.’

After a visit to the cosy lavender scented nursery, where the tiny Comte Alexandre proved to be every bit as beautiful as his fond little
maman
claimed him to be, they went down to dinner in the blue damask dining room on the ground floor, which had French windows that led out onto a wide terrace and then down to the gardens. ‘It will be hideously dull,’ Venetia warned her friends in a whisper before they entered the candlelit
salon
to be introduced to the family. ‘But if I can endure it for weeks on end, you can put up with it for one night.’

The old Duc turned out to be every bit as formidable as they imagined - tall, and bad tempered with a red face that clashed with the gold embroidered crimson velvet of his coat. ‘So these are your friends, Venetia?’ he barked in French as he bent low over Eliza’s hand. ‘I had no idea that English girls could be so pretty. You’re usually a pallid, toothy lot.’

‘You are too kind, Monsieur le Duc,’ Eliza replied with a smile, before pulling Clementine, who was looking at the family portraits that lined the walls of the
salon
, forward. ‘This is my younger sister, Clementine.’

‘Enchanted, mademoiselle,’ the Duc looked Clementine over as she blushed and stared at the floor. ‘You were admiring the paintings?’

Clementine curtsied uneasily. ‘They are very beautiful,’ she murmured, intimidated by his height and manner.

‘Yes,’ the Duc agreed before crooking a finger at one of a trio of silent, pale faced girls who sat beside the fire staring at the newcomers with mingled curiosity and hostility. ‘My daughter, Violette can show you some of them after dinner.’ He took Eliza’s hand and led both girls to Madame la Duchesse, a small redheaded wispy lady dressed in rustling emerald green satin, who was embroidering roses onto a cushion cover in her armchair on the other side of the vast ornately carved fireplace. ‘May I present the Mesdemoiselles Garland?’

Madame la Duchesse graciously inclined her head as she thoughtfully looked them both up and down. ‘Welcome to Clermont,’ she said in a low voice that they had to step forward to be able to hear. ‘It is very kind of you to accept our invitation to visit.’ She smiled fondly up at her daughter in law, who came forward and took her hand. ‘I was afraid that poor Venetia would be lonely here with just us for company.’ It was clear that Venetia, mother to the only grandchild, could do no wrong as far as Madame la Duchesse was concerned.

She put aside her embroidery and stood up, brushing down her crumpled satin skirts. ‘I am sorry that our eldest son, Edmond could not be here tonight to meet you,’ she said to Eliza, with a not very well disguised look of chagrin. ‘We hope that he will be able to join us tomorrow.’

The elder Miss Garland blushed. ‘I shall be very glad to meet him,’ she mumbled, shooting a mortified look at the grinning Venetia. ‘What have you told them?’ she whispered to her friend as they walked together into the dining room, behind the Duc and Duchesse.

Venetia laughed and shook back her long scarlet ringlets as her trio of sisters in law muttered and rolled their eyes behind her. ‘Only that you are very pretty, very rich and very well behaved.’ They took their places at the candle and flower covered round table in the centre of the room. ‘It needed only that to pique my mother in law’s interest.’

Eliza sighed. ‘I don’t want to be married just for my money,’ she whispered. ‘Anyway, it’s not like they need a rich bride for this Comte Edmond is it?’ She looked around the beautiful dining room, which was lined with huge gilt framed mirrors and portraits of long dead Duchesses, curling their long dark ringlets between slender, white fingers and gazing out upon the diners with languorous, faintly amused black eyes. Above their heads there hung an enormous chandelier, with large gleaming crystal drops that swayed and twinkled slightly with every stray breeze.

Venetia smirked. ‘Don’t be deceived, Eliza,’ she replied, spreading her fine linen napkin across her silk knees and smiling up at the solemn footman who filled her glass with red wine. ‘Like most of the French aristocracy, my dear parents in law are simply keeping up appearances.’ She took a large sip of her wine. ‘They fell like vultures upon my meagre little allowance so heaven knows what they’d make of all your thousands, darling.’

‘Oh hush.’ Eliza flushed crimson and looked quickly away.
 

After dinner they went for a stroll through the formal parterres of flowers that lay at the back of the house. Dusk had fallen and the beautiful château was bathed in an eerie pink light that made it look even more like a fairytale castle than before.

Venetia had drunk too much and almost tumbled to the ground several times as she danced in front of her friends, spinning around until she made them feel dizzy and implore her to stop. ‘So what do you think of them all?’ she asked with a laugh.
 

‘I liked them all very much,’ Eliza replied carefully. ‘Oh do stop spinning around, Venetia. You’re giving me a headache.’

‘How do you get along with Jules’ sisters?’ Clementine asked, with a look back over her shoulder at the house. Their hosts had retired to the
salon
again, no doubt to discreetly discuss their young guests, in particular Eliza, who had been the focus of much particular and embarrassing attention during dinner.

‘I get on very well with them,’ Venetia replied, pulling a porcelain snuff box from her sleeve and applying a sprinkle of powder to her wrist before sniffing. ‘They are not very interesting but then, not many convent bred girls are.’ She began to giggle. ‘You should have seen their faces fall when Madame la Duchesse said that she wanted me to invite you here. They’re terrified that your eccentric English charms will ruin things for them with all the young gentlemen.’

Eliza strolled along the edge of the parterre and gently picked some lavender, which she crumbled between her fingers, freeing the gentle, spicy scent into the air. ‘Where is Jules, Venetia?’ she asked in an undertone.

Venetia abruptly stopped laughing. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied after a moment’s awkward pause. ‘He could be in Paris or Versailles or visiting one of his friends in the provinces.’ She forced herself to smile and shrug. ‘He no longer feels the need to keep me up to date with his movements.’

Clementine looked shocked. ‘But you have only recently had his baby, Venetia!’ she exclaimed, astounded. ‘Don’t you care?’

‘Care?’ Venetia raised an eyebrow. ‘No, I don’t especially care. That’s just how marriage is here in France.’

Chapter Fourteen

Clementine woke up early the next morning and immediately sprang from her bed, ran across the sun bathed wooden floorboards in her bare feet and pushed open her window, which looked out across the gardens at the back of the château. She gave a happy sigh as she leaned out and breathed in deeply, enjoying the distant sounds of the Duc’s hunting dogs barking for their breakfast while a lone peacock called on the lawn, trailing its splendid feathers forlornly behind it.

Whoever married the absent, mysterious Comte Edmond would one day become
chatelaine
of all this splendour and as Clementine turned reluctantly away from the window, she tried to imagine Eliza as mistress of Clermont. It was a becoming image, but not a convincing one.
 

Venetia had promised them a wonderful surprise after breakfast and they were giddy with excitement as they clambered up into an open phaeton and set off at a brisk trot up the long avenue. ‘Where are we going?’ Clementine asked, holding on to her wide brimmed straw hat and looking back over her shoulder at the château as it receded from view.